Shackled Australian Prisoners of War – A Weapon Behind the Wire
Channel: Society for the History of War
Date: 2022-02-15

Throughout the Second World War, the management of prisoners of war was a complex issue. In 1942 and 1943, shackles were used by belligerent governments away from the battlefield in prisoner of war camps. It was an unusual reciprocal reprisal method implemented to politically manipulate the behaviour of the enemy government, exposing the lengths governments would go to in order to gain the upper hand over the enemy outside the field of battle. Hence, the shackling crisis became the most well-known instance of reprisals in the European theatre of war.