A short synopsis of the internment of ethnic Germans during and after World War II

On December 9, 1941 Karl Vogt, a German national residing in the U.S., was abruptly taken from his home near Plaza, Washington by agents of the F.B.I. and eventually sent to internment camps located in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and finally Montana. For nearly two years he was not told what the "evidence" was against him and he was never told who his accusers were. Left behind on the family farm, and also subjected to harassment by the United States government, were his wife, Elsie, and his two young children, all American born citizens.
Karl had immigrated to the U.S. in 1923, and although he was not yet a citizen at the time of his arrest, he had begun the process toward citizenship and considered himself an American.

Now we know that Karl, my dad, was joined in those internment camps by at least 11,000 other ethnic Germans, most of them immigrants, like Karl. As it turned out, Karl was one of the lucky ones. He was incarcerated for two years, while many others were held for a much longer period, some for as long as three years after the war. A majority of those held in internment camps lost all of their material possessions. At least 2,000 people, including American-born children, were deported into war-ravaged Germany to be exchanged Americans held there.

An additional 4,000 of Karl's fellow internees were German residents of Latin America, who were forcibly brought to the U.S. and destined to become a part of the exchange program. Incredibly, a number of these Latin Americans were Jews who had fled Germany years earlier.