Were Germans under the same obligation to refuse parole that Americans are?
Also, were German /officers/ imprisoned separately?
Regarding food, my impression is that the European economy was in a state of progressive collapse, so the immediate post-war period had even less food than the end-of-war period.
There were a lot of German prisoners in camps in Minnesota/Iowa/Dakotas during WWII.
They were paid 85¢ per day (Set at the prevailing wage for a farm worker in the 1940’s), the farm owner actually paid the US government, and the POW got paid in ‘camp script’, which was only spendable at the camp PX, where they sold candy, snacks, cigarettes, paper, envelope, stamps, higher-quality soap, shaving supplies, etc.
Here in the upper Midwest, a large part of the population was of German ancestry, with similar names, attended German Lutheran churches, and still spoke some German (older folks, mostly). The POW labor was urgently needed on the farms, and they were thus welcomed. Farmers did offer them extras, but mostly food or such – not cash US money – no place where POWs could spend that.
US policy was to treat POWs well – let them see how America under democracy was better than German Fascism. Romantic involvement was officially discouraged, but … there were many lonely young farm girls, and a great shortage of eligible young American men – it happened. Many German POWs, at the end of the war, got letters from family telling them about current conditions in Germany, and compared it to the opportunities in America, and decided to stay rather than be repatriated. And it was American policy to make this fairly easy.
Germany had been bombed to hell. The economy was tanked, and East Germany had been overrun by the Soviet army. Those young men had little reason to want to go back.
South Africa was a destination for a lot of Italian POWs (German, not so much, because active Boer Nazi sympathizers were considered a liability)
There was one big POW camp constructed in Transvaal and other POWs were kept in smaller camps in other places, where they built some of our most scenic roads and mountain passes.