Dr. Robert D. Billinger, Jr., an emeritus professor of history at Wingate University and public speaker, was born in Bethlehem, PA. He has a BA in History from Lehigh Univeristy and an MA and PhD in Modern European History from UNC-Chapel Hill. After a Fulbright Scholar residency in Vienna, Austria, he returned to the US to teach first at Palm Beach Atlantic College and then at Wingate College and Wingate University. He is a published author with three books, including: Hitler's Soldiers in the Sunshine State and Nazi POWs in the Tar Heel State. He was a member of the Speakers Bureau of the Florida Humanities Council (2009-2013) and a Road Scholar with the the North Carolina Humanities Council (2009-2020). He presented "Nazi  POWs in the Tar Heel State, 1942-1946," in a Zoom presentation as part of the "Answering the Call: WWII Lecture Series sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of History on May 19, 2021. It is now viewable on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com. He was interviewed in his home on April 11, 2025, by Gudrun Engel, Washington Bureau Chief, ARD German Television and Radio, for a German TV report on May 2 about her grandfather's time as a German POW at Winston Salem and Camp Butner.