# Which POWs were/are typically treated the worst? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 26, 2016, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240 "2016-02-26T19:43:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/1 "2016-02-26T19:43:49Z")
This is a historical \*and \*contemporary modern-day question. More than one person has commented that flamethrower operators were probably treated the most brutally when/if captured by the enemy. What about downed bomber/fighter pilots? Captured special-forces commandos? ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/2 "2016-02-26T19:46:38Z")
How do you define a POW? How far do you go back? To the Dark Ages where people might be tortured, impaled, etc.? Or since we started using the term “POW”? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/3 "2016-02-26T19:50:13Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > How do you define a POW? How far do you go back? To the Dark Ages where people might be tortured, impaled, etc.? Or since we started using the term “POW”? Let’s say beginning with the year 1900. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/4 "2016-02-26T19:57:46Z")
The Soviets considered their soldiers captured by the Germany as traitors during WWII, that’s pretty harsh treatment. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/5 "2016-02-26T19:59:16Z")
In WW II the Germans treated the Russians much worse than the Americans because the Soviet Union treated German prisoners worse - and I think did not subscribe to the Geneva Convention. So, tit for tat counts. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/6 "2016-02-26T20:07:28Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > The Soviets considered their soldiers captured by the Germany as traitors during WWII, that’s pretty harsh treatment. OK, but I mean treated badly by the **enemy**. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/7 "2016-02-26T20:20:47Z")
The Japanese straight-up [ate POWs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#Cannibalism). By which i mean murdered them for the purpose of eating them, not just eating ones that died of other causes. So there’s that. Although doesn’t look like they chose particular specialities. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/8 "2016-02-26T20:32:48Z")
In his book **the Great Escape** , author Paul Brickhill (who was a POW at Stalg Luft III) claimed that the air services prisoners (they were the ones interned at Stalag Luft III) were treated better than many other prisoners at first. The camps were ultimately under the command of Hermann Goering, who was in charge of the Luftwaffe and had been a pilot in WWI. According to Brickhill, he had a soft spot for other airmen. But it didn’t last. The bombings on Germany took their toll and dried up any goodwill that might have been there, so as the war progressed their treatment got harsher. In addition, as the war progressed there were fewer supplies and less food. The play (and later movie) **Stalag 17** was about a non-Luftwaffe POW camp, written by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, who had been imprisoned at the actual Stalag 17. Kolditz Castle was the POW camp for the “hard cases” (Despite what the script for _The Great Escape_ says about Luft III being the camp for the “rotten eggs all in one basket”). It was set on solid bedrock, so tuinnelling out wasn’t as straightforward an option as at the other camps, although there were numerous escapes (see the books by Pat Reid, and the movies based on it. The most spectacular escape – by glider – never happened, because they were liberated first). Kolditz was for officers. They were apparently treated relatively well. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/9 "2016-02-26T20:34:39Z")
I seem to recall someone here posting the factoid that at the end of WWII, Japan had to return the Chinese prisoners of war it still had. All 56 of them :eek: So, as far as a percentage survival rate, that HAS to rank WAY up there as sucky treatment…and probably going a good darn way back in the past for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![lucid-nonsense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/2acd7d/32.png) [@lucid-nonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lucid-nonsense)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/10 "2016-02-26T20:36:59Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > In WW II the Germans treated the Russians much worse than the Americans because the Soviet Union treated German prisoners worse - and I think did not subscribe to the Geneva Convention. So, tit for tat counts. The Germans treated the Soviet POWs much, much worse than the other way around. About 57% of Soviet POWs made by the Germans died, versus about 14% for German POWs made by the Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/11 "2016-02-26T21:10:42Z")
The treatment of the POW’s on the Burma Railroad was a whole other level of cruelty. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/12 "2016-02-26T21:13:27Z")
> [@lucid-nonsense](#): > > The Germans treated the Soviet POWs much, much worse than the other way around. About 57% of Soviet POWs made by the Germans died, versus about 14% for German POWs made by the Soviet Union. 14% is the official Soviet figure, but is highly suspect. The number of missing German soldiers on the Eastern Front was huge, and it’s generally thought that a very large proportion of those in fact died as POW’s. FWIW, the [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#World_War_II) has an estimate of 36% and that’s conservative compared to what some historians think the true number is. Of course there was also the issue of POW’s being kept as forced labor for up to a decade after the war, which is a whole other aspect of “bad treatment.” ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/13 "2016-02-26T21:36:46Z")
There are countless instances of prisoners straight up being shot out of hand in WWII on both sides, though some instances were more common than others. As mentioned in the European theatre Soviet POWs taken by Germany were probably [treated the worst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_mistreatment_of_Soviet_prisoners_of_war), POW ‘camps’ no more than barbed wire stockades where prisoners were simply left to starve, succumb to disease or the brutal whim of a guard. The first prisoners gassed at Auschwitz were Soviet POWs. Stalin’s [Order No. 270](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_No._270) rejected even the concept, Stalin commenting _“There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors.”_ This included his [own son](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Dzhugashvili#Second_World_War), who died in Sachsenhausen. The case of [Mikhail Devyatayev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Devyatayev) demonstrates the attitude towards POWs back in the USSR, extraordinarily he escaped Nazi slavery by stealing an aircraft. When the NKVD got hold of him they imprisoned him for the remainder of the war, his papers marked him as a criminal for allowing himself to be captured in the first place. He was only cleared in 1957. Hitler’s 1942 [Commando Order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_Order#Allied_casualties) mandated that any captured Allied commandos, even in uniform, should be executed without trial in a concentration camp. Similar to flamethrower troops, I’ve read that [snipers](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YXRIAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT36&lpg=PT36&dq=sniper+pow+executed&source=bl&ots=QvhNdaEyv3&sig=BJcYgu_wW7ogKhurEj8kF2ID5xY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK5PXgppbLAhWFOxoKHfssCxIQ6AEINzAJ) were loathed as ‘personalising’ the impersonal business of war and often executed out of hand. SS men were often wont to massacre prisoners and were repaid in kind. In Normandy there was mutual loathing between Canadians and the 12th SS ‘Hitlerjugend’, following [an SS massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_SS_Panzer_Division_Hitlerjugend#Ardenne_Abbey_massacre). Following the liberation of Dachau, American troops [executed a number of SS guards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals). Speaking of the SS, their black uniforms caused lethal instances of mistaken identity for panzer crews, also clad in black. Allied bomber crews were [depicted as monsters](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LoPTdkHrjjk/SquqyXYujAI/AAAAAAAAFAk/6wKEa-kEqt0/s1600/nazi-propaganda-poster-during-war-005.jpg), and there are multiple instances of downed RAF and USAF crews being beaten, shot or even [lynched](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%BCsselsheim_massacre) in enemy captivity. Japanese treatment of POWs has already been mentioned, including keeping prisoners as meat on the hoof. The fate of any prisoner who found themselves on one of the notorious [Hell ships](http://ww2today.com/29th-october-1942-the-hell-of-a-japanese-prison-ship) is also a grim one. Kept in crowded, stinking holds with the additional fear that Allied subs could [torpedo](http://ww2today.com/1st-july-1942-australian-tragedy-uss-sturgeon-sinks-montevideo-maru) the unmarked ship. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/14 "2016-02-26T21:55:37Z")
My father, a Sergeant in the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment) was captured at Dunkirk - he had the bad luck to be in the rearguard - and spent the entire war in captivity at Lamsdorf. The German guards treated them well but there were many Russian POWs who were partitioned separately and my old man used to tell me he really felt sorry for those guys. The guards regarded them as _Untermensch_, undermen, and they would be abused, beaten and killed with impunity. I’d say the Russians were definitely among the worst-treated POWs of the war. And of course all they could look forward to on liberation was a bullet or imprisonment by their own people. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/15 "2016-02-26T22:09:50Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > The Japanese straight-up [ate POWs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#Cannibalism). By which i mean murdered them for the purpose of eating them, not just eating ones that died of other causes. So there’s that. Although doesn’t look like they chose particular specialities. One Liberal Democrat MP ( post-war ) had dined on American Airman Liver — fortunately neither the Yanks nor the Japanese held grudges against him and the latter erected a statue to him in Kaga. _Pace_ that old jewish ex-commie, Arthur Koestler, who didn’t rate French ( non-POW ) Camps very highly at all, I would prefer to be caught in order by the Canadians/British/Americans/Germans/French/Soviets/Japanese. I might even choose suicide like Mr. Koestler before being caught by the last two. The Germans treated soviet POWs utterly appallingly the first year, then it settled down and they were just over-worked instead of starved to death. Soviet treatment of POWs was in accord with the long tradition of Gulag bestiality, and instead of labelling many dead, they were labelled ‘missing’. Communist language was completely deceptive even when there was no reason to be deceptive. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/16 "2016-02-26T22:16:23Z")
[Arthur Dodd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Dodd_%28Auschwitz_survivor%29) was a British soldier captured in WWII and sent to _Auschwitz_ along with a number of his compatriots. In his biography, he mentioned that he and the others figured the reason they were sent to Auschwitz after their capture in North Africa was because of a prank they played soon after being taken prisoner. They had been asked by the Germans to write down their peacetime trade or occupation. IIRC, he wrote, “cat burglar” and his pals made up other similarly silly avocations. So, it looks jokers may have been “typically treated the worst”. For those interested, his book about his experience at Auschwitz is called ‘[Spectator in Hell](http://www.amazon.com/Spectator-Hell-Extraordinary-Imprisonment-Auschwitz/dp/1840241438)’. It used to be available free on-line (where I read it some years ago) but the publisher has since removed it. It is still for sale, though. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2016, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/17 "2016-03-06T07:19:16Z")
Of the 11,000 French Foreign Legion POWs captured at Dien Ben Phu by the Vietnamese only 3,300 survived to be repatriated, a 30% survival rate. To dissuade any international condemnation of these losses the Vietnamese made up the story that most captured were former German Waffen SS soldiers to make them political undesirables to defend, despite the FFL actively discouraging SS recruitment for the very same reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2016, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/18 "2016-03-06T08:01:30Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > There are countless instances of prisoners straight up being shot out of hand in WWII on both sides, though some instances were more common than others. > > Similar to flamethrower troops, I’ve read that [snipers](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YXRIAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT36&lpg=PT36&dq=sniper+pow+executed&source=bl&ots=QvhNdaEyv3&sig=BJcYgu_wW7ogKhurEj8kF2ID5xY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK5PXgppbLAhWFOxoKHfssCxIQ6AEINzAJ) were loathed as ‘personalising’ the impersonal business of war and often executed out of hand. I was going to mention snipers as well; very few snipers ever made it to POW cages. The distinction should be made that this is referring to actual snipers, there is a tendency to refer to all sporadic small arms fire as ‘sniper fire’. For Germans being captured with a scoped rifle was a virtual death sentence, at least from Normandy onwards in the ETO during WW2. From [here](https://digital.library.txstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10877/3836/fulltext.pdf): (warning, pdf) > [@](#): > > Interestingly, GIs demonstrated little animosity towards snipers during the North African, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns. Things changed, however, after the Germans began employing snipers on a large scale in Normandy. The hedgerow country of Northwestern France provided ideal ground for snipers to inflict a large number of casualties and severely hamper troop movement. Constantly hiding and ducking from an unseen enemy conflicted with the American concept of a fair fight. As war correspondent Ernie Pyle noted, “Sniping, as far as I know, is recognized as a legitimate means of warfare. And yet there is something sneaking about it that outrages the American sense of fairness”119 > Beginning in Normandy, a consensus developed among American troops that enemy snipers did not deserve the treatment as legitimate combatants. Such hypocrisy was not lost on Lester Atwell of the 345th Regiment, 87th Infantry Division, “The reaction to snipers was both understandable and a puzzle. We had snipers of our own, skilled soldiers, picked for their intelligence and keen eyesight….It always struck me as odd: the enemy snipers were unspeakable villains; our own were heroes.”120 Double standard or not, very few German snipers survived attempts to surrender. Just after crossing the Saar River, William Foley managed to wound a sniper dug into a rocky cliff. As soon as the German rose up shouting “Kamerad!” one of Foley‘s comrades shot and killed him. “After the initial shock at Salazar‘s action,” Foley recalled, “I realized he was right because of the situation we were in. Later, when I learned that a grenade fragment had cut Salazar‘s neck and removed his dog tags. I could even better understand his reaction. We hated snipers.”121 While advancing towards Suggerath, Germany, a sniper managed to kill a member of Roscoe Blunt‘s unit of the 333 Infantry Regiment, 84th Infantry Division before he flushed out of a building. “We surrounded him and then, in a spontaneous outburst of hatred, every man in the squad fired at once and then spat on the lifeless German. It was one for one. From many such instances later, I later learned that snipers were seldom taken alive unless they were needed by G-2 for information.”122 Such treatment even had the support of American high command: > [@](#): > > Even the American high command understood that snipers did not deserve the privileges afford to legitimate combatants. Lt. Col. Chester B. Hansen, Gen. Omar Bradley‘s First Army Assistant Division Commander, wrote, “Brad says that he will not take any action against anyone who decides to treat snipers a little more roughly than they are being treated at present….A sniper cannot sit around and shoot and then capture when you close in on him. That‘s not the way to play the game.”123 After taking heavy casualties on Omaha Beach, 1st Infantry Division commander Gen. Huebner supported his men‘s refusal to accept a sniper‘s surrender. In his report to Gen. Hodges he noted, “Could have taken four yesterday easily, but preferred to kill them.”124 In March 1945, Lester Atwell witnessed Gen. Purvis order a lieutenant to beat a recently captured sniper in Lissendorf, Germany. After the lieutenant administered a “sound beating with large, solid fists,” the general ordered the prisoner to dig his own grave and had him shot. As he stared at the corpse the general remarked, “That‘s the way to treat these sons of bitches.”125 ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2016, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/19 "2016-03-06T09:05:45Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > In WW II the Germans treated the Russians much worse than the Americans because the Soviet Union treated German prisoners worse - and I think did not subscribe to the Geneva Convention. So, tit for tat counts. No, the German mistreatment of Soviets clearly came first as the Germans captured millions of Soviet POWs in the first year of the war. From **Mr Kobayashi** ’s link: > [@](#): > > The most deaths took place between June 1941 and January 1942, when the Germans killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs primarily through deliberate starvation,[7] exposure, and summary execution, in what has been called, along with the Rwandan Genocide, an instance of “the most concentrated mass killing in human history (…) eclipsing the most exterminatory months of the Jewish Holocaust”. US naval airmen captured by IJN ships would be hauled out if the water, interrogated and then killed. The Japanese were scheduled to kill the 100,000 Allied POWs in August, 1945, but the war ended first. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2016, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240/20 "2016-03-06T09:36:34Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > Of the 11,000 French Foreign Legion POWs captured at Dien Ben Phu by the Vietnamese only 3,300 survived to be repatriated, a 30% survival rate. > > To dissuade any international condemnation of these losses the Vietnamese made up the story that most captured were former German Waffen SS soldiers to make them political undesirables to defend, despite the FFL actively discouraging SS recruitment for the very same reasons. How “active” that discouragement was was a variable thing. A LOT of the FFL at the time of Dien Ben Phu were formerly German soldiers: Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, and regular SS. It was easy and common for an SS soldier to turn the blood group tattoo on their left arm in to just a scar. And it’s not like the FFL recruiters did much of a background investigation of the prior military service of an applicant who claimed to just be a Wehrmacht soldier. They probably didn’t have to present a paybook and probably got rid of their SS dagger. Very rare was the Special Operators’ bars in Nam that didn’t have “Lili Marlene” in the juke box. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-pows-were-are-typically-treated-the-worst/747240.md?page=2)