‘Let Us Die in the Cold!’ — German Women POWs REFUSED Rescue, One Soldier’s Response BROKE Them

February 1945, Camp Stark, New Hampshire. In the freezing cold of the American winter, 127 German women—prisoners of war—stood in a line, waiting for what they had been told would be their fate: cruelty, humiliation, and death. The war had already taken everything from them. The devastation in their home country, the collapse of the Reich, the deaths of loved ones—none of it had prepared them for what was to come.

They had heard the stories—the rumors—that the Americans, the very soldiers they had fought against, would treat them like animals. They would be stripped naked in the snow, abused, photographed for propaganda, and forced into brothels. One SS officer had whispered to them as they surrendered, “They will do to you what the Russians did in the east, but worse. The Americans smile while they destroy you.”

Arriving at Camp Stark, the women were herded off a freezing cattle train in the dead of winter. Snow piled high and the temperatures hovered just above freezing. Their bodies, exhausted and ravaged by months of war and deprivation, now found themselves in the hands of the enemy they had been taught to hate.

As they were led into the camp, their breath formed clouds in the air, and the sight that met them should have confirmed their worst fears. Barbed wire, guard towers, and American soldiers stood in formation, rifles slung over their shoulders. The women shivered violently, their ragged uniforms insufficient for the freezing temperatures of New Hampshire.

Then, something happened that they didn’t expect. It was nothing like the cruelty they had imagined. Instead of humiliation, there was mercy. Three American soldiers stepped forward, carrying large bundles. Wool blankets, thick and warm, were handed out to each woman. And with them—hot coffee. It was the very kindness the women had been taught to fear, a kindness that made no sense to their traumatized minds.

“No,” Greta Miller, a 23-year-old radio operator from Hamburg, said, shaking her head. She couldn’t trust this kindness. She’d been taught that accepting help from the enemy meant surrendering their dignity. The other women joined in, some shouting, “Let us die in the cold!” They threw the blankets and coffee to the ground, rejecting what was offered, unable to believe that their captors could show mercy.

But Private James Sullivan, a 21-year-old American soldier from Boston, wasn’t prepared to let them freeze. Having seen the horrors of war, having fought on Omaha Beach and witnessed the atrocities in concentration camps, he couldn’t stand by while these women—scared, starving, freezing—refused help.

With no hesitation, Sullivan slowly unbuttoned his heavy winter coat. The women watched him, their eyes filled with fear and confusion. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Americans were supposed to be the monsters. He pulled off his coat and walked up to the nearest woman, a German in her 40s, whose lips had already turned blue from the cold. He draped his coat over her shoulders.

The woman screamed and pushed the coat off, as if it were burning her. Sullivan didn’t flinch. He picked it up, brushed off the snow, and tried again. “Please,” he said softly, “You’ll die out here. You have to take it.”

And then, in an act that no one expected, Sullivan sat down in the snow. “If you’re going to freeze,” he said, “I’ll freeze with you.”

The women stood frozen, unable to comprehend what they were witnessing. They had been taught to fear the Americans, to hate them. But here was one of their soldiers, sitting in the snow, shivering, refusing to move until the women took the blankets. It was an act of selflessness that no one could have predicted. He wasn’t trying to shame them. He wasn’t performing for them. He was simply doing what he believed was right: showing mercy to those who needed it.

Minutes passed, and Sullivan’s lips turned purple, his hands shaking violently from the cold. But still, he sat there, waiting. “You are insane,” Maria, another prisoner, whispered to him. Sullivan looked up, smiling weakly, his face tired but determined. “Maybe,” he said, “But you’re not the enemy anymore. The war is over, and I’m not going to let you freeze just because you’re scared.”

His words hit Greta like a slap. “Scared, not defiant, not brave. Scared.” And she realized it was true. These women weren’t defying their captors; they were simply terrified. They had been lied to for so long, conditioned to believe that the Americans were monsters, and now here they were, offering help, showing kindness instead of cruelty.

After a long silence, Greta couldn’t take it anymore. She stepped forward and picked up one of the discarded blankets. She wrapped it around her shoulders. “There,” she said, her voice breaking. “I took the blanket. Now put on your coat before you die, you stupid American.”

One by one, the other women began to follow her lead. They picked up the blankets and wrapped themselves in the warmth, some crying as they did. They had spent months in fear and deprivation, and now, for the first time, they were given something they never thought possible: mercy.

Private Sullivan stood, his legs barely able to support him. He had given them his coat, his warmth, and in return, they had taken what they had rejected. He had shown them kindness when they had expected cruelty. And in that moment, the war, with all its hatred and division, began to fall away. The women were no longer enemies and captors. They were human beings sharing warmth, a moment of shared humanity in the midst of the madness of war.

Later, they were taken into the camp’s barracks, where they were fed hot meals, given clean clothes, and allowed to rest. This was not what they had expected from their American captors. It wasn’t just survival—they were given dignity. They were treated like people. And for the first time, they began to realize that the war they had fought in wasn’t just about who had won, but about who had lost their humanity along the way.

Greta, Maria, and the other women would leave Camp Stark eventually, but not as they had arrived. They had come expecting death and found mercy instead. They had come believing the enemy would destroy them, but instead, they were shown compassion. And in that moment of mercy, they saw the truth of what war had stolen from them: their ability to see others as human beings.

Greta would later write in her diary, “The Americans could have made us suffer. They had every right. But they chose a different path. They chose to prove that even enemies can be treated with dignity.” And that simple act of mercy, more than anything else, would stay with her for the rest of her life.

In the years that followed, as she returned to a Germany that had been destroyed by the war, Greta would remember the kindness of Private Sullivan and the others who had treated her and her fellow prisoners with humanity. She would remember the blankets, the soap, the food, and the warmth. But most of all, she would remember the moment when a soldier sat in the snow with her, refusing to let her freeze.

For those 127 women, that moment of mercy shattered everything they had believed. And in the process, it changed them forever. It taught them that kindness could be stronger than hatred, that compassion could outlast cruelty. And it showed them that even in the darkest of wars, humanity could survive.