, May 1940 Historian
Niall Ferguson, 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 surrendering to the Japanese after the
Battle of Singapore, 1942 The
Empire of Japan, 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 or during the
Pacific War, because the Japanese viewed surrender as dishonorable. Moreover, according to a directive ratified on 5 August 1937 by
Emperor Hirohito, the constraints of the Hague Conventions were explicitly removed on Chinese prisoners of war. Prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Japanese-occupied Asia, held by Japanese imperial armed forces were subject to murder, torture (both physical and psychological), beatings, extrajudicial punishment,
slavery,
medical experiments, starvation rations, poor medical treatment and
cannibalism. The most notorious use of forced labour was in the construction of the Burma–Thailand
Death Railway. After 20 March 1943, the Imperial Navy was ordered to kill prisoners of war taken at sea. After the
Armistice of Cassibile, Italian soldiers and civilians in East Asia were taken as prisoners of war by Japanese armed forces and subject to the same conditions as other POWs. , April 1942 According to the findings of the
Tokyo Tribunal, the Japanese captured 350,000 POWs, of which 131,134 came from Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Of these 131,134 POWs, 35,756 died while detained, the death rate of Western prisoners was thus 27.1 per cent, seven times that of Western POWs under the Germans and Italians. The death rate of Chinese was much higher. Thus, while 37,583 prisoners from the United Kingdom, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the
surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56. The 27,465 US Army POWs captured in the Pacific Theater, including Filipinos, had a 40.4 per cent death rate. The War Ministry in Tokyo issued an order at the end of the war allowing local commanders to kill remaining POWs without formal orders from Tokyo. No direct access to the POWs was provided to the
International Red Cross. Escapes among the
prisoners of European descent were almost impossible because of the difficulty of hiding in Asiatic populations. Allied POW camps and ship-transports became accidental targets of Allied attacks. The number of deaths which occurred when Japanese "
hell ships"—unmarked transport ships in which POWs were transported in harsh conditions—were attacked by
U.S. Navy 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,
Philip Meninsky,
Ashley George Old, and
Ronald Searle. Human hair was often used for brushes, plant juices and blood for paint, toilet paper as the "canvas". Some of their works were used as evidence in the trials of Japanese war criminals. Female prisoners (detainees) at
Changi Prison in Singapore, recorded their ordeal in seemingly harmless prison quilt embroidery. File:Portrait of "Dusty" Rhodes by Ashley George Old.jpg|Water colour sketch of "Dusty" Rhodes by
Ashley George Old 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, 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 near
Yokohama, Japan, waving flags of the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands in August 1945 File:Canadian POWs in Manilla Philippines 1945.gif|Liberated Canadian POWs arriving in Manila, Philippines, 1945 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 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 held as POW by the Germans into
Stalag I-B, East Prussia (now Poland), 1944. 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 and
Commonwealth, France, the U.S., and other western Allies in accordance with the
Geneva Convention, which had been signed by these countries. Consequently, western Allied officers were not usually made to work and some personnel of lower rank were usually compensated, or not required to work either. The main complaints of western Allied prisoners of war in
German POW camps—especially during the last two years of the war—concerned shortages of food. Only a small proportion of western Allied POWs who were Jews—or whom the Nazis believed to be Jewish—were killed as part of
the Holocaust or were subjected to other
antisemitic policies. For example, Major
Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, a
Palestinian Jew who had enlisted in the British Army, and who was captured by the Germans in
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 625 [also 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 in many places waiting for orders were arrested by Germans and Italian fascists and taken to internment camps in Germany or Eastern Europe, where they were held for the duration of the war. The International Red Cross could do nothing for them, as they were not regarded as POWs, but the prisoners held the status of "
military internees". Treatment of the prisoners was generally poor. The author
Giovannino Guareschi was among those interned and wrote about this time in his life. The book was translated and published as
My Secret Diary. He wrote about semi-starvation, the casual murder of individual prisoners by guards and how, when they were released (now from a German camp), they found a deserted German town filled with foodstuffs that they (with other released prisoners) ate.. It is estimated that of the 700,000 Italians taken prisoner by the Germans, around 40,000 died in detention and more than 13,000 lost their lives during the transportation from the Greek islands to the mainland.
Eastern European POWs ". Between 1941 and 1945 the Axis powers took about 5.7 million Soviet prisoners. About one million of them were released during the war, in that their status changed but they remained under German authority. A little over 500,000 either escaped or were liberated by the Red Army. Some 930,000 more were found alive in camps after the war. The remaining 3.3 million prisoners (57.5% of the total captured) died during their captivity. Between the launching of
Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and the following spring, 2.8 million of the 3.2 million Soviet prisoners taken died while in German hands. According to Russian military historian General
Grigoriy Krivosheyev, the Axis powers took 4.6 million Soviet prisoners, of whom 1.8 million were found alive in camps after the war and 318,770 were released by the Axis during the war and were then drafted into the Soviet armed forces again. By comparison, 8,348 Western Allied prisoners died in German camps during 1939–45 (3.5% of the 232,000 total). The Germans officially justified their policy on the grounds that the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention. Legally, however, under article 82 of the
Geneva Convention, signatory countries had to give POWs of all signatory and non-signatory countries the rights assigned by the convention. Shortly after the German invasion in 1941, the USSR made Berlin an offer of a reciprocal adherence to the
Hague Conventions. Third Reich officials left the Soviet "note" unanswered.
Romania Soviet POWs Between 1941 and 1944, 91,060 Soviet prisoners of war were captured by the
Romanian Army. Until August 1944, 5,221 Soviet prisoners died in Romanian camps mainly to disease during winter. The POWs were treated according to the 1929 Geneva Convention, which was ratified by Romania on 15 September 1931. Initially, the prisoners were held in five POW camps in
Vulcan,
Găești,
Drăgășani,
Alexandria and
Slobozia. By 1942, the number reached 12 camps of which 10 were in Romania, and two in
Transnistria at
Tiraspol and
Odesa. As the frontline moved further away, the captured prisoners were given to German POW camps, and then they were transferred to Romanian ones after requests from the Romanian authorities. In the winter of 1941/1942, the conditions of the POW camps were unsatisfactory, leading to the deaths of prisoners due to various diseases. The conditions were improved in 1942 when, by order of Marshal
Ion Antonescu, the organisations leading the camps were to permanently control how the prisoners were accommodated, cared for, fed, and used. Due to some problems that arose with the food allowance in 1942, it was decided that the prisoners were to be fed like the Romanian troops, with an allocated 30
lei per soldier per day. The excellent living conditions at the camp earned it the nickname "gilded cage", with the prisoners describing it as "probably the best prison camp in the world". The treatment of the Allied POWs was overseen by Princess
Catherine Caradja, who was nicknamed "The Angel of Ploiești" by the airmen. In the spring of 1944, with the increasing number of American and British prisoners due to the
restarted air campaign, a new camp was set up in Bucharest. It was later moved to the
Normal School on St. Ecaterina Street. In June 1944, the non-commissioned officers were transferred to a wing of the . After 23 August, at the request of the prisoners to be organised into a military unit, General
Mihail Racoviță approved the transfer of 896 POWs to the barracks of the 4th
Vânători Regiment. All Western Allied POWs were evacuated to Italy during
Operation Reunion from 31 August to 3 September. 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, 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 delegation As a result of the
Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers became
prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Thousands were executed; over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the
Katyn massacre. Out of
Anders' 80,000 evacuees from the Soviet Union to 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, 560,000 to 760,000
Japanese prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union. The prisoners were captured in
Manchuria, Korea, South
Sakhalin and the
Kuril Islands, then sent to work as forced labour in the Soviet Union and
Mongolia. An estimated 60,000 to 347,000 of these Japanese prisoners of war died in captivity.
Americans Stories that circulated during the Cold War claimed 23,000 Americans held in German POW camps had been seized by the Soviets and never been repatriated. The claims had been perpetuated after the release of people like
John H. Noble. Careful scholarly studies demonstrated that this was a myth based on the misinterpretation of a telegram about Soviet prisoners held in Italy.
Treatment of POWs by the Western Allies Germans open-field
Rheinwiesenlager During the war, the armies of Western Allied nations such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the US were given orders to treat
Axis prisoners strictly in accordance with the
Geneva Convention. 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 on what the officers believed were private casual conversations. Much of the listening was carried out by German refugees, in many cases Jews. The work of these refugees in contributing to the Allied victory was declassified over half a century later. In February 1944, 59.7% of POWs in America were employed. This relatively low percentage was due to problems setting wages that would not compete against those of non-prisoners, to union opposition, as well as concerns about security, sabotage, and escape. Given national manpower shortages, citizens and employers resented the idle prisoners, and efforts were made to decentralise the camps and reduce security enough that more prisoners could work. By the end of May 1944, POW employment was at 72.8%, and by late April 1945 it had risen to 91.3%. The sector that made the most use of POW workers was agriculture. There was more demand than supply of prisoners throughout the war, and 14,000 POW repatriations were delayed in 1946 so prisoners could be used in the spring farming seasons, mostly to thin and block
sugar beets in the west. While some in Congress wanted to extend POW labour beyond June 1946, President Truman rejected this, leading to the end of the program. Towards the end of the war in Europe, as large numbers of Axis soldiers surrendered, the US created the designation of
Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF) so as not to treat prisoners as POWs. A lot of these soldiers were kept in open fields in makeshift camps in the Rhine valley (
Rheinwiesenlager). Controversy has arisen about how Eisenhower managed these prisoners. (see
Other Losses). After the surrender of Germany in May 1945, the POW status of the German prisoners was in many cases maintained, and they were for several years used as public labourers in countries such as the UK and France. Many died when forced to clear minefields in countries such as Norway and France. "By September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in accidents". 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. A public debate ensued in the UK over the treatment of German prisoners of war, with many in Britain comparing the treatment to the POWs to
slave labour. In 1947, the Ministry of Agriculture argued against repatriation of working German prisoners, since by then they made up 25 per cent of the land workforce, and it wanted to continue having them work in the UK until 1948. 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. 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". 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 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, told US President
Harry S Truman 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 became POWs of the Western Allies. Some of these were, like the Germans, used as forced labour in France after the cessation of hostilities. After the war, Hungarian POWs were handed over to the Soviets and transported to the
Soviet Union for
forced labour. Such forced Hungarian labour by the USSR is often referred to as
malenkij robot—little work.
András Toma, a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1944, was discovered in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000. It is likely that he was the last prisoner of war from World War II to be repatriated.
Japanese Although thousands of Japanese servicemembers were taken prisoner of war, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the
Battle of Iwo Jima, over 20,000 were killed and only 216 were taken prisoner of war. Of the 30,000 Japanese troops that defended
Saipan, fewer than 1,000 remained alive at battle's end. Japanese prisoners of war 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 of war were tortured through a variety of methods. A method of torture used by the Chinese
National Revolutionary Army (NRA) included suspending prisoners by the neck in wooden cages until they died. 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 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 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 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==