1. “Once every decade, a masterpiece of history is written. Historian Ruth B. Cook has created such a gem. We could not praise it more highly. An utterly fascinating and delightful read.’
   
   --Roger Mansell, Director
   Center for Research
   Allied POWs under the Japanese.
   
   
   
2. “This is local history at its best. Ms. Cook has explored the wartime world of rural Aliceville, Alabama, in encyclopedic detail. It is the history of a generation, written with accuracy and depth that any American camp guard, local resident, or for that matter, German prisoner would recognize. From that day in August in 1942, when the appraiser from the Federal Land Bank swept in to Aliceville to purchase the Parker family’s 400 acres for $29,300, none of their lives would ever be the same. On June 1, 1943, several thousand German soldiers were marched from the train to their new camp, as the folks from Aliceville lined the road to gawk. The adventure continued inside the wire and on the streets of Aliceville and in the lives of everybody involved. Local historian Ruth Cook offers the reader a complete world in Aliceville.”
   
   --Arnold Krammer Professor, Texas A&M University
   Author of Nazi Prisoners of War in America, and
   Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees.
   
   
   
3. “Ruth Beaumont cook has written a ‘people’s history.’ Impressive and emotive details of the daily lives of Alabama locals, guards, and POWs, and a celebration of sixty-plus years of mutual good will-in-the-making characterize this sensitive portrayal of a small town in Pickens county where Americans and Germans learned that enemies are human.”
   
   --Robert D. Billinger, Jr., Ph.D.,
   author of Hitler’s Soldiers in the Sunshine State
   
   

German POWs in America: A True Story of Hope and Friendship

Guests Behind the Barbed Wire narrates the true story of Camp Aliceville in Pickens County, Alabama, where as many as 6,000 German prisoners of war were housed during World War II. It is the story not only of those prisoners but also of the 1,000 “raw recruit” soldiers sent from all over America to guard them and of the townspeople who related to the POWs through civilian jobs and labor assignments.

The story of Camp Aliceville has classic elements—escape and death, loneliness and fear, disillusionment and despair, but also humor, hope, and romance as well as the amazing creativity that flourished in confinement. It goes beyond the war to the reconciliation and reunion that has taken place in Aliceville since that time.

An additional source of information about Camp Aliceville is the Aliceville Museum located in Aliceville, Alabama.  It houses the largest collection of World War II Prisoner of War memorabilia in the country, along with an impressive collection of memorabilia from American servicemen and their experiences.  The museum is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon and from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.  For more information, visit the museum's website as This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Ruth Cook also maintains a frequently updated blog where readers share additional information about Camp Aliceville and other topics of historical interest.  You are welcome to visit and to comment at www.genevapow.com.

A Civil War Trail of Tears

A Review by Sue DeVille for Civil War Book Review, Fall 1999

“Drawing from scant historical documentation and oral histories passed down by survivors, NORTH ACROSS THE RIVER examines how the working class fared in the Civil War by providing an account of a mass civilian deportation.

“Ruth Beaumont Cook begins this work with detailed histories of Roswell and Sweetwater, two small Georgia towns whose common denominator was their water-driven cotton mills. With the approach of General William T. Sherman’s forces, mill owners fled, leaving behind “mill bosses” to operate the mills with only a home guard for defense, thus setting the stage for the tragedy that followed.