Georg Gaertner

Gärtner was from Schweidnitz, Lower Silesia (now Świdnica, Poland). He enlisted in the Wehrmacht in 1940 at age 19, and fought in the North African Campaign with the Afrika Korps. He was captured by British troops in Tunis in 1943 and was taken to the United States as a prisoner of war.

At the end of the war, Gärtner was terrified at the thought of being repatriated to his hometown, which at the time became a part of communist Poland, and decided to escape. Several weeks after the war's end, he escaped from his prison camp in Deming, New Mexico, on September 22, 1945. After crawling under two gates, he jumped aboard a passing freight train whose schedule he had calculated. The train took him to California.

Gärtner moved between various towns on the West Coast, working as a lumberjack, dishwasher, or laborer. Having studied English as an officer candidate, he perfected his command of the language, created a new identity as Dennis F. Whiles, obtained a Social Security card in that name, and invented a biography in which he had been raised in an orphanage after his parents had been killed in a traffic accident. He eventually settled in Norden, California, where he worked as a ski instructor in the winter and in construction and sales jobs during the summer. While attending a YMCA dance, he met Jean Clarke, and the couple married in 1964. He adopted her two children from a previous marriage.[1]

After his 1945 escape the US Army launched a manhunt which lasted until 1963. The FBI issued "wanted" posters for Gärtner in 1947. According to his autobiography, he joined a ski expedition formed to rescue the City of San Francisco, a train stranded in a blizzard in the Sierra Nevada in January 1952, immediately after which Life magazine took his and the group's picture. Meanwhile, FBI wanted posters for him were in most post offices. For 40 years Gärtner was listed as one of the FBI's most wanted persons. However, since the authorities correctly surmised his reason for escaping, to avoid repatriation rather than a violent goal such as seeking revenge for Germany's defeat, he was not designated "dangerous," which would have resulted in a more intense manhunt.[2]

Upon his arrival by train in San Pedro, California as a fugitive, Gärtner first worked in various transient jobs as dishwasher, cook, and laborer under the guise of a Norwegian immigrant named Peter Petersen. Fearing discovery, he next moved to Fresno in the Central Valley where he worked as a migrant farm laborer. For a time, he lived and traveled with a migrant farm family from Arkansas; the father's name was Dennis Whiles. On the move again, Gärtner made his way to Northern California, and taking the name Dennis Whiles, he worked at various jobs in the construction industry, first as salesman for pre-hung doors, and then eventually as a construction estimator and architectural consultant. He also began working as a ski instructor at the Sugar Bowl in Tahoe during the winters, and as a tennis pro in the East Bay area. His connections to the construction industry allowed him and his wife to start a tennis club and tennis shop at the newly developed Aptos Country Club near Santa Cruz. After several years of running the tennis side of the country club and organizing successful tennis tournaments, there was a falling out with the Aptos management, and this led Gärtner and his wife to relocate to Hawaii. Gärtner continued his work as a construction estimator on a variety of military building projects in Hawaii while his wife worked for the state in social services. During this time, his wife became increasingly disturbed by his many excuses and refusal to discuss his past. His inability to travel outside the United States (he could not get a passport), also caused them to lead increasingly separate lives as she started traveling without him. In 1984, after she was about to leave him, he confessed his past to her. At her urging, he went public the following year. He contacted history professor Arnold Krammer, a well-known authority on the history of the 371,000 German POWs held in the United States during World War II. Together they published Hitler's Last Soldier in America (1985).[3] He also appeared on the Today Show, where he "surrendered" to Bryant Gumbel. He effectively became the last World War II German prisoner of war in America.[4]

When Gärtner went public, the government was bewildered about what to charge him with regarding his escape. Gärtner was not an illegal immigrant, since he had been brought to the United States against his will. He had not really escaped from prison since all German POWs were to be repatriated to their original homes, and Gärtner was due to be sent back to his hometown in Silesia, which had become a part of Poland. Moreover, as he had escaped after the war had ended, there was some question of whether he was still a prisoner of war. Because of this, he was not charged with any offenses. The FBI announced that it had no further interest in him, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service confirmed it had no interest in deporting him. Gärtner was invited to become a U.S. citizen. Due to bureaucratic delays, it was not until November 2009 that he was finally naturalized as a citizen in Denver.

His wife Jean Clarke divorced him in the 1980s, because he returned to Germany for two years with little communication. Visiting his sister in Hamburg, he saw no future for himself in Germany, so he returned to the U.S. He resided in Colorado for the remainder of his life, primarily living in Gunbarrel. He and Jean continued their friendship over the years and her grandchildren considered him a grandfather. In his later years he spent his time pursuing his passion as a painter and befriended other German-speaking locals, often hosting them at the bungalow he co-habited with an elderly German lady named Mildred.

• 1952 Life article on rescue of the City of San Francisco train, which Gärtner mentions in his book