# How Did The Germans Treat American POW's in WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 5, 2001, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551 "2001-11-05T04:49:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2017, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/121 "2017-09-15T14:35:40Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I thought they were sent to prison camps in the US and Canada. Many were, some 425,000 German PoWs were sent to the US and 34,000 to Canada and some to Australia and South Africa. There were 100,000 German PoWs in Egypt by 1945. There are some first-hand accounts of Allied PoW experiences. Prisoners were moved when the front line changed. That seemed to be the time of greatest danger. This is quite an interesting personal account of prison camp experiences. > **[British POW Experiences In Italian and German Camps | SWWEC](https://war-experience.org/events/british-pow-experiences-in-italian-and-german-camps/)** I expect there are similar accounts by US prisoners. People come out these experiences quite traumatised and spend years trying to forget. I had an uncle like that who was captured in the Italian campaign, he never spoke of it. ---
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2017, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/122 "2017-09-15T14:48:35Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Some were. I read an account of some guys who escaped a POW camp in Alberta and made it to the US border… just in time for the USA to enter the war against Germany. That was a book and a movie ‘The one the got away’ about Franz Von Werra Apparently, the only German PoW to successfully escape back to Germany. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVxc8cStNxo) ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/123 "2017-09-17T00:40:00Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > There was no arrangement between the Nazis and the Soviets with respect to PoWs and both sides treat their prisoners with great severity. This suggests Hitler did try to come to an arrangement, but Stalin refused. I guess he saw his captured soldiers as expendable. Or possibly Stalin just recognized that Russia had much more manpower than Germany to replace POW’s, so doing nothing on this hurt Germany more. For much the same reasons, in the US Civil War, the North mostly refused to do POW exchanges with the South. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/124 "2017-09-17T01:58:03Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > For much the same reasons, in the US Civil War, the North mostly refused to do POW exchanges with the South. Did they have any idea how little food there was in the South and how badly prisoners were treated? My g-d, that amounts to endorsing Andersonville! ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/125 "2017-09-17T02:49:59Z")
If you go by movies and film - Stalag 17, The Great Escape, Hogan’s Heroes, Victory, Hart’s War, German POW camps are more or less portrayed almost like summer camps. Inept guards. Cordial commandants. Prisoner’s largely left to their own devices, up to and including planning elaborate escape attempts, conducting espionage throughout the local area and forming semi-pro football teams. So long as you don’t do something stupid like charge the perimeter fence, the worst thing about movie stalags seems to that the prisoners obviously don’t want to be there. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/126 "2017-09-17T03:17:22Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > Or possibly Stalin just recognized that Russia had much more manpower than Germany to replace POW’s, so doing nothing on this hurt Germany more. > > For much the same reasons, in the US Civil War, the North mostly refused to do POW exchanges with the South. There were prisoner exchanges early on during the Civil War, but they broke down when the Confederates refused to treat captured U.S. Colored Troops on the same basis as white prisoners. But you’re right, it turned out to be militarily advantageous to the U.S. with its much larger population. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/127 "2017-09-17T03:45:23Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Did they have any idea how little food there was in the South and how badly prisoners were treated? My g-d, that amounts to endorsing Andersonville! No, they had no idea. The North treated Southern prisoners reasonably well, crowded conditions, but fed OK, and assumed the South was doing the same with Northern prisoners. They might have learned from soldiers’ letters home, but mail service between North & South was interrupted (Southern Post Offices refused to deliver letters with US stamps, and later the US Post Offices did the same to Confederate stamps). Northern authorities were upset enough when they learned of Andersonville that they tried the commander. He was convicted of 12 out of 13 counts and hanged. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/128 "2017-09-17T17:24:21Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > Or possibly Stalin just recognized that Russia had much more manpower than Germany to replace POW’s, so doing nothing on this hurt Germany more. > > For much the same reasons, in the US Civil War, the North mostly refused to do POW exchanges with the South. Exchanges in any numbers, or except of very sick men, was never in the cards among any of the combatants in WWII. The issue was decent treatment or not. I would say the Soviets probably hurt themselves at least marginally by refusing to agree to treat German prisoners decently, assuming the Germans would have reciprocated under an agreement to stick to the Geneva Conventions\*. Because it gave the Germans leave to mistreat Soviet prisoners and thus be able to offer them humane conditions in return for actively helping the Germans. Whereas Western prisoners generally could expect at least minimally decent treatment without making any concession to the Germans. Soviet prisoners in German military service, ‘Osties’, were notorious for in some cases immediately surrendering to the Western Allies when they came in contact with them as front line troops. But they could be pretty useful for various duties that didn’t bring them in direct contact with Allied troops on the ground (like as AA gun crews for example), beyond the simple forced labor the Soviets were willing to use Germans prisoners to do. Less tangibly the Soviets could have believed the prospect of likely death anyway if captured by the Germans (not far from 1/2 survival rate in the hands of the Germans as it turned out, then further attrition in Soviet gulags if they survived the Germans) stiffened the resolve of their soldiers to fight. But that would have been at least partly offset by the same feeling by German soldiers. \*of course it would have been difficult for those two sides to trust one another on such an agreement, though as thread has discussed, the Germans mainly lived up to their tacit agreement with the Western Allies to follow the Conventions wrt prisoners; there was some Convention-violating treatment of both Allied and German prisoners by the other side. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/129 "2017-09-17T18:18:11Z")
According to [this video of a 2015 lecture,](https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=GegdZCTKiho) some German PWs were brought to Wisconsin and put to work picking cherries and other crops. They were well treated, and after the war and being sent home, many returned to Wisconsin, became friendly with families here, and even married some local girls. I never heard of any “accidents” or even attempts to escape even though they were not held in maximum security facilities. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/130 "2017-09-17T21:07:29Z")
In a book by[Pappy Boyington](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappy_Boyington)of Black Sheep fame he was a prisoner of the Japanese for 20 months and he said it wasn’t all bad and it depended upon the Japanese. He said some Japanese, especially those who had travelled abroad, were against the war and tried to teat the pows fair. Others though he said were just sadists. After the war he testified at the trial of some former guards freeing some and convicting others. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2017, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/131 "2017-09-17T21:08:52Z")
In one movie the Germans are able to plant a spy in an allied POW camp. Does anyone know if this really happened? As I understand it POWs were pretty careful of this and they vetted all new prisoners. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/132 "2017-09-18T18:44:56Z")
Some were not bad considering that some camps had bands, newspapers, and POWs could take college courses for credit offered by other POWs. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/133 "2017-09-18T19:42:04Z")
IIRC - Stalin’s logic was that Soviet soldiers could have been “contaminated” by exposure to western ideas and by discovering that even the Nazi system allowed the average (non-Jewish) Heinrich more liberty and better manufatured goods than the Soviet system. Plus as mentioned, some were willing to actively help the enemy in some way. Safer to not trust them when they got home. Even safer not to try and get them back when the war was still going in any parole arrangement, as they might be actually detrimental to morale and the war effort. Plus, as Sherman’s “total war” concept pointed out 80 years previosuly, someone able-bodied but not actively on the front lines was still an asset to the industrial war machine. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/134 "2017-09-19T01:49:50Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > IIRC - Stalin’s logic was that Soviet soldiers could have been “contaminated” by exposure to western ideas and by discovering that even the Nazi system allowed the average (non-Jewish) Heinrich more liberty and better manufatured goods than the Soviet system. Plus as mentioned, some were willing to actively help the enemy in some way. Safer to not trust them when they got home. Even safer not to try and get them back when the war was still going in any parole arrangement, as they might be actually detrimental to morale and the war effort. Plus, as Sherman’s “total war” concept pointed out 80 years previosuly, someone able-bodied but not actively on the front lines was still an asset to the industrial war machine. Stalin was the devil incarnate. The invasion of Poland began World War II when Great Britain declared war on Germany, and Russia took all they countries they “liberated” from the Nazis under their control, including Poland. Sherman was just an asshole. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/135 "2017-09-19T04:42:15Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > In one movie the Germans are able to plant a spy in an allied POW camp. > > Does anyone know if this really happened? > > As I understand it POWs were pretty careful of this and they vetted all new prisoners. No, I have never heard of that happening. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/136 "2017-09-19T05:36:49Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Stalin was the devil incarnate. > The invasion of Poland began World War II when Great Britain declared war on Germany, and Russia took all they countries they “liberated” from the Nazis under their control, including Poland. > > Sherman was just an asshole. Stalin and Hitler split up Poland, actually. Then, eventually, Stalin’s forces “liberated” Germany’s half. Hey, it’s a running debate who killed more people, Hitler or Stalin. As for Sherman, he was right. In a war where they needed factories to supply armies, and railroads to feed those factories and supply the troops, and food for the troops and the factory workers - destroying everything in your path made a lot of sense. It was just an extension of the Union tactic of blockading ports in the South to cut off the supply chain from Europe, and prevent cotton sales from funding the war. the farmer in central Georgia paying taxes is as much a fair target as the farmer next door to Gettysburg. Once mass aerial bombardment was possible, both sides tried to apply that lesson in WWII. The allies were more effective and had more (and more isolated) factories. The person who makes ball bearings and tires for war machines, or packs rations for the troops, is as much a part of the war as the front lines. It’s just harder for them to defend themselves. Hence, more than ever, war is hell. And as I said, releasing a POW on parole is meaningless if he just goes into a factory job to free up someone else to go to the front. Prisoner exchanges worked when the King had a limited supply of nobles, and doing catch and release on half his nobles cut his army officers by half. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551/137 "2018-08-17T15:35:49Z")
Note: See the [brief interview with a newly liberated US Naval office](https://youtu.be/Sh3uqAasdKU)r, still in the [Mauthausen concentration camp](https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005196), on his treatment and the murder of other US personnel. (YouTube link is to where his interview begins.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-germans-treat-american-pows-in-wwii/91551.md?page=6)