Editing Prisoner of war (section)

====Germans====
[[File:Remagen enclosure.jpg|thumb|left|[[Remagen]] open-field ''[[Rheinwiesenlager]]''<!--not a POW camp-->]]
[[File:Gefangenen-Meldung Vorderseite.jpg|thumb|US Army: Card of capture for German POWs – front]]
[[File:Gefangenen-Meldung Rueckseite.jpg|thumb|Reverse of US Army Card of capture]]
[[File:EB-Kriegsgefangenen-Entlassungsausweis.jpg|thumb|Certificate of Discharge<br />of a German General<br />(Front- and Backside)]]

During the war, the armies of Western Allied nations such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the US<ref>Tremblay, Robert, Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, et al. "Histoires oubliées – Interprogrammes : Des prisonniers spéciaux" Interlude. Aired: 20 July 2008, 14h47 to 15h00. '''Note''': See also [[Saint Helen's Island]].</ref> were given orders to treat [[Axis powers of World War II|Axis]] prisoners strictly in accordance with the [[Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (1929)|Geneva Convention]].<ref>{{cite book|editor-last1=Dear |editor-first1=I.C.B |editor-last2=Foot |editor-first2=M.R.D.|title=The Oxford Companion to World War II |publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|year=2005|pages=983–984|chapter=War Crimes|isbn=978-0-19-280670-3}}</ref> 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.<ref>[[James J. Weingartner]], [http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/94.4/weingartner.html ''"Americans, Germans, and War Crimes: Converging Narratives from "the Good War"''] the [[Journal of American History]], Vol. 94, No. 4. March 2008 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101114112740/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/94.4/weingartner.html |date=14 November 2010 }}</ref>

In Britain, German prisoners, particularly higher-ranked officers, were housed in luxurious buildings where [[Covert listening device|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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-britains-german-born-jewish-secret-listeners-helped-win-world-war-ii/|title=How Britain's German-born Jewish 'secret listeners' helped win World War II|first=Robert|last=Philpot|website=www.timesofisrael.com|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407045310/https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-britains-german-born-jewish-secret-listeners-helped-win-world-war-ii/|archive-date=7 April 2023}}</ref>

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.<ref name="histpow">{{Cite web |title=History of Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army 1776–1945 |author=George G. Lewis |author2=John Mehwa |work=Center of Military History, United States Army |date=1982 |access-date=16 August 2020 |url= https://history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-11-1/cmhPub_104-11-1.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405180657/https://history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-11-1/cmhPub_104-11-1.pdf|archive-date=5 April 2023}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,958673,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070310191329/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,958673,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=10 March 2007 | magazine=Time | title=Ike's Revenge? | date=2 October 1989 | access-date=22 May 2010}}</ref> (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".<ref>S. P. MacKenzie "The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II" The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 66, No. 3. (September 1994), pp. 487–520.</ref><ref>Footnote to: K. W. Bohme, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges, 15 vols. (Munich, 1962–74), 1, pt. 1:x. (n. 1 above), 13:173; ICRC (n. 12 above), p. 334.</ref>

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 reparations|war reparation]].<ref name="Renate Held 2008">Renate Held, "Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in britischer Hand – ein Überblick [The German Prisoners of War in British Hands – An Overview] (in German)" (2008)</ref><ref>Eugene Davidsson, "The Trial of the Germans: An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants Before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg", (1997) pp. 518–519 "the Allies stated in 1943 their intention of using forced workers outside Germany after the war, and not only did they express the intention but they carried it out. Not only Russia made use of such labour. France was given hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war captured by the Americans, and their physical condition became so bad that the American Army authorities themselves protested. In England and the United States, too, some German prisoners of war were being put to work long after the surrender, and in Russia thousands of them worked until the mid-50s."</ref> 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 [[Slavery|slave labour]].<ref name="German migrants">{{cite book | author = Inge Weber-Newth |author2=Johannes-Dieter Steinert | title = German migrants in post-war Britain: an enemy embrace | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=hSxK1Hus-BIC | access-date = 15 December 2009 | year = 2006 | publisher = Routledge | isbn =978-0-7146-5657-1| pages = 24–30 | chapter = Chapter 2: Immigration policy—immigrant policy  | quote = Views in the Media were mirrored in the House of commons, where the arguments were characterized by a series of questions, the substance of which were always the same. Here too the talk was often of slave labour, and this debate was not laid to rest until the government announced its strategy.}}</ref> 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.<ref name="German migrants"/>

The "[[London Cage]]", an [[MI19]] prisoner of war facility in London used during and immediately after the war to interrogate prisoners before sending them to prison camps, was subject to allegations of torture.<ref name='Secrets'>{{cite news | first=Ian | last=Cobain | title=The secrets of the London Cage | date=12 November 2005 | url =https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/nov/12/secondworldwar.world | work =The Guardian | access-date = 17 January 2009|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404012234/https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/nov/12/secondworldwar.world|archive-date= 4 April 2023 }}</ref>

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.<ref name="autogenerated2005">Staff. [http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/57jnwx?opendocument ICRC in WW II: German prisoners of war in Allied hands] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090426202233/http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/57jnwx?opendocument |date=26 April 2009 }}, 2 February 2005<!--Retrieved 12 August 2008--></ref> 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".<ref name="autogenerated2005"/>

POWs were also transferred among the Allies, with for example 6,000 German officers transferred from Western Allied camps to the Soviets and subsequently imprisoned in the [[Sachsenhausen concentration camp]], at the time one of the [[NKVD special camps in Germany 1945–50|NKVD special camps]].<ref>"Ex-Death Camp Tells Story of Nazi and Soviet Horrors" ''New York Times'', 17 December 2001</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Butler|first=Desmond|date=17 December 2001|title=Ex-Death Camp Tells Story of Nazi and Soviet Horrors|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/world/ex-death-camp-tells-story-of-nazi-and-soviet-horrors.html|access-date=30 December 2013|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230328012225/https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/world/ex-death-camp-tells-story-of-nazi-and-soviet-horrors.html|archive-date=28 March 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEFDA163EF934A25751C1A9679C8B63 | work=The New York Times | title=Ex-Death Camp Tells Story of Nazi and Soviet Horrors | first=Desmond | last=Butler | date=17 December 2001|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230328012225/https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/world/ex-death-camp-tells-story-of-nazi-and-soviet-horrors.html|archive-date= 28 March 2023}}</ref> 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".<ref>Edward N. Peterson, The American Occupation of Germany, pp. 42, 116, "Some hundreds of thousands who had fled to the Americans to avoid being taken prisoner by the Soviets were turned over in May to the Red Army in a gesture of friendship."</ref> 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.<ref>Niall Ferguson, "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 2004 11 (2) 148–192 p. 189, (footnote, referenced to: [[Heinz Nawratil]], Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen und Verschleppter: mit einer übersicht über die europäischen Nachkriegsverluste (Munich and Berlin, 1988), pp. 36f.)</ref>

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,

<blockquote>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.<ref>David Lubań, "Legal Modernism", Univ of Michigan Press, 1994. {{ISBN|978-0-472-10380-5}} pp. 360, 361</ref><ref>"[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nuremberg/peopleevents/e_warcrimes.html The Legacy of Nuremberg]", PBS. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110929015356/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nuremberg/peopleevents/e_warcrimes.html |date=29 September 2011 }}.</ref></blockquote>