Pod Insights American History Tellers Daring Prison Escapes | Nazis in the Arizona Desert | 4 About this episode During World War II, the United States housed hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers who had been captured as prisoners of war. Camp Papago Park, located in Phoenix, was built to hold captured German U-boat crew members, some of the most well-trained and ardent members of the German military. Authorities hoped that the harsh Arizona desert would deter any escape attempts, but they underestimated the German soldiers’ determination to return to battle.
Under the watchful eyes of the American guards, over 20 German soldiers dug their way out Camp Papago Park and kicked off the largest manhunt in American history.
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0:00 Lindsay Graham? Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
0:24 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's the early evening on September 3, 1942. You're a low-ranking officer in the German Navy, assigned to a U-boat submarine. You're cruising just below the surface of the Caribbean Sea, about 60 miles south of Barbados. You're on a mission to take out Allied merchant ships in order to impede the flow of supplies to your enemies in Europe. You stare through the eyepiece of the U-boat's periscope, scanning the surface of the ocean for enemy ships. The air in the submarine is stale and stuffy, and it makes you sleepy. But your commanding officer, Captain Jürgen Wattenberg, stands just a few feet away, gazing intently at you. So you stifle or yawn. That's when suddenly, you see something through the eyepiece.
1:07 Lindsay Graham? Sir, I believe there's a British destroyer at our four o'clock.
1:10 Speaker 01 Well, prepare to fire.
1:12 Lindsay Graham? Are you sure, sir? This isn't a merchant ship, it's a destroyer, heavily armed.
1:16 Speaker 01 Even better, we'll do real damage to the British Navy if we take this ship out.
1:20 Lindsay Graham? Water's quite rough, sir, it could impact the accuracy of our shots.
1:23 Speaker 01 I gave you an order. Every second we wait, we risk being spotted and losing the element of surprise. I said, fire!
1:29 Lindsay Graham? Yes, sir. One of your colleagues fires the torpedo, and you watch through the periscope as it comes up to the surface, and then misses the British ship by several feet.
1:38 Speaker 01 It's a miss, it's a miss. Then fire again.
1:42 Lindsay Graham? But before the crew can fire more torpedoes, the water around your U-boat churns with explosions from all sides. The submarine shakes so hard you can barely stand.
1:51 Speaker 01 Where are all these shells coming from? Can't be just one destroyer.
1:55 Lindsay Graham? You swing the periscope around left and right. Captain, I see two more destroyers. We're surrounded.
2:00 Speaker 01 Well, fire again. Keep firing until I say stop. Do as much damage as we can.
2:06 Lindsay Graham? Black, greasy water pours into the sub, and you look down in horror. The fuel line's been hit. Sir, we don't have much time. What should we do?
2:14 Speaker 01 Prepare to surface and abandon ship.
2:19 Lindsay Graham? Your damaged U-boat breaks through the surface of the sea and you climb up through the escape hatch and dive into the ocean. You watch as sailors from the British destroyer prepare to pick you and the rest of your crew up in lifeboats. You realize you're about to become a prisoner of war. Your teeth chatter from the cold water and the adrenaline, but you clench your jaw. You may have been taken out of the battle, but the war isn't over. And even in captivity, you're going to do everything in your power to make the lives of the Allies difficult and advance the Nazi cause.
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3:59 Lindsay Graham? From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story.
4:20 Lindsay Graham? In the 1940s, as America stepped up its involvement in World War II, US soil became home to hundreds of prisoner of war camps. Enemy soldiers captured by the US and Allied forces were taken to remote sites far from the fronts of Europe and Asia. Over the course of the war, the United States held more than 400,000 POWs in 700 prison camps throughout the country. In the state of Arizona alone, there were 23 of these prisoner camps. One of them, Camp Papago Park in eastern Phoenix, was created specifically to hold German UVO crewmen. The harsh Arizona desert that surrounded the camp was intended to be as much a deterrent for escape as bars or armed guards.
5:01 Lindsay Graham? But in 1944, a shrewd group of German POWs broke out of Papago, sparking one of the largest manhunts in American history. This is episode 4 in our four-part series, Daring Prison Escapes: Nazis in the Arizona Desert.
5:20 Lindsay Graham? In August 1944, Colonel William Anthony Holden arrived at Camp Papago Park on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, to take over as commander. The camp spread over 160 acres in a remote corner of the desert city. Wooden buildings painted white dotted the red dirt, and as Holden surveyed his new assignment, he took in the drab site with determination. The sprawling dusty plot had been subdivided into five compounds for prisoners, as well as an area for the American guards and officers watching over them. Former barracks for members of the Civilian Conservation Corps had been converted into living quarters for the prisoners, while other buildings served as a mess hall, hospital, and latrines. The camp's perimeter was lined with two eight-foot-tall fences with barbed wire running along the top of them,
6:05 Lindsay Graham? and 15 watchtowers had been erected to keep an eye on the approximately 3,000 prisoners held at the camp. A native of Wisconsin, Colonel Holden felt as out of place in the scorching dry desert as the Germans imprisoned there. But Holden pushed any discomfort out of his mind. He was on a mission to clean up the place. The camp had only opened the previous October, not even a year earlier, and already had developed a reputation for a host of problems. Six months earlier, in February 1944, five prisoners had managed to sneak out of the camp on the back of an army truck. They carried with them forged documents which they hoped to use to cross over the border into Mexico. Ultimately, two of these men were arrested in Tucson after a police officer stopped
6:49 Lindsay Graham? to question them and heard their German accents. Most embarrassing for the army, though, the officers in charge of Papago Park hadn't even realized that any prisoners were missing before they received the call from the Tucson Police Department. Then, that same month, four more prisoners managed to escape. All of them were caught and returned to the camp, but news of the breakouts made the front page of the local newspaper. It was a black mark on the Army and the operation at Papago Park. Then in early March 1944, the Army sent an investigator to look into why so many prisoners were able to escape. This investigator found many security lapses, including several unmanned guard stations and gates that were left unlocked. He also learned that guards at the main entrance failed to check identification or search
7:34 Lindsay Graham? trucks leaving the camp, even though prisoners had just recently snuck out the back of one. Then, just eight days after this investigator wrapped up his report, a prisoner was murdered in captivity, found hanging in the shower room. The prisoner had cooperated with US intelligence officers, sharing information about German U-boat tactics and operations, and Army authorities believed his death was a warning from loyal Nazi POWs to other captured German soldiers not to talk. The escape of nine prisoners in a single month was embarrassing, but the murder of a prisoner was damaging to the US war effort. Cooperation by captured German soldiers was a key method of intelligence gathering. Camp authorities knew, if word got out that the US Army couldn't keep its informants
8:17 Lindsay Graham? safe, fewer soldiers would be willing to talk. So by spring 1944, it was clear that major changes were needed at Papago Park. And the Army decided that Colonel William Anthony Holden was the man to implement them. Holden was career military. He'd served as company commander in the Army Infantry during World War I, earning the equivalent of the Silver Star for his actions during campaigns in France. Then, after the First World War ended, Holden returned to Wisconsin where he ran a home for veterans, while also serving in the Wisconsin National Guard. When World War II broke out, Holden's National Guard unit was activated and he was sent to Louisiana to train soldiers for battle in the event the US entered the war. Then, in late 1941,
9:01 Lindsay Graham? the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States officially joined the Allied war effort. Holden was eager to go overseas and fight for his country once again, but he was diagnosed with a heart condition which prevented him from serving in combat. But the Army appreciated Holden's leadership and organizational skills, so in March 1942, they sent him to Florence, Arizona, to set up a POW camp for captured Italian soldiers, many of whom were draftees who had willingly surrendered. Holden excelled at managing these prisoners and the camp at Florence was soon considered a model for all others. The Army hoped Holden could do the same at Camp Papago Park, but he would have his work cut out for him. Not only were there many core problems with how Papago Park was run,
9:43 Lindsay Graham? the prisoners housed there were some of the most elite German soldiers the Allies had ever captured. The camp was specifically conceived to hold U-boat crew, and in the German Navy, being assigned to a U-boat was a prestigious position and required significant training. These were not docile conscripts, but dedicated soldiers eager to serve their homeland. And among these, there was a core group of prisoners held at Papago Park who caused the Guards the most difficulty. These men still saw themselves as agents of the Third Reich, even if they were being held captive thousands of miles from the battlefield. Their leader was Captain Jürgen Wattenberg, a narrow-faced man in his 40s. He was the highest-ranking German officer held at Papago Park when Colonel Holden arrived.
10:27 Lindsay Graham? In 1913, when Vattenberg was just 13 years old, he was invited by a family friend to visit the German Naval Academy. As soon as he saw the great ships there tended by uniformed cadets, Vattenberg knew he wanted a career in the German Navy. He began his officer training in 1921, but at the time his prospects for advancement were limited. Due to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that had ended World War I, the German Navy was small, with strict limitations on what type of vessels it could operate. But when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1935, one of the first actions he took was to rapidly expand the German Navy. Vattenberg quickly rose up the ranks, becoming a loyal follower of Hitler and an ardent believer in Nazi ideology.
11:11 Lindsay Graham? Then five years later came the pinnacle of his career, when he was made commander of a U-boat. But just two years after that, he was captured by a British destroyer in the Caribbean Sea, which turned him and his crew over to the Americans. As the highest-ranking officer among the prisoners at Papago Park, Vattenberg served as a liaison between the German prisoners and the American guards. But Vattenberg did not see himself as a diplomat. Instead, he felt it was his duty to Germany to make life difficult for his American captors. He was a stickler for the rules and made sure the camp followed the Geneva Convention guidelines for POW camps. He frequently reminded the guards that as an officer, he was required to be treated with respect and dignity fitting of his rank. He complained bitterly that he didn't have private quarters.
11:55 Lindsay Graham? He balked if an American soldier of lower rank asked him to do anything, or even oversaw roll call. He bombarded the Red Cross with letters complaining about every petty problem he and the other German captives faced. And one of Vattenberg's biggest complaints was that the men were denied access to gardening tools and were not allowed to beautify their surroundings. He was so adamant on this point that camp officials relented and gave the prisoners shovels and other tools, despite concern from some of the other camp authorities that these could be used for escape. Vattenberg and a core of other officers who remained loyal to the Third Reich also encouraged all other German POWs to refuse to do anything that might help the Americans run the camp. So by September 1944, a month after his arrival,
12:39 Lindsay Graham? Colonel Holden realized that if he was going to clean up Papago Park, he needed to deal with Vattenberg and the other German troublemakers. He soon came up with a surprising approach.
12:52 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's early September 1944. You're the assistant provost marshal of Camp Papago Park, second in command. It's just past 9 a.m. as you walk into the camp's administrative office. It's not much more than a large hut with desks, and the scorching sun is streaming through the windows, causing sweat to beat up on your forehead. Your superior officer, Colonel William Holden, looks up from his desk as you walk in. You exchange salutes. You wanted to see me, sir? Yeah, I'm a see. I've come to a decision regarding these troublemakers. Well, I'm eager to hear what you have in mind, sir. I've come to believe that the majority of POWs in this camp would be model prisoners if not for these loyal Nazi officers. They're the real thorn in our side. I completely agree. Bottenberg and the other officers are like a cancer.
13:37 Lindsay Graham? Their negative attitude has spread throughout the whole camp. Yeah, precisely. So we need to separate them from the others to prevent them from spreading their influence. Holden hands you a piece of paper with a list of names. I've identified these 140 officers who I see as the prime troublemakers. Starting today, we're gonna move them all into Compounds 1A and 1B. As you scan the list, you can feel a knot of tension forming between your shoulder blades. Well, I'm sure you thought of this, sir, but just so I understand, aren't you concerned about grouping the most disobedient prisoners all together? Well, that's the point. We're gonna isolate them, keep them and their bad attitudes away from the other prisoners. Well, yes, I understand that logic, but these men are very smart. And to be honest, this camp has some real weaknesses.
14:21 Lindsay Graham? I mean, Compound 1A has a real blind spot, a place that can't be seen from any of the guard towers. I'm certain that these men will discover it if they don't know about it already. Believe me, I understand your concerns. But housing these men in different compounds certainly isn't working. We need to try something new. Well, sir, if you don't mind me speaking out of turn, did you read the report that was written after the escape last February? I sure did. So you know the author suggested that these officers be shipped off to different camps entirely? Oh, no, I'm not gonna force these troublemakers on other commanders. These men are our responsibility. We just need to figure out how to deal with them. So let's end that discussion. This afternoon, I want you to start the process of moving the men on this list into Compound 1. You're still not convinced that your commander knows what he's doing,
15:06 Lindsay Graham? but you're in no position to disobey an order. So you stand up and give him a firm salute. Yes, sir, I'll get right to it. I appreciate it, and you'll see, this is gonna work.
15:18 Lindsay Graham? You nod and turn to walk out the office. You certainly hope Holden is right. But in your time helping to oversee the camp, you've come to know these prisoners. They're brilliant, disciplined, and highly motivated to cause disruption or even attempt escape. And now, they'll all be able to work together.
15:39 Lindsay Graham? In early September 1944, under Colonel William Anthony Holden's orders, the most troublesome prisoners at Papago Park were moved into Compound One, which was located in the northeastern corner of the camp just inside the main gate. The compound was split into two barracks. The commissioned officers were housed in Compound One A, while the non-commissioned officers were assigned to Compound One B. And just as feared, as soon as they moved into Compound One A, a few of the German officers, led by Captain Jürgen Wattenberg, began casing their new surroundings looking for vulnerabilities. Wattenberg knew that any escape attempt would be dangerous. He'd heard rumors that in the spring, a large group of Allied POWs had escaped from a camp in Germany. All of those escapees were caught,
16:22 Lindsay Graham? and 50 of them were then executed. Wattenberg was concerned that the Americans might take a similarly harsh approach to any escape attempts on US soil, too. But Wattenberg wasn't going to let the specter of death dissuade him from doing what he saw as his duty. For him, it was time for the men of Compound One A to plan their escape regardless of the risks.
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17:56 Lindsay Graham? In the early fall of 1944, German U-boat commander Jürgen Wattenberg walked a dusty patch of dirt in Camp Papago Park where he was being held as a prisoner of war. With him were three other German naval officers who were all housed in Compound 1A. They had made an exciting discovery. On one side of Wattenberg was a small wooden shack that served as Compound 1's laundry room. About three feet south of that was a wooden bin that stored coal for the laundry room's water heater. Just past that were the 1B barracks, and about nine feet to the west was the perimeter of the camp lined with two eight-foot-tall barbed-wire fences. One of the officers pointed out to Wattenberg that when they stood next to the coal bin, none of the guards could see them.
18:39 Lindsay Graham? The laundry room blocked the view from Towers 1 and 2 to the north, and Compound 1B blocked the guard tower 3 from seeing them from the south. Wattenberg and the other officers realized that they could use this blind spot to dig a tunnel under the perimeter gate. But Wattenberg knew that to pull this off, they would need to be highly organized. As the highest-ranking German officer in the camp, Wattenberg was in charge, and he decided to assemble a team of the five people he trusted most. Together, they came up with a plan. In the space in between the laundry room and the coal box, they would dig down six feet. From that point, they would dig horizontally until they made it underneath the camp perimeter. The first challenge was to determine how long exactly the tunnel needed to be.
19:22 Lindsay Graham? It was essential that they get this measurement right, because if the tunnel was too short, they could come up directly under the searchlights and be easily caught or shot by the guards. If they extended the tunnel too far, they would dig into a canal and drown anyone in the tunnel. So their target was at the base of a telephone pole, where there was shrubbery that would provide cover as the men came up from underground. Using trigonometry formulas they'd learned to navigate the open sea, they calculated the distance from the edge of the camp to the telephone pole. They determined the total length of the tunnel needed to be 178 feet. It would need to be about 2 and 1/2 feet wide for the men to fit through. Bottenberg delegated oversight of the digging to another officer named Hans Werner Kraus.
20:05 Lindsay Graham? Kraus organized the occupants of Compound 1A into three-man digging teams. They worked a 90-minute shift, starting at sundown every evening, using a shovel that had been given to the prisoners for gardening. The soil, though, was extremely hard and rocky, so it was difficult work. But it did mean that they didn't have to worry about the tunnel caving in, as they would have if the soil was softer. But they soon ran into another problem: what to do with all the dirt they were digging up. As a solution, Bottenberg asked for permission to level a section of the camp into a playing field for a German sport called fistball, which is similar to volleyball. The camp's commander, Colonel William Anthony Holden, agreed, and even provided the men with additional shovels and wheelbarrows.
20:48 Lindsay Graham? Now the Germans had an area that could absorb the dirt they were digging up and additional tools to speed up the digging process. But there is yet another part of the puzzle: what to do once they were past the camp fence. Bottenberg selected 28 men to be part of the escape. He broke them into teams of two or three people. They decided that when it was time to make their break, these teams would depart at 20-minute intervals. Once they were out, each team would be responsible for themselves. For his teammates, Bottenberg selected two men who had served with him on his Yubot, named Walter Kozar and Johann Kramer. Most of these groups had planned to head for Mexico after they escaped. The border was 130 miles south of the camp and it would be a difficult journey over the punishing
21:31 Lindsay Graham? terrain of the Sonoran Desert, but Mexico was home to a large German immigrant population. Some of the men even had relatives living there, so it seemed like the best target for their escape. As the digging progressed through the fall of 1944, the teams also gathered supplies. They stole food that was relatively lightweight and could survive in the desert heat, like crackers. They secretly dyed some of their khaki uniforms so they wouldn't look like escaped POWs, and then they managed to even steal maps of the region from trucks the guards had left unlocked. Most of the teams prepared to cross the desert on foot, but one of the more ambitious trios built a lightweight collapsible boat that they could carry through the tunnel. They planned to float down the Gila River, eventually meeting up with the Colorado River
22:14 Lindsay Graham? and then taking that the rest of the way into Mexico. All the while, as the residents of Compound 1A were hatching an escape plan, Colonel Holden was pleased with himself with how compliant the German officers had become. He took this as a sign that his decision to isolate the troublemakers had worked. But there was still one aspect of camp protocol that Wattenberg continued to make a fuss about. The camp guards did a roll call morning and evening to verify that every prisoner was accounted for. Wattenberg was outraged that officers in the German Navy were being called by American enlisted men. He considered it disrespectful and a violation of the Germans' rights. But after months of complaints, Colonel Holden still wouldn't relent. But then in November 1944, Holden granted one small concession.
22:59 Lindsay Graham? He wrote up a memo that excused all German officers from roll call on Sunday mornings. Holden didn't realize how big of a win he had just handed to Wattenberg. If the men left on Saturday night after the evening roll call, they would have a 24-hour head start before the American guards realized they had fled. And by mid-December, the tunnel was complete. With Christmas around the corner, Wattenberg chose the evening of Saturday, December 23rd, for the escape. He expected many guards would be off-duty for the holiday, including Holden. And then the men caught another lucky break when word reached the camp that the German Army had broken through the American lines in Ardennes, France. Wattenberg arranged with the men in Compound 1B to loudly celebrate this victory the evening
23:44 Lindsay Graham? of the 23rd, hoping their revelry would help cover any sounds of the escapees entering the tunnel and hopefully keep the guards occupied. But then they got their first stroke of bad luck. Rain began to pour from the skies as the escape began at 6:30 PM on Saturday, December 23rd, 1944. Even though the Sonoran Desert had a reputation for being hot and dry, it was the start of the rainy season. But this was still their best shot at escape, and Vattenberg wasn't going to let some rain ruin months of planning. So as the men in Compound 1B loudly sang and danced, the men in Compound 1A descended into the tunnel in their teams. Every 20 minutes, another team climbed down the shaft and into the dark, narrow passageway.
24:27 Lindsay Graham? Vattenberg waited as his fellow prisoners left in groups, then he descended into the tunnel with his two teammates, the second-to-last team to leave. A total of 25 men left the camp. As they crawled through the cool, narrow tunnel, the heavy, stale air reminded Vattenberg of the air on the U-boat, until suddenly, they reached the end and emerged from the tunnel less than two feet away from the base of the telephone pole that had been their goal. Without a word, Vattenberg then led his men down the drainage canal away from the camp. They walked carefully. The bottom was slick with moss, and they worried that if they slipped, the splash might attract the attention of the guards. So they kept creeping along, eventually climbing up the banks of the drainage canal and heading east. They then took shelter from the rain in a grapefruit orchard.
25:11 Lindsay Graham? But as the men lay on bedrolls they brought with them and tried to rest, Vattenberg revealed to his companions that he'd been keeping a secret.
25:22 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's the night of December 23rd, 1944. You're a German naval officer who has just escaped from the POW camp you've been held at for over a year. You're lying in an orchard in the middle of the Arizona desert. Next to you is your commanding officer, Jürgen Vattenberg, as well as another crew member from your old U-boat, Walter Kozler. It's very late, and normally you'd have been asleep for hours, but every rustle of a leaf or yip from a coyote makes you jump tonight. You've worked so hard to get free, you don't want to get caught this close to the camp. You're confident that if you can make it to Mexico, you'll be safe. You hear Vattenberg moving in his bedroll, and then he sits up. Gentlemen, you still awake? Yeah, I'm not getting any sleep tonight. Well, I need to tell you something.
26:05 Lindsay Graham? I've been making plans for our escape, and they're a little different from what the others are doing. What do you mean? We're not going to Mexico. What? Where are we going? We're gonna stay here. We're gonna lay low, live in the backcountry. Sir, I don't understand. Isn't everyone gonna be looking for us? Yes, the next two weeks are the most likely time we'll be caught. As soon as the guards notice we're gone, a massive manhunt will begin. And not only will law enforcement officers be looking for us, but members of the public too. So shouldn't we get out of here as fast as we can? No, we're gonna stay hidden and let it all blow over until the manhunt has died down. After that, no one will look at us with suspicion. They'll assume the escaped Germans are all long gone. Trust me, our odds of making it to freedom are much better this way.
26:48 Lindsay Graham? But what about food? We didn't pack enough supplies to last us weeks out here. Now, don't worry about that. I've made arrangements with a loyal man on one of the work crews to leave food at a drop point for us. I think I've thought of everything, trust me.
27:02 Lindsay Graham? You don't like to doubt your commander, but you're not sure about this plan. And as the rain falls, a shiver goes through you. You've been so focused on helping dig the tunnel and gathering supplies, you hadn't really thought about what would happen after you got out. Now you're wondering what you'll do if your food runs out, and how much Captain Vattenberg can be trusted.
27:25 Lindsay Graham? As Vattenberg shared his secret plan with his teammates in an orchard not far from the camp, the other escapees were already fanning across the desert, hoping to make it to Mexico as soon as possible. Back at Papago Park, the guards were still unaware of the breakout. Their attention was instead focused on the men of Compound 1B, who were still celebrating the German army's victory in Europe. Their celebration had turned raucous, thanks to some contraband liquor provided by Vattenberg. It was only the next afternoon on December 24th, 1944, at around 4:00 PM that the escape began to be noticed. A low-ranking US Army guard called for the men of Compound 1A to make their way to the mess hall for roll call. But when he entered the mess hall, it seemed oddly empty.
28:08 Lindsay Graham? The guard did a head count and realized there were only 39 men present. There were supposed to be 62. He turned to one of the prisoners and asked where everyone else was. The prisoner answered with a shrug and a smirk. With that, the guard raced back to headquarters, hoping he wasn't too late in alerting his superiors to the awful news. More prisoners had escaped from Camp Papago Park. This time, it's dozens of them, with a 24-hour head start.
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30:34 Lindsay Graham? On December 24, 1944, the guards at the Camp Papago Park found out that about a third of the German prisoners from Compound 1A were missing, and two men from Compound B were gone as well. They rushed to call the camp commander, Colonel William Holden, but he was off duty for the Christmas holiday and wasn't answering the phone. With Holden unavailable, his second-in-command was called in, Assistant Provost Cecil Partial. By 7:00 PM, roughly three hours after the men were first discovered to be missing,
31:15 Lindsay Graham? Partial was on the phone with the FBI, but it was the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office that caught the first prisoner. They had one of the camp's escapees in custody. He'd been hitchhiking, and the driver who picked him up grew suspicious when he heard the prisoner's German accent. The driver brought him to the closest courthouse and then turned him over to the sheriff's department. Cold and wet from the rain, the prisoner confessed who he was to sheriff's deputies almost immediately. Within an hour of this call, four other escapees had been caught in a similar manner. Then, having finally been notified, Colonel Holden arrived at the camp a little after 9 o'clock that night. In the time it took him to get there, another six escapees had been picked up by local law enforcement.
31:57 Lindsay Graham? So Holden knew that the press would soon learn of the escape, and he'd be blamed for it. Not only was he camp commander, he had been the one to segregate all of the troublemakers into one compound, which was now clearly a mistake. So he and his second-in-command partial called in every branch of law enforcement to help. They called local police, including sheriff's departments, they called the Arizona Highway Patrol and Southern Pacific Railroad Police. Soon, every agency in the area was looking for the escaped Germans. Meanwhile, as Holden predicted, the press blasted the story on the front page of Christmas Day editions. Holden was portrayed as a bumbling commander and the escapees as ruthless Nazis determined to disrupt the American way of life.
32:40 Lindsay Graham? This publicity meant the public soon joined the search. And over the next seventeen days, one team of escapees after another was caught. One pair turned themselves in after one of them got an infection from a cactus. The Germans with the homemade boat hadn't known that the Gila River was dammed and thus dry. They were caught while still on foot by a pair of cowboys who found their behavior suspicious. Members of the Thona-Awtham tribe caught another team hiking through their land only ten miles from the Mexican border. But while the rest of their escapees were trudging through the desert or trying to hitchhike, Vattenberg and his teammates remained hidden, having camped out in a cave only a few miles from Papago Park. They stole water from a nearby farm and carefully rationed out the food they'd brought with them.
33:25 Lindsay Graham? They'd managed to evade capture for roughly two weeks after breaking out of Papago Park, but by early January, Vattenberg thought it might be time to make their way to Mexico. Still, he wanted a little more information on the status of the manhunt before making a final decision. So on the night of January 7th, 1945, Vattenberg sent his two teammates into downtown Phoenix, approximately eight miles away. They were on a mission to find a newspaper and try and find out the fate of their fellow escapees. And when the teammates returned the next morning, they were grinning ear to ear. They had found an unlocked news kiosk and stole two weeks' worth of back issues of the local papers. But as the three men read through them, they learned that all of the other escapees had been caught. Vattenberg decided that they wouldn't wait any longer.
34:10 Lindsay Graham? It was time to make their move. The first step was to pick up more supplies, which Vattenberg promised would be waiting for them left by a prisoner on a work crew. But when one of the men went to go get the supplies, he was disappointed to discover only some cigarettes and a few pieces of fruit. There was a note explaining that the drop had been compromised, and the rest of the supplies were in a different location 500 yards away. But after a frenzied search, nothing was found. So Johann Kramer returned to Wattenberg and fellow escapee Koser suggesting a new plan. He wanted to sneak back into Papago Park and set up a new supply line. It was an audacious idea, but surprisingly, he got in easy enough by blending in with a work crew returning to the camp from outside.
34:53 Lindsay Graham? Then he revealed himself and his plan to a fellow escapee now back in custody. But unbeknownst to Kramer, that escapee had started cooperating with the camp guards, and he turned Kramer in on January 23, 1945. When Kramer didn't return to the hideout, Wattenberg's other teammate Walter Koser decided to try again to find a second drop point the original supplier had mentioned. But he too was captured in the process. Wattenberg waited three days for Koser to return until he couldn't wait any longer. But since all the other escapees had been captured attempting to cross the Sonoran Desert to Mexico, Wattenberg decided to try something else. Instead of going to Mexico, Wattenberg would go straight to downtown Phoenix. He had a little bit of cash, and he planned to get some food,
35:38 Lindsay Graham? a hotel room, and then look for a job where they didn't ask too many questions. He thought dishwashing might be a good fit, and then he would just disappear into American society. So on Saturday, January 27, 1945, a little over a month after crawling out of Papago Park, Wattenberg walked into downtown Phoenix. But to his disappointment, all the hotels were full. He had to change plans once again. He decided to head to the train station. He looked at his map and headed north. But after a few blocks, he grew concerned that he was going in the wrong direction. He asked a construction worker for help. He pointed Wattenberg in the right direction, but Wattenberg didn't realize he had just made a critical error.
36:21 Lindsay Graham? Imagine it's a little past midnight on January 28th, 1945. You're a police officer with the Phoenix Police Department. You're walking quickly down the sidewalk on 3rd Avenue, searching among the soldiers on their weekend furloughs for a man in a different kind of uniform. That's when you spot him. A middle-aged man with unkempt hair in a prison jumpsuit, but dyed dark blue. He matches the construction worker's description of a bedraggled-looking man who spoke with a foreign accent and asked for directions to the train station. Adrenaline pumps through you as you catch up with him. Hey! The man turns around, but his eyes seem calm. Yes, officer? How can I help you? Can I see some identification, please? Now, may I ask why? Well, I got a report of a suspicious man in the neighborhood.
37:06 Lindsay Graham? I'm afraid I don't have any. You don't have any identification? No Selective Service ID? No Alien Registration Card? The man laughs and waves his hand, as if he just told a joke. Ah, I realize how that sounds. It's not that I don't have identification. I just don't have it on me. I left it at home. I'm only here one night, and I didn't think I'd need it. All right, and where exactly are you from? Glendale. Glendale. Is that Arizona or California? Back East. Back East? That's right. So let me see if I understand. You're here from back east, but you're only here for one night, and you left your identification at home? Yes, that's correct. Well, you know what? I think I'm gonna want to ask you some more questions about exactly what you're doing here in Phoenix. Come on with me down to the station.
37:50 Lindsay Graham? Well, is that really necessary, officer? Yes, it is. Now get moving.
37:57 Lindsay Graham? You escort the man into a patrol car, and as he settles into the backseat, it's like he deflates. His entire body slumps and looks at you with exhausted eyes. When you see that look, you have no doubt who this man is. He's the big-shot German POW everyone's been looking for. And it's you, a lowly patrol officer, who caught the mastermind of the Camp Papago Park escape. You're gonna be a hero.
38:25 Lindsay Graham? After admitting who he was to a Phoenix police officer, Vattenberg was brought to police headquarters and questioned. Then he returned to Camp Papago Park on January 28th, greeted by boisterous cheering from the other prisoners. Vattenberg had no idea what punishment they might receive for attempting to escape, and he worried that the American guards might even execute him, the way the Gestapo had executed Allied escapees in Germany the year before. But instead Colonel Holden ordered each man to be given only bread and water for the same period of time that they had been missing from camp. For Vattenberg, that meant 37 days. Then, less than three months later, on May 8th, 1945, Germany surrendered to Allied forces.
39:07 Lindsay Graham? Among the terms worked out in the peace negotiations was an exchange of POWs. It took almost a year before the last prisoners detained at Camp Papago Park returned home. And as a stipulation of the peace treaty, Germany was forced to disband its navy. So when Jürgen Vattenberg returned home in 1946, he found himself out of a job. He ended up working as everything from a dairy farmer to a traveling salesman after the war. And for the next 40 years, he declined to talk about his escape from Papago Park. After Germany's surrender, Colonel William Holden retired from the army. Ultimately, no disciplinary action was taken against him for the escape that occurred under his command, and he died just four years later in 1949. After the war, the camp was demolished,
39:52 Lindsay Graham? and today Papago Park is open to the public with hiking trails, a zoo, and botanical garden. Looking around, it's easy to forget that the area once housed thousands of German sailors, led by a zealous Nazi officer determined to escape.
40:08 Lindsay Graham? From Monterey, this is episode four of our four-part series, Prison Breaks from American History Tellers. In our next episode, I speak with historian Robert Watson about his book, Escape: The Story of the Confederacy's Infamous Libby Prison and the Civil War's Largest Jailbreak.
40:26 Lindsay Graham? American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you, so thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com.
41:02 Lindsay Graham? If you'd like to learn more about the escape from Camp Papago Park, we recommend The Great Desert Escape by Keith Warren Lloyd. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsay Graham, for Airship. Audio editing by Mohamed Shazi. Sound design by Molly Bach. Supervising sound designer Matthew Filler. Music by Throm. This episode is written by Austin Rackless. Edited by Dory Marina. Produced by Alida Rozansky. Coordinating producer Desi Plaughlin. Managing producer Matt Gann. Senior managing producer Ryan Moore. Senior producer Andy Herman. And executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marsha Louie for Wondery.
41:46 Speaker 09 Hey, I'm Cassie DePecce, the host of Against the Odds from Audible Originals. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who lived to tell the tale. In our latest series, we track the story of Hugh Glass, the real-life revenant that inspired the 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 1823, Glass was brutally mauled by a grizzly bear in present-day South Dakota and left for dead. His survival depended on trekking through 350 miles of wilderness alone with grave injuries. But he was driven by his thirst for revenge. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Against the Odds early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
Previous Daring Prison Escapes | Escape from Leavenworth | 3 Next Daring Prison Escapes | Escape from Libby Prison | 5 Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated