How Harsh Were German Pow Camps?

Prisoners were usually housed in one-storey wooden barracks which contained bunk beds (two or three high) and a charcoal burning stove in the middle of the room. Prisoners were generally given two meals a day – thin soup and black bread. Needless to say hunger was a feature of most prisoners’ lives.

How were POWs treated by Germans?

They

mostly supervised the German officers and NCOs who strictly maintained discipline

. The Germans woke their own men, marched them to and from meals, and prepared them for work; their routine successfully recreated the feel of military discipline for prisoners.

What was life like as a German POW?

Held by the Nazis to be racially and politically inferior, they were

starved and brutalised

. The appalling suffering of these POWs was witnessed by British and Commonwealth prisoners held in separate compounds. At Stalag VIIIB alone, in Lamsdorf, eastern Germany, over 40,000 Russians perished.

What were conditions like in POW camps?

Forced to carry out slave labour on a starvation diet and in a hostile environment, many died of malnutrition or disease

. Sadistic punishments were handed out for the most minor breach of camp rules. Most prisoners of war (POWs) existed on a very poor diet of rice and vegetables, which led to severe malnutrition.

What was it like to be a POW in ww2?

Prisoners were

routinely beaten, starved and abused and forced to work in mines and war-related factories in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions

. Of the 27,000 Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese, a shocking 40 percent died in captivity, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

What was the most famous POW camp?

The most famous POW breakout is the ‘Great Escape’ in March 1944 from

Stalag Luft III

, a camp which held Allied aircrew. Plans for a mass escape from the camp began in April 1943, headed by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell.

What happened to the German POWs after ww2?

After World War II,

German prisoners were taken back to Europe as part of a reparations agreement

. They were forced into harsh labor camps. Many prisoners did make it home in 18 to 24 months, Lazarus said. But Russian camps were among the most brutal, and some of their German POWs didn’t return home until 1953.

Did the Allies take prisoners?

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.

How many German POWs stayed in the US after the war?

How many World War II German prisoners of war interned in the United States stayed in the United States after the war? Thank you. Dear KM, Officially, none of the

more than 425,000

Axis POWs kept in the United States should have stayed there after the war—POWs are supposed to be repatriated after the war is over.

What were German POW camps called?

Stalag or Stammlager (“Base camp”)

– These were enlisted personnel POW camps. Stalag Luft or Luftwaffe-Stammlager (“Luftwaffe base camp”) – These were POW camps administered by the German Air Force for Allied aircrews.

Where was Stalag 17?

In 1943, as American air attacks against Germany increased, the Nazis moved the growing number of captured American airmen into prisoner of war camps, called Stalags. Over 4,000 airmen ended up in Stalag 17-b,

just outside of Krems, Austria

, in barracks made for 240 men.

Did prisoners of war get paid?

Captive or POW Pay and Allowance Entitlements: Soldiers are entitled to all pay and allowances that were authorized prior to the POW period.

Soldiers who are in a POW status are authorized payment of 50% of the worldwide average per diem rate for each day held in captive status

.

What was the worst POW camp in ww2?

Why did the Japanese treat their prisoners of war so horribly?

The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers

to believe that surrender was dishonourable

. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect. The IJA also relied on physical punishment to discipline its own troops.

What was the most feared Japanese POW camp?

In three years, between 1942 (the year the Japanese occupied Singapore) and 1945,

Changi

gained its reputation as the most feared Japanese prison. Malaysian civilians and Allied soldiers captured on the Asian front were detained here.

Did the Japanese execute POWs?

The POWs who were accused of committing serious crimes or those who tried to escape were prosecuted at the Japanese Army Court Martial and sent to prison for Japanese criminals,

many were executed in front of their fellow POWs

.

Did anyone escape Japanese POW camps?

Cowra breakout, (August 5, 1944), mass escape by nearly 400 Japanese prisoners of war from a prison camp in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia

. It was the largest prison break staged during World War II.

How did the Japanese treat female prisoners of war?

They organized shifts and began care for other prisoners who were captured, but despite the different roles their Japanese captors treated them equally badly. All these women had to

constantly fight off starvation and disease

, with an average weight loss being about 30% of their body weight.

What did Andersonville prisoners eat?

Food rations were a small portion of

raw corn or meat

, which was often eaten uncooked because there was almost no wood for fires. The only water supply was a stream that first trickled through a Confederate army camp, then pooled to form a swamp inside the stockade.

What happened to Confederate prisoners?

Between 1862-1865, approximately 4-6,000 Confederate prisoners

died from starvation, disease, and cold

at Camp Douglas. Despite the filth, freezing temperatures, inadequate clothing, and disease, however, some Confederates told of being treated humanely.

Who Escaped 5 times as a POW ww2?

Bill Ash

, WWII prisoner who attempted multiple escapes from POW camps, dies at 96. Bill Ash, a Texas-born fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, who was shot down over France and made more than a dozen daring efforts to escape from German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II, died April 26 in London.

What happened to the SS soldiers after the war?

Though members of the SS

continued to stand in defendant’s docks in the Federal Republic of Germany and elsewhere

after the end of World War II—even up to the present day—the vast majority of SS and police were never called to account for their crimes.

What happened to German soldiers captured at Stalingrad?

By February 1943, Russian troops had retaken Stalingrad and captured nearly 100,000 German soldiers, though pockets of resistance continued to fight in the city until early March.

Most of the captured soldiers died in Russian prison camps, either as a result of disease or starvation

.

How were German soldiers treated after ww2?

In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were

forced into labor by the Allied forces

. The topic of using Germans as forced labor for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers.

Who was more brutal in ww2?

According to the National World War II Museum, more people were killed on the Eastern Front than every other part of World War II combined.

The Soviet Union

suffered anywhere between 8,800,000 to 10,700,000 casualties in the military, but even more jarring is the 24 million civilians that died during the war.

How many German soldiers were executed?

According to postwar German estimates, more than 35,000 soldiers were convicted by military courts of leaving their units during the course of the war. Some 23,000 were sentenced to death, and

at least 15,000

of these were actually executed.

Did American soldiers shoot German prisoners?