December 1942.
Deep in the Canadian wilderness, 127 German prisoners of war sat packed together in the recreation hall of camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario.
The room smelled like sweat and wood smoke.
Outside, snow fell thick and heavy in the darkness.
Inside, the men waited in rows of wooden chairs, their breath making small clouds in the cold air.
Oberg rider Klaus Becker sat in the third row, his hands gripping the wooden chair beneath him.
He was 23 years old with blonde hair cut short like all German soldiers around him.
Yin 27 German prisoners sat waiting in tense silence.
The whole room held its breath.
This is the story of what happened next.
This is the story of how a simple radio broadcast destroyed years of lies in under 15 minutes.
Klouse had believed everything they told him.
He grew up in Hamburg working in his family’s bakery when he wasn’t at Hitler youth meetings.
He started going to those meetings when he was 14.
They taught him that Germany was the best country in the world.
They taught him that Germans were better than everyone else.
They taught him that Canada was a frozen wasteland where poor people lived in igloos and did whatever the British told them to do.
His two brothers joined the Vermach before him.
His mother cried when all three of her sons went to war, but she said it was for Germany.
It was for the future.
Klouse believed her because everyone believed it.
Everyone said the same things.
Then came August 19th, 1942.
The beaches at Diet, France, Klouse was part of the German defenders.
The Canadians came in boats trying to take the town.
It was chaos.
Bullets everywhere, explosions, screaming.
When it ended, 9007 Canadian soldiers lay dead.
But the Germans captured 568 Canadians, too.
And the Canadians captured Klouse.
He thought they would kill him.
The officers had said the enemy took no prisoners.
They said if you got captured, you would be tortured.
You would be worked to death.
You would starve.
Instead, a Canadian medic gave him water.
The medic treated a cut on Klaus’s arm.
He did it before treating his own wounded soldiers.
Klouse didn’t understand it then.
He still didn’t understand it now, 4 months later, sitting in this recreation hall.
Feld Vable Ernst Hoffman sat three rows behind Klouse.
Ernst was 38 years old, old enough to have fought in the first war.
He came from Bavaria from a small farm near Munich.
He had three daughters back home.
He owned 15 acres of land.
Not much, but it was his.
Ernst had been a soldier his whole adult life.
He knew how to follow orders.
He knew how to not ask questions, but he also knew that officers sometimes lied.
He learned that in the first war.
So when they told him the Canadians were starving, that their economy was falling apart, that they lived in poverty, Ernst filed it away in his mind.
Maybe true.
Maybe not.
He would see for himself.
The British and Canadians captured him in Tunisia in May 1942.
That was 7 months ago.
He surrendered with thousands of other Axis soldiers during the early North Africa campaign.
Ernst was glad to be alive.
He was less glad about what came next.
He had heard the same warnings as Klouse.
Expect revenge.
Expect brutality.
Expect nothing good.
But they gave him food on the ship across the Atlantic.
Real food.
Hot soup.
Bread.
Coffee that wasn’t made from burned acorns.
Ernst ate and stayed quiet and watched everything.
Friedrich Vieber was only 19 years old.
Everyone called him Fritz.
He came from Berlin.
He had been studying it engineering for 6 months when they drafted him.
6 months.
That was all the university he got before they put a rifle in his hands and sent him to France.
Fritz got captured at Dap 2, same day as Klouse.
He remembered being terrified.
He was sure they would shoot all the prisoners.
Why wouldn’t they? The propaganda ministry said the Canadians were savages.
The ministry showed pictures of bombed German cities and said the Canadians cheered when German children died.
But no one shot him.
They put him on a ship.
They gave him food.
They brought him to Canada, 6,000 kilometers from the war, and put him in this camp with heated buildings and real beds.
Fritz spent every day confused.
This wasn’t what anyone said would happen.
This wasn’t what the briefings promised.
Now all three of them sat in this recreation hall.
Klouse in front, still young enough to believe in something.
Ernst in the middle, old enough to doubt everything.
Fritz near the back, too young to know what to believe anymore.
They all remembered what they were told.
They all heard the same broadcasts from Berlin.
Yseph Gerbles on the radio every week, his voice sharp and angry.
Canada was dying.
Britain was squeezing them dry.
Canadian people were starving while Churchill ate fancy meals in London.
The Canadian economy was broken.
Their factories were failing.
They had nothing left.
Already in just a few weeks at camp, they had seen things that didn’t match what they were told.
The food was more abundant than expected.
The buildings were heated and clean.
The guards weren’t cruel.
Something didn’t add up.
But you couldn’t say that out loud.
Not if you wanted to avoid trouble with the other prisoners.
Not if you didn’t want to be called a traitor.
The commandant walked to the front of the room carrying something large.
The men watched in silence, waiting to learn why they’d been called together.
Klouse gripped the edge of his wooden chair.
Arens leaned forward three rows back.
Fritz held his breath near the back of the room.
None of them knew what was coming.
None of them knew that in the next hour everything they believed would crack apart like ice in spring.
What came next would change everything.
The ship rolled on the Atlantic waves like a giant metal coffin.
Klouse pressed his back against the cold steel wall and tried not to think about drowning.
Below deck, 800 German prisoners packed together in what used to be a cargo hold.
The air smelled like oil and sick men and the salt of the ocean.
It was September 1942 and Klaus had been a prisoner for 3 weeks.
He remembered the films they showed at Hitler youth meetings.
German yubot sinking Allied ships one after another.
The narrators said 90% of Allied ships never made it across the Atlantic.
They showed British sailors drowning in burning oil.
They said the convoy system was failing.
They said the allies were losing the war at sea.
But this convoy moved steady and calm.
Klouse could hear the engines of other ships nearby.
10 ships.
20 ships, maybe more.
He never saw a yubot.
He never heard an explosion.
The convoy sailed on through gray water under gray skies, and nothing happened.
The British and Canadian guards brought food twice a day, hot soup, bread that was only 2 days old, real coffee, not the burned grain mixture they drank in the Vermacht.
Klouse ate his portion and felt guilty.
His brothers were still fighting.
They probably had less food than this.
Ernst noticed the same thing.
He sat near the middle of the hold, watching everything.
The guards ate the same food the prisoners ate.
Same portions, same quality.
In Ernst’s experience, that meant something.
It meant the guards weren’t starving either.
It meant there was enough food to go around.
But Gerbles said Britain was starving her colonies.
Gerbal said Canada had nothing left.
On the fourth day at sea, a young prisoner named Verer got an infection in his hand.
A small cut from barbed wire had turned red and swollen.
The boy was 18, scared, running a fever.
He thought they would leave him to die.
Instead, the ship’s medical officer came down to the hold.
A Canadian captain with gray hair and tired eyes.
He looked at Verer’s hand under an electric lamp.
He cleaned the wound.
Then he gave Verer a shot of something.
Sulfa drugs, he said in broken German.
Antibiotics.
Real medicine, not sawdust, not hope.
Real medicine that actually worked.
Verer’s fever broke the next day.
Klouse watched it happen and didn’t know what to think.
They were supposed to be the enemy.
Why waste good medicine on the enemy? Fritz spent most of the voyage trying to see the ship’s engine room.
He was an engineering student, or he had been for 6 months.
Through a crack in a doorway, he saw the engines running smooth and clean.
All the equipment looked new, well-maintained.
The whole ship felt solid and strong.
But they were told the Allied industrial base was collapsing.
They were told British and Canadian factories couldn’t keep up with demand.
One night, Klouse couldn’t sleep.
The ship rocked too much.
He heard two guards talking in the corridor outside the hold.
They spoke English, but Klaus knew a little English from school.
One guard complained about rationing back home.
His wife was upset.
She couldn’t get enough sugar for baking.
Butter was getting scarce, too.
She had to use coupons for everything.
Klouse listened hard.
Sugar.
Butter.
That was the shortage.
Not bread, not meat, not food to survive.
Just less sugar for cakes, just less butter for toast.
He thought about hamburg.
His mother’s last letter said they were eating turnips for dinner.
Just turnips for months.
And the Canadian guards were complaining about not enough sugar.
The ship docked at Halifax on October 15th, 1942.
Klouse and Fritz walked off together, their legs shaky from two weeks at sea.
Ernst had arrived two months earlier in June 1942 on a different ship, but he saw the same things they did.
The harbor was full of ships.
Klouse counted 43 ships at anchor or at dock.
Huge cranes moved cargo from ships to trains.
Workers swarmed everywhere like ants on a hill.
Buildings lined the waterfront, tall and solid.
No bomb damage, no ruins, no burned out shells, just a working city, busy with work.
The dock workers looked healthy.
Some of them looked fat, not starving, not thin and desperate like the people in German cities.
One man was eating a sandwich the size of Klaus’s fist.
He took big bites and threw half of it to a seagull.
Ernst whispered to another prisoner.
“Where are the starving masses? Where are the ruins?” The prisoner had no answer.
They loaded the prisoners onto trains for the journey west.
The train was old, but it worked.
Through the windows, Klouse watched Canada roll past.
Forests, rivers, small towns, then farms, miles and miles of farms.
It was autumn, harvest time.
The fields were full of grain.
Combines moved through wheat, cutting and gathering.
Huge grain elevators rose up beside railroad tracks, holding more food than Klaus had seen in years.
Modern tractors, not horses, pulled equipment through fields.
Power lines ran along roads, bringing electricity to farms in the middle of nowhere.
Klouse pressed his face to the window.
This wasn’t supposed to be possible.
They said Canadian agriculture had collapsed.
They said the farms couldn’t produce enough.
But here were thousands of acres of wheat, healthy and golden, being harvested by machines.
Fritz started counting cars.
In a 100 km stretch of track, he counted 47 automobiles, some parked outside houses, some driving on roads, private cars, not military vehicles.
He saw more cars in one afternoon than he’d seen in Berlin in 6 months.
Small towns passed by the windows.
Electric street lights.
Shops with goods in the windows.
Movie theaters with new films advertised on mares.
People walking on sidewalks going about their lives.
No air raid shelters.
No rubble.
No fear.
At the processing station, the guards were polite but firm.
They asked questions and wrote down answers.
They gave each prisoner a Red Cross form to send home to tell their families they were alive.
They issued two wool blankets to each man.
Real wool, thick and warm.
They gave out mess kits, toiletries, even toothbrushes.
Aaron took his toothbrush and stared at it.
The Germans didn’t give toothbrushes to prisoners.
They barely gave toothbrushes to soldiers.
He found Klouse in the processing line.
Either they’re fattening us for Ma.
Something worse.
Ert said quietly, or everything we were told was a lie.
Klouse didn’t answer.
He couldn’t because he was starting to think he knew which one it was.
The truck stopped in front of a brick building that looked like a school.
Klouse stepped down onto gravel and stared up at three stories of solid brick walls.
Windows with real glass reflected the afternoon sun.
A Canadian flag snapped in the wind above the roof.
This was Camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario, 75 km east of Toronto.
This was going to be home.
Klouse expected wooden barracks.
He expected dirt floors and crowded bunks where men slept shoulderto-shoulder.
He expected cold and darkness and the smell of too many bodies in too small a space.
He had seen camps like that in Poland.
He knew what prison camps looked like.
This wasn’t that.
The guards led them inside.
The hallway had electric lights hanging from the ceiling.
Real lights, not candles or oil lamps.
The floors were wood swept clean.
Radiators lined the walls.
Cold now in October, but ready for winter.
The building used to be a reform school for boys who got in trouble.
Now it held 650 German prisoners.
Later it would hold 847.
They climbed stairs to the second floor.
Klaus’s group got assigned to a dormatory room with eight beds.
Eight men, not 40.
Each bed had a real mattress, not a bag of straw.
Each bed had two blankets.
The room had windows that opened and closed.
It had a radiator for heat.
It had electric lights with switches on the wall.
Fritz sat on his bed and bounced once, testing it.
The mattress was thin but real.
He looked at Klouse and said nothing.
What was there to say? Ert stood at the window and looked out at the campgrounds.
He could see a soccer field, a volleyball court.
Other prisoners walking between buildings, not marching, just walking.
Guards stood at posts along the fence, but they weren’t pointing guns at anyone.
They just stood there watching, bored.
This wasn’t right.
Something about all of this wasn’t right.
The dinner bell rang at 6:00.
Klouse followed the other prisoners down to the dining hall.
Long tables filled the room with benches on both sides.
The kitchen smelled like cooking meat.
Real meat, not the mystery stew they got in the Vermacht.
His stomach growled so loud the man next to him laughed.
They lined up with metal trays.
A Canadian cook in a white apron spooned food onto each tray.
Klouse watched the portions pile up.
Oatmeal even though it was dinner.
Two eggs, bread with butter.
Real butter, yellow and soft.
A cup of coffee that smelled like actual coffee.
He sat down and stared at his tray.
This was more food than he got most days as a soldier.
This was more food than his family got in Hamburg.
He was a prisoner and he was eating like a king.
Fritz leaned over and whispered.
I think they made a mistake.
This can’t be for us, but it was for them every day, three times a day.
The camp gave each prisoner three 400 calories of food every single day.
Klouse used to get 2,200 calories in the Vermacht, and that was on good days.
Here, lunch was meat stew with vegetables and potatoes and fruit.
Dinner was roast pork or roast beef, 150 g of meat with bread and cheese, and sometimes cake for dessert.
Klouse wrote a letter home that night.
He tried to tell his mother what the food was like.
He tried to explain the beds and the heat and the electric lights, but he knew she wouldn’t believe him.
He knew it sounded crazy.
So he crossed it all out and wrote instead, “The food is adequate.
We are treated according to the Geneva Convention.
” The sensors would let that through.
The truth would not.
The camp had a medical building with 12 beds.
A real doctor worked there, a Canadian captain named Williams.
The building had an X-ray machine.
Klouse saw it through the window.
An X-ray machine in a prison camp.
For prisoners, for the enemy.
The library had over 800 books on shelves, some in English, some in German.
The Red Cross donated them.
Local Canadian families donated them, too.
Prisoners could check out books and read in their rooms.
They had chess sets and musical instruments.
They had a soccer field and a volleyball court.
They had things to do besides sit and wait.
The guards were mostly old men, veterans from the first war, too old to fight in this one.
Sergeant Macdonald was 54 years old from Nova Scotia.
He had fought Germans at Vimemy Ridge in 1917.
He had seen men die in mud and blood.
Now he guarded German prisoners and his face showed nothing.
Not hate, not revenge, just a job that needed doing.
Klouse tried to talk to him once.
Macdonald looked at him for a long moment, then said in rough German, “War’s over for you boys.
Make the best of it.
” That was all.
No speeches about evil, no threats, no cruelty, just a statement of fact.
Ernst watched everything and said little.
He noticed the guards ate in their own dining hall, but they ate the same food the prisoners ate.
He noticed they lived in barracks that looked just like the prisoner barracks.
They weren’t living in luxury while prisoners suffered.
They were just men doing a job, living simply, following orders.
At night in the dormatory, the prisoners talked in whispers.
Some said it was all a trick.
They were being fattened up for forced labor in mines.
They would work until they died.
This kindness was temporary, meant to soften them for interrogation.
Others weren’t sure.
The evidence kept piling up.
The food, the beds, the medical care, the books, the sports.
None of it fit what they were told to expect.
Klouse lay in his bed on the seventh night and wrote in a small diary he kept hidden under his mattress.
The pencil was stub from a Canadian guard who dropped it.
The paper was from a torn Red Cross form.
He wrote in tiny letters, “Day seven, still waiting for the cruelty to begin.
But somewhere deep inside, in a place he didn’t want to look at yet, Klouse was starting to think the cruelty wasn’t coming.
The cruelty was what they left behind.
The cruelty was the lies.
November came cold and gray.
The camp conant announced that prisoners could work on local farms if they wanted.
It was voluntary.
They would get paid 20 cents per day in camp vouchers.
They could use the vouchers to buy cigarettes and candy and small things from the camp store.
Klouse signed up.
He missed being outside.
He missed working with his hands.
The guards assigned him to the Stevenson farm, 8 kilometers from camp.
A truck took him and five other prisoners there every morning at 7.
The farmhouse sat on a small hill surrounded by fields.
It was white with green shutters and a porch that wrapped around two sides.
Klouse walked up to the door that first morning, and Mrs.
Stevenson came out to meet them.
She was 62 years old with gray hair pulled back in a bun.
She showed them what needed doing and sent them to work.
At noon, she called them in for lunch.
Klouse stood in the doorway and stared.
The kitchen had a radio on the counter.
A real radio playing music.
The sink had running water that came out hot or cold depending on which handle you turned.
An electric refrigerator hummed in the corner.
A telephone hung on the wall, black and shiny.
Mrs.
Stevenson made them chicken sandwiches with fresh bread.
She cut slices of apple pie and poured glasses of cold milk.
She set the food on the table and told them to sit and eat.
Then she said something Klouse would never forget.
“You boys are someone’s sons,” she said, her English slow so they could understand.
“War’s not your fault.
” Klouse ate his sandwich and didn’t know what to say.
His mouth was full, but his mind was empty.
This woman should hate him.
Her country was fighting his country.
Canadian boys were dying because of Germany.
But she made him lunch and called him someone’s son.
Ernst got assigned to a lumber camp with 35 other prisoners.
They cut timber for the war effort.
Big trees that would become ships and buildings and crates.
Ernst expected hands saws and axes and old tools.
He expected hard work with simple equipment.
Instead, the Canadian foreman showed them power saws, electric chainsaws that cut through wood like butter, modern equipment that did in minutes what would take hours by hand.
The Canadians weren’t using primitive tools.
They were using the newest technology even this far from any city.
The foreman was a Chinese man named Mr.
Chen.
He immigrated to Canada in 1920, he told Erns through a translator.
He owned a house in town.
He had two sons fighting in the Canadian army right now somewhere in Europe.
Maybe fighting Germans, maybe fighting Arenst’s old unit.
Ernst stood in the forest and thought about that.
A Chinese man in Canada owned property, had a good job, sent his sons to fight for Canada like they belong there.
Back in Germany, Jews couldn’t own property anymore.
They couldn’t have jobs.
They couldn’t be part of society.
And here was Mr.
Chen from the other side of the world, more free in Canada than Ernst had ever been in Germany.
Fritz stayed in camp on maintenance duty.
He knew about electrical systems from his engineering studies.
The camp needed someone to fix lights and outlets and wiring.
They gave him tools and let him work.
One day, he had to repair an outlet in the camp administrator’s office.
He worked quietly while the administrator did paperwork at his desk.
The telephone rang.
The administrator picked it up and talked to his wife.
Fritz understood enough English to follow the conversation.
The administrator was complaining about Christmas shopping.
His wife wanted to buy too many presents.
The war bonds were expensive.
Everything cost money.
But he was talking about buying presents plural about shopping for Christmas like it was normal, like there was no war.
Fritz finished the repair and left.
He walked back to his dormatory in a days.
In Berlin, there was no Christmas shopping.
There were no presents in stores.
There was nothing to buy, even if you had money.
The prisoners tried to write letters home.
The sensors read everything.
Both the Germans and the Canadians.
So, the prisoners learned to be careful with words.
Klouse wrote to his mother.
The food here is adequate.
We are treated according to the Geneva Convention.
I am safe and healthy.
I think of you always.
What he wanted to write was, “Mother, everything they told us was lies.
These people live like kings.
We were wrong about everything.
Arenst wrote to his wife Maria.
Tell the girls their father is safe and thinking of them daily.
The work is not too hard.
I am well.
” What he wanted to write was, “Maria, I pray Germany surrenders soon.
Every day this war continues is a waste.
We cannot win against this.
” Fritz kept a hidden diary instead of writing letters.
His parents were dead, killed in a bombing raid.
He had no one to write to, so he wrote to himself.
I counted 23 automobiles in Bowmanville today.
private cars, just regular people driving to work or to shop.
In Berlin, only Nazi officials have cars.
What does that mean? What does any of this mean? The evidence kept piling up like snow in winter.
The prisoners noticed everything now.
They couldn’t help it.
The camp kitchen had electric refrigerators and industrial ovens and hot running water.
The medical building had modern surgical equipment and real medicine.
Penicellin, sulfa drugs, medicine most German civilians couldn’t get.
The prisoners talked among themselves in the dormitories at night.
Klouse told Ernst about Mrs.
Stevenson’s kitchen.
Ernst told Klouse about Mr.
Chen owning a house.
Fritz told them both about the administrator buying Christmas presents.
An older prisoner who fought in the first war said, “In the last war, we starved in the camps.
We ate rats.
We died of disease.
This this is different.
” Some prisoners refused to believe it.
They said it was all for show.
They said only this area was nice, that the rest of Canada was poor and starving.
They said to wait until winter, then the truth would come out.
But winter came and nothing changed.
The radiators kept the buildings warm.
The food kept coming.
Three meals a day, every day, hot and filling.
In early December, the camp commandant made an announcement.
There would be a special Christmas dinner.
The Red Cross was sending packages.
Prisoners could attend religious services if they wanted, Catholic mass, Protestant services, whatever they needed.
Klouse listened to the announcement and felt something crack inside his chest.
They were allowed to practice their faith, to celebrate Christmas, to be treated like human beings.
Father Murphy, a Catholic chaplain, came to camp to offer Christmas mass.
He was Canadian, but he spoke some German.
He told the Catholic prisoners they were welcome.
God loved them even if their countries were at war.
Fritz wasn’t religious, but he went to the service anyway.
He sat in the back and listened to Latin prayers and German hymns.
He watched German soldiers cry while singing Silent Night.
He realized they were crying because they missed home, but also because home had never treated them this kindly.
Klouse lay in bed that night and stared at the ceiling.
The evidence was everywhere now, impossible to ignore.
Canada was at war on multiple continents, fighting in Europe, fighting in the Pacific, sending ships and planes and men to die.
And still they had abundance.
Still they had electric lights and automobiles and Christmas shopping and food to spare.
Something was very wrong or very right.
Klouse didn’t know which, but he knew he couldn’t keep lying to himself much longer.
The truth was pushing through like water through cracks in a dam.
Soon the whole thing would break.
Soon he would have to face what all of this meant.
December 20th, 1942, 7:00 in the evening.
The recreation hall filled with prisoners until 127 men sat in rows facing the front.
The camp had grown since those first arrivals in the summer and fall.
The room smelled like wool and cigarette smoke, and the soap they used to wash floors.
Outside, snow fell soft and thick, covering the camp in white silence.
Major Patterson carried the radio to a table at the front of the room.
It was a big wooden console, an RCA Victor with a curved front and brass knobs that gleamed under the electric lights.
He set it down carefully, then turned to face the prisoners.
“Gentlemen,” he said in his accented German, “we have acquired a radio for educational and recreational purposes.
You may listen or not, as you choose.
” Klouse sat in the third row with Ernst on his left and Fritz on his right.
His hands gripped the edge of his wooden chair.
His heart beat fast in his chest.
around him.
The other prisoners sat still and tense, waiting.
Ernst leaned close and whispered.
Careful.
It could be propaganda aimed at us.
Klouse nodded.
Of course, it could be propaganda.
Everything was propaganda.
The question was, “Who’s propaganda and what it would tell them?” Major Patterson turned the dial.
Static crackled through the speaker loud in the quiet room.
He adjusted the knob slowly until a voice came through clear and professional.
A man speaking English.
CBC Radio, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The announcer read the news.
His voice was calm and measured, not excited or angry.
He reported on the war in Russia.
The German army was advancing towards Stalingrad.
He said it plainly without emotion.
Then he reported on the Pacific theater, on the home front, on weather and politics.
Klouse listened hard trying to understand the English.
What shocked him was the tone.
The announcer wasn’t screaming like gerbles.
He wasn’t making grand speeches about destiny and blood.
He was just reading facts.
Ernst whispered, “He’s reporting our victories, too.
Honestly, that made no sense.
Why would enemy radio report German victories? Why not lie and say Germany was losing everywhere.
At 7 minutes past 7, the news ended.
Then came something Claus had not expected.
A jingle music.
A man’s voice cheerful and bright.
Coca-Cola.
Refreshing taste.
Just 5 cents at your corner store.
Klouse froze.
His whole body went rigid.
5 cents for luxury goods.
for soda during a war.
The advertisement ended.
Another one began immediately.
Start your day with Kellogg’s cornflakes now with added vitamins.
Wholesome breakfast cereal for the whole family.
Fritz grabbed Klaus’s arm and squeezed.
Breakfast cereal.
They were advertising breakfast cereal.
On the radio during a war, a third advertisement played.
General Motors is proud to announce that 1943 Chevrolet models are coming soon.
The car for every Canadian family.
Visit your local dealer today.
Every conversation stopped mid-sentence.
Not a man breathed.
Not a whisper.
General Motors making civilian cars in the middle of a war.
While fighting on multiple continents, Klaus felt dizzy.
The room tilted sideways.
He gripped his chair harder.
A fourth advertisement.
And this one broke something inside Klaus’s chest.
Eaton’s department store Christmas sale.
Diamond rings.
Fur coats.
Electric appliances.
Giftgiving made easy.
Shop now for the perfect present.
Diamond rings.
Fur coats.
Electric appliances.
For Christmas while at war.
One prisoner stood up and walked out.
His footsteps echoed on the wooden floor.
No one else moved.
The music program started jazz music.
Duke Ellington Orchestra.
The announcer said, “From the Palladium Ballroom in downtown Toronto, dancing tonight until midnight.
People were dancing in ballrooms while the war raged while men died.
While cities burned, Canadians were dancing to jazz music in fancy ballrooms.
” Fritz whispered, “This can’t be real.
None of this can be real.
But it was real.
It was playing on the radio right now.
Real advertisements for real products that real people could buy.
At 20 minutes 7, a discussion program began.
CBC radio forum.
The topic was women’s voting rights.
Should Canada expand them further? A panel of civilians talked.
They debated.
that disagreed with each other.
One woman said clearly, “I disagree with the prime minister’s position on this matter.
” She disagreed with the prime minister on the radio, on public radio, and no one arrested her.
No one stopped her.
She just said it and kept talking.
Klouse stood up.
He couldn’t sit anymore.
He couldn’t breathe.
He walked to the corner of the room and pressed his forehead against the cold wall.
His hands shook, his legs shook, everything shook.
Ernst found him 5 minutes later outside in the snow.
Klouse was bent over vomiting into a snowbank.
His whole body heaved and shook.
“It’s not possible,” Klouse said between gasps.
“None of this is possible.
We were told.
” “I know what we were told,” Ert said quietly.
His voice was steady, but his face looked 10 years older.
“I know what we believed.
Fritz came out and stood with them.
Snow fell on their shoulders and melted.
The three of them stood in the dark and the cold while inside.
124 German prisoners kept listening to the radio.
The advertisements, Fritz said, his voice cracked.
They were advertising luxury goods during total war.
Ernst looked at the dark sky.
Do you understand what this means? Canada is fighting on multiple continents, sending ships and planes and men.
And they still have enough industrial capacity to make Coca-Cola and sell it for 5 cents.
They still have enough abundance to advertise fur coats and diamond rings.
Klouse straightened up.
His mouth tasted like acid.
My brother wrote that they’re eating turnips in Hamburgg.
Just turnips for months.
And here, here they’re advertising Coca-Cola for 5 cents.
They stood in silence.
Inside, someone laughed.
The radio was playing a comedy show now.
Jack Benny, jokes about rationing.
Light jokes, gentle humor, no panic, no fear.
Germany can’t win this war.
Ert said, “We never could.
You can’t beat this with tanks.
You can’t beat abundance with lies.
” Fritz started crying.
Not loud, just tears running down his face in the dark.
I’m 19 years old.
I believed everything they told me.
Everything.
Klouse wanted to say something to make it better, but there was nothing to say.
The truth was crushing all of them.
The weight of it was too heavy to carry.
At 8:00, Major Patterson turned off the radio.
He looked at the prisoners still sitting in their chairs.
Some had tears on their faces.
Some sat frozen.
Some looked angry.
A few were arguing in whispers.
“The radio will be available every evening,” Major Patterson said.
“You may listen or not, as you choose.
Good night, gentlemen.
” He walked out and left them there.
Left them to process what they had heard.
Left them to face what it meant.
That night, the dormitories buzzed with voices until 2:00 in the morning.
Arguments erupted between men who still believed and men who couldn’t believe anymore.
Shouting accusations.
Someone called someone else a traitor.
Klouse lay in his bed and wrote in his hidden diary with a stub of pencil.
His hand his shook so badly the words came out crooked.
December the 20th, 1942.
Everything I believe died tonight.
I don’t know what I am anymore.
Ernst lay awake three beds away staring at the ceiling.
He thought about his daughters eating watery soup in Bavaria.
He thought about his friends who died in Africa.
He whispered to the dark, “I fought for a lie.
They all died for a lie.
” Fritz pulled his blanket over his head and cried into his pillow.
He was 19.
He had believed with his whole heart, and now his heart was broken, and he didn’t know how to put it back together.
The radio had been on for 1 hour, just 1 hour, and it destroyed years of lies in 127 men.
The camp split into three groups in the days after the radio broadcast.
About 30% refused to listen to the radio again.
They were the true believers, former SS members, officers who had sworn oaths to Hitler.
They said the radio was sophisticated propaganda.
The advertisements were fake.
The abundance was an illusion meant to break their spirits.
Hopedman Schneider led this group.
He was a captain, older than Klouse, harder than Ernst.
He gathered the true believers in a corner of the recreation hall and told them to stay strong.
Germany has wonder weapons coming.
He said, “Secret weapons that will turn the tide.
We will win.
Trust the furer.
” About 50% of the prisoners couldn’t deny what they heard.
Ernst became the informal leader of this group without trying.
Men came to him with questions because he was older, calmer, less emotional than the younger soldiers.
They wanted to understand what it all meant.
The rest fell somewhere in between.
Klouse was one of these.
He wanted to believe the old propaganda, but couldn’t make the pieces fit anymore.
He lay awake at night trying to find explanations that would let him keep believing.
But every explanation fell apart when he thought about 5-cent Coca-Cola and diamond ring advertisements during Total War.
Klouse kept working at Mrs.
Stevenson’s farm.
One morning, he gathered his courage and asked her a question.
His English was getting better.
He could make simple sentences now.
“Is the radio real?” he asked.
the advertisements.
Mrs.
Stevenson looked at him for a long moment.
Then she went into the house and came back with a thick catalog.
Eaton’s department store.
She handed it to him.
Klouse flipped through 600 pages of consumer goods.
Bicycles, radios, clothing, furniture, toys, jewelry, all available for purchase.
All with prices listed.
All real.
My granddaughter wants a bicycle for Christmas, Mrs.
Stevenson said.
We’ll order it from there.
Klouse handed the catalog back with shaking hands.
In Hamburg, you couldn’t buy a bicycle without a permit.
Only essential workers got permits.
And here was this woman ordering a bicycle for her granddaughter from a catalog like it was nothing.
Ernst asked Major Patterson for permission to read Canadian newspapers.
To his surprise, the major said yes.
The Toronto Daily Star.
The sites Globe and Mail.
Ernst could read them in the library.
Ernst read every page.
The movie listings showed 15 theaters in Toronto showing current films.
The help wanted section had dozens of job openings.
There was a labor shortage because so many men were fighting.
The society pages talked about weddings and parties and charity balls.
The editorial page had fierce debates about government policy.
People criticizing the prime minister, arguing about war strategy.
No one was arrested for it.
In Germany, criticizing the government meant prison or death.
Here it was just Tuesday.
The arguments in the recreation hall got worse.
One evening, Schneider confronted Arenst in front of 40 men.
“You’re weak,” Schneider shouted.
“Corrupted by their lies?” ence stayed calm.
“Hans, I heard advertisements for fur coats, diamond rings, while they’re fighting on five fronts.
” “Nah, what wonder weapon beats that industrial capacity?” “You’re a traitor to the fatherland.
” “I’m awake,” Ert said quietly.
“Finally.
” Schneider stormed out.
Half the men followed him.
The other half stayed with Arenst.
In the dormatory that night, Fritz asked Klouse the question that haunted them both.
Are we bad people? Were we the bad guys? Klouse didn’t answer for a long time.
Finally, he said, “I don’t know anymore.
I thought we were saving Germany, saving Europe.
” An older prisoner named Herman lay in the next bed.
He was 45.
a veteran of both wars.
He said, “I fought in the last war.
We lost that one, too.
Maybe we’re just good at fighting for bad causes.
” The prisoners tried to write letters home, but the words came hard.
How could they explain what they were learning? How could they tell their families that everything was a lie? Klouse wrote to his mother on December 28th.
Mother, I am learning things here that trouble me greatly.
When I return, we must talk, really talk about what we believed and why.
The sensors cut out the next paragraph where he wrote, “I don’t think we were the good Germans.
I don’t think there were any good Germans.
” Ernst wrote to his wife, Maria, tell the girls their father is safe and thinking of them daily.
I pray Germany surrenders soon.
The longer this continues, the worse it will be.
Maria would understand the subtext.
Ernst now hoped Germany would lose.
He hoped it would end quickly before more people died for the lie.
Major Patterson watched the transformation happen and didn’t interfere.
He told his senior staff, “Let the radio do the work.
Truth is the best weapon against lies.
” Sergeant Macdonald talked to Ernst one day while Ernst was helping repair a fence.
Macdonald said, “My son’s fighting in Italy right now.
Part of me wants to hate you boys, but I remember being 20, believing what my officers told me.
You’re not evil, son.
You were just pointed in the wrong direction.
” In January 1943, the camp started offering classes.
English language, Canadian history, democratic government, all voluntary.
No one was forced to attend.
68.
Prisoners signed up the first week.
Fritz took all three classes.
I need to understand what I didn’t know, he told Klouse.
Klouse signed up for English only.
He wasn’t ready for the rest yet.
Learning the language was practical.
Learning that his whole worldview was wrong was too much too fast.
The true believers formed their own group and refused to associate with what they called traitors.
Some fights broke out in the yard.
The guards stopped them quickly, but the tension stayed thick.
The hardliners started keeping lists.
Names of men who listened to the radio.
Names of men who took classes.
Names of men who asked questions.
They would deliver these lists to the Gestapo.
If Germany won, if Germany liberated them, these men would be punished for their weakness.
Errens told Klouse, “They think we’re the traitors.
Maybe we were traitors before and we’re loyal now.
Loyal to truth.
Father Murphy, the Catholic chaplain, noticed more men coming to services.
Fritz started attending, even though he wasn’t particularly religious.
He needed someone to talk to, someone who might have answers.
One Sunday after mass, Fritz asked for confession.
Father Murphy heard him out in a small room.
Father, I think I worshiped false gods.
Fritz said, I think I committed evil in service of evil.
Father Murphy was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, recognizing that is the first step back to grace, son.
The first step back to yourself.
In February, Ernst received his first letter from home.
It took 4 months to arrive.
The sensors had cut holes in it where they removed sensitive information.
But the message was clear enough.
Maria wrote about food shortages, about bombings, about fear.
She told him not to worry.
They were enduring.
They would survive.
Ernst showed the letter to Klouse.
I’m eating roast beef while my daughters eat bread and potatoes.
They tell me not to worry.
Klouse read the letter and felt sick.
God help us.
What have we done? By March 1943, the split was complete.
The true believers kept to themselves.
The transformed met in study groups.
The undecided watched both sides and tried to figure out where they belonged.
Klouse made his decision on a cold morning in late March.
He went to the administration building and signed up for the democratic government class.
The first lecture was about the rights of the individual versus the power of the state.
The instructor was a Canadian professor brought in from Toronto.
He talked about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to disagree with your government without fear.
Klouse sat in the back and listened.
Something crystallized in his mind, something he’d been circling around for months without quite seeing it.
In Germany, he never had rights.
He had permissions.
The government allowed him to do things or didn’t allow him.
But here, people had rights that existed whether the government liked it or not.
That wasn’t the same thing at all.
Klouse walked back to his dormatory in a days.
He felt like he’d been blind his whole life and someone just gave him eyes.
Everything looked different now.
Everything was different.
He was 23 years old and he was learning how to see the world for the first time.
The radio brought news of defeat after defeat.
January 1943, Stalingrad fell.
The German Sixth Army surrendered.
91,000 soldiers captured.
Klouse listened to the broadcast and felt relief mixed with horror.
Relief that those men wouldn’t die.
Horror at what awaited Germany.
September 1943, Italy surrendered.
Germany’s main ally quit the war.
Klaus was fluent in English now.
He helped teach German to Canadian guards who were learning interrogation techniques.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
A German prisoner teaching his captors how to question other Germans.
June 6th, 1944.
D-Day.
Klouse sat in the recreation hall with a hundred other prisoners and listened to Eisenhower’s message on the BBC.
Allied forces landing in France.
The invasion of Europe had begun.
Some prisoners wept.
Some sat in silence.
Klouse felt numb.
He wrote to his father that night.
The letter probably wouldn’t get through, but he tried anyway.
Father, I don’t know if this will reach you.
If it does, know that I learned something important here.
We were wrong, all of us, about everything.
The sensor read it and let it through.
Maybe because the war was ending, maybe because it didn’t matter anymore.
Ernst applied to stay in Canada through the agricultural labor program.
The government was letting some prisoners stay if they had useful skills.
Ernst knew farming.
He’d worked on Mrs.
Stevenson’s neighbor’s farm for 2 years.
The neighbor wrote him a reference letter.
Ernst filled out the forms and waited.
He wrote to Maria in May 1944.
When you and the girls can come, I want us to start over here.
Germany will take generations to heal.
We can have a life here, a real life.
Fritz was 22 now.
He’d spent his entire adult life either in Nazi Germany or in this Canadian camp.
He had no memory of a free Germany, no memory of a Germany without Hitler.
He told Ernst one night, “I have no homeland, just a place I came from and a place I might stay.
” He started writing letters to the University of Toronto, asking about their engineering program, asking if a former German prisoner could study there.
The answers came back surprisingly positive.
if he could pass the entrance exams, they would consider him.
May 8th, 1945.
The recreation hall was packed, 300 prisoners now.
The camp had expanded.
They gathered around the radio at 8:00 in the evening and listened to the announcement.
Germany surrendered unconditionally.
The war in Europe was over.
Some men wept, some cheered, some sat frozen in their chairs.
Klouse wrote in his diary that night, “It’s over.
We lost.
But I think I won something.
” Truth.
The repatriation process started slowly.
847 prisoners in this camp alone.
35,000 German prisoners across all of Canada.
The government needed to process everyone, decide who could stay, who had to go, who wanted what.
Errens got approval to stay.
His family could come join him in 1947 if they survived until then.
He would work on a farm in Ontario.
Save money, build a life.
He was 41 years old.
Not too late to start over.
Fritz got accepted to stay, too.
He would work for a year to save money, then start university in 1947.
The Canadian government would help pay for it through a veterans education program.
Even though he fought against them, Klouse chose to go home.
His mother was still alive as far as he knew.
One brother, too.
He needed to see them.
Needed to make sure they survived.
Then maybe he would come back to Canada.
Maybe.
Major Patterson gave a speech the day before the first group left.
He stood at the front of the recreation hall one last time and looked at the men he’d guarded for four years.
Gentlemen, you came here as enemies.
You leave as well.
That’s for you to decide.
Some of you will return home.
Some will stay.
But you’ll all carry something back to Germany.
The knowledge that we were never your real enemy.
Your leadership was.
Sergeant Macdonald found Ernst in the yard that afternoon.
His son had come home from Italy missing a leg, but alive.
Macdonald told Ernst about it.
Part of me wants to blame you, Macdonald said.
But you boys were lied to, same as we were lied to in the last war.
Hope you find peace, son.
Mrs.
Stevenson came to camp to say goodbye to Klouse.
She brought him a reference letter in an envelope.
You worked hard for 3 years.
You were always respectful.
If you need this, wherever you end up, you have it.
Klouse took the train to Halifax in July 1946.
the same route in reverse.
Through Ontario farmland, through Quebec, seeing Canada one last time, it looked prosperous and peaceful.
People were rebuilding, moving forward, optimistic about the future.
Klaus thought, “This is what peace looks like.
Will Germany ever look like this?” The ship from Halifax to Bremen carried 800 former prisoners.
They talked endlessly about what they would find.
What was left? Who survived? Klouse met Fritz on deck.
Fritz was going back to get his mother if she was alive, then bringing her to Canada.
I’m going to check on my family, Klouse said.
Then I don’t know.
Breman Harbor in August 1946 was barely functioning.
60% of the city lay in ruins, bombed buildings, rubble in the streets, British occupation forces everywhere.
Klouse stepped off the ship and stared.
This was Germany.
This was home destroyed.
The British were rationing food at 1 in 200 calories per day.
Less than Klouse ate as a prisoner.
He’d been living better in a Canadian camp than free Germans were living now.
The train to Hamburgg took 6 hours.
It should have taken three, but the tracks were damaged in places.
Klouse stared out the window at burned cities and destroyed bridges and fields that should have been planted but weren’t.
He found his mother in a bombed apartment building.
Three families sharing what used to be one family’s home.
His mother was 52 but looked 70, thin, gray, tired.
His brother was there too.
The other brother died at Kursk.
His mother’s first words were, “You look healthy.
God, you look so healthy.
Klouse realized she was starving.
Not dramatically, not dying, but slowly starving on British rations that weren’t enough.
He showed them photos from Canada, pictures he’d been allowed to keep.
The camp, the dining hall, the farm.
His mother looked at the dining hall photo and cried.
His brother saw it, too.
That’s where you were imprisoned.
That’s where I ate better than I ever did in the Vermacht, Klouse said.
Better than you ate here.
His mother wept into her hands.
What did they do to us? What did we do to ourselves? Klouse stayed in Hamburg for 3 weeks.
He saw the ruins.
He saw the hunger.
He saw people living in cellars and bombed buildings.
He saw children playing in rubble.
He saw Germany destroyed.
And he knew.
He knew with absolute certainty Germany had done this to itself.
All of it.
The lies led here to this.
To ruin and hunger and shame.
He filled out the papers to return to Canada in 1949.
It would take three years, but he would go back.
He would start over.
He would build a life in a place that told the truth.
Klouse returned to Canada in 1949.
He was 30 years old and starting over.
He settled in Bowmanville, the same town where the camp had been.
People asked him why.
Why go back to the place where he’d been a prisoner.
Klouse said it was because Bowmanville was where he learned to see clearly.
It was where the lies died and the truth lived.
He worked construction during the building boom.
Canada was growing fast after the war.
New houses, new schools, new everything.
Klouse was good with his hands and he worked hard.
By 1952, he had enough money saved to think about a future.
He met Margaret at the public library.
She was a librarian, quiet and kind, with brown hair and eyes that smiled before her mouth did.
They talked about books.
Then they talked about everything else.
He told her he’d been a prisoner at Camp 30.
She said she knew.
Everyone in town knew.
She didn’t care about the past.
She cared about who he was now.
They married in 1952, had three children by 1960.
All of them grew up speaking both German and English.
Klouse taught them German at home, but never taught them to think like Germans.
He taught them to question, to ask why, to never believe something just because someone in power said it was true.
He never joined the German Canadian clubs in town.
People invited him.
There were other former prisoners who stayed, other German immigrants.
They wanted to keep their culture alive.
Klouse always said no.
I’m Canadian now, he told Margaret.
That other thing, that Germany I came from, it doesn’t exist anymore.
Maybe it never did.
Erin’s family came to Canada in 1947.
His wife Maria and three daughters stepped off a ship in Halifax.
and Ernst was there waiting.
The girls were 14, 16, and 18 now.
They’d survived the war in an Bavaria, eating watery soup and hiding from bombs.
They thought they knew what poverty looked like.
Then they saw Canada, the abundance, the food, the houses with electricity and running water, the cars, the stores.
The girls cried, not from sadness, from relief.
From realizing they didn’t have to be hungry anymore.
Erns bought a small farm in Ontario in 1952.
Just 40 acres, but it was his.
All three daughters went to university.
In Nazi Germany, girls from poor families didn’t go to university.
Here they did.
One became a teacher, one became a nurse, one became a professor.
The professor’s daughter, Ernst’s granddaughter, became a member of Canadian Parliament in 1988.
She gave a speech once about her grandfather.
She said, “My grandfather used to say he was captured in Tunisia, but liberated in Ontario.
He meant it.
He was freed from lies when he became a prisoner of truth.
” Fritz worked for a year saving money, then enrolled at the University of Toronto in 1947.
Engineering, the thing he’d studied for 6 months before the war took him.
He finished his degree in 1952, got his PhD in 1955, electrical engineering.
He spent his career with Ontario Hydro, helping build the power grid that brought electricity to rural areas.
the same kind of electricity he’d seen in Mrs.
Stevenson’s kitchen in 1942.
The electricity that wasn’t supposed to exist in a poor collapsing colony.
In 1970, Fritz published a memoir called The Radio That Broke Me Free.
It sold modestly, but historians loved it.
One passage got quoted in textbooks for decades.
Fritz wrote, “I was 19 when I heard that first advertisement for Coca-Cola.
Such a small thing, 5 cents for a bottle of soda.
But it shattered an entire ideology because I realized that a country that could advertise luxuries during total war had already won.
We were fighting industrial abundance with manufactured lies.
In 1967, a veterans association organized a reunion at the former site of Camp 30.
The camp was gone now, turned into houses and apartments, but they put up a marker where the recreation hall used to be.
67 former prisoners came, some from across Canada, some from the United States, some flew in from Germany.
Ernst came with his whole family.
Fritz came with his wife.
Klouse came with Margaret and their three kids.
Major Patterson came too, retired now and 72 years old.
He walked with a cane, but his mind was sharp.
Sergeant Macdonald had died in 1963, but his son came, the one who lost his leg in Italy.
Klouse gave a speech.
He stood where the recreation hall used to be, and talked to the crowd of old men and their families.
I was 23 when I arrived here as a prisoner.
I believed I was the victim of propaganda.
I was, but it was my own side’s propaganda.
What I learned here was simple.
The enemy wasn’t across the ocean.
The enemy was the lie, and the truth set me free.
Even in captivity, people applauded.
Some cried.
Ernst shook Klaus’s hand and said, “You said it better than I could.
The original RCA Victor radio was donated to the Bowmanville Museum in 1975.
Someone found it in storage and realized what it was.
They put it on display with a plaque.
The plaque read, “This radio playing simple CBC broadcasts in December 1942 did more to change minds than any interrogation.
Truth needs no force.
” Klouse visited that radio every year until he died.
He would stand in front of it for a few minutes, not saying anything, just remembering.
Remembering the boy he was, remembering the moment everything changed.
Historians studied the Canadian P camps for decades.
The numbers were striking.
Of 35,000 German prisoners held in Canada, about 6,000 stayed permanently.
Many became business owners, teachers, engineers, community leaders.
Their children and grandchildren became doctors and lawyers and politicians.
A university study in 1985 found that P camps with radio access showed 73% faster ideological reorientation than camps without radios.
The power wasn’t in anti-German propaganda.
It was in normal programming, normal life, normal advertisements.
The truth was the weapon.
In 1990, a graduate student interviewed Klouse for a thesis project.
Klaus was 71 years old, still living in Bowmanville.
Margaret had died two years before.
He missed her everyday, but he was okay.
His children visited.
His grandchildren called.
The student asked, “Mr.
Becker, you were a Hitler youth, a true believer.
What single moment changed you? Klouse was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, December 20th, 1942, 700 p.
m.
, a radio commercial for Coca-Cola.
5 cents.
He paused, looked out the window, continued.
You have to understand what that meant.
I’d been taught Canada was starving, collapsing, desperate.
And here was this cheerful voice selling soda pop for pocket change luxury during wartime while advertising.
It wasn’t the news that broke me.
News can be propaganda.
It was the advertisements.
You can’t fake an economy of abundance.
You can’t fake 5 cent luxuries during total war unless you actually have them.
That’s when I knew everything was a lie.
The student asked, “Are you bitter about being captured?” Klouse shook his head.
I was imprisoned my whole life until I got to that camp.
The barbed wire in Bowmanville couldn’t keep me trapped like the lies in Germany did.
That radio set me free.
What do you want people to learn from your story? Klaus thought about that.
That propaganda dies in the light.
That abundance beats authoritarianism.
That truth is the most powerful weapon and that 5 cents for a Coca-Cola can mean more than a thousand tanks because it represents a society so strong it can afford frivolity during war.
We never stood a chance.
Not against that.
Not against truth.
Klouse died in 1992 at age 73.
His funeral was in Bowmanville.
His children buried him there.
The town he’d been a prisoner in.
the town that became his home.
Before he died, he visited the museum one last time, stood before that old radio, put his hand on the wooden console, whispered in German than in English.
Thank you for lying to me better than my own country did.
Thank you for telling me the truth.
The radio sits in that museum still silent now.
Its work done decades ago, but the lesson remains.
Truth requires no force.
