German POWs reading in a barracks at Camp Blanding, Florida, June 1943.This photo is used on the cover of Hitler's Soldiers in the Sunshine State: German POWs in Florida. A total of 378,000 people captured in Africa, Italy and France were held in camps on U.S. soil. There were 25 camps in Florida where about 10,000 German POWs were held. The main purpose of these camps was to solve the problem of labor shortages in agriculture during wartime.
The book mentions Camp Clewiston, which is called "the worst place in all of America. The prisoners were engaged in harvesting cane in very high temperatures in an area rich in poisonous snakes.
