The French kept large numbers of German POWs around after the war to help rebuild things. Especially in the Normandy area but also several other cities that were heavily bombed, such as the ones that had German U-boat ports.
While the distinction between prison labor and slave labor might seem small, the Soviets were well within their rights to use the POWs as prison laborers. The Geneva Conventions allow the use of POWs in non-hazardous, non-war related work. Unfortunately, with all things Stalin, it got pretty nasty.
The Soviets also kept large numbers of Japanese prisoners as laborers for several years. And given the Japanese didn’t destroy anything Russian and their war only lasted a few weeks, that seems excessive even if they had been treated right.
Note that POWs are supposed to be returned at the end of the war. But people get creative about deciding when a war is over. E.g., Russia and Japan haven’t officially concluded things between them. The last remnants of the German occupation ended in 1991.
I visited Volgograd (modern-day Stalingrad) and was treated to a fantastic tour in and around the battlefield-area. I asked this exact question “Why would you not allow the prisoners to return home until 1955???” What would be the point in keeping them? They took me to a canal which was built with German know-how and prison laor. They were told,build the canal. When you finish it, you can leave. The also build whole villages of German looking housing next to the canal. They finished the canal in 1955 and were sent home to Germany. I thnk this is an anecdotal story which was multiplied many times after the war.
I read that some of the last German and Italian POWs didn’t get home till 1957-those guys must have had a shock (the German postwar economic boom was in full swing).
I did read that a lot of the Germans were made to labor in dangerous situations (lead mines, gold fields), and lots of them died.
I think we need to distinguish between using using prisoners for labour (allowed) and working them to death (not allowed). As long as the prisones are decently fed, and the work is not health-threateningly strenuous, the discipline reasonable, what’s the problem?
The difficulty on boths sides of the eastern front seems to be a willingness to use starvation, overwork, and random sadism up to and including executions.
In Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor (a great read, btw), he quotes the Soviet leadership as surveying the ruins that were once Stalingrad and saying, “when Stalingrad is re-built, they (the German POWs) will be released”.
Indentured servants could theoretically leave at any time once their debt is paid up. They were just often exploited and equivalent to slaves when their terms were artificially increased due to things like company scrip. Plus, depending on the job, it could be a death trap. So in some cases, indentured servitude was the same as slavery, except that the former had a distant thing to look forward to.
This is the thing that struck me when I first learned that German POWs didn’t go home from Soviet Russia until the mid-50s - young Private Schmidt signed up in 1942 in a patriotic fervour, mind full of Triumph of the Will and military marches, and came back a prematurely-aged thirtysomething in 1955 to Elvis Presley and bubble cars. They must have found it almost impossible to re-integrate.
Changing topic, were the former German POWs who were sent back to East Germany treated as second-class citizens by the general population and the authorities, or were they just left to get on with their lives? Not just for being former pawns of an evil regime, but simply because they were living reminders of an unfortunate age. I’ve always assumed that POWs returned to West Germany were told to keep schtum but were otherwise unmolested, because no-one wanted to rock the boat, but East Germany had the Stasi and was pally with Stalin.