When Minnesota Veterans returned home in the fall of 1945, they were surprised to find thousands of German and Italian prisoners of war harvesting the state's crops. Twenty-one POW camps, housing Axis soldiers captured in Europe and North Africa, were established in Minnesota between 1943 and 1945. Prisoners from these camps proved to be a valuable source of manpower for agriculture, logging, and small businesses. Based on archival material in the United States and Europe, as well as interviews with former German prisoners, Swords into Plowshares recreates an absorbing episode in Minnesota's history.