The story of the last Japanese soldier is well known throughout the world. The last German to surrender was Georg Gärtner. Georg Gärtner was captured in 1943 by British troops in Tunis while serving in the Afrika Korps. He was transferred to the United States as a prisoner of war. At the end of the war, Gärtner feared being repatriated to his hometown of Schweidnitz in Lower Silesia, which had by then become a Polish city under communist rule. He decided to escape. On September 22, 1945, he escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp in Deming, New Mexico, by jumping aboard a freight train. This train took him to California. Gärtner then moved from town to town along the West Coast of the United States. He worked as a lumberjack, dishwasher, and laborer. He improved his English, adopted a new identity as Dennis F. Whiles, obtained a Social Security card, and fabricated a biography in which he claimed to have grown up in a Connecticut orphanage after the accidental death of his parents. He eventually settled in Norden, California, where he worked as a ski instructor in the winter and in construction or sales in the summer. It was there that he met Jean Clarke, whom he married in 1964. He adopted her two children from a previous marriage. Throughout this time, the American military continued its search. For forty years, Gärtner remained on the FBI's list of most wanted individuals. However, American authorities considered him to pose no threat, believing he was merely trying to avoid being sent back to Eastern Europe—not out of loyalty to defeated Germany, but out of fear of the new regime. Although Gärtner led a quiet life, his wife grew increasingly worried by his refusal to discuss his past. In 1984, when she threatened to leave him, he confessed the whole truth to her. At her insistence, he decided to make his story public. The following year, he contacted historian Arnold Krammer, a renowned expert on German prisoners of war in the United States. Together, they published a book titled Hitler's Last Soldier in America. Gärtner became famous overnight. He was invited onto several television programs, including The Today Show, where he symbolically "surrendered" to host Bryant Gumbel. The income generated by the book sales ensured him a degree of financial independence. When he came forward, the American government found itself facing a legal vacuum. Gärtner was not an illegal immigrant, since he had been brought to the United States against his will. He had not escaped from a prison in the strict sense, since prisoners of war were, in principle, supposed to be released and repatriated. And because his escape had taken place after the official end of hostilities, it was uncertain whether he would still be considered a prisoner of war in the legal sense. No charges were filed. The FBI stated it no longer had any interest in him, and immigration officials confirmed they had no intention of deporting him. Gärtner was invited to apply for U.S. citizenship. After several years of application, he was naturalized in November 2009. He devoted the end of his life to his passion for painting. Georg Gärtner passed away in 2013 in Loveland, Colorado.