Doppelganger ---- a ghostly double of a living person. Adapted from German word doppel, meaning “double,” the term has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person. 

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During the late 1800s and early 1900s, thousands of European immigrants arrived in America to begin new lives. Among the largest of these groups were Germans, many of whom were farmers settled in the Middle-Western states of Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas, and the Dakotas.Germans no longer living in Deutschland were known as “Volksdeutschers.”

During World War I, the American public questioned these immigrant loyalties, and considerable discrimination was perpetrated against them. Until the Great War, the predominant language in their communities throughout the Midwest was German. After the war, a great effort was made by the Volksdeutschers themselves to learn English in order to blend into the American society. Names were changed to sound more “Anglo” and less “German.” But, things changed in the mid-1930s for those German-Americans who felt disenfranchised. In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany with massive work programs. The new Fuhrer and the Nazi Party were rebuilding Germany, instilling new pride into the defeated and bankrupt nation, which had been stripped of many of its lands and riches by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I.

With renewed pride in their German heritage, hundreds, maybe thousands of American Volksdeutscher families sent their children back to Germany to be educated in what was considered at the time some of the finest higher educational institutions in the world. 

Once in Germany, many of these young Americans found themselves caught up in the Nazi movement, either willingly or unwittingly. Hundreds of young Americans were drafted into Hitler’s Wehrmacht.

This is the story of a young American, who became a soldier in the German army against his will. Considered a German citizen by the Third Reich, John Krauss eventually faces his own countrymen as the world goes to war for a second time.