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A prisoner of war ( POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons. These may include isolating them from enemy combatants still in the field (releasing and Repatriation them in an orderly manner after hostilities), demonstrating military victory, punishment, prosecution of , labour exploitation, recruiting or even conscripting them as combatants, extracting collecting military and political intelligence, and political or religious indoctrination.
Typically, victors made little distinction between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although they were more likely to spare women and children. Sometimes the purpose of a battle, if not of a war, was to capture women, a practice known as raptio; the Rape of the Sabines involved, according to tradition, a large mass-abduction by the founders of Rome. Typically women had no rights, and were held legally as chattels.
In the fourth century AD, Bishop Acacius of Amida, touched by the plight of Persian prisoners captured in a recent war with the Roman Empire, who were held in his town under appalling conditions and destined for a life of slavery, took the initiative in ransoming them by selling his church's precious gold and silver vessels and letting them return to their country. For this he was later canonised.
King Henry V's English army killed many French prisoners of war at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415."But when the outcries of the lackies and boies, which ran awaie for feare of the Frenchmen thus spoiling the campe came to the kings eares, he doubting least his enimies should gather togither againe, and begin a new field; and mistrusting further that the prisoners would be an aid to his enimies, or the verie enimies to their takers in deed if they were suffered to live, contrarie to his accustomed gentleness, commended by sound of trumpet, that everie man (upon pain and death) should uncontinentlie slaie his prisoner. When this dolorous decree, and pitifull proclamation was pronounced, pitie it was to see how some Frenchmen were suddenlie sticked with daggers, some were brained with pollaxes, some slaine with malls, others had their throats cut, and some their bellies panched, so that in effect, having respect to the great number, few prisoners were saved." Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, quoted by Andrew Gurr in his introduction to (2025). 9780521847926, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521847926 This was done after a French raiding party returned to the main army after looting the English camp, Henry misinterpreted this as the French receiving reinforcements, and was afraid that the prisoners who would rejoin the fight against the English.
In the later Middle Ages a number of aimed to not only defeat but also to eliminate enemies. Authorities in Christian Europe often considered the extermination of Heresy and paganism desirable. Examples of such wars include the 13th-century Albigensian Crusade in Languedoc and the Northern Crusades in the Baltic region. When asked by a crusader how to distinguish between the Catholics and Cathars following the projected capture (1209) of the city of Béziers, the papal legate Arnaud Amalric allegedly replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own".
Likewise, the inhabitants of conquered cities were frequently massacred during crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed; their families would have to send to their captors large sums of wealth commensurate with the social status of the captive.
Feudal Japan had no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, who could expect for the most part summary execution. "Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan" , The Journal of Japanese Studies.
In the 13th century the expanding Mongol Empire famously distinguished between cities or towns that surrendered (where the population was spared but required to support the conquering Mongol army) and those that resisted (in which case the city was ransacked and destroyed, and all the population killed). In Termez, on the Oxus: "all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, and divided in accordance with their usual custom, then they were all slain".
The Aztec warfare constantly with neighbouring tribes and groups, aiming to collect live prisoners for sacrifice.Meyer, Michael C. and William L. Sherman. The Course of Mexican History. Oxford University Press, 5th ed. 1995. For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed.Hassig, Ross (2003). "El sacrificio y las guerras floridas". Arqueología Mexicana, pp. 46–51.
During the early Muslim conquests of 622–750, Muslims routinely captured large numbers of prisoners. Aside from those who converted, most were ransomed or Muslim slavery.Roger DuPasquier. Unveiling Islam. Islamic Texts Society, 1992, p. 104 Christians captured during the Crusades were usually either killed or sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom. During his lifetime ( – 632), Muhammad made it the responsibility of the Islamic government to provide food and clothing, on a reasonable basis, to captives, regardless of their religion; however, if the prisoners were in the custody of a person, then the responsibility was on the individual.Maududi (1967), Introduction of Ad-Dahr, "Period of revelation", p. 159. On certain occasions where Muhammad felt the enemy had broken a treaty with the Muslims he endorsed the mass execution of male prisoners who participated in battles, as in the case of the Banu Qurayza in 627. The Muslims divided up the females and children of those executed as ghanima (spoils of war).
Naval forces from both Christian and Muslim countries often turned prisoners of war into . Thus, at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Empire.
In line with this development the treatment of prisoners of war was increasingly regulated by international treaties, particularly the so-called cartel system, which regulated how warring states would exchange prisoners. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, established the rule that prisoners of war should be released and allowed to return to their homelands without ransom after hostilities ended."Prisoner of war", Encyclopædia Britannica
There also evolved the right of parole, French for "discourse", in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain better accommodations and the freedom of the prison. If he swore to cease hostilities against the nation that held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity.
During the Battle of Leipzig, both sides used the city's cemetery as a Lazaretto and prisoner camp for around 6,000 POWs who lived in burial vaults and used coffins for firewood. Food was scarce and prisoners resorted to eating horses, cats, dogs or even human flesh. The bad conditions inside the graveyard contributed to a city-wide epidemic after the battle.
Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention protects captured military personnel, some guerrilla fighters, and certain civilians. It applies from the moment of capture until release or repatriation. Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, POWs are protected persons, meaning their deprivation of rights afforded by the Third Convention could amount to a war crime. Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention states that POWs can only be required to give their name, date of birth, Military rank and service number.
The ICRC has a special role to play, with regards to international humanitarian law, in restoring and maintaining family contact in times of war, in particular concerning the right of prisoners of war and internees to send and receive letters and cards (Geneva Convention (GC) III, art. 71 and GC IV, art. 107).
However, nations vary in their dedication to following these laws, and historically the treatment of POWs has varied greatly. During World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were notorious for atrocities against prisoners of war. The German military used the Soviet Union's refusal to sign the Geneva Convention as a reason for not providing the necessities of life to Soviet POWs; the Soviets also used Axis prisoners as forced labour. The Germans routinely executed Allied commandos captured behind German lines per the Commando Order.
Under Additional Protocol I, the requirement of a distinctive marking is waived. Francs-tireurs, , , terrorists, saboteurs, Mercenary, and spies generally do not qualify because they do not fulfill the criteria of Additional Protocol I and are therefore unlawful combatants. Captured soldiers who do not get POW status are still protected like civilians under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The criteria are applied primarily to international armed conflicts. The application of prisoner of war status in non-international armed conflicts like civil wars is guided by Additional Protocol II, but insurgents are often treated as traitors, terrorists, or criminals by government forces and are sometimes executed on spot or tortured. Guerrillas and other irregular combatants generally cannot expect to receive benefits from both civilian and military status simultaneously.
In addition, if wounded or sick on the battlefield, the prisoner will receive help from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
When a country is responsible for breaches of prisoner of war rights, those accountable will be punished accordingly. An example of this is the Nuremberg Trials and Tokyo Trials. German and Japanese military commanders were prosecuted for preparing and initiating a war of aggression, murder, ill treatment, and deportation of individuals, and genocide during World War II. Most were executed or sentenced to life in prison for their crimes.
When a military member is taken prisoner, the Code of Conduct reminds them that the chain of command is still in effect (the highest ranking service member eligible for command, regardless of service branch, is in command), and requires them to support their leadership. The Code of Conduct also requires service members to resist giving information to the enemy (beyond identifying themselves, that is, "name, rank, serial number"), receiving special favours or parole, or otherwise providing their enemy captors aid and comfort.
Since the Vietnam War, the official U.S. military term for enemy POWs is EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War). This name change was introduced to distinguish between enemy and U.S. captives.
In 2000 the U.S. military replaced the designation "Prisoner of War" for captured American personnel with "Missing-Captured". A January 2008 directive states that the reasoning behind this is since "Prisoner of War" is the international legal recognised status for such people there is no need for any individual country to follow suit. This change remains relatively unknown even among experts in the field and "Prisoner of War" remains widely used in the Pentagon which has a "POW/Missing Personnel Office" and awards the Prisoner of War Medal.
The German Empire held 2.5 million prisoners; Russian Empire held 2.9 million, and Britain and France held about 720,000, mostly gained in the period just before the Armistice in 1918. The US held 48,000. The most dangerous moment for POWs was the act of surrender, when helpless soldiers were sometimes killed or mistakenly shot down. Once prisoners reached a POW camp conditions were better (and often much better than in World War II), thanks in part to the efforts of the International Red Cross and inspections by neutral nations.
There was much harsh treatment of POWs in Germany, as recorded by the American ambassador (prior to America's entry into the war), James W. Gerard, who published his findings in My Four Years in Germany. Even worse conditions are reported in the book Escape of a Princess Pat by the Canadian George Pearson. It was particularly bad in Russia, where starvation was common for prisoners and civilians alike; a quarter of the over 2 million POWs held there died." Disobedience and Conspiracy in the German Army, 1918–1945 ". Robert B. Kane, Peter Loewenberg (2008). McFarland. p. 240. Nearly 375,000 of the 500,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war taken by Russians perished in Siberia from smallpox and typhus. In Germany, food was short, but only 5 per cent died.Richard B. Speed, III. Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity. (1990)Ferguson, The Pity of War. (1999) Ch 13Desmond Morton, Silent Battle: Canadian Prisoners of War in Germany, 1914–1919. 1992.
The Ottoman Empire often treated prisoners of war poorly. Some 11,800 British soldiers, most from the British Indian Army, became prisoners after the five-month Siege of Kut, in Mesopotamia, in April 1916. Many were weak and starved when they surrendered and 4,250 died in captivity.British National Archives, "The Mesopotamia campaign", at [5] ;
During the Sinai and Palestine campaign 217 Australian and unknown numbers of British, New Zealand and Indian soldiers were captured by Ottoman forces. About 50 per cent of the Australian prisoners were light horsemen including 48 missing believed captured on 1 May 1918 in the Jordan Valley. Australian Flying Corps pilots and observers were captured in the Sinai Peninsula, Palestine and the Levant. One third of all Australian prisoners were captured on Gallipoli including the crew of the submarine AE2 which made a passage through the Dardanelles in 1915. Forced marches and crowded railway journeys preceded years in camps where disease, poor diet and inadequate medical facilities prevailed. About 25 per cent of other ranks died, many from malnutrition, while only one officer died.Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior with Jean Bou, The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2008) p. 429H.S. Gullett, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18, Vol. VII The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine (1941) pp. 620–622 The most curious case came in Russia where the Czechoslovak Legion of Czechoslovakia prisoners (from the Austro-Hungarian army) who were released and armed to fight on the side of the Entente, who briefly served as a military and diplomatic force during the Russian Civil War.
On 13 December 1918, the armistice was extended and the Allies reported that by 9 December 264,000 prisoners had been repatriated. A very large number of these had been released en masse and sent across Allied lines without any food or shelter. This created difficulties for the receiving Allies and many ex-prisoners died from exhaustion. The released POWs were met by cavalry troops and sent back through the lines in lorries to reception centres where they were refitted with boots and clothing and dispatched to the ports in trains.
Upon arrival at the receiving camp the POWs were registered and "boarded" before being dispatched to their own homes. All commissioned officers had to write a report on the circumstances of their capture and to ensure that they had done all they could to avoid capture. Each returning officer and man was given a message from King George V, written in his own hand and reproduced on a lithograph.
While the Allied prisoners were sent home at the end of the war, the same treatment was not granted to Central Powers prisoners of the Allies and Russia, many of whom had to serve as forced labour, e.g. in France, until 1920. They were released after many approaches by the ICRC to the Allied Supreme Council.
| 60.0+% |
| 57.5% |
| 41.2% |
| 35.8% |
| 33.0% |
| 32.9% |
| 24.8% |
| 4.1% |
| 3.5% |
| 2.6% |
| 1.2% |
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Prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Japanese-occupied Asia, held by Japanese imperial armed forces were subject to murder, torture (both physical and psychological), beatings, extrajudicial punishment, slavery, medical experiments, starvation rations, poor medical treatment and cannibalism. The most notorious use of forced labour was in the construction of the Burma–Thailand Death Railway. After 20 March 1943, the Imperial Navy was ordered to kill prisoners of war taken at sea.
No direct access to the POWs was provided to the International Red Cross. Escapes among the European descent were almost impossible because of the difficulty of hiding in Asiatic populations. Prisoners of the Japanese : POWs of World War II in the Pacific, by Gavan Daws,
Allied POW camps and ship-transports became accidental targets of Allied attacks. The number of deaths which occurred when Japanese ""—unmarked transport ships in which POWs were transported in harsh conditions—were attacked by U.S. Navy was particularly high. Gavan Daws has calculated that "of all POWs who died in the Pacific War, one in three was killed on the water by friendly fire". Daws states that 10,800 of the 50,000 POWs shipped by the Japanese were killed at seaDaws (1994), p. 297 while Donald L. Miller states that "approximately 21,000 Allied POWs died at sea, about 19,000 of them killed by friendly fire."
Life in the POW camps was recorded at great risk to themselves by artists such as Jack Bridger Chalker, Philip Meninsky, Ashley George Old, and Ronald Searle. Human hair was often used for brushes, plant juices and blood for paint, toilet paper as the "canvas". Some of their works were used as evidence in the trials of Japanese war criminals.
Female prisoners (detainees) at Changi Prison in Singapore, recorded their ordeal in seemingly harmless prison quilt embroidery.
A small number of Allied personnel were sent to concentration camps, for a variety of reasons including being Jewish.See, for example, Joseph Robert White, 2006, "Flint Whitlock. Given Up for Dead: American GIs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga" (book review) As the US historian Joseph Robert White put it: "An important exception ... is the sub-camp for U.S. POWs at Berga an der Elster, officially called Arbeitslager 625 also. Berga was the deadliest work detachment for American captives in Germany. 73 men who participated, or 21 percent of the detachment, perished in two months. 80 of the 350 POWs were Jews." Another well-known example was a group of 168 Australian, British, Canadian, New Zealand and US aviators who were held for two months at Buchenwald concentration camp;See:
Information on conditions in the stalags is contradictory depending on the source. Some American POWs claimed the Germans were victims of circumstance and did the best they could, while others accused their captors of brutalities and forced labour. In any case, the prison camps were miserable places where food rations were meager and conditions squalid. One American admitted "The only difference between the stalags and concentration camps was that we weren't gassed or shot in the former. I do not recall a single act of compassion or mercy on the part of the Germans." Typical meals consisted of a bread slice and watery potato soup which was still more substantial than what Soviet POWs or concentration camp inmates received. Another prisoner stated that "The German plan was to keep us alive, yet weakened enough that we wouldn't attempt escape."Ambrose, pp 360
As the Red Army approached some POW camps in early 1945, German guards forced western Allied POWs to walk long distances towards central Germany, often in extreme winter weather conditions. It is estimated that, out of 257,000 POWs, about 80,000 were subject to such marches and up to 3,500 of them died as a result.
The Germans officially justified their policy on the grounds that the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention. Legally, however, under article 82 of the Geneva Convention, signatory countries had to give POWs of all signatory and non-signatory countries the rights assigned by the convention. Shortly after the German invasion in 1941, the USSR made Berlin an offer of a reciprocal adherence to the Hague Conventions. Third Reich officials left the Soviet "note" unanswered.Beevor, Stalingrad. Penguin 2001 p. 60James D. Morrow, Order within Anarchy: The Laws of War as an International Institution, 2014, p. 218
In the winter of 1941/1942, the conditions of the POW camps were unsatisfactory, leading to the deaths of prisoners due to various diseases. The conditions were improved in 1942 when, by order of Marshal Ion Antonescu, the organisations leading the camps were to permanently control how the prisoners were accommodated, cared for, fed, and used. Due to some problems that arose with the food allowance in 1942, it was decided that the prisoners were to be fed like the Romanian troops, with an allocated 30 Romanian leu per soldier per day.
In accordance with Article 27 of the Geneva Convention, the POWs were used in various productive activities. In return for providing work, the prisoners were granted payment and accommodation, as well as free time for cleaning, rest, and religious or other activities by their employers, according to the contracts signed with the commanders of the prison camps. The main workplaces for prisoners were in agriculture and industrial enterprises, but also in forestry, civil works, and in service of the POW camps.
For correspondence with their families, the prisoners were provided with postcards. However, most of these were not used as the POWs feared reprisals from the Soviet authorities upon learning that they were prisoners in Romania. The punishment of POWs in the Romanian camps was applied following the regulations of the Romanian Army. Executions by firing squad were few. The escapees who were caught and did not commit any acts of sabotage or espionage were tried by court-martial and sentenced to prison terms from 3–6 months to several years. After 23 August 1944, the Soviet POWs were handed over to the Soviet headquarters.
In the spring of 1944, with the increasing number of American and British prisoners due to the restarted air campaign, a new camp was set up in Bucharest. Camp No. 13 from Bucharest was initially located within the barracks of the 6th Guard Regiment "Mihai Viteazul", in a frequently bombed area. It was later moved to the Normal School on St. Ecaterina Street. In June 1944, the non-commissioned officers were transferred to a wing of the . After 23 August, at the request of the prisoners to be organised into a military unit, General Mihail Racoviță approved the transfer of 896 POWs to the barracks of the 4th Vânători Regiment. All Western Allied POWs were evacuated to Italy during Operation Reunion from 31 August to 3 September.
German soldiers were kept as forced labour for many years after the war. The last German POWs like Erich Hartmann, the highest-scoring flying ace in the history of aerial warfare, who had been declared guilty of but without due process, were not released by the Soviets until 1955, two years after Stalin died.
Of the 230,000 Polish prisoners of war taken by the Soviet army, only 82,000 survived." Livre noir du Communisme: crimes, terreur, répression ". Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer (1999). Harvard University Press. p. 209.
In Britain, German prisoners, particularly higher-ranked officers, were housed in luxurious buildings where listening devices were installed. A considerable amount of military intelligence was gained from eavesdropping on what the officers believed were private casual conversations. Much of the listening was carried out by German refugees, in many cases Jews. The work of these refugees in contributing to the Allied victory was declassified over half a century later.
In February 1944, 59.7% of POWs in America were employed. This relatively low percentage was due to problems setting wages that would not compete against those of non-prisoners, to union opposition, as well as concerns about security, sabotage, and escape. Given national manpower shortages, citizens and employers resented the idle prisoners, and efforts were made to decentralise the camps and reduce security enough that more prisoners could work. By the end of May 1944, POW employment was at 72.8%, and by late April 1945 it had risen to 91.3%. The sector that made the most use of POW workers was agriculture. There was more demand than supply of prisoners throughout the war, and 14,000 POW repatriations were delayed in 1946 so prisoners could be used in the spring farming seasons, mostly to thin and block sugar beets in the west. While some in Congress wanted to extend POW labour beyond June 1946, President Truman rejected this, leading to the end of the program.
Towards the end of the war in Europe, as large numbers of Axis soldiers surrendered, the US created the designation of Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF) so as not to treat prisoners as POWs. A lot of these soldiers were kept in open fields in makeshift camps in the Rhine valley ( Rheinwiesenlager). Controversy has arisen about how Eisenhower managed these prisoners. (see Other Losses).
After the surrender of Germany in May 1945, the POW status of the German prisoners was in many cases maintained, and they were for several years used as public labourers in countries such as the UK and France. Many died when forced to clear minefields in countries such as Norway and France. "By September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in accidents".S. P. MacKenzie "The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II" The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 66, No. 3. (September 1994), pp. 487–520.Footnote to: K. W. Bohme, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges, 15 vols. (Munich, 1962–74), 1, pt. 1:x. (n. 1 above), 13:173; ICRC (n. 12 above), p. 334.
In 1946, the UK held over 400,000 German POWs, many having been transferred from POW camps in the US and Canada. They were employed as labourers to compensate for the lack of manpower in Britain, as a form of war reparations.Renate Held, "Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in britischer Hand – ein Überblick The (in German)" (2008)Eugene Davidsson, "The Trial of the Germans: An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants Before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg", (1997) pp. 518–519 "the Allies stated in 1943 their intention of using forced workers outside Germany after the war, and not only did they express the intention but they carried it out. Not only Russia made use of such labour. France was given hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war captured by the Americans, and their physical condition became so bad that the American Army authorities themselves protested. In England and the United States, too, some German prisoners of war were being put to work long after the surrender, and in Russia thousands of them worked until the mid-50s." A public debate ensued in the UK over the treatment of German prisoners of war, with many in Britain comparing the treatment to the POWs to Slavery. In 1947, the Ministry of Agriculture argued against repatriation of working German prisoners, since by then they made up 25 per cent of the land workforce, and it wanted to continue having them work in the UK until 1948.
The "London Cage", an MI19 prisoner of war facility in London used during and immediately after the war to interrogate prisoners before sending them to prison camps, was subject to allegations of torture.
After the German surrender, the International Red Cross was prohibited from providing aid, such as food or prisoner visits, to POW camps in Germany. However, after making appeals to the Allies in the autumn of 1945, the Red Cross was allowed to investigate the camps in the British and French occupation zones of Germany, as well as providing relief to the prisoners held there.Staff. ICRC in WW II: German prisoners of war in Allied hands , 2 February 2005 On 4 February 1946, the Red Cross was also permitted to visit and assist prisoners in the US occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food. "During their visits, the delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions. They drew the attention of the authorities to this fact, and gradually succeeded in getting some improvements made".
POWs were also transferred among the Allies, with for example 6,000 German officers transferred from Western Allied camps to the Soviets and subsequently imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, at the time one of the NKVD special camps."Ex-Death Camp Tells Story of Nazi and Soviet Horrors" New York Times, 17 December 2001 Although the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention, the U.S. chose to hand over several hundred thousand German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship".Edward N. Peterson, The American Occupation of Germany, pp. 42, 116, "Some hundreds of thousands who had fled to the Americans to avoid being taken prisoner by the Soviets were turned over in May to the Red Army in a gesture of friendship." U.S. forces also refused to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender to them in Saxony and Bohemia, and handed them over to the Soviet Union instead.Niall Ferguson, "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 2004 11 (2) 148–192 p. 189, (footnote, referenced to: Heinz Nawratil, Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen und Verschleppter: mit einer übersicht über die europäischen Nachkriegsverluste (Munich and Berlin, 1988), pp. 36f.)
The United States handed over 740,000 German prisoners to France, which was a Geneva Convention signatory but which used them as forced labourers. Newspapers reported that the POWs were being mistreated; Judge Robert H. Jackson, chief US prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, told US President Harry S Truman in October 1945 that the Allies themselves,
After the war, many Japanese POWs were kept on as Japanese Surrendered Personnel until mid-1947 by the Allies. The JSP were used until 1947 for labour purposes, such as road maintenance, recovering corpses for reburial, cleaning, and preparing farmland. Early tasks also included repairing airfields damaged by Allied bombing during the war and maintaining law and order until the arrival of Allied forces in the region.
After Italy surrendered to the Allies and declared war on Germany, the United States initially made plans to send Italian POWs back to fight Germany. Ultimately though, the government decided instead to loosen POW work requirements prohibiting Italian prisoners from carrying out war-related work. About 34,000 Italian POWs were active in 1944 and 1945 on 66 US military installations, performing support roles such as quartermaster, repair, and engineering work as Italian Service Units.
The 1952 Inter-Camp POW Olympics were held from 15 to 27 November 1952 in Pyuktong, North Korea. The Chinese hoped to gain worldwide publicity, and while some prisoners refused to participate, some 500 POWs of eleven nationalities took part.Adams, (2007), p. 62. They came from all the North Korean prison camps and competed in football, baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, track and field, soccer, gymnastics, and boxing. For the POWs, this was also an opportunity to meet with friends from other camps. The prisoners had their own photographers, announcers, and even reporters, who after each day's competition published a newspaper, the "Olympic Roundup".Adams, Clarence. (2007). An American Dream: The Life of an African American Soldier and POW who Spent Twelve Years in Communist China. Amherst & Boston. University of Massachusetts Press. , p.62
At the end of the First Indochina War, of the 11,721 French soldiers taken prisoner after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and led by the Viet Minh on to distant POW camps, only 3,290 were repatriated four months later. Trap Door to the Dark Side . William C. Jeffries (2006). p. 388.
During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army took many South Vietnamese and United States servicemembers as prisoners of war and subjected them to mistreatment and torture. Some American and South Vietnamese prisoners of war were held in the prison known to US POWs as the Hanoi Hilton. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong held in custody by South Vietnamese and American forces were also tortured and badly treated. After the war, millions of South Vietnamese servicemen and government workers were sent to "re-education" camps, where many perished.
As in previous conflicts, speculation existed, without evidence, that a handful of American pilots captured during the Korean and Vietnam wars were transferred to the Soviet Union and never repatriated. pp 26–33 Transfer of U.S. Korean War POWs To the Soviet Union. Nationalalliance.org. Retrieved on 24 May 2014. USSR . Taskforceomegainc.org (17 September 1996). Retrieved on 24 May 2014.
Regardless of regulations determining treatment of prisoners, violations of their rights continue to be reported. Many cases of POW massacres have been reported in recent times, including the murder of Israeli prisoners of war in the 1973 Yom Kippur War by their Egyptian captors, the 13 October massacre in Lebanon by Syrian forces and June 1990 massacre in Sri Lanka.
Indian intervention in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 led to the third Indo-Pakistan war, which ended in Indian victory and the capture of 93,000 Pakistani POWs, they were later slowly repatriated in a deal with Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
In 1982, during the Falklands War, prisoners were well-treated in general by both sides, with military commanders dispatching enemy prisoners back to their homelands in record time following the end of the war.
In 1991, during the Gulf War, American, British, Italian, and Kuwaiti POWs (mostly crew members of downed aircraft and special forces) were tortured by the Iraqi secret police. An American military doctor, Rhonda Cornum, a 37-year-old flight surgeon captured when her Blackhawk UH-60 was shot down, was also subjected to sexual abuse.
During the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, Serb paramilitary forces supported by JNA forces killed POWs at Vukovar massacre and Škarbrnja, while Bosnian Serb forces killed POWs at Srebrenica. A large number of surviving Croatian or Bosnian POWs described the conditions in Serbian concentration camps as similar to those in Germany in World War II, including regular beatings, torture and random executions.
In 2001, reports emerged concerning two POWs that India had taken during the Sino-Indian War, Yang Chen and Shih Liang. The two were imprisoned as spies for three years before being interned in a mental asylum in Ranchi, where they spent the following 38 years under a special prisoner status.Shaikh Azizur Rahman, " Two Chinese prisoners from '62 war repatriated ", The Washington Times.
The last prisoners of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War were exchanged in 2003.
During the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Ukrainian POWs have described being tortured by Russian forces using electrocution, beatings, and sexual abuse. Both sides of the conflict forced prisoners to be naked at times as a humiliating punishment. According to the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, the abuse of Palestinian detainees has become so institutionalized that the prisons should be called 'torture camps'.
(2025). 9781844156474, Pen & Sword Maritime. ISBN 9781844156474 After the Armistice of Cassibile, Italian soldiers and civilians in East Asia were taken as prisoners of war by Japanese armed forces and subject to the same conditions as other POWs.
According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the Japanese captured 350,000 POWs, of which 131,134 came from Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Of these 131,134 POWs, 35,756 died while detained, the death rate of Western prisoners was thus 27.1 per cent, seven times that of Western POWs under the Germans and Italians. The death rate of Chinese was much higher. Thus, while 37,583 prisoners from the United Kingdom, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 2001, p. 360 The 27,465 US Army POWs captured in the Pacific Theater, including Filipinos, had a 40.4 per cent death rate.Statistical and Accounting Branch, Office of the Adjutant General, U.S. Department of the Army, Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II. Final Report, 7 December 1941–31 December 1946, page 5 The War Ministry in Tokyo issued an order at the end of the war allowing local commanders to kill remaining POWs without formal orders from Tokyo. Japanese Atrocities in the Philippines ". Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
Australia 21,726 7,412 34.1 1,691 273 16.1 121 31 25.6 37,000 8,500 22.9 50,016 12,433 24.8 United States 21,580 7,107 32.9 Total 132,134 35,756 27.1
Germany
French soldiers
After the French armies surrendered in summer 1940, Germany seized two million French prisoners of war and sent them to camps in Germany. About one third were released on various terms. Of the remainder, the officers and non-commissioned officers were kept in camps and did not work. The privates were sent out to work. About half of them worked for German agriculture, where food supplies were adequate and controls were lenient. The others worked in factories or mines, where conditions were much harsher.Richard Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (2006) pp. 183–214
Western Allies' POWs
Germany and Italy generally treated prisoners from the British Empire and Commonwealth, France, the U.S., and other western Allies in accordance with the Geneva Convention, which had been signed by these countries. Consequently, western Allied officers were not usually made to work and some personnel of lower rank were usually compensated, or not required to work either. The main complaints of western Allied prisoners of war in Wehrmacht POW camps—especially during the last two years of the war—concerned shortages of food.
Only a small proportion of western Allied POWs who were Jews—or whom the Nazis believed to be Jewish—were killed as part of the Holocaust or were subjected to other antisemitism policies. For example, Major Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, a Palestinian Jew who had enlisted in the British Army, and who was captured by the Germans in Greek Campaign, experienced four years of captivity under entirely normal conditions for POWs.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Royal Canadian Air Force Association, "Allied Officers Deported to Buchenwald" and National Museum of the USAF, "Allied Victims of the Holocaust". two of the POWs died at Buchenwald. Two possible reasons have been suggested for this incident: German authorities wanted to make an example of terror bombing ("terrorist aviators") or these aircrews were classified as spies, because they had been disguised as civilians or enemy soldiers when they were apprehended.
Italian POWs
In September 1943 after the Armistice, Italian officers and soldiers in many places waiting for orders were arrested by Germans and Italian fascists and taken to internment camps in Germany or Eastern Europe, where they were held for the duration of the war. The International Red Cross could do nothing for them, as they were not regarded as POWs, but the prisoners held the status of "military internees". Treatment of the prisoners was generally poor. The author Giovannino Guareschi was among those interned and wrote about this time in his life. The book was translated and published as My Secret Diary. He wrote about semi-starvation, the casual murder of individual prisoners by guards and how, when they were released (now from a German camp), they found a deserted German town filled with foodstuffs that they (with other released prisoners) ate.. It is estimated that of the 700,000 Italians taken prisoner by the Germans, around 40,000 died in detention and more than 13,000 lost their lives during the transportation from the Greek islands to the mainland.
Eastern European POWs
Between 1941 and 1945 the Axis powers took about 5.7 million Soviet prisoners. About one million of them were released during the war, in that their status changed but they remained under German authority. A little over 500,000 either escaped or were liberated by the Red Army. Some 930,000 more were found alive in camps after the war. The remaining 3.3 million prisoners (57.5% of the total captured) died during their captivity. Between the launching of Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and the following spring, 2.8 million of the 3.2 million Soviet prisoners taken died while in German hands. According to Russian military historian General Grigoriy Krivosheyev, the Axis powers took 4.6 million Soviet prisoners, of whom 1.8 million were found alive in camps after the war and 318,770 were released by the Axis during the war and were then drafted into the Soviet armed forces again. By comparison, 8,348 Western Allied prisoners died in German camps during 1939–45 (3.5% of the 232,000 total).
Romania
Soviet POWs
Between 1941 and 1944, 91,060 Soviet prisoners of war were captured by the Romanian Army. Until August 1944, 5,221 Soviet prisoners died in Romanian camps mainly to disease during winter. The POWs were treated according to the 1929 Geneva Convention, which was ratified by Romania on 15 September 1931. Initially, the prisoners were held in five POW camps in Vulcan, Găești, Drăgășani, Alexandria and Slobozia. By 1942, the number reached 12 camps of which 10 were in Romania, and two in Transnistria at Tiraspol and Odesa. As the frontline moved further away, the captured prisoners were given to German POW camps, and then they were transferred to Romanian ones after requests from the Romanian authorities.
Western Allies' POWs
The first Americans were captured in Romania following Operation Tidal Wave. The airmen were interned at first in the court of the Central Seminary in Bucharest, with the wounded airmen taken to the no. 415 Hospital in Sinaia. After Marshal Antonescu's visits, a new camp was to be set up, and the prisoners were to be treated according to the Geneva Convention. In September, all 110 POWs were transferred to the villas belonging to the Brașov and Giurgiu City Halls at Timișul de Jos, in the newly established Camp No. 14 ( Lagărul de prizonieri nr. 14). The excellent living conditions at the camp earned it the nickname "gilded cage", with the prisoners describing it as "probably the best prison camp in the world". The treatment of the Allied POWs was overseen by Princess Catherine Caradja, who was nicknamed "The Angel of Ploiești" by the airmen.
Treatment of POWs by the Soviet Union
Germans, Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, Finns
According to some sources, the Soviets captured 3.5 million Axis servicemen (excluding Japanese), of whom more than a million died. One specific example is that of the German POWs after the Battle of Stalingrad, where the Soviets captured 91,000 German troops in total (completely exhausted, starving and sick), of whom only 5,000 survived the captivity.
Polish
As a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers became prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Thousands were executed; over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre.Benjamin Fischer (historian), " The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999–2000. Out of Anders' 80,000 evacuees from the Soviet Union to the United Kingdom, only 310 volunteered to return to Poland in 1947.
Japanese
After the Soviet–Japanese War, 560,000 to 760,000 Japanese prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union. The prisoners were captured in Manchuria, Korea, South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, then sent to work as forced labour in the Soviet Union and Mongolia. An estimated 60,000 to 347,000 of these Japanese prisoners of war died in captivity. Japanese POW group says files on over 500,000 held in Moscow , BBC News, 7 March 1998 UN Press Release , Commission on Human Rights, 56th session, 13 April 2000. POW in the USSR 1939–1956: Documents and Materials Moscow Logos Publishers (2000) (Военнопленные в СССР. 1939–1956: Документы и материалы Науч.-исслед. ин-т проблем экон. истории ХХ века и др.; Под ред. М.М. Загорулько. – М.: Логос, 2000. – 1118 с.: ил.) Anne Applebaum Gulag: A History, Doubleday, April 2003, ; p. 431. Introduction online )
Americans
Stories that circulated during the Cold War claimed 23,000 Americans held in German POW camps had been seized by the Soviets and never been repatriated. The claims had been perpetuated after the release of people like John H. Noble. Careful scholarly studies demonstrated that this was a myth based on the misinterpretation of a telegram about Soviet prisoners held in Italy.Paul M. Cole (1994) POW/MIA Issues: Volume 2, World War II and the Early Cold War National Defense Research Institute. RAND Corporation, p. 28 Retrieved 18 July 2012
Treatment of POWs by the Western Allies
Germans
During the war, the armies of Western Allied nations such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the USTremblay, Robert, Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, et al. "Histoires oubliées – Interprogrammes : Des prisonniers spéciaux" Interlude. Aired: 20 July 2008, 14h47 to 15h00. Note: See also Saint Helen's Island. were given orders to treat Axis prisoners strictly in accordance with the Geneva Convention. (2025). 9780192806703, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192806703 Some breaches of the Convention took place, however. According to Stephen E. Ambrose, of the roughly 1,000 US combat veterans he had interviewed, only one admitted to shooting a prisoner, saying he "felt remorse, but would do it again". However, one-third of interviewees told him they had seen fellow US troops kill German prisoners.James J. Weingartner, "Americans, Germans, and War Crimes: Converging Narratives from "the Good War" the Journal of American History, Vol. 94, No. 4. March 2008
have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them. We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practising it.David Lubań, "Legal Modernism", Univ of Michigan Press, 1994. pp. 360, 361" The Legacy of Nuremberg", PBS. [21].
Hungarians
Hungarians became POWs of the Western Allies. Some of these were, like the Germans, used as forced labour in France after the cessation of hostilities. After the war, Hungarian POWs were handed over to the Soviets and transported to the Soviet Union for forced labour. Such forced Hungarian labour by the USSR is often referred to as malenkij robot—little work. András Toma, a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1944, was discovered in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000. It is likely that he was the last prisoner of war from World War II to be repatriated.Thorpe, Nick. Hungarian POW identified . BBC News, 17 September 2000. Accessed 11 December 2016
Japanese
Although thousands of Japanese servicemembers were taken prisoner of war, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the Battle of Iwo Jima, over 20,000 were killed and only 216 were taken prisoner of war. Of the 30,000 Japanese troops that defended Saipan, fewer than 1,000 remained alive at battle's end. Battle of Saipan , historynet.com Japanese prisoners of war sent to camps fared well; however, some were killed when attempting to surrender or were massacred American troops 'murdered Japanese PoWs' , "American and Australian soldiers massacred Japanese prisoners of war" according to The Faraway War by Prof Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University. From the diaries of Charles Lindberg: as told by a US officer, "Oh, we could take more if we wanted to", one of the officers replied. "But our boys don't like to take prisoners." "It doesn't encourage the rest to surrender when they hear of their buddies being marched out on the flying field and machine-guns turned loose on them." On Australian soldiers attitudes Eddie Stanton is quoted: "Japanese are still being shot all over the place", "The necessity for capturing them has ceased to worry anyone. Nippo soldiers are just so much machine-gun practice. Too many of our soldiers are tied up guarding them." just after doing so (see Allied war crimes during World War II in the Pacific). In some instances, Japanese prisoners of war were tortured through a variety of methods. A method of torture used by the Chinese National Revolutionary Army (NRA) included suspending prisoners by the neck in wooden cages until they died. CNN 23 September 1996 image 2 In very rare cases, some were beheaded by sword, and a severed head was once used as a football by Chinese National Revolutionary Army (NRA) soldiers. CNN 23 September 1996 image 3
Italians
In 1943, Italy overthrew Benito Mussolini and became an Allied co-belligerent. This did not change the status of many Italian POWs, retained in Australia, the UK and US due to labour shortages.Insolvibile Isabella, Wops. I prigionieri italiani in Gran Bretagna, Naples, Italy, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2012,
Cossacks
On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the USSR. The interpretation of this agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets (Operation Keelhaul) regardless of their wishes. The forced repatriation operations took place in 1945–1947.
Post-World War II
During the Korean War, the North Koreans developed a reputation for torturing and severely mistreating prisoners of war (see Treatment of POWs by North Korean and Chinese forces). Their POWs were housed in three camps, according to their potential usefulness to the North Korean army. Peace camps and reform camps were for POWs that were either sympathetic to the cause or who had valued skills that could be useful to the North Korean military; these enemy soldiers were indoctrinated and sometimes conscripted into the North Korean army. While POWs in peace camps were reportedly treated with more consideration, regular prisoners of war were usually tortured or treated very poorly.
Numbers of POWs
This section lists nations with the highest number of POWs since the start of World War II and ranked by descending order. These are also the highest numbers in any war since the Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War entered into force on 19 June 1931. The USSR had not signed the Geneva Convention.Clark, Alan Barbarossa: The Russian-Geran Conflict 1941–1945 p. 206,
World War II
Historian Rüdiger Overmans maintains that it seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that one million died in Soviet custody.
He also believes that there were men who actually died as POWs among those listed as missing-in-action.Rüdiger Overmans: "Die Rheinwiesenlager 1945" in: Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.): Ende des Dritten Reiches – Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Eine perspektivische Rückschau. Herausgegeben im Auftrag des Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamtes. Munich 1995. , p. 277
5.7 million taken by Germany (about 3 million died in captivity (56–68%)) Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, Greenhill Books, London, 1997, G. F. Krivosheev, editor (ref. Streit) World War II (total) 1,800,000 taken by Germany World War II 1,000,000+ taken by Japan World War II 675,000 (420,000 taken by Germany; 240,000 taken by the Soviets in 1939; 15,000 taken by Germany in Warsaw in 1944) World War II ≈200,000 (135,000 taken in Europe, does not include Pacific or Commonwealth figures) World War II ≈175,000 taken by Coalition of the Gulf War Persian Gulf War
World War II
≈130,000 (95,532 taken by Germany) World War II
World War II
In popular culture
Films and television
See also
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Primary sources
Further reading
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "American Soldiers and POW Killing in the European Theater of World War II"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> DOD's POW/MIA Mission: Capability and Capacity to Account for Missing Persons Undermined by Leadership Weaknesses and Fragmented Organizational Structure: Testimony before the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2013.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> webcast conversation regarding their individual experiences as POWs and the memoirs they each published:
External links
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> German POWs and the art of survival Historical Eye
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> German army list of Stalags
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> German army list of Oflags
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> New Zealand PoWs of Germany, Italy & Japan New Zealand Official History
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Notes of Japanese soldier in a USSR prison camp after World War II
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Jewish POW swapped by Germans in World War II
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