# WW2 - German and Italian POW's **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 18, 2026, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000 "2026-06-18T14:18:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2026, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/41 "2026-06-19T20:19:08Z")
> [@Ancient\_Nerd](#): > > where a black entertainer (don’t recall who) was supposed to perform someplace like Memphis. That would be Lena Horne, and the venue was Camp Robinson in North Little Rock. [https://medium.com/@daratucker/the-time-lena-horne-defied-the-u-s-military-72238b21a793](https://medium.com/@daratucker/the-time-lena-horne-defied-the-u-s-military-72238b21a793) ---
**Author:** ![Humbagger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/db5fbb/32.png) [@Humbagger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humbagger)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2026, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/42 "2026-06-19T20:23:52Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > He talked a local into helping him kill some people. Your cite does not support and even contradict you: “Nishikaichi told the Haradas about the attack and the two agreed to help him. Nishikaichi and Yoshio Harada overcame a guard and escaped to destroy Nishikaichi’s plane and papers, then took Niihauans Benehakaka “Ben” Kanahele and his wife Kealoha “Ella” Kanahele prisoner.” ---
**Author:** ![Humbagger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/db5fbb/32.png) [@Humbagger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humbagger)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2026, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/43 "2026-06-19T20:25:53Z")
You are actually making a fairly good and valid comparison, one in which the concentration camps seems significantly worse than the POW camps. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2026, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/44 "2026-06-19T21:41:33Z")
They were definitely worse in most respects especially that they existed at all. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/45 "2026-06-20T01:09:24Z")
My colleague escaped from From Germany on the Kindertransport. At first he was working on a farm in England, but then some functionary decided that he was an enemy alien and he was deported to a POW camp in an island in the St. Laurence near Quebec City. Then he was moved to a different camp near Montreal (Ile Ste. Helene, where Expo 67 was held). In both places he was mixed with a bunch of German POWs, which was not very pleasant. Eventually, the authorities decided this was silly and allowed a Jewish businessman in Montreal to sponsor him. He enrolled as a student at McGill, stayed and got a PhD and became a very distinguished professor. His tenure at McGill spanned 72 years from student through professor emeritus, the longest in the school’s history when he died in 2013. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/46 "2026-06-20T01:19:51Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Families had to live in dormitories with no privacy so there was no dignity and the weather was generally horrible. Same with POWs. And the evil thing was that many were US Citizens. Of course, Imperial Japanese citizens would be interned as 'enemy aliens" just like Germans. And the “No-No boys” would have been sent to prison. > [@hajario](#): > > They were definitely worse in most respects especially that they existed at all. For the US Citizens of Japanese descent, yes- estimates range from half of those interned to 2/3rds. Mind you, it was sold as a way to protect them- and of course, there would have been hate crimes against them. But the real reason for many American lawmakers was racism. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/47 "2026-06-20T01:31:31Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Same with POWs. Yes but this was a bunch of men, not spouses. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/48 "2026-06-20T02:41:00Z")
A few years ago on “Who Do You Think You Are” Chelsea Handler learned about her grandfather who was a POW in Iowa. She was raised Jewish and was apprehensive about what she might find out. She was relieved to find out he was a draftee with an unremarkable military career. He was captured in the early part of Operation Dragoon (the invasion of southern France). IIRC he was already married and after the war he returned to Germany and later emigrated to the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![Ancient\_Nerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed655f/32.png) [@Ancient\_Nerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ancient_Nerd)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/49 "2026-06-20T02:59:12Z")
> [@Railer13](#): > > That would be Lena Horne, and the venue was Camp Robinson in North Little Rock. Thank-you ---
**Author:** ![ricepad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/50 "2026-06-20T04:29:36Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Families had to live in dormitories with no privacy so there was no dignity and the weather was generally horrible. Dormitories? The assembly centers housed them in HORSE STALLS. Stalls that had not been cleaned. Stalls with piles of horse shit. They were given empty sacks and piles of hay to stuff into the sacks to make their beds. The barracks in the camps weren’t horse stalls, but they were no dormitories, either. Families of six in one 20x20 room where the walls were made of green boards that shrunk when they dried, leaving huge gaps. Gaps that bitter, icy cold winds blew through, and when it wasn’t cold, the winds carried so much dust it was almost pointless to sweep. Barracks with community bathroom with no dividers between the toilets or walls between the showers. These were no dormitories. ---
**Author:** ![ricepad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/51 "2026-06-20T04:37:54Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > This is not true. Mind you, the POWs werent a lot less well off, and in some cases about the same. I’m going to guess that you don’t have family that was in one of those camps. You have never visited one of the camps. And you never held your grandmother as she wept at some of the memories of the camps. My father was eight years old when he was imprisoned by his own government, and had committed no crime. That is what makes it worse. German and Italian POWs had taken up arms against the US. My dad? Well, I suppose since he _looked_ like the enemy, better lock up that kid, and all those other kids, too. And their parents. And their grandparents. The government told everybody that it’s for their own safety, but in reality, it was because of (say it with me now): Racism. It was actually more than just racism, though. If it was strictly racist, there would have been mass incarcerations in Hawaii, too. I know there was Hono’uli’uli, but if the military had applied the same criteria in Hawaii as on the mainland, the Hawaiian economy would have crashed. On the mainland, however, Japanese Americans occupied a piece of the American pie that Caucasians wanted. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/52 "2026-06-20T05:16:34Z")
I apologize. That was a very poor choice of words. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/53 "2026-06-20T06:11:25Z")
I recal reading once about a German POW who was captured in the early days of WWII and sent to a POW camp in the Canadian prairies. He managed to escape, and make his way to freedom in the USA. Then the USA entered the war, and he was picked up and sent to an American POW camp. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/54 "2026-06-20T07:25:30Z")
In the UK, POWs were held for a couple of years after 1945 because British soldiers couldn’t all be demobilised immediately, and quite a few were offered the opportunity to stay permanently. One who did became a sporting hero: > **[Bert Trautmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Trautmann)** > > Bernhard Carl "Bert" Trautmann (22 October 1923 – 19 July 2013) was a German professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. > Born in Bremen in 1923, he joined the Jungvolk, the junior section of the Hitler Youth in August 1933. Trautmann joined the Luftwaffe early in the Second World War, and then served as a paratrooper. He was initially sent to occupied Poland, and subsequently fought on the Eastern Front for three years, earning five medals, including an Iron Cross. Later in the war, h... AIUI, the Geneva Conventions allowed for “other ranks” to be put to work on civilian jobs (the Germans sent my father down a coal mine, among other jobs), but officers weren’t. In the Invasion scare of 1940, “enemy alien” civilians were indeed rapidly interned without regard to their political opinions (until an appeal/review system was established). Many were held in the empty hotels and guesthouses on the Isle of Man. One high profile case of complication caught up the film producer husband of the entertainment star Gracie Fields. He’d been brought up in the UK but was technically still an Italian citizen. The whole family had been in the US, when Italy’s declaration of war made it impossible for him to come back to the UK. There was a tabloid-driven wave of vilification of her, involving Parliament, which lingered on for some years. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/55 "2026-06-20T12:22:47Z")
[Moderating] While the US treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is certainly a worthwhile topic of discussion, this thread is not the place for it. Please feel free to continue this discussion elsewhere. If you want to share your family’s personal experiences, I would recommend IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/56 "2026-06-20T13:55:29Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > In the Invasion scare of 1940, “enemy alien” civilians were indeed rapidly interned without regard to their political opinions (until an appeal/review system was established). As depicted in the final act of 1943’s [The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Death_of_Colonel_Blimp). ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2026, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/57 "2026-06-21T09:33:18Z")
Italians were employed in agriculture around our town. They didn’t cause any trouble, and I don’t think they were guarded, they locked themselves in at night. Many Italians stayed on after the war and worked in the brickworks around Bedfordshire. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2026, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/58 "2026-06-22T02:02:00Z")
Italian POWs on the island of Orkney, north of the Scottish msinland worked on construction projects and built this remarkable church from spare concrete and whatever they could scrounge up > **[Italian Chapel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Chapel)** > > The Italian Chapel is a highly ornate Catholic chapel on Lamb Holm in Orkney, Scotland. It was built during the Second World War by Italian prisoners of war, who were housed on the previously uninhabited island while they constructed the Churchill Barriers to the east of Scapa Flow. Only the concrete foundations of the other buildings of the prisoner-of-war camp survive. The chapel was not completed until after the end of the war, and was restored in the 1960s and again in the 1990s. It is a p... ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2026, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/59 "2026-06-22T02:45:15Z")
They built a swimming pool (from bottles and concrete) north of town here. Swimming pools require continuous maintenance, and a pool built by and for young men in the 1940’s is too deep and steep by modern standards anyway, but it was solidly built and still in good shape (empty) when I saw it. ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2026, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000/60 "2026-06-22T03:54:30Z")
From a reddit thread regarding Italian POWs after Italy changed sides > **Georgy\_K\_Zhukov•10y ago•Edited 10y ago** > > Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms > > So under the rules of war, POWs can be made to work, but _not_ on projects directly related to war production. Italy’s surrender removed this prohibition, so the Italian internees were of particular value here, allowing employment on military installations and other sites doing work considered vital to the military, but decidedly menial and unglamourous. A few restrictions remained, but not ones that impeded their use in that way. > > In the US, 180 units of ~34,000 Italians in total were organized as follows: > > ```auto > 1 headquarters and headquarters detachment, ISU > 15 ordnance medium automotive maintenance companies > 1 ordnance heavy automotive maintenance company > 98 quartermaster service companies > 5 quartermaster laundry companies > 2 quartermaster depot companies > 9 quartermaster salvage and repair companies > 24 headquarters and headquarters detachments, quartermaster battalions > 1 harbor craft company > 2 engineer general service regiments > 8 engineer dump truck companies > 1 special engineer battalion, together with five companies > 6 engineer maintenance companies > 2 engineer depot companies > 4 engineer petroleum distribution companies > 1 provisional mail and property detachment for The Provos > > ``` > > 1,400 Americans were also seconded to the units in supervisory roles, but many Italians, considered most trustworthy, were given paroled which allowed them to work unsupervised, even off-site. > > Numbers from “History of the Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army 1776-1945” by Lewis and Mewha [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-german-and-italian-pows/1031000.md?page=4)