In World War II, African-American GIs helped liberate Germany from Nazi rule. Once defeated, Germans - however reluctantly - accepted them as a part of the victorious US army. But within the U.S. army as well as back home in the U.S., racism still prevailed. Returning home, the war veterans took up a different, peaceful kind of fight. They became a vital force in the fledgling civil rights movement. This time, the prize was their own freedom.