Pro-German American Soldiers Tried to Bring World War II to Colorado

New Book by Coloradan Bill Sonn Traces the Unlikely Journeys of Five Would-be Rebels

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Oct 25, 2021, 15:51 ET

DENVER, Oct. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new book by Colorado author Bill Sonn tells the true story of four U.S. soldiers the Army merely suspected of disloyalty and turned them into actual disloyal soldiers conspiring to conduct a guerilla war from the Rocky Mountains.

In the group was the only American soldier convicted of the military equivalent of treason in the U.S. during World War II.

All the GIs in the outrageous plan got long sentences. One was sentenced to hang. And all ended up successful businessmen.

A critical part of the story unfolds at the famed Camp Hale in the mountains near Redcliff, Colorado.

"In its rush to assemble a force of seven million, the Army discovered it had inducted some seemingly iffy patriots," Sonn explained. "They might have had FBI files, German-sounding names, disruptive college records, visited pre-war Europe, or, quite often, done nothing at all. The Army stripped them of their guns, put them in prison-like uniforms, abused them, and stashed them in remote camps. One was Camp Hale, where members of the Army's storied 10^th Mountain Division, training nearby, occasionally dropped by to beat the supposed traitors up."

Something Like Treason: Disloyal American Soldiers and the Plot to Bring World War II Home follows one soldier's flight from the camp with two German POWs. They aimed to cross the Atlantic to wartime Germany to persuade the Nazi government to supply the money and the materials they needed to ignite their guerilla war back in the U.S.

Published by Sunbury Press, the book traces these men through the tumult of the 1930s, into the war, their military misadventures. and the bureaucratic knife fights among the country's intelligence services. Their postwar lives, moreover, closely reflect the nation's grand prosperity and the emergence of some rust in America's industrial sector.

"So much fascinates me about this story, including how the environment and actions mirror the polarization, isolationism and domestic terrorism of today," Sonn added.

Something Like Treason is available through Amazon, Goodreads, at many bookstores, and from Sunbury Press.

Qualified reviewers can receive a copy of the book or arrange an interview by contacting [email protected].

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