Hans Sennholz

He was drafted into the Luftwaffe during World War II and became the pilot of a Messerschmitt Bf 109, earning the Iron Cross for valor from his engagements in Norway, France, and Russia. He was shot down over North Africa on August 31, 1942, at a time when the battle for north Africa was intensifying, and spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp in the United States, ultimately located to a POW camp in Wilson, Arkansas, where he worked from 1945 to 1946 at the Wilson dairy farm "milking 20 cows twice a day".[2]

During his stay in Arkansas, he maintained a journal of his time as a POW prisoner.[3] When he was transferred back to Germany in 1946, he gave the journal to a trusted guard. "Please send this to my home when the time comes." But the journal never arrived.[4]

In 1964, William Harrison, a factory worker in Jonesboro, Arkansas, found the journal along the banks of Bay Ditch, a drainage artery bordering 'old' Highway 63, and kept it.[5] In November, 1985, Harrison took the journal to Scott Darwin, a professor of German at Arkansas State University. Darwin informed Harrison that no one on staff could read it because it had been hand written in a script of German that was no longer used. The journal was eventually translated by Erika Cohen, the German-born wife of Robert S. Cohen, M.D., whom she married while he was serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Having attended school in the 1930s, she was able to read the script.[6]

The journal told the story of its author's life as a Luftwaffe pilot, being shot down in north Africa and his subsequent time as a German POW in Arkansas. There was no indication as to the identity of the author. This, perhaps, was intentional, as POWs were not supposed to have personal possessions.[3]

In 1988, Harrison published the story, "Who Wrote the Diary", in Die Welt, a large-circulation German newspaper. Willie Weischhoff read the story, which mentioned him by name, and wrote to his friend and fellow German POW, Hans Sennholz, a Professor of Economics at Grove City College. On October 20, 1988, Harrison received a letter from Sennholz stating: "I am the POW author you have been looking for."[2]

• "What We Can Know About the World". The Freeman, 1970.
• "Omnipotent Government". The Freeman, 1970.
• "The Great Depression". The Freeman, October 1969.

• Divided Europe. New York, NY, 1955.
• How Can Europe Survive. D. Van Nostrand Company, 1955.
• Moneda y libertad. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1961.
• The Great Depression. Lansing, MI, 1969.
• Inflation or Gold Standard. Lansing, MI, 1973.
• Gold is Money. Westport, CT, 1975.
• Death and Taxes. Washington, D. C., 1976. 2nd ed. 1982.
• Problemas económicas de actualidad. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1977.
• Age of Inflation, Belmont, MA, 1977, 1979
  • Spanish: Tiempos de inflation, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1983.
• Money and Freedom. Spring Mills, PA, 1985
  • Spanish: Moneda y libertad, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1987
  • Polish: Pieniadze I Wolnosc. London, England, 1991.
• The Politics of Unemployment. Spring Mills, PA, 1987.
• Debts and Deficits. Spring Mills, PA, 1987.
• The Great Depression: Will We Repeat It?. Spring Mills, PA, 1988.
• The Savings and Loan Bailout. Spring Mills, PA, 1989.
• Three Economic Commandments. Spring Mills, PA, 1990.
• The First Eighty Years of Grove City College. Grove City, PA, 1993.
• Reflection and Remembrance. Irvington, NY, 1997.
• Sowing the Wind. Grove City, PA, 2004.
• Age of Inflation Continued. Grove City, PA, 2006.