At the advent of the 20th century, the rules to war had changed. No longer were the days
of defeating an enemy force and killing the men whilst enslaving the women and children
and when both World War 1 and World War 2 hit, all sides were met with an unfamiliar hitch in
their logistics. What to do with the excesses of men they had captured in battle? In today’s
Front video we’ll only be covering World War 2 P.O.W’s and we’ll be taking a look at 8 main
belligerents and how they handled their prisoners of war and how their prisoners
of war handled them in some cases. Without further adieu, let’s get into the video.
The first country we’ll be covering on our list is Germany. Now in World War 2 era Germany,
if you asked both an enlisted American or British Officer and a Jew or Slav on the conditions of
their confinement, you would get two wildly different answers. The Nazi party of course
believed that everyone Jewish and essentially everyone to the east was inferior whilst everyone
considered Nordic or arayan were in their good books and equal to them. As a result of this,
dependent on what race you were, you could expect to either be gassed or worked to death,
or to be treated to a relatively mild prisoner of war experience.
I do have to say though, that even in the non-slavic and jew P.O.W camps,
many Nazi guards were extremely strict and heavy handed with the punishment tools
they had at their disposal, most notably solitary confinement. In addition to this,
they did not take escape attempts very lightly, and as many of you will know,
in the great escape, 50 of the 73 recaptured men were summarily executed by the Gestapo because
Hitler was angry. Although uncommon amongst western prisoners of war,
executions like this did happen if you managed to piss off the wrong person on the wrong day.
Exact figures are hard to pinpoint, especially with prisoners of war,
however the biggest complaint of British and American POWs were usually food and boredom,
whereas eastern european soldiers were treated with the utmost cruelty. Of 257,000 Western
Allied PoWS, an estimated 4000 died in captivity, whereas of the 5.7 million eastern european
prisoners of war, an estimated 3.3 million died in captivity, a grim 57.5% of the total captured.
The Italians, to put it bluntly, weren’t ready to fight a war,
and their internment camps showed this. With their largest influx of prisoners
coming from the early successes of the desert war in North Africa,
they managed to capture many Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans. By all accounts,
many allied prisoners became frustrated at the ineptitude and disorganisation of the Italian
camps. Many felt contempt and embarrassment at the fact that they had been interned by such a
lackluster force, and came to oddly admire German efficiency and organisation on the back of that.
Regardless, Italian PoW camps were some of the most relaxed in the entire war,
and the guards working there would often trade with prisoners and turn a blind eye
to the disobedience of regulation. The only problem the men had to face in these camps
were food shortages, and both the prisoners and the guards were given meagre rations to live off.
All in all, despite the malnutrition, there was no mass form of brutality in Italian
camps and the only way a prisoner could die was through a combination of malnutrition
and disease. The death rate here was therefore understandably, very low.
Japan here needs no introduction. The estimated 140,000 PoWS taken by the Japanese were the
unluckiest of the war, as Imperial Japan had pretty much no regard for the Geneva
Convention. As I’ve stated in prior videos, Imperial Japan revolved around a primal culture
that believed in honour above everything, in short meaning death before surrender. If you
were unlucky enough to be an Allied soldier in the pacific surrendering to them, they
interpreted that as the ultimate form of weakness and dishonour and they thus saw you as sub human.
The Japanese used all their prisoners as slave workers and regularly beat and
tortured prisoners for the fun of it. Flat out execution, medical experimentation and
intentionally restricting rations were also not uncommon and therefore the death rate of Western
POWs was a hefty 27.1%. For Allied airmen, this figure rose to a shocking 40% death rate,
as the Japanese wanted to make an example out of them. Although these figures were bad,
what was worse was their treatment of other Asian prisoners of war, specifically the
Chinese. While over 80,000 Western allied PoWS would survive and walk out of the camps by the
end of the war, a mere 56 Chinese did, as Japan refused to acknowledge them as POW’s.
Now as if this wasn’t all bad enough, the Japanese had an ultimatum order that was to be carried out
if they had to retreat to defend Japan. This order was called the kill all order and demanded the
extermination of all prisoners of war by whatever means necessary. Thankfully the dropping of the
nukes forced Japan into an early surrender and this horrible order was never realised.
If you were a German or Italian soldier captured in the field of battle, getting sent to a PoW camp
in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand was probably your best bet. All of these countries
were under British influence and treated their prisoners extremely well. Every captured soldier
could fully expect for his rights to be adhered to, as all of these countries followed the Geneva
convention to the letter. In Australia for instance, the Italians were so happy to be
away from the war that the guards trusted them to work outside of the camp boundaries unguarded,
and not a single Italian attempted escape. This was a common theme for 99% of Italians and many
Germans as well, who were nestled away far from the war and didn’t necessarily go back.
It should be noted though, that the few Japanese that were caught,
and I mean few, they were not as happy to be getting good treatment from the
allies. Already disgraced by the fact that they survived battle, what made it worse was that
they weren’t getting punished for it, which led to entire Japanese compounds rebelling
against their captors in both New Zealand’s Featherstone camp and Australia’s Cowra camp.
In the end though, these incidents were a drop in the pond, and the fatality rate in
the commonwealth was 0.03% with a mere 1254 POWs out of 3.65 million knocking on the door of death.
Depending on who you ask about this one, the Americans were either the same as
the British or as bad as the Russians. Although from most historical accounts,
PoW camps run by Americans followed all the Geneva conventions and some, there are theories that the
Americans systematically starved hundreds of thousands of Germans in conjunction with the
French. Although I don’t believe this, I just wanted to let you all know the theory exists.
Otherwise, from the memoirs of German Naval officers interned at places like
Papago Park in Arizona, the Americans were extremely lenient. It got to a point were
the public began to push for harsher treatment of German PoWs because of the stories they were
hearing about the SS overseas in the murder of American GI’s and prisoners. The stats however,
speak for themselves, and like England, the US had a very low mortality rate,
at 0.2% or 5802 deaths of the 3.097 million prisoners in the country.
Last but not least we have Russia. Russia, as is to be inferred did not have a great
relationship with the Germans. As the Germans were cruel to Russians,
the Russians were Cruel to Germans, and there was little to no hint of the Geneva convention
anywhere. The Russians sent many prisoners to gulags where they were worked to death,
and often summarily executed higher ranking Germans and Poles. They were apathetic in
how they handled their lower ranking PoWS, and although many wouldn’t look to actively kill them,
they weren’t doing them any favours either and essentially let the weather do the work.
Of the 3.15 million prisoners of the Soviet Union,
there was a fatality rate of just under 35%, meaning approximately 1.1 million died.
Now guys, I feel like Ive just brushed the surface with these,
and in general I’m very interested in PoW camps. If you want to learn more hit the like button