This program is over. Hope you didn't miss it! Browse other programs we offer Detained Diplomats: A WWII Story Evening Program with Book Signing Evening Lecture/Seminar Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - 6:45 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. ET Code: 1J0050 Location: S. Dillon Ripley Center1100 Jefferson Dr SWMetro: Smithsonian (Mall exit) Select your Tickets $20 Member $30 Non-Member Resize text German diplomats are pictured at the Greenbrier resort, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, circa 1942 (Courtesy of The Greenbrier Resort) In the chaotic days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration made a contentious decision affecting the Axis diplomats living and working in the nation’s capital. To encourage reciprocal treatment of U.S. diplomats trapped abroad, they were sent to luxurious rural resorts including the Greenbrier in West Virginia and the Homestead in Virginia—a move that enraged Americans stunned by the attack. The roundup, detention, and eventual repatriation of more than a thousand German, Japanese, Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian diplomats and dependents is now a forgotten footnote to the early WWII era in the nation’s capital. Author Harvey Solomon examines a fractious period that unleashed public outrage, hidden agendas, rancor and racism, diplomatic machinations, and political calculations, and analyzes how these detentions stripped away the veneer of pre-war diplomatic bonhomie to reveal deep conflicts among captives and captors alike. Solomon’s book, Such Splendid Prisons: Diplomatic Detainment in America During World War II (Potomac Books), is available for sale and signing.
