When the Allies carved Germany into zones of occupation at the end of World War II, the United States imposed a strict nonfraternization policy on its troops. Soldiers weren't allowed to speak with German adults or children, and if they fathered a child with a local woman, paying to support the child was considered aid to the enemy. The policy was so widely flouted that, by the end of 1946, the military scrapped it to save face.

During the four years of occupation, U.S. soldiers fathered 37,000 illegitimate children in Germany. In 1950, when Harry Truman declared West Germany the next front in the Cold War, America replaced its occupation force of 80,000 with a protective force three times as large. U.S. soldiers were told to befriend Germans, bring them onto bases, and invite them into their homes. There were movie dates and mixers at the officers' clubs. Newspapers filled with wedding announcements for German women and American men. A popular German cartoon in the early 1950s showed a parade of small children waving American flags. America, it said, "could just send uniforms for the kids instead of more troops."

In early 1960, 19-year-old Erika Süß of Augsburg, Bavaria, realized she was pregnant. The child's father was a U.S. soldier, but Süß didn't know which one. She'd been dating a man from the Airborne. Another soldier, meanwhile, had been stalking her. One night, while Süß was babysitting at an American couple's home, her stalker came by, called to her from the porch, and disappeared just before the couple returned. Süß walked alone down the path to the penny streetcars and was raped in the black winter night.

Süß's boyfriend, since stationed elsewhere, stopped responding to her letters. Her family forbade her from telling police about the rape, became enraged when she refused an abortion, and kept her out of sight. On Oct. 23, 1960, she gave birth to Wilhelm Süß. Less than a year later, she left with him for America.

Süß became Suess and Wilhelm, William. Erika married and settled in Brentwood, Mo., where Suess grew up with two half-brothers, two half-sisters, and a life much like those of his classmates at Mark Twain Elementary. His mother called him Sweet William, and sometimes Wilhelm, but when he asked about Germany, it upset her. Suess clashed, sometimes violently, with his stepdad, and he resisted being adopted. His stepgrandfather, though, had taken him riding on the back of a red 1947 Indian motorcycle when he was small, and eventually he mowed enough lawns to buy a small off-road bike of his own. Suess sped through town to reach the trails in the surrounding woods, local cops often in pursuit until he disappeared into the trees, feeling free.

When Suess was about 18, his mother gave him his green card and told him to put it somewhere safe. "Permanent Resident," it said, and below that, "Country of birth: Germany." It had no mention of citizenship. All that struck Suess about the card was the tiny photo, which showed a round-headed baby with a few strands of hair, like Charlie Brown. "That's you," his mother said. The idea of citizenship confused him — he couldn't imagine being anything but American, and any alarm bells about legal technicalities were muffled as he chased girls and roared around on a Triumph Bonneville chopper. When he applied for a marriage license at 20, he marked himself as a U.S. citizen, because that's what he considered himself. Then he joined the Army.

It was only in 1981, when his unit was scheduled for deployment to Germany, that he realized the potential implications of his immigration status. An officer called him aside on the blacktop at Fort Carson, Colo.

"Suess," he said, "you're not going." Being born in Germany made Suess a German citizen, the officer explained, which meant that if he went there, he might not be allowed to return. But the Army could get him his U.S. citizenship, Suess was told. He went to an office on base, filled out some forms, and left his green card with the clerk. By then his unit had already left for Germany, but he considered the citizenship matter resolved. He never saw the green card again.

After his discharge from the Army, Suess' marriage fell apart. He used drugs, joined an Illinois motorcycle gang called the Wind Tramps, and built a rap sheet of crimes that ranged from petty busts and bar fights to burglary. In the late 1980s, the Tramps were busted in a federal sting, and "Wild Bill" Suess was arrested — along with guys named Lightning and Diablo — and convicted of conspiracy to sell in excess of 15 kilograms of cocaine. Before Suess was released in 2001, and again in 2006, after he fell into old habits and did another prison stint, he was taken to a conference room, where two immigration agents complimented his English. Both times, Suess explained his history, saying he wasn't German but American, and the agents seemed to agree.

His second time out, Suess was determined to go straight. Erika was living alone in Richwoods, Mo., and she owned a vacant modular home nearby, set deep in 72 acres of woods. Trespassers had stripped the home of its appliances, cabinets, and light fixtures, and they used the woods to cook crystal meth. At the request of his mother, who was also fighting breast cancer, Suess moved in. He brought a mutt named Fuel, his girlfriend Laura Smith — blonde, blue-eyed, and pretty, even with just six teeth — and three years of parole.

Bringing order to the chaos was like penance for Suess. Six feet tall, hard-featured, and lean, with a thick black mustache and Man-in-Black gait, he walked the woods with a rifle strapped to his back and his ponytail hanging to the waist of his jeans, firing into the ground when Fuel growled at suspicious sounds in the brush and standing sentry in the road to peer into passing trucks. He piled the bleach containers and half-cooked batches of dope into a field and burned them. He found work as a carpenter, converted an old mobile home into a garage, filled it with tools, and renovated the house. He wore through chainsaws as he cleared the trees that had stretched to the windows. He finished his parole in 2009 and set a wedding date with Smith for the fall. He laid a base of rock beneath the driveway and at the end put a homemade wrought-iron gate. There were posts around the house and, in the garage, rolls of chain-link fence.

One summer day in 2009, Smith left to spend the day at a lake, and Suess headed to town to buy cigarettes. On the way, he noticed two black SUVs idling at an intersection. He stopped at the post office and then the country store next door, buying himself Marlboros and a Diet Coke. When he walked out of the store, a black SUV was at the post office. Suess returned to the dirt road that led to his house to find another SUV blocking his way. He slowed to a stop and climbed out to see what was wrong, and the second SUV roared up behind him. Plainclothes men jumped out, handguns drawn. Suess shot his palms up in front of his chest.

"We're federal ICE agents," one of the men said.

"What the fuck is ice?" Suess asked.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement," the agent said.

"Well, what's that got to do with me?"

That evening Smith returned to an empty house.