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How did the issue of the “late returnees” (Spätheimkehrer) serve as the final emotional chapter of World War II for West Germany, and how did Konrad Adenauer’s diplomatic gamble in Moscow in 1955 fundamentally alter the Federal Republic’s relationship with the Soviet Union and its own citizenry? This article examines one of the most emotionally charged events in the history of the early Federal Republic: the return of the last 10,000 German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union in 1955. It analyzes the plight of German soldiers in Soviet captivity, framing their continued imprisonment a decade after the war…