“Treat Them Like Human Beings” — How American Medics Restored Hope to German Women POWs

The Bathhouse Protocol: A Story of Unexpected Mercy

Arrival at Camp Crawford

March 12th, 1945. The cold breeze swept through the pine trees near Camp Crawford, Georgia. For the first time in six months, Greta Hoffman stood frozen, her hands trembling as the warm water cascaded over her body in a wooden bathhouse. The scent of lemon soap filled her lungs as steam surrounded her, and for the first time in what felt like forever, she felt human again.

The previous months had broken her spirit, but nothing could have prepared her for the overwhelming kindness she felt now. She had been expecting cruelty, punishment, and fear after her capture in France, but the Americans had given her the unexpected gift of warmth, privacy, and dignity. As the water washed away layers of dirt and shame, she could hear the quiet sobs of another woman, Leisel Müller, in the next stall. It wasn’t just the heat from the water that made Greta’s heart shake—it was the realization that the Americans, the very people who had fought against her country, had shown her compassion instead of revenge. And that terrified her more than any weapon ever could.

Greta had grown up in Germany, believing in the strength of her country and the righteousness of their cause. But that was before the war had taken everything from her—her husband, her home, her beliefs. Now, here she stood, wrapped in a towel, trying to make sense of this impossible kindness. The propaganda had painted the Americans as monsters, savages who would punish their enemies without mercy. But in the bathhouse, in the warmth and the soap, she had experienced the unimaginable: kindness. And in that moment, her mind began to break apart the lies she had once held close.

The Train Ride to Captivity

Six months earlier, the world had made sense. The war was ongoing, and Greta had been part of the German army, serving as a nurse. She had seen the worst of the fighting, patching up soldiers who never came back, and burying the ones who did. When her husband, Friedrich, was killed in Normandy, it shattered her world. The war had already taken so much from her, and she had never imagined that it would lead her to this—captured and thrown into the hands of the enemy.

The train ride had been cold, uncomfortable, and filled with fear. She had heard the stories—the rumors about how the Americans treated prisoners, how they would starve and humiliate them. The uncertainty gnawed at her. But as the days passed, she began to notice something unsettling—something that contradicted the image the Nazis had painted of the Americans. The guards weren’t shouting at them. They weren’t treating them with contempt. They offered them water, real water from their cantens. She had expected to be met with hostility, but instead, the Americans treated them with something she didn’t know how to process—respect.

That was the first crack in the wall of hatred she had built up over the years. When they arrived at Camp Crawford, Georgia, it only got worse. The camp was clean. The roads were swept. The barracks stood neat, with windows that actually had glass. And then, the impossibility of it all—bathhouses with steam rising from small chimneys, hot water waiting for them, soap wrapped in paper stamped with the U.S. Army logo.

The Struggle of Mercy

It wasn’t just the facilities. It was the approach. The Americans didn’t just give them the basics for survival. They gave them dignity. They didn’t see them as subhuman; they saw them as people who deserved to be treated with respect, even after the horrors they had inflicted. This was harder for Greta to accept than any punishment could have been. She had expected to hate the Americans, but instead, they were giving her something more powerful than hatred: they were giving her a choice to feel something else.

Greta’s struggle was not just with the American soldiers—it was with herself. Every time she took a warm shower, every time she was treated with care and kindness, she was forced to confront the stark contrast to what she had been taught. The hatred she had carried for so long was being drowned in confusion, in kindness, and it felt like an impossible thing to bear.

Leisel, too, struggled. She had left her son, Klouse, behind in Berlin, not knowing if he was alive or dead. But the kindness she received from the Americans forced her to see them not as monsters, but as human beings. The man who served her breakfast, a black American soldier named Corporal Davis, treated her like a person. The quiet dignity he showed her shattered the propaganda she had believed about Americans, and she couldn’t reconcile the love he showed her with the hate she had been taught to feel.

Freda, the oldest among the women, had already learned to keep moving forward. She didn’t hate the Americans, but she certainly didn’t understand them. She was tired of all the lies. But here, in the camp, she was learning something unexpected: the Americans followed the Geneva Convention, not because they had to, but because they chose to. They chose to be kind when it would have been easier to seek revenge. And that choice, that decision to treat people with dignity, was more powerful than any weapon they had ever deployed in the war.

The Power of Protocol

When the women were told that they could meet with American volunteers from a local church, it was a shock. Volunteers, helping their enemies? Leisel, Greta, and Freda were hesitant, but they came together for the first time in the camp’s recreation area, working side by side with American civilians. And then the moment came. Sarah Morrison, an American woman in her forties, introduced herself to Leisel and offered her a book. Leisel was taken aback. Why would this woman help her, a prisoner, an enemy? Sarah had lost her own son in Saipan, yet she was offering Leisel a book, offering her warmth and compassion.

And that was the moment that changed everything for Leisel. Sarah wasn’t just an American woman showing kindness to a stranger. She was a mother who understood the pain of losing a child, a woman who believed in doing what was right, even when it was hard. Sarah wasn’t just helping them because it was the right thing to do; she was doing it because she wanted to honor the memory of her son, who had fought for the values of mercy and humanity. It was in that moment that Leisel realized: the Americans were not monsters. They were human beings who believed in something bigger than hatred, bigger than revenge.

The Rebirth of Humanity

The months that followed in Camp Crawford were a slow, painful process for the women. They had to reconcile their past, the losses, the propaganda they had been fed, and the kindness that was being shown to them. And then came the most difficult challenge of all—the announcement that the war in Europe had ended. Germany had surrendered, but the women weren’t free. They had to make difficult choices about whether to return to a country in ruins or to stay in America. For Leisel, it was the hardest decision. She was finally able to see Klouse again, but in a way she hadn’t imagined. He had been adopted by an American family, and she would never be his legal mother again. But she could be near him. She could watch him grow.

Greta, too, had to make a choice. She could return to Germany, or she could stay in America, working on a ranch in Texas. She had already signed the paperwork for a work visa. She had already begun to imagine a life that didn’t involve constant grief and rage. And when she met Buck Morrison, Sarah’s husband, she found something unexpected—a man who had lost his son to the war but was willing to offer her a chance at a new life. He wasn’t kind to her because of her past, but because he followed a code of respect that made him see her as a human being, not an enemy.

A Future Forged in Mercy

When the women finally reunited with their families, the journey was hard. Klouse had learned to speak English, and he now called both women his mothers. The bond between them had been forged not through blood but through the simple acts of kindness, respect, and dignity. In time, Greta, Leisel, and Freda would each find their place in the new world they had been given—a world where enemies could become family, where mercy could heal the wounds of war.

In the years that followed, their story became a beacon of hope for a world still recovering from the devastation of the war. The kindness shown to them in that camp, the adherence to protocol and the Geneva Convention, became the cornerstone of a new era of rebuilding. The lessons of mercy, of choosing humanity over vengeance, would ripple through generations, transforming enemies into friends and building a future founded on the principles that defined America at its finest.

And as they stood together at the museum dedication in 1985, four generations gathered, German and American, old and young, united by the same simple truth: America’s greatest weapon was not its military might, but its ability to choose kindness, even when the world had every reason to choose otherwise.

Note: Some content was generated using AI tools (ChatGPT) and edited by the author for creativity and suitability for historical illustration purposes.