A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held
captive
Captive or Captives may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Captive'' (1980 film), a sci-fi film, starring Cameron Mitchell and David Ladd
* ''Captive'' (1986 film), a British-French film starring Oliver Reed
* ''Captive'' (1991 ...
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 in custody for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons, such as isolating them from the enemy
combatants still in the field (releasing and
repatriating them in an orderly manner after hostilities), demonstrating military victory, punishing them, prosecuting them for
war crimes,
exploiting them for their labour, recruiting or even
conscripting them as their own combatants, collecting military and political intelligence from them, or
indoctrinating them in new political or religious beliefs.
Ancient times
![Abu-Simbel temple3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Abu-Simbel_temple3.jpg)
For most of human history, depending on the culture of the victors, enemy fighters on the losing side in a battle who had surrendered and been taken as prisoners of war could expect to be either slaughtered or
enslaved. Early Roman
gladiators could be prisoners of war, categorised according to their ethnic roots as
Samnites,
Thracians
The Thracians (; grc, Θρᾷκες ''Thrāikes''; la, Thraci) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied t ...
, and
Gauls
The Gauls ( la, Galli; grc, Γαλάται, ''Galátai'') were a group of Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (''Gallia''). They s ...
(''Galli''). Homer's ''
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Odys ...
'' describes Greek and Trojan soldiers offering rewards of wealth to opposing forces who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but their offers are not always accepted; see
Lycaon for example.
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
''Raptio'' (in archaic or literary English rendered as ''rape'') is a Latin term for the large-scale abduction of women, i.e. kidnapping for marriage, concubinage or sexual slavery. The equivalent German term is ''Frauenraub'' (literally '' ...
''; the
Rape of the Sabines
The Rape of the Sabine Women ( ), also known as the Abduction of the Sabine Women or the Kidnapping of the Sabine Women, was an incident in Roman mythology in which the men of Rome committed a mass abduction of young women from the other citi ...
involved, according to tradition, a large mass-abduction by the founders of Rome. Typically women had no
rights
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory ...
, and were held legally as
chattels.
In the fourth century AD, Bishop
Acacius of Amida
Acacius of Amida (died 425) was bishop of Amida, Mesopotamia (modern-day Turkey) from 400 to 425, during the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II. He has no extant writings, but his life is documented by Socrates Scholasticus, in th ...
, 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 eventually
canonized
Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of s ...
.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
![DiezAlbumsPrisoners](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/DiezAlbumsPrisoners.jpg)
According to legend, during
Childeric's siege and blockade of
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
in 464 the nun
Geneviève
Genevieve (french: link=no, Sainte Geneviève; la, Sancta Genovefa, Genoveva; 419/422 AD –
502/512 AD) is the patroness saint of Paris in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Her feast is on 3 January.
Genevieve was born in Nanterre an ...
(later canonised as the city's patron saint) pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response. Later,
Clovis I () liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so.
[Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. ''The Penguin Dictionary of Saints''. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. .]
King
Henry V Henry V may refer to:
People
* Henry V, Duke of Bavaria (died 1026)
* Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor (1081/86–1125)
* Henry V, Duke of Carinthia (died 1161)
* Henry V, Count Palatine of the Rhine (c. 1173–1227)
* Henry V, Count of Luxembourg (1 ...
's English army killed many French prisoners of war after the
Battle of Agincourt in 1415. This was done in retaliation for the French killing of the boys and other non-combatants handling the baggage and equipment of the army, and because the French were attacking again and Henry was afraid that they would break through and free the prisoners to fight again.
In the later
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
a number of
religious war
A religious war or a war of religion, sometimes also known as a holy war ( la, sanctum bellum), is a war which is primarily caused or justified by differences in religion. In the modern period, there are frequent debates over the extent to wh ...
s aimed to not only defeat but also to eliminate enemies. Authorities in
Christian Europe
Christendom historically refers to the Christian states, Christian-majority countries and the countries in which Christianity dominates, prevails,SeMerriam-Webster.com : dictionary, "Christendom"/ref> or is culturally or historically intertwine ...
often considered the extermination of
heretics
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...
and
heathens desirable. Examples of such wars include the 13th-century
Albigensian Crusade in
Languedoc
The Province of Languedoc (; , ; oc, Lengadòc ) is a former province of France.
Most of its territory is now contained in the modern-day region of Occitanie in Southern France. Its capital city was Toulouse. It had an area of approximately ...
and the
Northern Crusades
The Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were Christian colonization and Christianization campaigns undertaken by Catholic Christian military orders and kingdoms, primarily against the pagan Baltic, Finnic and West Slavic peoples around th ...
in the
Baltic region. When asked by a Crusader how to distinguish between the Catholics and
Cathars
Catharism (; from the grc, καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure ones") was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France. F ...
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 Christians'
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...
against
Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Noblemen
Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The characterist ...
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
The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC when new inve ...
had no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, who could expect for the most part summary execution.
![Codex Magliabechiano (141 cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Codex_Magliabechiano_%28141_cropped%29.jpg)
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
Termez ( uz, Termiz/Термиз; fa, ترمذ ''Termez, Tirmiz''; ar, ترمذ ''Tirmidh''; russian: Термез; Ancient Greek: ''Tàrmita'', ''Thàrmis'', ) is the capital of Surxondaryo Region in southern Uzbekistan. Administratively, it i ...
, on the
Oxus
The Amu Darya, tk, Amyderýa/ uz, Amudaryo// tg, Амударё, Amudaryo ps, , tr, Ceyhun / Amu Derya grc, Ὦξος, Ôxos (also called the Amu, Amo River and historically known by its Latin name or Greek ) is a major river in Central Asi ...
: "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
The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...
s
warred constantly with neighbouring tribes and groups, aiming to collect live prisoners for
sacrifice. For the re-consecration of
Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed.
During the
early Muslim conquests
The early Muslim conquests or early Islamic conquests ( ar, الْفُتُوحَاتُ الإسْلَامِيَّة, ), also referred to as the Arab conquests, were initiated in the 7th century by Muhammad, the main Islamic prophet. He estab ...
of 622–750, Muslims routinely captured large numbers of prisoners. Aside from those who converted, most were ransomed or
enslaved. 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
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mo ...
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. The freeing of prisoners was highly recommended as a charitable act.
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
The Banu Qurayza ( ar, بنو قريظة, he, בני קוריט'ה; alternate spellings include Quraiza, Qurayzah, Quraytha, and the archaic Koreiza) were a Jewish tribe which lived in northern Arabia, at the oasis of Yathrib (now known as ...
in 627. The Muslims divided up the females and children of those executed as ''ghanima'' (spoils of war).
Modern times
![3090 interrogation lg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/3090_interrogation_lg.jpg)
In Europe, the treatment of prisoners of war became increasingly centralized, in the time period between the 16th and late 18th century. Whereas prisoners of war had previously been regarded as the private property of the captor, captured enemy soldiers became increasingly regarded as the property of the state. The European states strove to exert increasing control over all stages of captivity, from the question of who would be attributed the status of prisoner of war to their eventual release. The act of surrender was regulated so that it, ideally, should be legitimized by officers, who negotiated the surrender of their whole unit. Soldiers whose style of fighting did not conform to the battle line tactics of regular European armies, such as
Cossacks and Croats, were often denied the status of prisoners of war.
In line with this development the treatment of prisoners of war became increasingly regulated in interactional treaties, particularly in the form of the so-called cartel system, which regulated how the exchange of prisoners would be carried out between warring states. Another such treaty was the 1648
Peace of Westphalia, which ended the
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle ...
. This treaty established the rule that prisoners of war should be released without ransom at the end of hostilities and that they should be allowed to return to their homelands.
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 who held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity.
European settlers captured in North America
Early historical narratives of captured European settlers, including perspectives of literate women captured by the
indigenous peoples of North America
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...
, exist in some number. The writings of
Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott (c. 1637January 5, 1711), was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans in 1676 during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after h ...
, captured in the chaotic fighting of
King Philip's War
King Philip's War (sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion) was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between indigenous inhabitants of New England and New England coloni ...
, are an example. Such narratives enjoyed some popularity, spawning a genre of the
captivity narrative
Captivity narratives are usually stories of people captured by enemies whom they consider uncivilized, or whose beliefs and customs they oppose. The best-known captivity narratives in North America are those concerning Europeans and Americans ta ...
, and had lasting influence on the body of early American literature, most notably through the legacy of
James Fenimore Cooper's ''
The Last of the Mohicans
''The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757'' is a historical romance written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826.
It is the second book of the ''Leatherstocking Tales'' pentalogy and the best known to contemporary audiences. '' The Pathfinder ...
''. Some Native Americans continued to capture Europeans and use them both as labourers and bargaining chips into the 19th century; see for example
John R. Jewitt
John Rodgers Jewitt (21 May 1783 – 7 January 1821) was an English armourer who entered the historical record with his memoirs about the 28 months he spent as a captive of Maquinna of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people on what is now the Britis ...
, a sailor who wrote a memoir about his years as a captive of the
Nootka people on the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...
coast from 1802 to 1805.
French Revolutionary wars and Napoleonic wars
The earliest known purpose-built
prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. ...
was established at
Norman Cross
Norman Cross Prison in Huntingdonshire, England, was the world's first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp or "depot", built in 1796–97 to hold prisoners of war from France and its allies during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic War ...
in Huntingdonshire, England in 1797 to house the increasing number of prisoners from the
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars (french: Guerres de la Révolution française) were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted France against Britain, Austria, Prussia ...
and the
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
. The average prison population was about 5,500 men. The lowest number recorded was 3,300 in October 1804 and 6,272 on 10 April 1810 was the highest number of prisoners recorded in any official document.
Norman Cross Prison
Norman Cross Prison in Huntingdonshire, England, was the world's first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp or "depot", built in 1796–97 to hold prisoners of war from France and its allies during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wa ...
was intended to be a model depot providing the most humane treatment of prisoners of war. The British government went to great lengths to provide food of a quality at least equal to that available to locals. The senior officer from each quadrangle was permitted to inspect the food as it was delivered to the prison to ensure it was of sufficient quality. Despite the generous supply and quality of food, some prisoners died of starvation after gambling away their rations. Most of the men held in the prison were low-ranking soldiers and sailors, including midshipmen and junior officers, with a small number of
privateers. About 100 senior officers and some civilians "of good social standing", mainly passengers on captured ships and the wives of some officers, were given ''parole'' outside the prison, mainly in
Peterborough
Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...
although some further afield. They were afforded the courtesy of their rank within English society.
During the
Battle of Leipzig both sides used the
city's cemetery as a
lazaret
A lazaretto or lazaret (from it, lazzaretto a diminutive form of the Italian word for beggar cf. lazzaro) is a quarantine station for maritime travellers. Lazarets can be ships permanently at anchor, isolated islands, or mainland buildings. ...
and prisoner camp for around 6,000 POWs who lived in the
burial vaults
A burial vault (also known as a burial liner, grave vault, and grave liner) is a container, formerly made of wood or brick but more often today made of metal or concrete, that encloses a coffin to help prevent a grave from sinking. Wooden coffin ...
and used the 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.
Prisoner exchanges
The extensive period of conflict during the
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...
and
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
(1793–1815), followed by the
Anglo-American
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...
War of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States, United States of America and its Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom ...
, led to the emergence of a
cartel
A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mos ...
system for the
exchange of prisoners, even while the belligerents were at war. A cartel was usually arranged by the respective armed service for the exchange of like-ranked personnel. The aim was to achieve a reduction in the number of prisoners held, while at the same time alleviating shortages of skilled personnel in the home country.
American Civil War
![Price Raid (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Price_Raid_%28cropped%29.jpg)
At the start of the American Civil War a system of paroles operated. Captives agreed not to fight until they were officially exchanged. Meanwhile, they were held in camps run by their own army where they were paid but not allowed to perform any military duties. The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. In the late summer of 1864, a year after the
Dix–Hill Cartel
The Dix–Hill Cartel was the first official system for exchanging prisoners during the American Civil War. It was signed by Union Major General John A. Dix and Confederate Major General D. H. Hill at Haxall's Landing on the James River in Vi ...
was suspended, Confederate officials approached Union General Benjamin Butler, Union Commissioner of Exchange, about resuming the cartel and including the black prisoners. Butler contacted Grant for guidance on the issue, and Grant responded to Butler on 18 August 1864 with his now famous statement. He rejected the offer, stating in essence, that the Union could afford to leave their men in captivity, the Confederacy could not. After that about 56,000 of the 409,000 POWs died in prisons during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
, accounting for nearly 10% of the conflict's fatalities. Of the 45,000 Union prisoners of war confined in
Camp Sumter, located near
Andersonville, Georgia
Andersonville is a city in Sumter County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 237. It is located in the southwest part of the state, approximately southwest of Macon on the Central of Georgia railroad. ...
, 13,000 (28%) died. At
Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, 10% of its Confederate prisoners died during one cold winter month; and
Elmira Prison
Elmira Prison was originally a barracks for "Camp Rathbun" or "Camp Chemung", a key muster and training point for the Union Army during the American Civil War, between 1861 and 1864. The site was selected partially due to its proximity to the E ...
in New York state, with a death rate of 25% (2,963), nearly equalled that of Andersonville.
Amelioration
During the 19th century, there were increased efforts to improve the treatment and processing of prisoners. As a result of these emerging conventions, a number of international conferences were held, starting with the Brussels Conference of 1874, with nations agreeing that it was necessary to prevent inhumane treatment of prisoners and the use of weapons causing unnecessary harm. Although no agreements were immediately ratified by the participating nations, work was continued that resulted in new
conventions being adopted and becoming recognized as
international law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
that specified that prisoners of war be treated humanely and diplomatically.
Hague and Geneva Conventions
Chapter II of the Annex to the
1907 Hague Convention
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaty, treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions w ...
''IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land'' covered the treatment of prisoners of war in detail. These provisions were further expanded in the
1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War and were largely revised in the
Third Geneva Convention
The Third Geneva Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was first adopted in 1929, but significant ...
in 1949.
Article 4 of the
Third Geneva Convention
The Third Geneva Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was first adopted in 1929, but significant ...
protects captured
military personnel
Military personnel are members of the state's armed forces. Their roles, pay, and obligations differ according to their military branch (army, navy, marines, air force, space force, and coast guard), rank (officer, non-commissioned officer, or ...
, some
guerrilla fighters, and certain
civilians
Civilians under international humanitarian law are "persons who are not members of the armed forces" and they are not " combatants if they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war". It is slightly different from a non-combatant ...
. It applies from the moment a prisoner is captured until their release or repatriation. One of the main provisions of the convention makes it illegal to
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. definitions of tortur ...
prisoners and states that a prisoner can only be required to give their
name,
date of birth
A birthday is the anniversary of the birth of a person, or figuratively of an institution. Birthdays of people are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with birthday gifts, birthday cards, a birthday party, or a rite of passage.
Many re ...
,
rank
Rank is the relative position, value, worth, complexity, power, importance, authority, level, etc. of a person or object within a ranking, such as:
Level or position in a hierarchical organization
* Academic rank
* Diplomatic rank
* Hierarchy
* ...
and
service number
A service number is an identification code used to identify a person within a large group. Service numbers are most often associated with the military; however, they may be used in civilian organizations as well. National identification numbers may ...
(if applicable).
The
ICRC
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
has a special role to play, with regards to
international humanitarian law
International humanitarian law (IHL), also referred to as the laws of armed conflict, is the law that regulates the conduct of war ('' jus in bello''). It is a branch of international law that seeks to limit the effects of armed conflict by pro ...
, 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
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...
and
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
(towards Soviet POWs and Western Allied commandos) 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; and the Soviets also used Axis prisoners as forced labour. The Germans also routinely executed Allied commandos captured behind German lines per the
Commando Order.
Qualifications
![Illustration of the Decapitation of Violent Chinese Soldiers by Utagawa Kokunimasa 1894](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Illustration_of_the_Decapitation_of_Violent_Chinese_Soldiers_by_Utagawa_Kokunimasa_1894.png)
To be entitled to prisoner-of-war status, captured persons must be
lawful combatant
Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It ...
s entitled to combatant's privilege—which gives them immunity from punishment for crimes constituting lawful acts of war such as killing
enemy combatant
Enemy combatant is a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, engages in hostilities for the other side in an armed conflict. Usually enemy combatants are members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the case ...
s. To qualify under the
Third Geneva Convention
The Third Geneva Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was first adopted in 1929, but significant ...
, a combatant must be part of a
chain of command
A command hierarchy is a group of people who carry out orders based on others' authority within the group. It can be viewed as part of a power structure, in which it is usually seen as the most vulnerable and also the most powerful part.
Milit ...
, wear a "fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance", bear arms openly, and have conducted military operations according to the
laws and customs of war
The law of war is the component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war (''jus ad bellum'') and the conduct of warring parties (''jus in bello''). Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territor ...
. (The Convention recognizes a few other groups as well, such as "
habitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units".)
Thus, uniforms and badges are important in determining prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention. Under
Additional Protocol I, the requirement of a distinctive marking is no longer included. ''
Francs-tireurs
(, French for "free shooters") were irregular military formations deployed by France during the early stages of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). The term was revived and used by partisans to name two major French Resistance movements set ...
'',
militia
A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...
s,
insurgents,
terrorists
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
,
saboteurs
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identiti ...
,
mercenaries, and
spies
Spies most commonly refers to people who engage in spying, espionage or clandestine operations.
Spies or The Spies may also refer to:
* Spies (surname), a German surname
* Spies (band), a jazz fusion band
* Spies (song), "Spies" (song), a song by ...
generally do not qualify because they do not fulfill the criteria of Additional Protocol 1. Therefore, they fall under the category of
unlawful combatant
An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war and therefore is claimed not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
The Internat ...
s, or more properly they are not combatants. Captured soldiers who do not get prisoner of war 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
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
is guided by
Additional Protocol II, but
insurgents
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...
are often treated as
traitors,
terrorist
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
s or
criminals
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...
by government forces and are sometimes executed on spot or tortured. However, in the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
, both sides treated captured troops as POWs presumably out of
reciprocity, although the
Union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
regarded
Confederate
Confederacy or confederate may refer to:
States or communities
* Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities
* Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...
personnel as separatist rebels. However, guerrillas and other irregular combatants generally cannot expect to receive benefits from both civilian and military status simultaneously.
Rights
Under the
Third Geneva Convention
The Third Geneva Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was first adopted in 1929, but significant ...
, prisoners of war (POW) must be:
* Treated humanely with respect for their persons and their honor
* Able to inform their next of kin and the
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
of their capture
* Allowed to communicate regularly with relatives and receive packages
* Given adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical attention
* Paid for work done and not forced to do work that is dangerous, unhealthy, or degrading
* Released quickly after conflicts end
* Not compelled to give any information except for name, age, rank, and service number
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
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
and
Tokyo Trials
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes against peace, conv ...
. German and Japanese military commanders were prosecuted for preparing and initiating a
war of aggression
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation.
Wars without international legality (i.e. not out of self-defense nor san ...
,
murder, ill treatment, and
deportation
Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...
of individuals, and
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...
during World War II. Most were executed or sentenced to life in prison for their crimes.
U.S. Code of Conduct and terminology
The United States Military Code of Conduct
The Code of the U.S. Fighting Force is a code of conduct that is an ethics guide and a United States Department of Defense directive consisting of six articles to members of the United States Armed Forces, addressing how they should act in combat ...
was promulgated in 1955 via
Executive Order 10631
Executive ( exe., exec., execu.) may refer to:
Role or title
* Executive, a senior management role in an organization
** Chief executive officer (CEO), one of the highest-ranking corporate officers (executives) or administrators
** Executive dir ...
under
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
to serve as a moral code for United States service members who have been taken prisoner. It was created primarily in response to the breakdown of leadership and organization, specifically when U.S. forces were POWs during the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
.
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 Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
, the official U.S. military term for enemy POWs is EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War). This name change was introduced in order 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 recognized 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 Prisoner of War Medal is a military award of the United States Armed Forces which was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on 8 November 1985. The United States Code citation for the POW Medal statute is .
The ...
.
World War I
![US pow](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/US_pow.jpg)
During World War I, about eight million men surrendered and were held in POW camps until the war ended. All nations pledged to follow the Hague rules on fair treatment of prisoners of war, and in general the POWs had a much higher survival rate than their peers who were not captured. Individual surrenders were uncommon; usually a large unit surrendered all its men. At
Tannenberg 92,000 Russians surrendered during the battle. When the besieged garrison of
Kaunas surrendered in 1915, 20,000 Russians became prisoners. Over half the Russian losses were prisoners as a proportion of those captured, wounded or killed. About 3.3 million men became prisoners.
The
German Empire held 2.5 million prisoners;
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
held 2.9 million, and
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
and
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
held about 720,000, mostly gained in the period just before the
Armistice
An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the ...
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
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
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. Nearly 375,000 of the 500,000
Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war taken by Russians perished in
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...
from
smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...
and
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...
. In Germany, food was short, but only 5 per cent died.
The
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
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
The siege of Kut Al Amara (7 December 1915 – 29 April 1916), also known as the first battle of Kut, was the besieging of an 8,000 strong British Army garrison in the town of Kut, south of Baghdad, by the Ottoman Army. In 1915, its population ...
, in
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
, in April 1916. Many were weak and starved when they surrendered and 4,250 died in captivity.
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
The Australian Flying Corps (AFC) was the branch of the Australian Army responsible for operating aircraft during World War I, and the forerunner of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The AFC was established in 1912, though it was not until ...
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. The most curious case came in Russia where the
Czechoslovak Legion
The Czechoslovak Legion (Czech language, Czech: ''Československé legie''; Slovak language, Slovak: ''Československé légie'') were volunteer armed forces composed predominantly of Czechs and Slovaks fighting on the side of the Allies of World ...
of
Czechoslovak
Czechoslovak may refer to:
*A demonym or adjective pertaining to Czechoslovakia (1918–93)
**First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38)
**Second Czechoslovak Republic (1938–39)
**Third Czechoslovak Republic (1948–60)
**Fourth Czechoslovak Repub ...
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
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Russian Civil War
, partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I
, image =
, caption = Clockwise from top left:
{{flatlist,
*Soldiers ...
.
Release of prisoners
![Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1971-085-63, Begrüßungsfeier für heimgekehrte Kriegsgefangene, Berlin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1971-085-63%2C_Begr%C3%BC%C3%9Fungsfeier_f%C3%BCr_heimgekehrte_Kriegsgefangene%2C_Berlin.jpg)
At the end of the war in 1918 there were believed to be 140,000 British prisoners of war in Germany, including thousands of internees held in neutral Switzerland. The first British prisoners were released and reached
Calais on 15 November. Plans were made for them to be sent via
Dunkirk to
Dover and a large reception camp was established at Dover capable of housing 40,000 men, which could later be used for
demobilisation
Demobilization or demobilisation (see spelling differences) is the process of standing down a nation's armed forces from combat-ready status. This may be as a result of victory in war, or because a crisis has been peacefully resolved and milit ...
.
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
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Qu ...
, 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
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires,german: Mittelmächte; hu, Központi hatalmak; tr, İttifak Devletleri / ; bg, Централни сили, translit=Tsentralni sili was one of the two main coalitions that fought in ...
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
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
to the
Allied Supreme Council
The Supreme War Council was a central command based in Versailles (city), Versailles that coordinated the military strategy of the principal Allies of World War I: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Britain, French Third Republic, Franc ...
.
World War II
![Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-267-0111-36, Russland, russische Kriegsgefangene (Juden)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-267-0111-36%2C_Russland%2C_russische_Kriegsgefangene_%28Juden%29.jpg)
Historian
, in addition to figures from
Keith Lowe, tabulated the total death rate for POWs in World War II as follows:
Treatment of POWs by the Axis
Empire of Japan
The
Empire of Japan
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan, 1947 constitu ...
, which had signed but never ratified the
1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, did not treat prisoners of war in accordance with international agreements, including provisions of the
Hague Conventions, either during the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
or during the
Pacific War, because the Japanese viewed surrender as dishonorable. Moreover, according to a directive ratified on 5 August 1937 by
Hirohito, the constraints of the Hague Conventions were explicitly removed on Chinese prisoners.
Prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Philippines held by Japanese imperial armed forces were subject to murder, beatings, summary punishment, brutal treatment,
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
,
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
The Burma Railway, also known as the Siam–Burma Railway, Thai–Burma Railway and similar names, or as the Death Railway, is a railway between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat, Burma (now called Myanmar). It was built from 1940 to 1943 ...
. After 20 March 1943, the Imperial Navy was ordered to kill prisoners taken at sea. After the
Armistice of Cassibile, Italian soldiers and civilians in East Asia were taken as prisoners by Japanese armed forces and subject to the same conditions as other POWs.
According to the findings of the
Tokyo Tribunal
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes against peace, conve ...
, the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1 per cent, seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.
The death rate of Chinese was much higher. Thus, while 37,583 prisoners from the United Kingdom, Commonwealth, and Dominions, 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.
[ The 27,465 ]United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
and United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...
POWs in the Pacific Theater had a 40.4 per cent death rate. The War Ministry in Tokyo issued an order at the end of the war to kill the remaining POWs.
No direct access to the POWs was provided to the International Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
. Escapes among Caucasian prisoners were almost impossible because of the difficulty of hiding in Asiatic societies.
Allied POW camps and ship-transports were sometimes accidental targets of Allied attacks. The number of deaths which occurred when Japanese "hell ship
A hell ship is a ship with extremely inhumane living conditions or with a reputation for cruelty among the crew. It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army to transport Allied prisoners o ...
s"—unmarked transport ships in which POWs were transported in harsh conditions—were attacked by U.S. Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...
submarines 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 sea 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
Jack Bridger Chalker (10 October 1918 – 15 November 2014), was a British artist and teacher best known for his work recording the lives of the prisoners of war building the Burma Railway during World War II.
Biography
Chalker was born in Lo ...
, Philip Meninsky
Philip Meninsky (born 1919 in Fulham, England, died in 2007) was the son of Bernard Meninsky. Despite an early passion for art, at his father's wish, he initially trained as an accountant, before being called up for National Service.
After a firs ...
, Ashley George Old
Ashley George Old (born 1913, d. 2001) was an artist best known for documenting the lives of prisoners of war forced to construct the Thailand-Burma Railway.
During World War II he was stationed in Singapore, and when it fell to the Japanese in F ...
, and Ronald Searle
Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI (3 March 1920 – 30 December 2011) was an English artist and satirical cartoonist, comics artist, sculptor, medal designer and illustrator. He is perhaps best remembered as the creator of St Trinian's S ...
. 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
Changi Prison Complex, often known simply as Changi Prison, is a prison in Changi in the eastern part of Singapore.
History First prison
Before Changi Prison was constructed, the only penal facility in Singapore was at Pearl's Hill, beside ...
in Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
, recorded their ordeal in seemingly harmless prison quilt embroidery.
Research into the conditions of the camps has been conducted by The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
File:Bosbritsurrendergroup.jpg, Troops of the Suffolk Regiment surrendering to the Japanese, 1942
File:March of Death from Bataan to the prison camp - Dead soldiers.jpg, Many US and Filipino POWs died on the Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March (Filipino: ''Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan''; Spanish: ''Marcha de la muerte de Bataán'' ; Kapampangan: ''Martsa ning Kematayan quing Bataan''; Japanese: バターン死の行進, Hepburn: ''Batān Shi no Kōshin'') wa ...
, in May 1942
File:Portrait of "Dusty" Rhodes by Ashley George Old.jpg, Water colour sketch of "Dusty" Rhodes by Ashley George Old
Ashley George Old (born 1913, d. 2001) was an artist best known for documenting the lives of prisoners of war forced to construct the Thailand-Burma Railway.
During World War II he was stationed in Singapore, and when it fell to the Japanese in F ...
File:POWs Burma Thai RR.jpg, Australian and Dutch POWs at Tarsau, Thailand in 1943
File:Army nurses rescued from Santo Tomas 1945h.jpg, U.S. Army Nurses in Santo Tomas Internment Camp
Santo Tomas Internment Camp, also known as the Manila Internment Camp, was the largest of several camps in the Philippines in which the Japanese interned enemy civilians, mostly Americans, in World War II. The campus of the University of Santo ...
, 1943
File:Navy Nurses Rescued from Los Banos.jpg, U.S. Navy nurses rescued from Los Baños Internment Camp, March 1945
File:Gaunt allied prisoners of war at Aomori camp near Yokohama cheer rescuers from U.S. Navy. Waving flags of the United... - NARA - 520992.tif, Allied prisoners of war at Aomori camp
is the capital city of Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 278,964 in 136,457 households, and a population density of 340 people per square kilometer spread over the city's total are ...
near Yokohama
is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...
, Japan waving flags of the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands in August 1945.
File:Canadian POWs at the Liberation of Hong Kong.gif, Canadian POWs at the Liberation of Hong Kong
File:Aso Mining POWs.jpg, Malnourished Australian POWs forced to work at the Aso mining company, August 1945.
File:Giving a sick man a drink as US POWs of Japanese, Philippine Islands, Cabanatuan prison camp.jpg, POW art depicting Cabanatuan prison camp, produced in 1946
File:LeonardGSiffleet.jpg, Australian POW Leonard Siffleet captured at New Guinea moments before his execution with a Japanese shin gunto
Shin may refer to:
Biology
* The front part of the human leg below the knee
* Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates
Names
* Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese g ...
sword in 1943.
File:Japanese atrocities imperial war museum K9923.jpg, Captured soldiers of the British Indian Army executed by the Japanese.
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.
=Western Allies' POWs
=
Germany and Italy generally treated prisoners from the British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
and Commonwealth, France, the U.S., and other western Allies in accordance with the Geneva Convention
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conve ...
, 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 German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
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 Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
s—or whom the Nazis believed to be Jewish—were killed as part of the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
or were subjected to other antisemitic policies. For example, Major Yitzhak Ben-Aharon
Yitzhak Ben-Aharon ( he, יצחק בן אהרון;17 July 1906 – 19 May 2006) was an Israeli left-wing politician.
He was a Knesset member from the first to the fifth Knessets and in the seventh and eighth, and a former Minister of Transpo ...
, a Palestinian Jew who had enlisted in the British Army, and who was captured by the Germans in Greece in 1941, experienced four years of captivity under entirely normal conditions for POWs.
A small number of Allied personnel were sent to concentration camps, for a variety of reasons including being Jewish. 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 ''Arbeitskommando
''Arbeitslager'' () is a German language word which means labor camp. Under Nazism, the German government (and its private-sector, Axis, and collaborator partners) used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially duri ...
625'' lso_known_as_''Stalag_IX-B''.html" ;"title="Stalag_IX-B.html" ;"title="lso known as ''Stalag IX-B">lso known as ''Stalag IX-B''">Stalag_IX-B.html" ;"title="lso known as ''Stalag IX-B">lso known as ''Stalag IX-B'' 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; two of the POWs died at Buchenwald. Two possible reasons have been suggested for this incident: German authorities wanted to make an example of '' Terrorflieger'' ("terrorist aviators") or these aircrews were classified as spies, because they had been disguised as civilians or enemy soldiers when they were apprehended.
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."
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.
=Italian POWs
=
In September 1943 after the Armistice, Italian officers and soldiers 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
Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi (; 1 May 1908 – 22 July 1968) was an Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist whose best known creation is the priest Don Camillo.
Life and career
Giovannino Guareschi was born into a middle-class famil ...
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
=
Germany did not apply the same standard of treatment to non-western prisoners, especially many Polish and Soviet POWs who suffered harsh conditions and died in large numbers while in captivity.
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
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
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
Grigoriy Fedotovich Krivosheyev (russian: Григорий Федотович Кривошеев, 15 September 1929 – 29 April 2019) was a Russian military historian and a Colonel General of the Russian military. He is mostly known in the West, ...
, 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).
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
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conve ...
, 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. In contrast, Nikolai Tolstoy recounts that the German Government – as well as the International Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
– made several efforts to regulate reciprocal treatment of prisoners until early 1942, but received no answers from the Soviet side. Further, the Soviets took a harsh position towards captured Soviet soldiers, as they expected each soldier to fight to the death, and automatically excluded any prisoner from the "Russian community".
Some Soviet POWs and forced labourers whom the Germans had transported to Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
were, on their return to the USSR, treated as traitors and sent to gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
prison-camps.
Treatment of POWs by the Soviet Union
Germans, Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, Finns
According to some sources, the Soviets captured 3.5 million Axis
An axis (plural ''axes'') is an imaginary line around which an object rotates or is symmetrical. Axis may also refer to:
Mathematics
* Axis of rotation: see rotation around a fixed axis
* Axis (mathematics), a designator for a Cartesian-coordinat ...
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.
German soldiers were kept as forced labour for many years after the war. The last German POWs like Erich Hartmann
Erich Alfred Hartmann (19 April 1922 – 20 September 1993) was a German fighter pilot during World War II and the most successful flying ace, fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare. He flew 1,404 combat missions and participated in ...
, the highest-scoring fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare, who had been declared guilty of war crimes but without due process, were not released by the Soviets until 1955, two years after Stalin died.
Polish
As a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland
The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subs ...
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
The Katyn massacre, "Katyń crime"; russian: link=yes, Катынская резня ''Katynskaya reznya'', "Katyn massacre", or russian: link=no, Катынский расстрел, ''Katynsky rasstrel'', "Katyn execution" was a series of m ...
.[ Fischer, Benjamin B.,]
The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field
, ''Studies in Intelligence
''Studies in Intelligence'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on intelligence that is published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, a group within the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It contains both classified and u ...
'', Winter 1999–2000. Out of Anders
Anders is a male name in Scandinavian languages and Fering North Frisian, an equivalent of the Greek Andreas ("manly") and the English Andrew. It originated from Andres via metathesis.
In Sweden, Anders has been one of the most common names fo ...
' 80,000 evacuees from the Soviet Union in the United Kingdom, only 310 volunteered to return to Poland in 1947.
Of the 230,000 Polish prisoners of war taken by the Soviet army, only 82,000 survived.
Japanese
After the Soviet–Japanese War
The Soviet–Japanese War (russian: Советско-японская война; ja, ソ連対日参戦, soren tai nichi sansen, Soviet Union entry into war against Japan), known in Mongolia as the Liberation War of 1945 (), was a military ...
, 560,000 to 760,000 Japanese prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union. The prisoners were captured in Manchuria
Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...
, Korea, South Sakhalin
Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh ...
and the Kuril Islands
The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; rus, Кури́льские острова́, r=Kuril'skiye ostrova, p=kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva; Japanese: or ) are a volcanic archipelago currently administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the ...
, then sent to work as forced labour in the Soviet Union and Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
. 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](_blank)
''BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
'', 7 March 1998[UN Press Release](_blank)
Commission on Human Rights
A human rights commission, also known as a human relations commission, is a body set up to investigate, promote or protect human rights.
The term may refer to international, national or subnational bodies set up for this purpose, such as nationa ...
, 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
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born July 25, 1964) is an American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
She has worked at ''The Econ ...
''Gulag: A History'', Doubleday, April 2003, ; page 43
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
John H. Noble (September 4, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American survivor of the Soviet Gulag system, who wrote two books which described his experiences in it after he was permitted to leave the Soviet Union and return to the United State ...
. Careful scholarly studies demonstrated that this was a myth based on the misinterpretation of a telegram about Soviet prisoners held in Italy.
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 US were given orders to treat Axis
An axis (plural ''axes'') is an imaginary line around which an object rotates or is symmetrical. Axis may also refer to:
Mathematics
* Axis of rotation: see rotation around a fixed axis
* Axis (mathematics), a designator for a Cartesian-coordinat ...
prisoners strictly in accordance with the Geneva Convention
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conve ...
. 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.
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
Eavesdropping is the act of secretly or stealthily listening to the private conversation or communications of others without their consent in order to gather information.
Etymology
The verb ''eavesdrop'' is a back-formation from the noun ''eaves ...
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 decentralize 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
Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF, less commonly, Surrendered Enemy Forces) was a US designation for soldiers who surrendered to an adversary after hostilities ended, and for those POWs who had already surrendered and were held in camps in occupied Ge ...
(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
The ''Rheinwiesenlager'' (, ''Rhine meadow camps'') were a group of 19 camps built in the Allied-occupied part of Germany by the U.S. Army to hold captured German soldiers at the close of the Second World War. Officially named Prisoner of War ...
''). Controversy has arisen about how Eisenhower managed these prisoners. (see ''Other Losses
''Other Losses'' is a 1989 book by Canadian writer James Bacque, which makes the claim that U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower intentionally caused the deaths by starvation or exposure of around a million German prisoners of war held in Western in ...
'').
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".
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 reparation
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.
History
Making one party pay a war indemnity is a common practice with a long history.
R ...
.[Renate Held, "Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in britischer Hand — ein Überblick ]he German Prisoners of War in British Hands – An Overview
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
(in German)" (2008) A public debate ensued in the U.K. over the treatment of German prisoners of war, with many in Britain comparing the treatment to the POWs to slave labour
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. In 1947, the Ministry of Agriculture argued against repatriation of working German prisoners, since by then they made up 25 percent of the land workforce, and it wanted to continue having them work in the UK until 1948.
The "London Cage
The London Cage, also known as Connor McCracken's room, was an MI19 prisoner-of-war facility during and after the Second World War to mainly interrogate captured Germans, including SS personnel and members of the Nazi Party. The unit, which was ...
", an MI19
MI19 was a section of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. During the Second World War it was responsible for obtaining information from enemy prisoners of war.
It was originally created in December 1940 as ...
prisoner of war facility in London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
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
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...
, at the time one of the NKVD special camps
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
. 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". U.S. forces also refused to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender to them in Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
and Bohemia, and handed them over to the Soviet Union instead.
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
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...
, told US President Harry S Truman
Harry may refer to:
TV shows
* ''Harry'' (American TV series), a 1987 American comedy series starring Alan Arkin
* ''Harry'' (British TV series), a 1993 BBC drama that ran for two seasons
* ''Harry'' (talk show), a 2016 American daytime talk show ...
in October 1945 that the Allies themselves,
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.
Hungarians
Hungarians
Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Urali ...
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
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
for forced labour. Such forced Hungarian labour by the USSR is often referred to as malenkij robot
The forced labour of Hungarians in the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II was not researched until the fall of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While exact numbers are not known, it is estimated that up to 600,000 Hun ...
—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.
Japanese
Although thousands of Japanese servicemembers were taken prisoner, 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 the 30,000 Japanese troops that defended Saipan, fewer than 1,000 remained alive at battle's end. Japanese prisoners sent to camps fared well; however, some were killed when attempting to surrender or were massacred just after doing so (see Allied war crimes during World War II in the Pacific). In some instances, Japanese prisoners 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. 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.
After the war, many Japanese POWs were kept on as Japanese Surrendered Personnel
Japanese Surrendered Personnel (JSP) is a designation for captive Japanese soldiers (similar to Disarmed Enemy Forces and Surrendered Enemy Personnel). It was used in particular by the British Army to refer to Japanese forces in Asia which had sur ...
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.
Italians
In 1943, Italy overthrew Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
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.
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 Italian Service Units or ISUs were military units composed of Italian prisoners of war (POWs) that served with the Allies during World War II against Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan from May 1944 to October 1945. The armed forces of the Un ...
.
Cossacks
On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the post ...
, 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
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
, the North Koreans developed a reputation for 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 treated very poorly.
The 1952 Inter-Camp POW Olympics were held from 15 to 27 November 1952 in Pyuktong, North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...
. 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
Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermine ...
. 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".
At the end of the First Indochina War
The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina from 19 December 1946 to 20 July 1954 between France and Việt Minh (Democratic Republic of Vi ...
, of the 11,721 French soldiers taken prisoner after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and led by the Viet Minh
The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...
on death march
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Conven ...
es to distant POW camps, only 3,290 were repatriated four months later.
During the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
, the Viet Cong
,
, war = the Vietnam War
, image = FNL Flag.svg
, caption = The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green.
, active ...
and North Vietnamese Army
The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN; vi, Quân đội nhân dân Việt Nam, QĐNDVN), also recognized as the Vietnam People's Army (VPA) or the Vietnamese Army (), is the military force of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the armed win ...
took many United States servicemembers as prisoners of war and subjected them to mistreatment and torture. Some American prisoners were held in the prison known to US POWs as the Hanoi Hilton
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
. Communist Vietnamese 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.
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 13 October massacre
Thirteen or 13 may refer to:
* 13 (number), the natural number following 12 and preceding 14
* One of the years 13 BC, AD 13, 1913, 2013
Music
* 13AD (band), an Indian classic and hard rock band
Albums
* ''13'' (Black Sabbath album), 2013
...
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 over 90,000 Pakistani POWs.
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.
In 1991, during the Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...
, 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, Major 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
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related Naimark (2003), p. xvii. ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place in the SFR Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from ...
in the 1990s, Serb
The Serbs ( sr-Cyr, Срби, Srbi, ) are the most numerous South Slavic ethnic group native to the Balkans in Southeastern Europe, who share a common Serbian ancestry, culture, history and language.
The majority of Serbs live in their na ...
paramilitary forces supported by JNA forces killed POWs at Vukovar
Vukovar () ( sr-Cyrl, Вуковар, hu, Vukovár, german: Wukowar) is a city in Croatia, in the eastern region of Slavonia. It contains Croatia's largest river port, located at the confluence of the Vuka and the Danube. Vukovar is the seat of ...
and Škarbrnja, while Bosnian Serb
The Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sr-Cyrl, Срби у Босни и Херцеговини, Srbi u Bosni i Hercegovini) are one of the three constitutive nations (state-forming nations) of the country, predominantly residing in the politi ...
forces killed POWs at Srebrenica
Srebrenica ( sr-cyrl, Сребреница, ) is a town and municipality located in the easternmost part of Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a small mountain town, with its main industry being salt mining and a nearby ...
. 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
The Sino-Indian War took place between China and India from October to November 1962, as a major flare-up of the Sino-Indian border dispute. There had been a series of violent border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibet ...
, Yang Chen and Shih Liang. The two were imprisoned as spies for three years before being interned in a mental asylum
The lunatic asylum (or insane asylum) was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
The fall of the lunatic asylum and its eventual replacement by modern psychiatric hospitals explains the rise of organized, institutional psychiatry ...
in Ranchi, where they spent the following 38 years under a special prisoner status.
The last prisoners of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Ba'athist Iraq, Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations S ...
were exchanged in 2003.
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
Barbarossa, a name meaning "red beard" in Italian, primarily refers to:
* Frederick Barbarossa (1122–1190), Holy Roman Emperor
* Hayreddin Barbarossa (c. 1478–1546), Ottoman admiral
* Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Un ...
: The Russian-Geran Conflict 1941–1945'' p. 206,
In popular culture
Films and television
* '' 1971''
* '' Andersonville''
* '' Another Time, Another Place''
* ''As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me
''As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me'' (german: So weit die Füße tragen) is a 2001 film about German World War II prisoner of war Clemens Forell's escape from a Siberian Gulag in the Soviet Union back to Germany. It is based on the book of the ...
'' erman: ''So weit die Füße tragen''* '' Blood Oath''
* ''The Bridge on the River Kwai
''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' is a 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the 1952 novel written by Pierre Boulle. Although the film uses the historical setting of the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–1943, th ...
''
* ''The Brylcreem Boys
''The Brylcreem Boys'' is a 1998 romantic comedy film set in Ireland during the Second World War. The film, which stars Billy Campbell, Angus Macfadyen, Jean Butler and Gabriel Byrne, was directed and co written by Terence Ryan. The story is ...
''
* ''The Colditz Story
''The Colditz Story'' is a 1955 British prisoner of war film starring John Mills and Eric Portman and directed by Guy Hamilton. It is based on the 1952 memoir written by Pat Reid, a British army officer who was imprisoned in Oflag IV-C, Colditz ...
''
* ''Danger Within
''Danger Within'' (American title: ''Breakout'') is a 1959 British war film set in a prisoner of war camp in Northern Italy during the summer of 1943. A combination of POW escape drama and whodunit, the movie is based upon the 1952 novel '' Deat ...
''
* ''The Deer Hunter
''The Deer Hunter'' is a 1978 war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Slavic-American steelworkers whose lives were upended after fighting in the Vietnam War. The three soldiers are played by Robert De Niro, ...
''
* ''Empire of the Sun
''Empire of the Sun'' is a 1984 novel by English writer J. G. Ballard; it was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Like Ballard's earlier short story "The Dead Time" (published in the anthology ...
''
* ''Escape from Sobibor
''Escape from Sobibor'' is a 1987 British television film which aired on ITV and CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination ...
''
* ''Escape to Athena
''Escape to Athena'' is a 1979 British adventure comedy war film directed by George P. Cosmatos. It stars Roger Moore, Telly Savalas, David Niven, Stefanie Powers, Claudia Cardinale, Richard Roundtree, Sonny Bono and Elliott Gould. The film i ...
''
* ''Faith of My Fathers
''Faith of My Fathers'' is a 1999 bestselling non-fiction book by United States Senator John McCain with Mark Salter. Published by Random House, it is part autobiography, part family memoir. It traces the story of McCain's life growing up, during ...
''
* ''Grand Illusion
Grand Illusion may refer to:
Music
* ''Grand Illusion'' (album), by Nocturnal Rites, 2005
*'' The Grand Illusion'', a 1977 album by Styx, and its title song
*"Grand Illusion", a song from the 2016 album '' In the Now'' by Barry Gibb
*"Grand Illu ...
''
* '' The Great Escape''
* ''The Great Raid
''The Great Raid'' is a 2005 war film about the Raid at Cabanatuan on the island of Luzon, Philippines during World War II. It is directed by John Dahl and stars Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Connie Nielsen, Marton Csokas, Joseph Fiennes with Motok ...
''
* ''Hacksaw Ridge
''Hacksaw Ridge'' is a 2016 biographical war film directed by Mel Gibson and written by Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan, based on the 2004 documentary ''The Conscientious Objector'' directed by Terry Benedict. The film focuses on the World ...
''
* ''Hanoi Hilton
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
''
* ''Hart's War
''Hart's War'' is a 2002 American war drama film about a World War II prisoner of war (POW) camp based on the novel by John Katzenbach. It stars Bruce Willis as Col. William McNamara and Colin Farrell as Lt. Thomas Hart. The film co-stars Terrence ...
''
* '' Hogan's Heroes''
* ''Homeland
A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethn ...
''
* '' Katyń''
* '' King Rat''
* ''The McKenzie Break
''The McKenzie Break'' is a 1970 British war drama film starring Brian Keith as Jack Connor, an intelligence officer investigating recent disturbances at a prisoner of war (POW) camp in Scotland. The Nazi German POWs are led by the charismatic ...
''
* ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
, also known in many European editions as , is a 1983 war film co-written and directed by Nagisa Ōshima, co-written by Paul Mayersberg, and produced by Jeremy Thomas. The film is based on the experiences of Sir Laurens van der Post (portrayed b ...
''
* ''Missing in Action
Missing in action (MIA) is a casualty classification assigned to combatants, military chaplains, combat medics, and prisoners of war who are reported missing during wartime or ceasefire. They may have been killed, wounded, captured, ex ...
''
* '' The One That Got Away''
* ''P.O.W.- Bandi Yuddh Ke
''P.O.W. - Bandi Yuddh Ke'' is an Indian political thriller television series developed by Nikkhil Advani, and is loosely based on the Israeli drama ''Hatufim''. The series premiered 7 November 2016 on Star Plus. The show was featured at MAMI f ...
''
* '' The Pianist''
* '' Paradise Road''
* ''The Purple Heart
''The Purple Heart'' is a 1944 American black-and-white war film, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, directed by Lewis Milestone, and starring Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Don "Red" Barry, Sam Levene and Trudy Marshall. Eighteen-year-old Farley ...
''
* '' The Railway Man''
* '' Rambo: First Blood Part II''
* ''Rescue Dawn
''Rescue Dawn'' is a 2006 American epic war drama film written and directed by Werner Herzog, based on an adapted screenplay written from his 1997 documentary film ''Little Dieter Needs to Fly''. The film stars Christian Bale and is based on the ...
''
* ''Slaughterhouse Five
''Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death'' is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to h ...
''
* ''Some Kind of Hero
''Some Kind of Hero'' is a 1982 American comedy-drama film starring Richard Pryor as a returning Vietnam War veteran having trouble adjusting to civilian life. Soon he is involved in an organized crime heist. It co-stars Margot Kidder and was dir ...
''
* ''Stalag 17
''Stalag 17'' is a 1953 American war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen confined with 40,000 prisoners in a World War II German prisoner of war camp "somewhere on the Danube". Their compound holds 630 Sergeants representi ...
''
* '' Summer of My German Soldier''
* ''Tea with Mussolini
''Tea with Mussolini'' ( it, Un tè con Mussolini) is a 1999 Anglo-Italian semi-autobiographical comedy-drama war film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, scripted by John Mortimer, telling the story of a young Italian boy's upbringing by a circle ...
''
* ''To End All Wars
''To End All Wars'' is a 2001 war film starring Robert Carlyle, Kiefer Sutherland and Sakae Kimura and was directed by David L. Cunningham. The film is based on ''Through the Valley of the Kwai'', an autobiography of Scottish captain Ernest Gor ...
''
* '' Unbroken''
* '' Uncommon Valor''
* ''Von Ryan's Express
''Von Ryan's Express'' is a 1965 World War II adventure film starring Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard, and Raffaella Carrà, and directed by Mark Robson. Produced in CinemaScope, the film depicts a group of Allied prisoners of war ( POWs) who cond ...
''
* '' The Walking Dead''
* ''Who Goes Next?
''Who Goes Next?'' is a 1938 British war drama film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Barry K. Barnes, Sophie Stewart and Jack Hawkins. The story was inspired by the real-life escape of 29 officers through a tunnel from Holzminden prisoner-o ...
''
* ''The Wooden Horse
''The Wooden Horse'' is a 1950 British Second World War war film directed by Jack Lee and starring Leo Genn, David Tomlinson and Anthony Steel. It is based on the book of the same name by Eric Williams, who also wrote the screenplay.
The f ...
''
See also
* Prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. ...
* 13th Psychological Operations Battalion The 13th Psychological Operations Battalion (originally, the 13th Psychological Warfare Battalion (Enemy Prisoner of War)) is a Battalion in the United States Army Reserve.
History
It was established on 4 October 1961 in the Regular Army as Head ...
* 1952 POW olympics
* Armenian POWs during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War Armenian prisoners of Second Nagorno-Karabakh War are servicemen of the Defense Army of the Republic of Artsakh and the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, as well as civilians and other detainees, who surrendered or were forcibly captured b ...
* Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919–1924)
* Civilian Internee
A civilian internee is a civilian detained by a party to a war for security reasons. Internees are usually forced to reside in internment camps. Historical examples include Japanese American internment and internment of German Americans in the Un ...
* Duty to escape
* Elsa Brändström
Elsa Brändström (26 March 1888 – 4 March 1948) was a Swedish nurse and philanthropist. She was known as the "Angel of Siberia" (german: Engel von Sibirien).
Life and commitment
Elsa Brändström was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. ...
* Extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by Nazi Germany
* German Prisoners of War in the United States
Members of the German military were interned as prisoners of war in the United States during World War I and World War II. In all, 425,000 German prisoners lived in 700 camps throughout the United States during World War II.
World War I
Hostili ...
* Illegal combatant
An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war and therefore is claimed not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
The Internati ...
* Korean War POWs detained in North Korea
Tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers were captured by North Korean and Chinese forces during the Korean War (1950–1953) but were not returned during the prisoner exchanges under the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement. Most are presumed dead, b ...
* Laws of war
The law of war is the component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war (''jus ad bellum'') and the conduct of warring parties (''jus in bello''). Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territor ...
* List of notable prisoners of war
* List of prisoner-of-war escapes
This list of prisoner-of-war escapes includes successful and unsuccessful attempts in chronological order, where possible.
Thirty Years' War
*In the beginning of the war Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch's detachment of 8,000 imperial cavalrymen su ...
*
* Military Chaplain#Noncombatant status
* Prisoner of war mail
* Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project (RULAC)
The Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project (RULAC Project) is an initiative of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights to support the application and implementation of the international law of armed conflict.
Overview ...
* Vietnam War POW/MIA issue The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue concerns the fate of United States servicemen who were reported as missing in action (MIA) during the Vietnam War and associated theaters of operation in Southeast Asia. The term also refers to issues related to the tre ...
* World War II Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
* John Hickman, "What is a Prisoner of War For?"
Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies
'. Vol. 36, No. 2. 2008. pp. 19–35.
* Full text of Third Geneva Convention, 1949 revision
*
Gendercide site
* "Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century", Greenhill Books, London, 1997, G. F. Krivosheev, editor.
* "Keine Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941–1945", Dietz, Bonn 1997,
* Bligh, Alexander. 2015. "The 1973 War and the Formation of Israeli POW Policy – A Watershed Line? ". In Udi Lebel and Eyal Lewin (eds.), The 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Reshaping of Israeli Civil–Military Relations. Washington, DC: Lexington Books (2015), 121–146.
* Bligh, Alexander. 2014. "The development of Israel's POW policy: The 1967 War as a test case", Paper presented at the Seventh Annual ASMEA Conference: Searching for Balance in the Middle East and Africa (Washington, D.C., 31 October 2014).
Primary sources
* The stories of several American fighter pilots, shot down over North Vietnam are the focus of American Film Foundation's 1999 documentary ''Return with Honor
''Return with Honor'' is a 1999 documentary film about U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Among those profiled is Senator John McCain. It is narrated by Tom Hanks.
Directors Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders won the Best Film award at ...
'', presented by Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Ha ...
.
* Lewis H. Carlson, ''WE WERE EACH OTHER'S PRISONERS: An Oral History of World War II American and German Prisoners of War'', 1st Edition.; 1997, BasicBooks (HarperCollins, Inc). .
* Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior with Jean Bou : ''The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History'' 2nd edition (Melbourne: Oxford University Press Australia & New Zealand, 2008) .
* H.S. Gullett, ''Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18, Vol. VII The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine'' 10th edition (Sydney: Angus & Robinson, 1941) .
* Alfred James Passfield, ''The Escape Artist: An WW2 Australian prisoner's chronicle of life in German POW camps and his eight escape attempts'', 1984 Artlook Books Western Australia. .
* Rivett, Rohan D. (1946). ''Behind Bamboo''. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Republished by Penguin, 1992; .
* George G. Lewis and John Mewha, ''History of prisoner of war utilization by the United States Army, 1776–1945''; Dept. of the Army, 1955.
* Vetter, Hal, ''Mutine at Koje Island''; Charles Tuttle Company, Vermont, 1965.
* Jin, Ha, ''War Trash: A novel''; Pantheon, 2004. .
* Sean Longden, ''Hitler's British Slaves''. First Published Arris Books, 2006. Second Edition, Constable Robinson, 2007.
* Desflandres, Jean, ''Rennbahn: Trente-deux mois de captivité en Allemagne 1914–1917 Souvenirs d'un soldat belge, étudiant à l'université libre de Bruxelles'' 3rd edition (Paris, 1920)
Further reading
* Devaux, Roger.
Treize Qu'ils Etaient
Life of the French prisoners of war at the peasants of low Bavaria (1939–1945)'' – Mémoires et Cultures—2007—
* Doylem Robert C. ''The Enemy in Our Hands: America's Treatment of Prisoners of War From the Revolution to the War on Terror'' (University Press of Kentucky, 2010); 468 pages; Sources include American soldiers' own narratives of their experiences guarding POWs plu
Webcast Author Interview
at the Pritzker Military Library
The Pritzker Military Museum & Library (formerly Pritzker Military Library) is a non-profit museum and a research library for the study of military history on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. The institution was founded in 2003, and its spe ...
on 26 June 2010
* Gascare, Pierre. ''Histoire de la captivité des Français en Allemagne (1939–1945)'', Éditions Gallimard, France, 1967 – .
* McGowran, Tom, ''Beyond the Bamboo Screen: Scottish Prisoners of War under the Japanese.'' 1999. Cualann Press Ltd
* Arnold Krammer
Arnold Paul Krammer () was an American historian who specialized in German and United States history and a professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. He was twice a Fulbright scholar: in 1992–1993, he studied at the Universi ...
, 'Nazi Prisoners of War in America'' 1979 Stein & Day; 1991, 1996 Scarborough House. .
* Bob Moore,& Kent Fedorowich eds., ''Prisoners of War and Their Captors in World War II'', Berg Press, Oxford, UK, 1997.
* Bob Moore, and Kent Fedorowich. ''The British Empire and Its Italian Prisoners of War, 1940–1947'' (2002
excerpt and text search
* David Rolf, ''Prisoners of the Reich, Germany's Captives, 1939–1945'', 1998; on British POWs
* Scheipers, Sibyll
''Prisoners and Detainees in War ''
European History Online
European History Online (''Europäische Geschichte Online, EGO'') is an academic website that publishes articles on the history of Europe between the period of 1450 and 1950 according to the principle of open access.
Organisation
EGO is issued ...
, Mainz: Institute of European History The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, Germany, is an independent, public research institute that carries out and promotes historical research on the foundations of Europe in the early and late Modern period. Though autonomous i ...
, 2011, retrieved: 16 November 2011.
* Paul J. Springer. ''America's Captives: Treatment of POWs From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror'' (University Press of Kansas; 2010); 278 pages; Argues that the US military has failed to incorporate lessons on POW policy from each successive conflict.
* , EBook
* Richard D. Wiggers, "The United States and the Denial of Prisoner of War (POW) Status at the End of the Second World War", ''Militargeschichtliche Mitteilungen'' 52 (1993) pp. 91–94.
* Winton, Andrew, ''Open Road to Faraway: Escapes from Nazi POW Camps 1941–1945.'' 2001. Cualann Press Ltd.
* Harris, Justin Michael
"American Soldiers and POW Killing in the European Theater of World War II"
* United States. Government Accountability Office
''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.
* On 12 February 2013, three American POWs gathered at the Pritzker Military Library
The Pritzker Military Museum & Library (formerly Pritzker Military Library) is a non-profit museum and a research library for the study of military history on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. The institution was founded in 2003, and its spe ...
for
webcast conversation
regarding their individual experiences as POWs and the memoirs they each published:
** Rhonda Cornum – with Peter Copeland ''She Went to War: The Rhonda Cornum Story'' 1992
** John Borling – a collection of his poetry ''Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton'' 2013
** Donald E. Casey – ''To Fight for My Country, Sir!: Memoirs of a 19-year-old B-17 Navigator Shot Down in Nazi Germany'' 2009
External links
Prisoners of war and humanitarian law
ICRC.
Prisoners of War
UK National Archives.
Prisoners of War 1755–1831
UK National Archives ADM 103
Archive of World War II memories
BBC.
HistoryNet.
Reports made by World War I prisoners of war
UK National Archives
First hand account of being a Japanese POW. Part 1 in a series of 4 video interviews
Storyvault
Historical Eye
*Clifford Reddish
War Memoirs of a British Army Signalman as a prisoner of the Japanese
Canada's Forgotten PoW Camps
CBC Digital Archives
Colditz Oflag IVC POW Camp
Lamsdorf Reunited
New Zealand Official History
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090426202233/http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/57jnwx?opendocument German prisoners of war in Allied hands(World War II) ICRC
World War II U.S. POW Archives
Korean War POW Archives
Historic films about POWs in World War I
European Film Gateway
Jewish POW swapped by Germans in World War II
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prisoner Of War
17th-century neologisms
Aftermath of war
Imprisonment and detention
Warfare