Prisoners of war in World War II

Prisoners of war during World War II faced vastly different fates due to the POW conventions adhered to or ignored, depending on the theater of conflict, and the behaviour of their captors. During the war approximately 35 million soldiers surrendered, with many held in the prisoner-of-war camps. Most of the POWs were taken in the European theatre of the war. Approximately 14%, or 5 million, died in captivity.
Early in the World War II, Nazi Germany, overwhelmed by the number of POWs, released many, though some became used as forced labor. As the war progressed, POWs became strategic assets, increasingly used as forced labor, or considered an important leverage for reciprocal treatment. Within a few years of the war ending, most of POWs were repatriated, though notable exceptions persisted, with Axis POWs in Chinese and Soviet camps held into the 1950s.
The mortality rate was disproportionately high in the Eastern and Pacific theaters, where atrocities, forced labor, and starvation were common, especially for Soviet and Chinese captives under Axis powers and German POWs in Soviet hands. Axis POWs were treated very well by the Western Allies and very harshly by the USSR. Western Allied POWs generally experienced better conditions than most other belligerents, although their treatment by the Japanese was harsh.
Post-war trials, including the Nuremberg Trials, prosecuted violations of POW treatment, though public awareness of such crimes emerged much later, particularly in Germany, while in Japan and the USSR the issue is still mostly ignored. WWII POWs have been selectively depicted in popular culture, often romanticized in Western media through escape narratives like The Great Escape, while harsher realities, such as Axis and Soviet treatment of captives, remain underrepresented.
Most prisoners, after being captured, spent the war in the prisoner of war camps. In the early phases of the war, following German occupation of much of Europe, Germany also found itself unprepared for the number of POWs it held. As a result of that, as well as for political reasons, it released many (particularly enlisted personnel) on parole (as a result, it released all the Dutch, the Danes, all Flemish Belgian, all Greeks, nine-tenths of the Poles, and nearly a third of the French captives; some, however, like Poles, were almost immediately forcibly conscripted as laborers). Later prisoners became valuable and were kept as guarantee of good treatment of the prisoners' kept by the other side, or directly used for hard (forced) labor. A small number were exchanged in prisoner exchanges, primarily between Italy and Germany and the Western Allies (approximately 6,000 Italian, 14,000 German, and 12,400 Allied POWs were exchanged in such a fashion).
The majority of POWs were released by late 1940s. In most places they were warmly received by the populace, major exceptions included France, where society "preferred to forget about them", and the USSR, where they suffered from much discrimination. The last POWs of WWII were Germans and Japanese released from the USSR camps in 1956; some Japanese were held in China until 1964. A few exceptions include stories such as András Toma, considered the last POW of WWII released from captivity, who was discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000 and was returned to Hungary some fifty-six years after his capture.
In mid-90s Simon MacKenzie observed that "Obtaining an exact figure for the number of POWs [in WWII] is made virtually impossible by the inexactness or unavailability of the records kept by many of the belligerents". In some cases, where entire countries surrendered (for example, Belgians), most if not all soldiers who were not killed in action were captured at some point during the fighting, but many were quickly released unofficially; while others were imprisoned for years. Different estimates may or may not count all such groups as POWs. Likewise, German and Japanese soldiers held after their countries surrendered at the end of the war have often not been categorized as prisoners of war (see Japanese Surrendered Personnel, Disarmed Enemy Forces and Surrendered Enemy Personnel.).
MacKenzie cites the figure of 35 million following the 1960s estimate by German historian Kurt W. Böhme [Wikidata]. That estimate was considered conservative by MacKenzie, and has been repeated in more recent works (such as by Christian Gerlach in mid-2010s). Bob Moore, who in his monograph focused on the European theater, gave an estimate of "more than 20 million", which he considered inflated with the number of Axis troops that surrendered after the war.
Consequently, the estimates of the number of prisoners by country or origin or capture can vary as well. With regards to nationality, some estimates include:
By country of origin:
By country of capture:
While most major combatants signed the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, the Axis powers, as well as the USSR, ignored their provisions to a great or lesser degree. (USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention while Japan signed but not ratified it).
Treatment of POWs varied significantly based on time and place. Some were released - or killed - almost immediately after capture. Many ended up in prisoner-of-war camps. POWs on both sides were subject to significant propaganda; including attempts to enlist some POWs into fighting for the other side.
Support from Red Cross was important in improving camp conditions and supplementing often inadequate rations and other necessities for the prisoners, particularly in the camps run by the Axis.
Mistreatment of POWs have been listed as the most infamous war crime of the Second World War".
The death rate of prisoners of war in World War II was higher than that of prisoners of war in World War I. Christian Gerlach explained this due to "much higher prisoner numbers, more supply problems, politically motivated denial of food, hard labor and direct violence", including racism.
The situation of POWs was easiest in the Western Front, and much worse on the Eastern Front and in the Asian and Pacific theater. On the Western Front, both sides (in particular, major belligerents – Germany, Italy and the Western Allies) generally treated one another according to the Geneva Convention, while the Convention was mostly ignored in the Eastern Front. In the Asian and Pacific theater, the Allies respected the Convention and treated Japanese prisoners humanely, which was not reciprocated by the Japanese.
Approximately 14% (~5 million, not counting Chinese POWs) died in captivity. Soviet POWs in Germany (approximately 3 million fatalities) and Axis and German POWs in the Soviet Union (approximately million fatalities, or one and a half accounting for all Axis POWs in the USSR) were among the most numerous victims. There were also instances of mistreatment by Western Allies, although on a much smaller scale. Among the Allies, after the USSR, the French had the worst record of treating the POWs. Germany treated Western Allied POWs much better than those from the Eastern Front (in particular, Soviets). Asian and Pacific Fronts saw difficult POW situation as well, as Japan's treatment of POWs – Western, Chinese, Indian, Filipino and others – was very harsh. Canadian POW camps have been recognized as among the most comfortable in the entire war.
Experience of mass captivity has been described as central to narratives of World War II, and formative, psychological experience for millions of soldiers affected by it, as well as their relatives. After the war, majority of POWs were repatriated, received starkly different treatment in various countries. In some, they were celebrated as returning heroes or honored as victims; in others, they were ignored or subject to discrimination.
First trials of Germans accused of crimes against prisoners of war took place in the Soviet Union while the war was ongoing. Shortly after World War II, at the Nuremberg trials (in particular, during the High Command Trial), numerous German crimes against prisoners of war were found to be a direct breach of the laws of war (in particular, Geneva and Hague conventions). Almost all of the German high commanders tried during that trial were found to be guilty of crimes against POWs.
Despite the trial, German public's awareness of the war crimes committed by its regular army (Wehrmacht), did not arise until the late 90s (see myth of the clean Wehrmacht). Japanese soldiers guilty of crimes against POWs were also tried (for example, in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and Yokohama War Crimes Trials). The awareness of Japanese crimes against POWs is still poor in Japan; the topic mostly ignored or glossed over in that country.
In the war aftermath, war reparations in form of compensation (indemnities) for Allied POWs were stipulated in peace agreements and paid out by the Axis countries. This was done in the context of Axis states illegal (from the international law perspective) use of POWs as forced laborers. However, the payments were delayed for years or even decades due to issues related to drawing up the lists of claimants and the collection of the funds; some claims of insufficient compensation were discussed in courts as late as in the 1990s, particularly in relation to POWs in custody of Japan. Soviet POWs and these from countries under Soviet sphere of influence were also denied much compensation, partially due to failures of negotiations in the Cold War context.
Images of WWII POWs in popular culture have been highly selective, obscured by the story of victory for the allies (in which those taken prisoner played little role or were even considered traitors, like in the USSR), and driven by Cold War narratives.
Stories of WWII POWs have been popularized by media such as films The Wooden Horse (1950), Albert RN (1953), The Colditz Story (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956) and "perhaps most famously" (according to Moore) The Great Escape (1963). Those movies also popularized the concept of prisoner-of-war escapes, creating a misleading impression that this was a relatively common occurrence.
The harsh treatment of Allied POWs by Japan became infamous in the West and remains widely known; it is however still mostly ignored or glossed over in Japan. Similarly, as noted by Mark Edele, in the Soviet Union, "Any claim that the glorious Red Army might have committed war crimes was dismissed as slanderous enemy propaganda". Denial that such crimes occurred is still not uncommon in modern Russia, where the issue has remained politically controversial, and research on this topic in Russia is difficult.
The topic has been described as under researched in modern historiography, although there are exceptions. For example, in West Germany, the government established The Scientific Commission for the History of German Prisoners of War (often referred to as the Maschke Commission, after its chairman, Erich Maschke), which produced a large body of research on this topic, collected in 22 volumes.