# How Did the Allies Treat Enemy POWs in WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 30, 2014, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-allies-treat-enemy-pows-in-wwii/687369 "2014-04-30T15:58:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 35
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-allies-treat-enemy-pows-in-wwii/687369/35 "2014-05-01T02:04:53Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > I guess if I have to explain why treating **American citizens** worse than you treat your enemy is shameful behavior then we clearly see the world in a completely different manner. It’s pointless to explain to Southern Whites in my experience why their behavior and the behavior of their ancestors was reprehensible because they simply don’t believe that they did (or do) anything wrong. > > We’ll just have to disagree about how the situation was and leave it at that. Great, once again we go from an interesting question to a devolution of commentary about race relations between blacks and white in the American South during the 1940’s. Here is a hint. The topic is complicated and the two issues have little to do with one another. German POW camps in the South treated their prisoners (campers) quite well because no one saw any reason to do otherwise. That positive fact should stand on its own but somehow we get unrelated comments that try to turn it into a negative. That phenomenon wasn’t unilateral either. The Germans also had some POW camps that were relatively nice for American POW’s. The sitcom Hogan’s Heros was based on that theme. Don’t laugh. That was well within living memory of many people that were quarantined in them and it wasn’t generally considered offensive. However, there were other groups that were treated horrifically (obviously) and it was a crap-shoot even for American or British servicemen which situation they would find themselves in if they were captured. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-allies-treat-enemy-pows-in-wwii/687369)._