one of my grandfathers got captured by the brits and he spend the time literally gardening in the cotswolds and was back at home in early 47
the other grandfather was captured by the jugos and had to spend 5 years in a fricking mine and probably only survived because as an electrician he was usefull for them so he got extra rations
so i guess i have the best case szenario and probably one of the worst possible in the family
he was a nonflying officer in the Luftwaffe and just spent the last part of the war in Istria which is probably the best part of jugoslavia to be stationed
maybe he did some shit i really can't say
he really liked talking about the war and told me stories how awsome and funny it was to pillage random villages in russia and take their food but i never hear him say anything about his contacts with the locals in jugoslavia. He once told my mother (his daughter) a story how he one night walking trough a town got a panic attack an emptied his side arm in dark alley. that is the most "negativ" thing i ever heard about his war service
not him, but it's obliviously an exaggeration. still, generally the german army fought way dirtier in yugoslavia than in - for example - france or north africa. a variety of factors: >being allied with a bunch of local factions who wanted to settle scores and asked the germans to oblige >germans exploiting said local animosities >the largest partisan network in all of occupied europe - insurgencies tend to be nasty >german attitude towards slavs >germans being salty about franz ferdinand and that whole line of events >often a bunch of not exactly stellar units in terms of discipline were sent to yugoslavia, especially early on
The fricking Yugoslavs pulled their own genocide on all the Italians and Germans living in their terrorize, regardless if they settlers or natives.
I'd say the Chinese PVA were pretty humane in their treatment of POWs, I think alot mistreatment was due to logistical constraints which prevented the Chinese from stopping starvation or disease in the POW Camps. This is an interesting anecdote from a US Korean war POW, Glenn Scotts, "I was crawling over bodies and going wherever I could to get up and out of this ditch. I figured I would come out at a different location and the sniper wouldn't be expecting me. When I got up through there I found a GI who had been hit in the leg and shot through the mouth. He couldn't talk and he couldn't walk either. His leg was all blown up. When I got up to him, I saw a Chinaman who was also wounded. There were all kinds of weapons there so I just reached out and got one. I was going to shoot him but the GI told me no. I didn't understand what was going on. Then the GI started moaning because his leg was giving him a lot of problems. The Chinese guy reached over and adjusted his leg for him and then I understood. When I started to leave, the Chinaman told me no. He then raised up two or three times and finally he told me, "Go." I did. I bailed out of that ditch and traveled way on through to a creek bed. Why did the Chinaman let me know how to get out? I don't know. He was wounded, but he wasn't dead. I really don't know what his reasons were, but he was taking care of this GI and he helped me get out of the trench." Taken from this website, http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/memoirs/stotts_glenn/index.htm
Supposedly a lot of the Chinese sent to fight in Korea were former KMT fighters from the Chinese civil war and Mao had them used as cannon fodder to rid himself of potential adversaries and to push hard against UN forces. A lot of them were also well versed in combat due to the Chinese civil war and of course fighting the Japanese in WWII.
If her were a former KMT fighter he probably would have been far less likely to harbor any resentment as the US was close allies to the KMT in WWII.
>The fricking Yugoslavs pulled their own genocide on all the Italians and Germans living in their terrorize, regardless if they settlers or natives.
considering what the germans and italians got up to in yugoslavia, you can hardly blame them.
Like what exactly? Yugos squatted in land declared italian since the republic of venice. The only major campaign the italians made was the occupation of albania which is not yugoslavian soil. They were fricking butchers and for decades their crimes have been shushed by the boomer commie party.
>declared italian since the republic of venice
I declare your living room to be rightfully my territory. Hand it over.
>The only major campaign the italians made
My grandpa personally knew dozens of people Italians butchered in WWII - most of them women and children. And very far away from "rightful Italian soil." It's ancient history, there was plenty of death and misery going on in Europe at the time and two wrongs don't make a right: but you need to be pretty myopic to be so shocked and outraged by "anti-Italian persecution" following WWII.
>German soldiers captured by the British had the highest survival rate
If they got caught by the US before the end of the hostilities (and got shipped to the US) their chances were even higher.
A neighbor of mine (long dead) was Afrika Korps and was caught by US troops by the end of 1942 and shipped to POW camps inna US.
He always told us that the americans treated them much better than their own blacks. He also got kicked out (literally) as soon as the war ended. He was in California by the time. They just gave him some money, railway and ship tickets and sent him to New York.
When he returned home he was about 20 pounds heavier than in 1939.
In terms of allies, worst to good >soviet=french Black folk>>>>
[...]
>>>>>>>>>>>>>us(during war)
[...]
>us(pre-war)
My grandpa got captured by the 10th Armored Division in 1945. He was taken at Obersalzberg, worked here an electrician in the Führerhauptquatier. Spend two weeks as POW and then went home. Meanwhile if the Russian capture him, they would charge him with killing 1000 donbabwe childrens and hang him. As former luftwaffe ground crew personal (before he went to Obersalzberg), he exactly know how those Black folk behaved. He burned all his stuff before crossing the border into the soviet occuptaion zone.
On the other hand my Grandma saw US troops pillage and plunder entire homes. But the US quickly cut that shit out in Summer 1945 and the replacing US-Soldier were extremely professional. Also she saved a dog who was beating by a black-american officer. Why? because his Black person ass got rejected lmao
French also acted like Black folk, they still coped about the humiliation of 1940 and let their anger out on civilians like some bullied school shooter. For their dirty work they had their Black person division, acted like the soviets. They couldn't fight anyone with a gun and run away but killed civilians and pows in mass like a true russian. Still Hollywood start worshipping them in the last 5 years. They will talk about muh ww1 ww2 black people but never about the actual performance like in Battle of Gargaynana or their behavior in South Germany 1945.
British regularly tortured German POWs, executed them, and then lied on the paperwork. Probably one of the worst, beat only by the Russians.
Americans and oddly enough the Italians were the best.
I heard of this. Specifically, I heard one of the methods the British used was to withhold rations for long periods, than provide 'feasts' of nothing but Spam, which would cause lethal digestive issues, which they could sweep away as 'natural sickness'.
I heard of this. Specifically, I heard one of the methods the British used was to withhold rations for long periods, than provide 'feasts' of nothing but Spam, which would cause lethal digestive issues, which they could sweep away as 'natural sickness'.
Very natural and organic despite providing no source against overwhelming statistics
It depends on what part of the war you are talking about (like the Germans were treating allied prisoners way better than soviet prisoners). In general, the Allies tended to be the most humane. On the other hand, the Japanese were total psychos.
In WW2? If you were a German captured by the Soviets you could expect to toil away and die in a gulag. If you survived to around 1949 maybe you'd get to return home.
As for the best it probably really doesn't count but German pilots that ditched over Ireland had to stay in camps during the night but during the day they could intermingle with the locals and even go to the pub
>German pilots that ditched over Ireland had to stay in camps during the night but during the day they could intermingle with the locals and even go to the pub
lifehack, if you don't like being at war just leave lmao
>>As for the best it probably really doesn't count but German pilots that ditched over Ireland had to stay in camps during the night but during the day they could intermingle with the locals and even go to the pub
Reminds me the prisoners of the German ship Dresden during WWI in Chile. The Dresden was sunk in the coasts of Chile in 1915 and the survivors were intermittent in an island near the city of Concepcion were they built a little German town, they had farms, a furniture factory and concert hall. They had the support from the German immigrant community in Chile, some ended up marrying local women and staying, while others managed to escape, cross the border into Argentina and sail back to Germany, or went back once they were released in 1919.
On the flip side, I believe the Swiss were near Axis collaborators and treated Allied pilots that crashed/ditched terribly and if memory serves correct some weren’t released for years after the war ended.
The Swiss were allies of the Nazis. Their "neutrality" was a polite fiction the allies agreed to pretend was true because digging the frickers out would've been a bastard unless you wanted to crack atoms over their cities. By that point no one had a taste for it.
>1949
lucky bastard
some got home only in the mid 50s
https://i.imgur.com/aNKKjtm.jpg
Which nation was the most humane in treating pows? Which was the worst?
Germans and Italians interned in Canada were said to have the best POW experiences
American POW camps were occasionally hit and miss. One German officer wrote that he was shuttled around a few camps and one or two were badly-run, so he had a camel-like experience - growing nice and fat in one camp, then losing weight in another, repeat. Eventually he got fed up and just petitioned the camp commandant to send him home, and he was.
Which makes you kind of wonder, what the frick were the Allies thinking? Did they just forget the POWs they were holding, and just fed them until they were reminded to send them back?
p.s. of note however the worst that the American camps ever did was to steal medals and provide inadequate food. there was never any actual mistreatment.
>Did they just forget the POWs they were holding
You generally don't want to send back POWs back home immediately after the war is over. Shit might start up again (remote possibility after WWII - but still,) a bunch of traumatized vets arriving back all at once and roaming the devastated hulk of their country tends to lead to instability and you might want to see if some of them turn out to be war criminals you want to prosecute right away or if they hold intel of any value. Also paper-work and logistics were way slower back then and the number of POWs was way higher - especially when you're busy shipping millions of your own people and all their shit back home.
America ran a ridiculously effective intelligence gathering operation on german POWs that essentially boiled down to treating them so well they wanted to share information. A bunch of the POWs became US citizens after the war
My grandfather grew up next to one of the POW camps for Germans and he distinctly remembers one day a German SS officer hanged by the other POWs because he planned a breakout and to kill some of the guards.
America ran a ridiculously effective intelligence gathering operation on german POWs that essentially boiled down to treating them so well they wanted to share information. A bunch of the POWs became US citizens after the war
Stole that one from a German master interrogator who just became the friend of POWs. Most effective one they had. I'm sure there's a youtube video about him.
Stole that one from a German master interrogator who just became the friend of POWs. Most effective one they had. I'm sure there's a youtube video about him.
I read memoirs from American POW camps and they seem a bit different from what you are describing. Beatings, torture, especially israelites were behaving like...Soviet comissars. And the biggest surprise? Blacks were the most chill and friendly ones.
>yes POWs in Missouri who could walk the town and even work would be abused and tortured >my source? why my ass of course.
I think it widely varied depending the camp.
My great-grandpa ended up in a german Stalhag early in the war, what he was really doing was exactly the same shit he would have done at home = live in farmhand. By his own account he never actually lacked anything.
I think the worse you could land as an allied POW was in the hands of the japs, by a wide margin.
Being a Soviet in German hands was arguably almost as bad+you might get shot on liberation. I've heard nothing but basically paradise stories about American POW camps from germans. My 3rd generation German grandpa (in middle school at the time) would get sent around to hit up the other farms and swap POWs with other farmers so they could get dudes from their region of Germany on their farm.
[...]
I think it widely varied depending the camp.
My great-grandpa ended up in a german Stalhag early in the war, what he was really doing was exactly the same shit he would have done at home = live in farmhand. By his own account he never actually lacked anything.
I think the worse you could land as an allied POW was in the hands of the japs, by a wide margin.
German treatment of POWs varied wildly, but you could depend on the Gestapo for plenty of bad touch. Generally though the camps were decent in treatment and supplies until the war effort started to turn seriously (but this mirrors literally every country in war post Geneva).
Being a Soviet in German hands was arguably almost as bad+you might get shot on liberation. I've heard nothing but basically paradise stories about American POW camps from germans. My 3rd generation German grandpa (in middle school at the time) would get sent around to hit up the other farms and swap POWs with other farmers so they could get dudes from their region of Germany on their farm.
) was in the USA, btw. My impression is that farms in his area of the midwest were basically all their own subcamps
>German treatment depended wildly on whether or not you were soviet*
3.3 million soviet pows out of 5.7 died in German captivity so quit your white washing. The morgenthau plan never happened but I sure wish it did.
This guy managed to get away with a lot of shit as a German prisoner
>One attempt occurred when POWs were being transported in open trucks through Italy. Upham jumped from the truck at a bend and managed to get 400 yards away before being recaptured. He had broken an ankle in jumping from the moving truck.
>On another occasion, he tried to escape a camp by climbing its fences in broad daylight. He became entangled in barbed wire when he fell down between the two fences. When a guard pointed a pistol at his head and threatened to shoot, Upham calmly ignored him and lit a cigarette. This scene was photographed by the Germans as "evidence" and later reprinted in a biography
>After this incident, Upham was considered dangerous and was placed in solitary confinement. He was only allowed to exercise alone, while accompanied by two armed guards and while covered by a machine gun in a tower. Despite these precautions, Upham bolted from his little courtyard, straight through the German barracks and out through the front gate of the camp. The guard in the machine-gun tower later told other prisoners that he refrained from shooting Upham out of respect, and as he could see German soldiers coming up the road whom he expected to capture Upham. Upham was soon recaptured and sent to the infamous Oflag IV-C (Colditz)
>During his transfer on a civilian train while guarded by two Germans, Upham made his final escape attempt. Upham was only allowed to visit the toilet when the train was travelling at high speed to prevent him from jumping through a window. Nevertheless, Upham prised open the toilet window and jumped onto the tracks, knocking himself unconscious. After awakening, he escaped into a nearby orchard, but the even rows of trees and lack of undergrowth provided poor cover and he was recaptured after 12 hours.
In ww2? best treatment was probably brits if you were a german pov, worst either soviet or japanese. grampa was captured on the eastern front and sent to work building railroad tracks in siberia. somehow survived and made it back west after being released a few years after the war ended. other relatives in the war almost all died on the front or in soviet pow camps.
>Blacks were the most chill and friendly ones.
i read similar notions in the memories of Ernst Jünger and Ernst von Salomon's "Questionnaire", describing black americans as being comparatively sympathetic to the germans. something along the lines of "both of us are second class". french colonial troops on the other hand were ruthless
Americans or British were probably the best to get taken prisoner by. Germany wasn't too bad as long as you weren't considered a subhuman. Soviets were really bad news, and if you were taken prisoner by the Japanese there was a good chance you wouldn't even make it to a camp alive, and towards the end you'd have a decent chance of getting butchered and eaten.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Gaertner
My favorite POW story is this guy, Georg Gartner, a German captured in Tunisia who was due to get shipped back from the US at the end of the war to his hometown, which was now part of communist Poland. Obviously not too keen on living in a communist shithole, he escaped a few days before he was due to get sent back, forged a new identity as Dennis Whiles, got a decent job as a architect, an American wife, and kids. He was for some decades one of America's most wanted men. 40 years later he gave himself up because he would refuse to discuss his past and his wife threatened to leave him if he didn't tell her the truth. The FBI didn't know what to charge him with and the Immigration authority refused to deport him because he didn't meet the definition of an immigrant. So they offered him citizenship and he moved to Colorado and lived happily there. Eventually died of old age in 2013.
>40 years later he gave himself up because he would refuse to discuss his past and his wife threatened to leave him if he didn't tell her the truth
Did the wife hang around when she learned?
Sounds comfy tbh. Shame the wife was a b***h, but I'm glad it worked out for him
She loved him and stayed with him, and she was the one who pushed for him to come out to the public a year later. However she eventually divorced him some years later because he suddenly left to go back to see his family in Germany for like two years and didn't contact her at all. However they reconciled when he came back, and although they didn't remarry they remained very close until the end of his life.
Americans or British were probably the best to get taken prisoner by. Germany wasn't too bad as long as you weren't considered a subhuman. Soviets were really bad news, and if you were taken prisoner by the Japanese there was a good chance you wouldn't even make it to a camp alive, and towards the end you'd have a decent chance of getting butchered and eaten.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Gaertner
My favorite POW story is this guy, Georg Gartner, a German captured in Tunisia who was due to get shipped back from the US at the end of the war to his hometown, which was now part of communist Poland. Obviously not too keen on living in a communist shithole, he escaped a few days before he was due to get sent back, forged a new identity as Dennis Whiles, got a decent job as a architect, an American wife, and kids. He was for some decades one of America's most wanted men. 40 years later he gave himself up because he would refuse to discuss his past and his wife threatened to leave him if he didn't tell her the truth. The FBI didn't know what to charge him with and the Immigration authority refused to deport him because he didn't meet the definition of an immigrant. So they offered him citizenship and he moved to Colorado and lived happily there. Eventually died of old age in 2013.
most inhumane was far and away the Japanese, just look up 'Rape of Nanking'
Most humane was probably the Americans, see
America gets disqualified because the pacific war reached Eastern Front levels of taking no prisoners and fricking the absolute shit out of any that ended up in your hands. Hard to blame them, since the Japanese started it, but Marines in the pacific gave as much as they got once they realized what sick bastards the Japs could be.
My grandpa actually was a camp guard for Italian POWs in the war.
The funny part is that grandpa was only a 15 year old cadet at this time. The Brits figured that the Italians were not exactly dangerous or a big risk. Turns out they were right, gramps mostly just had to keep local Scottish women away from them.
My grandfather grew up in Argentina too, so he spoke Spanish, which was close enough to banter with the Italians
Argie here can confirm, spanish here in argentina has many words and slang from italian because of the huge italian inmigration. People from the capital kinda sound italian to non spanish speakers.
I often hear italians speak and can more or less understand most of what they are saying
>The Italians loved the UK (mainly Scotland) so much that many of them stayed.
My grandpa actually was a camp guard for Italian POWs in the war.
The funny part is that grandpa was only a 15 year old cadet at this time. The Brits figured that the Italians were not exactly dangerous or a big risk. Turns out they were right, gramps mostly just had to keep local Scottish women away from them.
My grandfather grew up in Argentina too, so he spoke Spanish, which was close enough to banter with the Italians
>My grandpa actually was
My gramps was a "forced laborer" (aka - slave) in munition factory in Treuembritzen. Poles and Italian POVs ware working there.
When the front line came close, Germans executed all Italian POVs, than tried to do the same with Poles, but they fled.
When Soviets came in and saw it, they killed all the german men they could find.
>When the front line came close, Germans executed all Italian POVs, than tried to do the same with Poles, but they fled. >When Soviets came in and saw it, they killed all the german men they could find.
lmao, more like the Soviets killed them and blamed the Germans like they did for numerous massacres while the allies looked the other way or outright helped them
German POWs >writing letters to Germany on comparatively expensive stationary out of a private post office >lavish meals >encouraged to play sports and use the full library >trained to work construction, farms and ranches so they can rebuild their lives >separated from the SS to stop reprisals >taken to idyllic country towns to interact with locals who treated them like cheeky rascals instead of enemy combatants
Lavish as in pretty good, and since a good portion of them were put on farms to work as hands to replace the soldiers who'd normally do that, rationing is much less of an issue when you're the supplier.
>How did they get lavish meals when the whole country was rationing?
German Prisoners in the US were subject to the same Nutrition standards as US civilians, but American civilian rationing was very very light in contrast anywhere else. Grain and cereals was unrationed for the whole war, meaning there was no calorie limit. Meat was rationed to 1 kg per week (in contrast, British meat ration was 0.5kg per month), Sugar was rationed to 300g per week, which is actually a lot of sugar
Letter written home by German POW
>There are 50 of us living in airy, roomy barracks, scenery reminds one of Mecklenburg. So, dear parents do not worry. And dear mother, naturally something about the food. it is no fairy tale. We have cake almost daily, all kinds of fruit, Kellogg's flakes with milk, roasts, salads, real coffee, crackers, etc. I often think how all of you would rejoice, and how urgently the children need it all. Today we have 3 large, fat pancakes and an omelet just as a side dish. Though food is not the most important thing it gladdens me. To me it is very important as I live just as on vacation.
Brits and Germans treated theirs the best. Russians kinda got the short end of the stick on the eastern front but that was more of a consequence of stretched supply lines and suddenly having like 3 million more mouths to feed than anything else.
I guess you could also count Americans since they might have treated their POWs terribly and intentionally starved them to death but officially they were just disarmed enemy combatants.
The standard for treating POW's is the same as local civilians. There was no food to go around the winter of 45 in basically all of Europe past the Rhine, and the French were in no mood to ship their food over to the Germans.
This just emphasizes for me really that Germany has no chance against US industrial potential - America barely felt a dip in their living standards while outproducing them 10fold and supplying USSR and UK at the same time.
Correct. The industrial might of the US is something people don't really comprehend, though there's always the cope of 'just kill enough Americans that they don't think killing you is worth it' as a way Germany could have won the war that was never going to happen.
>the cope of 'just kill enough Americans that they don't think killing you is worth it
I am not sure if it is cope. One video of dozens US soldiers rushing across open field and getting shredded to last man by enemy artilery like the one we had of ruskies last month and public outcry would make them pull out of a conflict abroad.
1 year ago
Anonymous
Good thing they didn't have social media in WWII then isn't it, you illiterate moron, and Germany's Uboat campaign meant that the average American had a reason to see Germany rendered toothless even before we get into their alliance with the nips or the various atrocities that were discovered on the liberation campaign.
1 year ago
Anonymous
depends on if the US invaded a third world shithole or the next superpower wannabe thought a surprise attack on the US navy at port is a good idea.
1 year ago
Anonymous
As others pointed out, there's a difference in motivations between fighting Tusken Raiders in Tatooine (Afghanistan) VS fighting against two hostile great powers which declared war on you.
The Soviet public was pretty demoralized by their own Afghan war after all, but that doesn't mean they were demoralized by the cataclysmic losses they suffered in WW2
1 year ago
Anonymous
>what was Pearl Harbor
How many times will morons keep making this mistake? Do they seriously think that just because the US military doesn’t take high casualties that means it’s unwilling to suffer any casualties?
1 year ago
Anonymous
Depends. People underestimate american bloodlust. Look what we did over some skyscrapers getting rekt. We lost the bloodlust after destroying saddam, but you either are young or non american if u dont remember how people felt after 9/11
1 year ago
Anonymous
Killing Americans pisses Americans off. It makes them want to genocide you, not leave you alone. The zips tried the 'just be too horrible to stand' tactic and it didn't help them. For decades after WW2 ended, there were Americans - veterans of the war and civilians alike - who said that we shouldn't have allowed the Japanese to surrender at all and wiped them out instead. And they absolutely fricking meant it.
1 year ago
Anonymous
>You are a doomed degenerate shithole and we will easily defeat you X 5
Account from a jap defender near Iwo Jima: "We were told the Americans would run back to their landing crafts as soon as they encountered our machine guns. The first ten die during disembarking. But they kept coming. Next thing we saw were flamethrowers burning us out of caves."
Also note that the state of Louisiana alone produced and refined more oil than the entirety of Germany and occupied territories.
Krauts were literally fricked since before the day they were born
>US was feeding the fricking german POWs all this stuff and won't even feed it's own citizen prisoners decently
Not saying we should let criminals live like kings or treat POWs like shit but come on man.
POWs were soldiers taken who fought and surrendered honorably, then conducted themselves well. Criminals are parasitic vermin who harm society and then get uppity when you dare to punish them for it.
europeans treated each other alright, the mongol horde predictably was another story. chinks be chinks and asiatics be asiatics, muslims just raped everyone and the holocaust never happened (but should have). war is chaos and psycho people everywhere will find their way to torture, maim, rape and what more for their enjoyment during it
US & Commonwealth forces, but only if you're German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Pole or any other person that got conscripted to fight on the western front. You just got shipped off to some fancy resort back in the US so you'd just get loose lipped and blab. Little less points for the UK because you could be bombed still.
>Captured by the French.
Hope you like clearing out minefields with no tools after the end of the war. RIP you if you collaborated in any way. >Captured by the Russians.
Off to the Glug with you until 1950. Also Rape. >Captured by the Romanians
Off to the Russians for you. >Captured by the Germans
Standard to below standard treatment. Unless you're Russian, then RIP you. Slightly less RIP if you're Italian, but still RP. Or if you're Belgian you likely just walked out and went home in the middle of the war. >Captured by the Japanese
VERY fast katana swinging at increibly hihg speed at ur neck >Captured by the Italians.
Anywhere from good to 'meh'. Provided it wasn't in africa, and provided you aren't black. >Captured by the Hungarians.
How do you feel to be in your very first snuff film?
>Captured anywhere in the Yugo territories.
Thats a rapin'
No kidding. My grandpa got attached to a unit that had to recover, catalogue, and bury the dead from Japanese POW camps during the occupation. That was some horrific shit. I don't know how true it is, but he once told me some other guys caught a Jap who was an officer or something in one of those camps and lynched him, shot him in the head for good measure, and dumped his body in the river.
My great grandpa was a medic and recovered bodies after battles in the pacific. He told me when i was a little shit that one time they found a teenage soldier hiding in the bushes and the kid rushed them with a stick instead of surrendering. I think that bothered him more than picking up limbs. I dont know why he told me, i was like 6. He always hated the jap govt but didnt seem to mind normal civvie japs. My other great grandpa stormed the beaches of normandy and occupied japan and said the germans were homosexuals and the japs were prostitutes lol i used to have the kimono and katana the family he stayed with gifted him. The kimono said eagle sun or something similiar in moon rune on the inside bit.
Lmao no be a yank in an imperial pow camp was the closest thing to hell one can experience. Asians in general are beasts that indulge in all kinds of torture as passtime
by the French. >Hope you like clearing out minefields with no tools after the end of the war. RIP you if you collaborated in any way.
Depended. My grandfather was POW in France, he was sent to a French farmer do work there for some time and for what i heard he was on absolutely OK terms with that farmer.
definitely Britain for the actual belligerents. Ireland and Sweden were the neutral nations that actually treated prisoners humanely unlike the swiss who deserved every accidental firebombing they ever got
False. I don't know do you mean in WW2 or the recent break up of yugoslavia, but I've spent my time in Bosnia 5 years before the war and during and 7 years after war. Rape wasn't common amongs POWs, mostly torture and mostly by the chetniks amd the Serbs. Walking on glass, hot embers, water torture and such. We have caught one ARBiH fighter trying to take a piss in one of the bottles that was supposed to be water for POWs but compared what other sides were doing it was pretty mild. He was chewed out by his squad leader on the spot though I think he was later tasked with cleaning the toilets the POWs used but don't hold my word on that, lots of years ago and lots of concussions ago
>Hope you like clearing out minefields with no tools after the end of the war. RIP you if you collaborated in any way.
Based. Traitors deserve death and forcing your enemy to clean up their mess is only fair. If they die? Oh well, at least a real person wasn't hurt.
>Captured anywhere in the Yugo territories. >Thats a rapin'
In WWII? By muslims? What the frick are you on about?
And if you mean the recent wars - Croats and Bosnians treated POWs pretty decently. Part of their agenda was portraying themselves as the morally superior party after all. Often they'd record their POWs to counter Serb propaganda that Croats and Bosnians were skinning POWs alive and doing satanic black magic shit with their guts or whatever the coked out propaganda writers in Belgrade came up with that week. You can find plenty of those recordings on youtube actually. And if there were crimes against them - it was usually getting slapped a bit or just getting shot straight out. Which might not be nice but beats torture any day.
As far as Serbs are concerned - yeah no shit. In many Croatian and Bosnian units keeping a spare bullet or grenade on you somewhere to blow your brains out before capture was pretty much standard procedure. One of the joys of having depraved hillbillies with an intense interest in the male body as neighbours.
>europeans treated each other alright
Blood is my daylight and darkness too.
The blessing of night has been gouged from my cheeks
Bearing with it my more lucky sight.
Within those holes, for tears, fierce fire inflamed
The bleeding socket as if for brain a balm –
While my bright eyes died on my own palm
It depends on the nationality of the prisoner, for example French POWs taken by the Germans were usually not kept in camps and were instead sent to German families to do farm work
It al depends on the war and which nation is taking which nation prisoner. US treated japanese prisoners poorly but considering japanese soldiers were fantaicle this was part the course. Americans treated European prisoners better and some even immigrated to the US after the war
My great-grandfather spoke German, so they had him working as an interpreter
Craziest thing was his cousin was a Wehrmacht general who surrendered himself and his men quite amicably in September of ‘44
I'd say the Chinese PVA were pretty humane in their treatment of POWs, I think alot mistreatment was due to logistical constraints which prevented the Chinese from stopping starvation or disease in the POW Camps. This is an interesting anecdote from a US Korean war POW, Glenn Scotts, "I was crawling over bodies and going wherever I could to get up and out of this ditch. I figured I would come out at a different location and the sniper wouldn't be expecting me. When I got up through there I found a GI who had been hit in the leg and shot through the mouth. He couldn't talk and he couldn't walk either. His leg was all blown up. When I got up to him, I saw a Chinaman who was also wounded. There were all kinds of weapons there so I just reached out and got one. I was going to shoot him but the GI told me no. I didn't understand what was going on. Then the GI started moaning because his leg was giving him a lot of problems. The Chinese guy reached over and adjusted his leg for him and then I understood. When I started to leave, the Chinaman told me no. He then raised up two or three times and finally he told me, "Go." I did. I bailed out of that ditch and traveled way on through to a creek bed. Why did the Chinaman let me know how to get out? I don't know. He was wounded, but he wasn't dead. I really don't know what his reasons were, but he was taking care of this GI and he helped me get out of the trench." Taken from this website, http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/memoirs/stotts_glenn/index.htm
The USA & Canada/UK were indisputably the best caretaker of POWs in WW2.
German POWs in American custody even managed to gain weight and work for minimum wage, so essentially while their relatives were getting bombed in Germany itself, the prisoners were living pretty comfortably with basic amenities and a peaceful environment to make some money. They had shelter, healthcare, plentiful food, and fricking wages.
I think Wauwilermoos in Switzerland was one of the worst places, since you had a double-whammy of Swiss officers (many of them National Socialists who sympathized with the Axis) who were pissed about the Allies bombing their towns, and rapey Soviet inmates who the Swiss officers allowed/encouraged to rape yankee/brit/frog prisoners.
Also since Switzerland wasn't at war their reaction after the war to allegations of mistreatment was simply "lol, lmao".
>Culler's good clothes were confiscated by Béguin in return for "old dirty rags." Sent to barracks 9, Culler was repeatedly raped by internees from Soviet Union. He reported this to camp commandant Béguin and some of the guards who laughed and sent him back. The next days they even closed Culler's barrack at night. The torture did not end until new internees became Culler's roommates: "I was bleeding everywhere", Culler said later. Culler fell seriously ill and was transferred to hospital.[
I think Wauwilermoos in Switzerland was one of the worst places, since you had a double-whammy of Swiss officers (many of them National Socialists who sympathized with the Axis) who were pissed about the Allies bombing their towns, and rapey Soviet inmates who the Swiss officers allowed/encouraged to rape yankee/brit/frog prisoners.
Also since Switzerland wasn't at war their reaction after the war to allegations of mistreatment was simply "lol, lmao".
>Culler's good clothes were confiscated by Béguin in return for "old dirty rags." Sent to barracks 9, Culler was repeatedly raped by internees from Soviet Union. He reported this to camp commandant Béguin and some of the guards who laughed and sent him back. The next days they even closed Culler's barrack at night. The torture did not end until new internees became Culler's roommates: "I was bleeding everywhere", Culler said later. Culler fell seriously ill and was transferred to hospital.[
Hot damn, Ghaddafi was right about the ~~*swiss*~~
If you got captured by an eastern power then it's pretty grim. Japs were bad, Chinese were bad, soviets were bad.
Pretty much anyone that isn't western christian is awful to be imprisoned by. That's not to say the west doesn't do gnarly shit to real baddies, but their treatment of the normal rank and file is humane. Expect to be fed and sheltered.
Brits and Germans treated theirs the best. Russians kinda got the short end of the stick on the eastern front but that was more of a consequence of stretched supply lines and suddenly having like 3 million more mouths to feed than anything else.
I guess you could also count Americans since they might have treated their POWs terribly and intentionally starved them to death but officially they were just disarmed enemy combatants.
>Germans >Treated their best
Being a Soviet POW in German custody literally had a higher mortality rate than being a soldier in active combat. The German government intentionally starved them or used them as slaves because they did not consider Russians to be worth of any dignified treatment >t. Actual knower
The first gassing in Auschwitz was tested on soviet POW. And it wasn't the last.
So bad treatment and no food was just one way to die for a soviet POW.
My opa was a nco in the luftwaffe and then a pow in a british camp - before he died he talked a bit about it. He said near the end of the war everyone knew it was over and you were only fighting on to not be captured as a pow by the russians. The hope was to surrender to the british or americans if you could. He was treated well.
Brits and Germans treated theirs the best. Russians kinda got the short end of the stick on the eastern front but that was more of a consequence of stretched supply lines and suddenly having like 3 million more mouths to feed than anything else.
I guess you could also count Americans since they might have treated their POWs terribly and intentionally starved them to death but officially they were just disarmed enemy combatants.
Anglo nations famously treated other Whites very well, especially British, there's a lot of stories of how Germans in Britain had it. Years back I met an old German man in a park who was visiting Britain and talking about his fond memories of his years in Britain... as a POW. To him it was just >That nice time I had in Britain
like >Those were the days, wish I could go back
British were not treated badly by Germans, but towards the end of the war some bad cases of how Americans were treated by the Germans.
I'm Polish, my grandfather fought in september '39. They surrendered somewhere out near the coast and he was able to dive in the bushes while on the way to stalag (POW camp for enlisted). He just walked 500km back home sleeping at people's houses.
The Wehrmacht wasn't so bad at first, but things got progressively more crazy, especially after all that went down in the east.
What was the occupation like for the average Catholic pole? My great grandfather left Plock/Potsk (Donovan the Anglo name) in 1904 to not die to the Japs but I’d imagine I had some cousins that got wrecked.
The americans/anglos are the most humane when it comes to post 1900 POWs treatments. Although the american civil war showcased on how brutal the americans can get when it comes to their treatment of POWs. The civil war was considered America's most brutal war for a reason, and its not because of casualties.
>Although the american civil war showcased on how brutal the americans can get when it comes to their treatment of POWs.
That was just pre Geneva Convention norms. The idea of "POWs" being anything at all is a modern one. In the past it was expected that only officers were worth keeping and their grunts would simply be massacred or enslaved.
Italians were surprisingly cruel, they held a particular loathe against italian americans serving US army, they considered them traitors. Against ethiopians tho they really did stuff like iron branding and crucifixion. Rodolfo Graziani in particular after a bloody terrorist attacks against italian civvies practically made legal to hunt down the locals like animals. Hundreds of thousands butchered
Japanese and Soviets were the worst, Americans were the best, followed by the Brits. Germans are interesting in this regard because early war they were decent and late war it got pretty bad. (For POWs specifically, not the treatment of prisoners in general) From my understanding, the Italians were ok, depending on the camp.
German POWs in Canada were sometimes used as road workers. This didn't make the history books, I have it from two separate first hand accounts that Polish exile pilots in training would periodically fly over them and bomb them with rocks, many were seriously injured or killed. While discouraged such behavior was tolerated by the EATS
Not the fun vacation in the woods its sometimes made out to be.
>Officially, none of the more than 425,000 Axis POWs kept in the United States should have stayed there after the war—POWs are supposed to be repatriated after the war is over. It is believed that about 1 percent of Germans did stay
The "Five Eyes Nation" (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) treated POWs the best.
The Japanese were the worst. The Japs would sometimes tourniquet the limbs of prisoners one at a time so that they could sever and eat them over the course of several days. That way the meat was kept alive and fresh. That's just one awful among countless monstrous things they did to both POWs and civilians.
It's hard reconciling the behavior of their soldiers in the war with Japanese people I've met in person. They've always come across as being kind and polite members of a refined and sophisticated culture. I guess they've shifted away from the bloodthirsty, samurai death cult tradition over time.
Here's an old timey song which echos the sentiment of American soldiers fighting in the Pacific and their hatred of the "cruel Japs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEoqBatgJE
The "Five Eyes Nation" (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) treated POWs the best.
The Japanese were the worst. The Japs would sometimes tourniquet the limbs of prisoners one at a time so that they could sever and eat them over the course of several days. That way the meat was kept alive and fresh. That's just one awful among countless monstrous things they did to both POWs and civilians.
It's hard reconciling the behavior of their soldiers in the war with Japanese people I've met in person. They've always come across as being kind and polite members of a refined and sophisticated culture. I guess they've shifted away from the bloodthirsty, samurai death cult tradition over time.
Here's an old timey song which echos the sentiment of American soldiers fighting in the Pacific and their hatred of the "cruel Japs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEoqBatgJE
>work in aged care >hear a resident crying >staff have accidently given him rice with his lunch >his memories of 'mealtime' as a slave on the Thai/Burma railway come back
One fist-sized chunk of brown rice a day. That was it. They had to sneak bugs, lizards and whatever when the guards weren't looking.
Yeah they had it super rough. I'm guessing you've read Bridge over the River Kwai anyone who hasn't definitely should.
I wonder if there's a US equivilant story?
Congratulations to your Great Uncle for making it to 96
He spends his time now enjoying an electric blanket and various wool cardigans.
Funny thing that always made me think, he hated the Japs for obvious reasons but after the war he was stationed in Egypt and for the love of God the disgust he has for them is amazing. He literally says it was the most vile place filled with the most filthy subhuman people ever.
There was also that movie made about the Olympic runner Air Corps guy who became a Jap POW.
Worst thing to be was a Chink POW of the Japs.
Hell they bayoneted babies at the Rape of Nanking so bad that the fricking Nazi became the Bugman “Schindler”.
Hope they wouldn’t take you to Unit 731 or whatever it was to be human Guinea pig.
Frick the Japs…they deserved 3 or 4 more atomic enemas for what they did as conquerors.
Same thing happened with Krauts. Before we liberated their Death Camps, they were treated okay, but after we saw that they had spent their time just flat-out murdering civilians, we got almost as nasty to them as they had been to their victims.
Even now Japanese people are expected to adhere to pretty strict social norms. When you look how rigid their school lives and office cultures are it's not hard to see how the whole country used to be hyper-militarized.
I think japanese were a weird one. Big cultural difference in that if you were captured, you were considered dishonored and basically already dead. Not that any of that excuses any of the crap they did to prisoners. Even as prisoners there were incidents where they decided en masse to pick up rocks and rush the guards to be gunned down
>be captured by Italy >send to pow camp >driver misses the camp and drive you to a farm >misses twice >finally arrive in pow camp >almost no guards >see prisoners driving bikes together with prison guards >prisoner count in twice week, no one knows how many are there >Italian camp commander talk with hands >two weeks later you released and walk back in the front lines >prison guard present you with a wine and a bread
The US captured about 1 million German soldiers at the end of WWII, set them up in a prison camp and starved them to death. So I guess the US is the most humane.
Met an interesting old geezer once, he was an old Legionaire, managed to become POW in 1954 in Vietnam and again in 1962 in Algeria. He said he got tortured in both countries, but that the Algerians were just mere amateurs compared to the Vietnamese.
Read a pretty good autobiography called Roll Me Over by an American soldier, Raymond Gantter, in the second world war. Near the end of the book he talks about how his unit liberated a POW camp in Germany. When they arrived the camp's guards were executing several of the camp's Slavic prisoners (most of whom were Poles) but fled when the US troops arrived. A few of the guards weren't able to get away in time and the Slavs grabbed them and started to beat the shit out of them, by Gantter stopped them. He wrote after he's not sure if he regrets that or not. The prisoners treated the American troops like kings, with the strongest of them grabbing Gantter and "bouncing" him (throwing him up in the air and catching him) so vigorously that he hit the ceiling multiple times. They also tried to give the troops a feast with what they had on hand, which was thin-sliced potatoes cooked on a cast iron stove.
There were French POWs in the camp as well, who mostly kept to themselves. They received better treatment and more food than the Slavs.
Gantter also states that the only time he ever brandished his weapon at German civilians was when some of the POWs left that camp and relaxed on the lawns of the houses outside (which had a full view of the yard were corpses still hung) and the civilians came out to scream at and spit on the prisoners.
In WW2? Going by number of POWs who just decided to stay, best was US. Worst were the Soviets going by number of prisoners deliberately starved to death. But honestly I don't have any sympathy for that, if someone invaded my country I wouldn't want them treated well, I'd want them dead or worked as slaves until they died.
>most humane
Australian. POWs from some nations weren’t even kept imprisoned and had paid jobs on farms & such. Where is a demoralised Italian conscript in rural Australia gonna escape to, after all >least humane
Japan probably edges out the USSR, barely. I don’t know how the Soviets treated non German prisoners either.
Germany. They let American prisoners in one instance build a small glider plane recreationally that the Americans planned to use to escape. Camp fell before that though.
Though your treatment depended on your race.
In WWII, the US threated them best
Japan and russia treated them pretty bad, hard to say which was worse, probably russia.
Ironically Germany treated POWs better than brittain did.
German soldiers captured by the British had the highest survival rate. I don't know if you consider survival rate to be the best metric though.
one of my grandfathers got captured by the brits and he spend the time literally gardening in the cotswolds and was back at home in early 47
the other grandfather was captured by the jugos and had to spend 5 years in a fricking mine and probably only survived because as an electrician he was usefull for them so he got extra rations
so i guess i have the best case szenario and probably one of the worst possible in the family
If you were a german soldier in yugoslavia you 100% did some war crimey shit tbf
he was a nonflying officer in the Luftwaffe and just spent the last part of the war in Istria which is probably the best part of jugoslavia to be stationed
This doesn’t take away from him doing war crimey shit, if anything it adds to it.
maybe he did some shit i really can't say
he really liked talking about the war and told me stories how awsome and funny it was to pillage random villages in russia and take their food but i never hear him say anything about his contacts with the locals in jugoslavia. He once told my mother (his daughter) a story how he one night walking trough a town got a panic attack an emptied his side arm in dark alley. that is the most "negativ" thing i ever heard about his war service
>If you were a german soldier in yugoslavia you 100% did some war crimey shit
If you actually believe this you're moronic
not him, but it's obliviously an exaggeration. still, generally the german army fought way dirtier in yugoslavia than in - for example - france or north africa. a variety of factors:
>being allied with a bunch of local factions who wanted to settle scores and asked the germans to oblige
>germans exploiting said local animosities
>the largest partisan network in all of occupied europe - insurgencies tend to be nasty
>german attitude towards slavs
>germans being salty about franz ferdinand and that whole line of events
>often a bunch of not exactly stellar units in terms of discipline were sent to yugoslavia, especially early on
The fricking Yugoslavs pulled their own genocide on all the Italians and Germans living in their terrorize, regardless if they settlers or natives.
Supposedly a lot of the Chinese sent to fight in Korea were former KMT fighters from the Chinese civil war and Mao had them used as cannon fodder to rid himself of potential adversaries and to push hard against UN forces. A lot of them were also well versed in combat due to the Chinese civil war and of course fighting the Japanese in WWII.
If her were a former KMT fighter he probably would have been far less likely to harbor any resentment as the US was close allies to the KMT in WWII.
>The fricking Yugoslavs pulled their own genocide on all the Italians and Germans living in their terrorize, regardless if they settlers or natives.
considering what the germans and italians got up to in yugoslavia, you can hardly blame them.
Like what exactly? Yugos squatted in land declared italian since the republic of venice. The only major campaign the italians made was the occupation of albania which is not yugoslavian soil. They were fricking butchers and for decades their crimes have been shushed by the boomer commie party.
>declared italian since the republic of venice
I declare your living room to be rightfully my territory. Hand it over.
>The only major campaign the italians made
My grandpa personally knew dozens of people Italians butchered in WWII - most of them women and children. And very far away from "rightful Italian soil." It's ancient history, there was plenty of death and misery going on in Europe at the time and two wrongs don't make a right: but you need to be pretty myopic to be so shocked and outraged by "anti-Italian persecution" following WWII.
>German soldiers captured by the British had the highest survival rate
If they got caught by the US before the end of the hostilities (and got shipped to the US) their chances were even higher.
A neighbor of mine (long dead) was Afrika Korps and was caught by US troops by the end of 1942 and shipped to POW camps inna US.
He always told us that the americans treated them much better than their own blacks. He also got kicked out (literally) as soon as the war ended. He was in California by the time. They just gave him some money, railway and ship tickets and sent him to New York.
When he returned home he was about 20 pounds heavier than in 1939.
In terms of allies, worst to good
>soviet=french Black folk>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>us(during war)
>us(pre-war)
My grandpa got captured by the 10th Armored Division in 1945. He was taken at Obersalzberg, worked here an electrician in the Führerhauptquatier. Spend two weeks as POW and then went home. Meanwhile if the Russian capture him, they would charge him with killing 1000 donbabwe childrens and hang him. As former luftwaffe ground crew personal (before he went to Obersalzberg), he exactly know how those Black folk behaved. He burned all his stuff before crossing the border into the soviet occuptaion zone.
On the other hand my Grandma saw US troops pillage and plunder entire homes. But the US quickly cut that shit out in Summer 1945 and the replacing US-Soldier were extremely professional. Also she saved a dog who was beating by a black-american officer. Why? because his Black person ass got rejected lmao
French also acted like Black folk, they still coped about the humiliation of 1940 and let their anger out on civilians like some bullied school shooter. For their dirty work they had their Black person division, acted like the soviets. They couldn't fight anyone with a gun and run away but killed civilians and pows in mass like a true russian. Still Hollywood start worshipping them in the last 5 years. They will talk about muh ww1 ww2 black people but never about the actual performance like in Battle of Gargaynana or their behavior in South Germany 1945.
>When he returned home he was about 20 pounds heavier than in 1939.
Amerifats so fat they even make prisoners of war fat
You joke, but there is a study that indicates that asians in the USA are less likely to face discrimination if they are overweight.
Yon Cassius has a mean and hungry look
He thinks too much, such men are dangerous
British regularly tortured German POWs, executed them, and then lied on the paperwork. Probably one of the worst, beat only by the Russians.
Americans and oddly enough the Italians were the best.
I heard of this. Specifically, I heard one of the methods the British used was to withhold rations for long periods, than provide 'feasts' of nothing but Spam, which would cause lethal digestive issues, which they could sweep away as 'natural sickness'.
Very natural and organic despite providing no source against overwhelming statistics
It depends on what part of the war you are talking about (like the Germans were treating allied prisoners way better than soviet prisoners). In general, the Allies tended to be the most humane. On the other hand, the Japanese were total psychos.
In WW2? If you were a German captured by the Soviets you could expect to toil away and die in a gulag. If you survived to around 1949 maybe you'd get to return home.
As for the best it probably really doesn't count but German pilots that ditched over Ireland had to stay in camps during the night but during the day they could intermingle with the locals and even go to the pub
>German pilots that ditched over Ireland had to stay in camps during the night but during the day they could intermingle with the locals and even go to the pub
lifehack, if you don't like being at war just leave lmao
>>As for the best it probably really doesn't count but German pilots that ditched over Ireland had to stay in camps during the night but during the day they could intermingle with the locals and even go to the pub
Reminds me the prisoners of the German ship Dresden during WWI in Chile. The Dresden was sunk in the coasts of Chile in 1915 and the survivors were intermittent in an island near the city of Concepcion were they built a little German town, they had farms, a furniture factory and concert hall. They had the support from the German immigrant community in Chile, some ended up marrying local women and staying, while others managed to escape, cross the border into Argentina and sail back to Germany, or went back once they were released in 1919.
On the flip side, I believe the Swiss were near Axis collaborators and treated Allied pilots that crashed/ditched terribly and if memory serves correct some weren’t released for years after the war ended.
The Swiss were allies of the Nazis. Their "neutrality" was a polite fiction the allies agreed to pretend was true because digging the frickers out would've been a bastard unless you wanted to crack atoms over their cities. By that point no one had a taste for it.
>1949
lucky bastard
some got home only in the mid 50s
Germans and Italians interned in Canada were said to have the best POW experiences
American POW camps were occasionally hit and miss. One German officer wrote that he was shuttled around a few camps and one or two were badly-run, so he had a camel-like experience - growing nice and fat in one camp, then losing weight in another, repeat. Eventually he got fed up and just petitioned the camp commandant to send him home, and he was.
Which makes you kind of wonder, what the frick were the Allies thinking? Did they just forget the POWs they were holding, and just fed them until they were reminded to send them back?
p.s. of note however the worst that the American camps ever did was to steal medals and provide inadequate food. there was never any actual mistreatment.
>Did they just forget the POWs they were holding
You generally don't want to send back POWs back home immediately after the war is over. Shit might start up again (remote possibility after WWII - but still,) a bunch of traumatized vets arriving back all at once and roaming the devastated hulk of their country tends to lead to instability and you might want to see if some of them turn out to be war criminals you want to prosecute right away or if they hold intel of any value. Also paper-work and logistics were way slower back then and the number of POWs was way higher - especially when you're busy shipping millions of your own people and all their shit back home.
1. Hitler
2. Salvation Army
America ran a ridiculously effective intelligence gathering operation on german POWs that essentially boiled down to treating them so well they wanted to share information. A bunch of the POWs became US citizens after the war
My grandfather grew up next to one of the POW camps for Germans and he distinctly remembers one day a German SS officer hanged by the other POWs because he planned a breakout and to kill some of the guards.
Cultural victory.
They even experimented with new interaction techniques, such having them smoke cannabis.
>interaction
Interrogation*
Stole that one from a German master interrogator who just became the friend of POWs. Most effective one they had. I'm sure there's a youtube video about him.
Scharff.
I read memoirs from American POW camps and they seem a bit different from what you are describing. Beatings, torture, especially israelites were behaving like...Soviet comissars. And the biggest surprise? Blacks were the most chill and friendly ones.
I do not believe these posts
>yes POWs in Missouri who could walk the town and even work would be abused and tortured
>my source? why my ass of course.
I think it widely varied depending the camp.
My great-grandpa ended up in a german Stalhag early in the war, what he was really doing was exactly the same shit he would have done at home = live in farmhand. By his own account he never actually lacked anything.
I think the worse you could land as an allied POW was in the hands of the japs, by a wide margin.
Being a Soviet in German hands was arguably almost as bad+you might get shot on liberation. I've heard nothing but basically paradise stories about American POW camps from germans. My 3rd generation German grandpa (in middle school at the time) would get sent around to hit up the other farms and swap POWs with other farmers so they could get dudes from their region of Germany on their farm.
German treatment of POWs varied wildly, but you could depend on the Gestapo for plenty of bad touch. Generally though the camps were decent in treatment and supplies until the war effort started to turn seriously (but this mirrors literally every country in war post Geneva).
Grandpa (here
) was in the USA, btw. My impression is that farms in his area of the midwest were basically all their own subcamps
>German treatment depended wildly on whether or not you were soviet*
3.3 million soviet pows out of 5.7 died in German captivity so quit your white washing. The morgenthau plan never happened but I sure wish it did.
>German treatment of POWs varied wildly
This guy managed to get away with a lot of shit as a German prisoner
>One attempt occurred when POWs were being transported in open trucks through Italy. Upham jumped from the truck at a bend and managed to get 400 yards away before being recaptured. He had broken an ankle in jumping from the moving truck.
>On another occasion, he tried to escape a camp by climbing its fences in broad daylight. He became entangled in barbed wire when he fell down between the two fences. When a guard pointed a pistol at his head and threatened to shoot, Upham calmly ignored him and lit a cigarette. This scene was photographed by the Germans as "evidence" and later reprinted in a biography
>After this incident, Upham was considered dangerous and was placed in solitary confinement. He was only allowed to exercise alone, while accompanied by two armed guards and while covered by a machine gun in a tower. Despite these precautions, Upham bolted from his little courtyard, straight through the German barracks and out through the front gate of the camp. The guard in the machine-gun tower later told other prisoners that he refrained from shooting Upham out of respect, and as he could see German soldiers coming up the road whom he expected to capture Upham. Upham was soon recaptured and sent to the infamous Oflag IV-C (Colditz)
>During his transfer on a civilian train while guarded by two Germans, Upham made his final escape attempt. Upham was only allowed to visit the toilet when the train was travelling at high speed to prevent him from jumping through a window. Nevertheless, Upham prised open the toilet window and jumped onto the tracks, knocking himself unconscious. After awakening, he escaped into a nearby orchard, but the even rows of trees and lack of undergrowth provided poor cover and he was recaptured after 12 hours.
In ww2? best treatment was probably brits if you were a german pov, worst either soviet or japanese. grampa was captured on the eastern front and sent to work building railroad tracks in siberia. somehow survived and made it back west after being released a few years after the war ended. other relatives in the war almost all died on the front or in soviet pow camps.
>Blacks were the most chill and friendly ones.
i read similar notions in the memories of Ernst Jünger and Ernst von Salomon's "Questionnaire", describing black americans as being comparatively sympathetic to the germans. something along the lines of "both of us are second class". french colonial troops on the other hand were ruthless
Americans or British were probably the best to get taken prisoner by. Germany wasn't too bad as long as you weren't considered a subhuman. Soviets were really bad news, and if you were taken prisoner by the Japanese there was a good chance you wouldn't even make it to a camp alive, and towards the end you'd have a decent chance of getting butchered and eaten.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Gaertner
My favorite POW story is this guy, Georg Gartner, a German captured in Tunisia who was due to get shipped back from the US at the end of the war to his hometown, which was now part of communist Poland. Obviously not too keen on living in a communist shithole, he escaped a few days before he was due to get sent back, forged a new identity as Dennis Whiles, got a decent job as a architect, an American wife, and kids. He was for some decades one of America's most wanted men. 40 years later he gave himself up because he would refuse to discuss his past and his wife threatened to leave him if he didn't tell her the truth. The FBI didn't know what to charge him with and the Immigration authority refused to deport him because he didn't meet the definition of an immigrant. So they offered him citizenship and he moved to Colorado and lived happily there. Eventually died of old age in 2013.
>40 years later he gave himself up because he would refuse to discuss his past and his wife threatened to leave him if he didn't tell her the truth
Did the wife hang around when she learned?
I remember that she helped him getting a lawyer and sort everything out.
She loved him and stayed with him, and she was the one who pushed for him to come out to the public a year later. However she eventually divorced him some years later because he suddenly left to go back to see his family in Germany for like two years and didn't contact her at all. However they reconciled when he came back, and although they didn't remarry they remained very close until the end of his life.
Sounds comfy tbh. Shame the wife was a b***h, but I'm glad it worked out for him
I don’t blame the wife 2bh, she probably had some suspicions and feared he was a camp guard or SS member or something.
That was a common thing most fighters from countries that fell under communist rule did.
most inhumane was far and away the Japanese, just look up 'Rape of Nanking'
Most humane was probably the Americans, see
America gets disqualified because the pacific war reached Eastern Front levels of taking no prisoners and fricking the absolute shit out of any that ended up in your hands. Hard to blame them, since the Japanese started it, but Marines in the pacific gave as much as they got once they realized what sick bastards the Japs could be.
The Italians loved the UK (mainly Scotland) so much that many of them stayed. To this day there are strong Scottish/Italian family and business links.
My grandpa actually was a camp guard for Italian POWs in the war.
The funny part is that grandpa was only a 15 year old cadet at this time. The Brits figured that the Italians were not exactly dangerous or a big risk. Turns out they were right, gramps mostly just had to keep local Scottish women away from them.
My grandfather grew up in Argentina too, so he spoke Spanish, which was close enough to banter with the Italians
Argie here can confirm, spanish here in argentina has many words and slang from italian because of the huge italian inmigration. People from the capital kinda sound italian to non spanish speakers.
I often hear italians speak and can more or less understand most of what they are saying
>The Italians loved the UK (mainly Scotland) so much that many of them stayed.
>My grandpa actually was
My gramps was a "forced laborer" (aka - slave) in munition factory in Treuembritzen. Poles and Italian POVs ware working there.
When the front line came close, Germans executed all Italian POVs, than tried to do the same with Poles, but they fled.
When Soviets came in and saw it, they killed all the german men they could find.
>When the front line came close, Germans executed all Italian POVs, than tried to do the same with Poles, but they fled.
>When Soviets came in and saw it, they killed all the german men they could find.
lmao, more like the Soviets killed them and blamed the Germans like they did for numerous massacres while the allies looked the other way or outright helped them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Keelhaul
>DINDU NUFFIN!!!!
I'd say the Japanese considering they did vivisections on pows.
German POWs
>writing letters to Germany on comparatively expensive stationary out of a private post office
>lavish meals
>encouraged to play sports and use the full library
>trained to work construction, farms and ranches so they can rebuild their lives
>separated from the SS to stop reprisals
>taken to idyllic country towns to interact with locals who treated them like cheeky rascals instead of enemy combatants
>lavish meals
How did they get lavish meals when the whole country was rationing?
Lavish as in pretty good, and since a good portion of them were put on farms to work as hands to replace the soldiers who'd normally do that, rationing is much less of an issue when you're the supplier.
>How did they get lavish meals when the whole country was rationing?
German Prisoners in the US were subject to the same Nutrition standards as US civilians, but American civilian rationing was very very light in contrast anywhere else. Grain and cereals was unrationed for the whole war, meaning there was no calorie limit. Meat was rationed to 1 kg per week (in contrast, British meat ration was 0.5kg per month), Sugar was rationed to 300g per week, which is actually a lot of sugar
Letter written home by German POW
>There are 50 of us living in airy, roomy barracks, scenery reminds one of Mecklenburg. So, dear parents do not worry. And dear mother, naturally something about the food. it is no fairy tale. We have cake almost daily, all kinds of fruit, Kellogg's flakes with milk, roasts, salads, real coffee, crackers, etc. I often think how all of you would rejoice, and how urgently the children need it all. Today we have 3 large, fat pancakes and an omelet just as a side dish. Though food is not the most important thing it gladdens me. To me it is very important as I live just as on vacation.
The standard for treating POW's is the same as local civilians. There was no food to go around the winter of 45 in basically all of Europe past the Rhine, and the French were in no mood to ship their food over to the Germans.
This just emphasizes for me really that Germany has no chance against US industrial potential - America barely felt a dip in their living standards while outproducing them 10fold and supplying USSR and UK at the same time.
Correct. The industrial might of the US is something people don't really comprehend, though there's always the cope of 'just kill enough Americans that they don't think killing you is worth it' as a way Germany could have won the war that was never going to happen.
>the cope of 'just kill enough Americans that they don't think killing you is worth it
I am not sure if it is cope. One video of dozens US soldiers rushing across open field and getting shredded to last man by enemy artilery like the one we had of ruskies last month and public outcry would make them pull out of a conflict abroad.
Good thing they didn't have social media in WWII then isn't it, you illiterate moron, and Germany's Uboat campaign meant that the average American had a reason to see Germany rendered toothless even before we get into their alliance with the nips or the various atrocities that were discovered on the liberation campaign.
depends on if the US invaded a third world shithole or the next superpower wannabe thought a surprise attack on the US navy at port is a good idea.
As others pointed out, there's a difference in motivations between fighting Tusken Raiders in Tatooine (Afghanistan) VS fighting against two hostile great powers which declared war on you.
The Soviet public was pretty demoralized by their own Afghan war after all, but that doesn't mean they were demoralized by the cataclysmic losses they suffered in WW2
>what was Pearl Harbor
How many times will morons keep making this mistake? Do they seriously think that just because the US military doesn’t take high casualties that means it’s unwilling to suffer any casualties?
Depends. People underestimate american bloodlust. Look what we did over some skyscrapers getting rekt. We lost the bloodlust after destroying saddam, but you either are young or non american if u dont remember how people felt after 9/11
Killing Americans pisses Americans off. It makes them want to genocide you, not leave you alone. The zips tried the 'just be too horrible to stand' tactic and it didn't help them. For decades after WW2 ended, there were Americans - veterans of the war and civilians alike - who said that we shouldn't have allowed the Japanese to surrender at all and wiped them out instead. And they absolutely fricking meant it.
>You are a doomed degenerate shithole and we will easily defeat you X 5
Account from a jap defender near Iwo Jima: "We were told the Americans would run back to their landing crafts as soon as they encountered our machine guns. The first ten die during disembarking. But they kept coming. Next thing we saw were flamethrowers burning us out of caves."
Also note that the state of Louisiana alone produced and refined more oil than the entirety of Germany and occupied territories.
Krauts were literally fricked since before the day they were born
>US was feeding the fricking german POWs all this stuff and won't even feed it's own citizen prisoners decently
Not saying we should let criminals live like kings or treat POWs like shit but come on man.
POWs were soldiers taken who fought and surrendered honorably, then conducted themselves well. Criminals are parasitic vermin who harm society and then get uppity when you dare to punish them for it.
US wasn’t really rationing all that hard.
>separated from the SS to stop reprisals
ironically the vast majority of mistreatment of german pows being kept in America were from other german pows
europeans treated each other alright, the mongol horde predictably was another story. chinks be chinks and asiatics be asiatics, muslims just raped everyone and the holocaust never happened (but should have). war is chaos and psycho people everywhere will find their way to torture, maim, rape and what more for their enjoyment during it
>muslims just raped everyone
what
They did. This I also another reason I hate the French.
>This I also another reason I hate the French.
i only heard about that happening in italy and not to pows
US & Commonwealth forces, but only if you're German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Pole or any other person that got conscripted to fight on the western front. You just got shipped off to some fancy resort back in the US so you'd just get loose lipped and blab. Little less points for the UK because you could be bombed still.
>Captured by the French.
Hope you like clearing out minefields with no tools after the end of the war. RIP you if you collaborated in any way.
>Captured by the Russians.
Off to the Glug with you until 1950. Also Rape.
>Captured by the Romanians
Off to the Russians for you.
>Captured by the Germans
Standard to below standard treatment. Unless you're Russian, then RIP you. Slightly less RIP if you're Italian, but still RP. Or if you're Belgian you likely just walked out and went home in the middle of the war.
>Captured by the Japanese
VERY fast katana swinging at increibly hihg speed at ur neck
>Captured by the Italians.
Anywhere from good to 'meh'. Provided it wasn't in africa, and provided you aren't black.
>Captured by the Hungarians.
How do you feel to be in your very first snuff film?
>Captured anywhere in the Yugo territories.
Thats a rapin'
>Captured by the Japanese
>VERY fast katana swinging at increibly hihg speed at ur neck
that's the good ending
No kidding. My grandpa got attached to a unit that had to recover, catalogue, and bury the dead from Japanese POW camps during the occupation. That was some horrific shit. I don't know how true it is, but he once told me some other guys caught a Jap who was an officer or something in one of those camps and lynched him, shot him in the head for good measure, and dumped his body in the river.
My great grandpa was a medic and recovered bodies after battles in the pacific. He told me when i was a little shit that one time they found a teenage soldier hiding in the bushes and the kid rushed them with a stick instead of surrendering. I think that bothered him more than picking up limbs. I dont know why he told me, i was like 6. He always hated the jap govt but didnt seem to mind normal civvie japs. My other great grandpa stormed the beaches of normandy and occupied japan and said the germans were homosexuals and the japs were prostitutes lol i used to have the kimono and katana the family he stayed with gifted him. The kimono said eagle sun or something similiar in moon rune on the inside bit.
Lmao no be a yank in an imperial pow camp was the closest thing to hell one can experience. Asians in general are beasts that indulge in all kinds of torture as passtime
by the French.
>Hope you like clearing out minefields with no tools after the end of the war. RIP you if you collaborated in any way.
Depended. My grandfather was POW in France, he was sent to a French farmer do work there for some time and for what i heard he was on absolutely OK terms with that farmer.
definitely Britain for the actual belligerents. Ireland and Sweden were the neutral nations that actually treated prisoners humanely unlike the swiss who deserved every accidental firebombing they ever got
anywhere in the Yugo territories.
>Thats a rapin
False. I don't know do you mean in WW2 or the recent break up of yugoslavia, but I've spent my time in Bosnia 5 years before the war and during and 7 years after war. Rape wasn't common amongs POWs, mostly torture and mostly by the chetniks amd the Serbs. Walking on glass, hot embers, water torture and such. We have caught one ARBiH fighter trying to take a piss in one of the bottles that was supposed to be water for POWs but compared what other sides were doing it was pretty mild. He was chewed out by his squad leader on the spot though I think he was later tasked with cleaning the toilets the POWs used but don't hold my word on that, lots of years ago and lots of concussions ago
>Hope you like clearing out minefields with no tools after the end of the war. RIP you if you collaborated in any way.
Based. Traitors deserve death and forcing your enemy to clean up their mess is only fair. If they die? Oh well, at least a real person wasn't hurt.
>Captured anywhere in the Yugo territories.
>Thats a rapin'
In WWII? By muslims? What the frick are you on about?
And if you mean the recent wars - Croats and Bosnians treated POWs pretty decently. Part of their agenda was portraying themselves as the morally superior party after all. Often they'd record their POWs to counter Serb propaganda that Croats and Bosnians were skinning POWs alive and doing satanic black magic shit with their guts or whatever the coked out propaganda writers in Belgrade came up with that week. You can find plenty of those recordings on youtube actually. And if there were crimes against them - it was usually getting slapped a bit or just getting shot straight out. Which might not be nice but beats torture any day.
As far as Serbs are concerned - yeah no shit. In many Croatian and Bosnian units keeping a spare bullet or grenade on you somewhere to blow your brains out before capture was pretty much standard procedure. One of the joys of having depraved hillbillies with an intense interest in the male body as neighbours.
>europeans treated each other alright
lmao no read up on the 30 years war. No read up on any war in European history you absolute brainlet
>europeans treated each other alright
>t. swiss
>americans and russians aren't europeans
>t. swiss
>europeans treated each other alright
Blood is my daylight and darkness too.
The blessing of night has been gouged from my cheeks
Bearing with it my more lucky sight.
Within those holes, for tears, fierce fire inflamed
The bleeding socket as if for brain a balm –
While my bright eyes died on my own palm
It depends on the nationality of the prisoner, for example French POWs taken by the Germans were usually not kept in camps and were instead sent to German families to do farm work
It al depends on the war and which nation is taking which nation prisoner. US treated japanese prisoners poorly but considering japanese soldiers were fantaicle this was part the course. Americans treated European prisoners better and some even immigrated to the US after the war
My grandfather was a MP for the first part of WW 2 , his job was to check up on German POWs doing work like driving trucks , doing deliveries etc.
My great-grandfather spoke German, so they had him working as an interpreter
Craziest thing was his cousin was a Wehrmacht general who surrendered himself and his men quite amicably in September of ‘44
A lot of Italians settled in my city after the war so we can't have treated them too badly
t. bong
During WW2 probably like this.
Best: Canadians, US(unless japanese), Brits.
Middle: French, German(if you were western forces ie Brits, Americans, French)
Worst: Germans(anyone not Brits or American) Russian(Best case gulag) Japan.
I'd say the Chinese PVA were pretty humane in their treatment of POWs, I think alot mistreatment was due to logistical constraints which prevented the Chinese from stopping starvation or disease in the POW Camps. This is an interesting anecdote from a US Korean war POW, Glenn Scotts, "I was crawling over bodies and going wherever I could to get up and out of this ditch. I figured I would come out at a different location and the sniper wouldn't be expecting me. When I got up through there I found a GI who had been hit in the leg and shot through the mouth. He couldn't talk and he couldn't walk either. His leg was all blown up. When I got up to him, I saw a Chinaman who was also wounded. There were all kinds of weapons there so I just reached out and got one. I was going to shoot him but the GI told me no. I didn't understand what was going on. Then the GI started moaning because his leg was giving him a lot of problems. The Chinese guy reached over and adjusted his leg for him and then I understood. When I started to leave, the Chinaman told me no. He then raised up two or three times and finally he told me, "Go." I did. I bailed out of that ditch and traveled way on through to a creek bed. Why did the Chinaman let me know how to get out? I don't know. He was wounded, but he wasn't dead. I really don't know what his reasons were, but he was taking care of this GI and he helped me get out of the trench." Taken from this website, http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/memoirs/stotts_glenn/index.htm
The USA & Canada/UK were indisputably the best caretaker of POWs in WW2.
German POWs in American custody even managed to gain weight and work for minimum wage, so essentially while their relatives were getting bombed in Germany itself, the prisoners were living pretty comfortably with basic amenities and a peaceful environment to make some money. They had shelter, healthcare, plentiful food, and fricking wages.
I think Wauwilermoos in Switzerland was one of the worst places, since you had a double-whammy of Swiss officers (many of them National Socialists who sympathized with the Axis) who were pissed about the Allies bombing their towns, and rapey Soviet inmates who the Swiss officers allowed/encouraged to rape yankee/brit/frog prisoners.
Also since Switzerland wasn't at war their reaction after the war to allegations of mistreatment was simply "lol, lmao".
Didn't one guy write to the Swiss PM about being raped constantly and the PM wrote back he deserved it? Decades after the fact too.
>Culler's good clothes were confiscated by Béguin in return for "old dirty rags." Sent to barracks 9, Culler was repeatedly raped by internees from Soviet Union. He reported this to camp commandant Béguin and some of the guards who laughed and sent him back. The next days they even closed Culler's barrack at night. The torture did not end until new internees became Culler's roommates: "I was bleeding everywhere", Culler said later. Culler fell seriously ill and was transferred to hospital.[
>switzerland
lmao what the actual frick
why were there even any Soviet inmates in Switzerland?
Hot damn, Ghaddafi was right about the ~~*swiss*~~
The mountains are there to keep them in, not to keep us out
Best
USA
Worst
Japan
Finland treated their prisoners so well most of them didn't want to go back.
If you got captured by an eastern power then it's pretty grim. Japs were bad, Chinese were bad, soviets were bad.
Pretty much anyone that isn't western christian is awful to be imprisoned by. That's not to say the west doesn't do gnarly shit to real baddies, but their treatment of the normal rank and file is humane. Expect to be fed and sheltered.
Brits and Germans treated theirs the best. Russians kinda got the short end of the stick on the eastern front but that was more of a consequence of stretched supply lines and suddenly having like 3 million more mouths to feed than anything else.
I guess you could also count Americans since they might have treated their POWs terribly and intentionally starved them to death but officially they were just disarmed enemy combatants.
>Germans
>Treated their best
Being a Soviet POW in German custody literally had a higher mortality rate than being a soldier in active combat. The German government intentionally starved them or used them as slaves because they did not consider Russians to be worth of any dignified treatment
>t. Actual knower
Germans couldn't even feed their own troops on the Eastern front, why are you surprised their POWs got treated like shit?
The first gassing in Auschwitz was tested on soviet POW. And it wasn't the last.
So bad treatment and no food was just one way to die for a soviet POW.
>because they did not consider Russians to be worth of any dignified treatment
They got a few things right.
>all these bluepilled Black folk thinking America treated its POWs well
My opa was a nco in the luftwaffe and then a pow in a british camp - before he died he talked a bit about it. He said near the end of the war everyone knew it was over and you were only fighting on to not be captured as a pow by the russians. The hope was to surrender to the british or americans if you could. He was treated well.
Might have been an American camp, I don't remember. Either way the treatment was good.
Probably british if it was late in the war due to
Being from Croatia, I'll just leave this thread
zozzle
Anglo nations famously treated other Whites very well, especially British, there's a lot of stories of how Germans in Britain had it. Years back I met an old German man in a park who was visiting Britain and talking about his fond memories of his years in Britain... as a POW. To him it was just
>That nice time I had in Britain
like
>Those were the days, wish I could go back
British were not treated badly by Germans, but towards the end of the war some bad cases of how Americans were treated by the Germans.
Except of course American post-war treatment of German POWs IN Germany, which was brutal.
I'm Polish, my grandfather fought in september '39. They surrendered somewhere out near the coast and he was able to dive in the bushes while on the way to stalag (POW camp for enlisted). He just walked 500km back home sleeping at people's houses.
The Wehrmacht wasn't so bad at first, but things got progressively more crazy, especially after all that went down in the east.
What was the occupation like for the average Catholic pole? My great grandfather left Plock/Potsk (Donovan the Anglo name) in 1904 to not die to the Japs but I’d imagine I had some cousins that got wrecked.
Croats capture Serb:
Serbs run for 4 days and nights to get captured by Croats instead of Muslims:
Croats capture radical muslims in Central Bosnia:
Serbs surrender to Croats in Pakrac:
Entire Serbian corpus of the self proclaimed serbian rebel republic surrenders to Croatian General Petar Stipetic:
Croatian soldiers hand out food to fleeing Serbian civilians:
>1.
Mine
>2.
Yours
The americans/anglos are the most humane when it comes to post 1900 POWs treatments. Although the american civil war showcased on how brutal the americans can get when it comes to their treatment of POWs. The civil war was considered America's most brutal war for a reason, and its not because of casualties.
>Although the american civil war showcased on how brutal the americans can get when it comes to their treatment of POWs.
That was just pre Geneva Convention norms. The idea of "POWs" being anything at all is a modern one. In the past it was expected that only officers were worth keeping and their grunts would simply be massacred or enslaved.
Any arab soldier captured by Israel had better living conditions than back home
Italians were surprisingly cruel, they held a particular loathe against italian americans serving US army, they considered them traitors. Against ethiopians tho they really did stuff like iron branding and crucifixion. Rodolfo Graziani in particular after a bloody terrorist attacks against italian civvies practically made legal to hunt down the locals like animals. Hundreds of thousands butchered
During WWII?
Slovaks, hands down.
why them specifically?
Japanese and Soviets were the worst, Americans were the best, followed by the Brits. Germans are interesting in this regard because early war they were decent and late war it got pretty bad. (For POWs specifically, not the treatment of prisoners in general) From my understanding, the Italians were ok, depending on the camp.
>Which nation was the most humane in treating pows?
Nazi Germany
>Which was the worst?
Russia
You said the same thing twice.
>UK held POWs 3.6m
>1254 died in captivity 0.03%
Statistically the UK treat them best
German POWs in Canada were sometimes used as road workers. This didn't make the history books, I have it from two separate first hand accounts that Polish exile pilots in training would periodically fly over them and bomb them with rocks, many were seriously injured or killed. While discouraged such behavior was tolerated by the EATS
Not the fun vacation in the woods its sometimes made out to be.
best are probably the americans and brits, worst are probably the japanese or ISIS, not that theres much difference
US was the only country that had German pows requesting to stay in Florida and not be sent back to Germany after the war.
>Was the only country they stayed in
How can you be so misinformed
1% of German POWs stayed in the US, that's around 4000.
25,000 stayed in the UK.
Where did you hear such nonsense?
Not 4000, 400000.
>Officially, none of the more than 425,000 Axis POWs kept in the United States should have stayed there after the war—POWs are supposed to be repatriated after the war is over. It is believed that about 1 percent of Germans did stay
Are you moronic?
The "Five Eyes Nation" (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) treated POWs the best.
The Japanese were the worst. The Japs would sometimes tourniquet the limbs of prisoners one at a time so that they could sever and eat them over the course of several days. That way the meat was kept alive and fresh. That's just one awful among countless monstrous things they did to both POWs and civilians.
It's hard reconciling the behavior of their soldiers in the war with Japanese people I've met in person. They've always come across as being kind and polite members of a refined and sophisticated culture. I guess they've shifted away from the bloodthirsty, samurai death cult tradition over time.
Here's an old timey song which echos the sentiment of American soldiers fighting in the Pacific and their hatred of the "cruel Japs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEoqBatgJE
My great uncle wouldn't buy Jap stuff for decades apparently, now he's 96 and drives a Lexus, best car he's had apparently kek
>work in aged care
>hear a resident crying
>staff have accidently given him rice with his lunch
>his memories of 'mealtime' as a slave on the Thai/Burma railway come back
One fist-sized chunk of brown rice a day. That was it. They had to sneak bugs, lizards and whatever when the guards weren't looking.
Poor guy
Yeah they had it super rough. I'm guessing you've read Bridge over the River Kwai anyone who hasn't definitely should.
I wonder if there's a US equivilant story?
He spends his time now enjoying an electric blanket and various wool cardigans.
Funny thing that always made me think, he hated the Japs for obvious reasons but after the war he was stationed in Egypt and for the love of God the disgust he has for them is amazing. He literally says it was the most vile place filled with the most filthy subhuman people ever.
“King Rat” by James Clavell.
There was also that movie made about the Olympic runner Air Corps guy who became a Jap POW.
Worst thing to be was a Chink POW of the Japs.
Hell they bayoneted babies at the Rape of Nanking so bad that the fricking Nazi became the Bugman “Schindler”.
Hope they wouldn’t take you to Unit 731 or whatever it was to be human Guinea pig.
Frick the Japs…they deserved 3 or 4 more atomic enemas for what they did as conquerors.
Same thing happened with Krauts. Before we liberated their Death Camps, they were treated okay, but after we saw that they had spent their time just flat-out murdering civilians, we got almost as nasty to them as they had been to their victims.
Congratulations to your Great Uncle for making it to 96
Even now Japanese people are expected to adhere to pretty strict social norms. When you look how rigid their school lives and office cultures are it's not hard to see how the whole country used to be hyper-militarized.
I think japanese were a weird one. Big cultural difference in that if you were captured, you were considered dishonored and basically already dead. Not that any of that excuses any of the crap they did to prisoners. Even as prisoners there were incidents where they decided en masse to pick up rocks and rush the guards to be gunned down
>be captured by Italy
>send to pow camp
>driver misses the camp and drive you to a farm
>misses twice
>finally arrive in pow camp
>almost no guards
>see prisoners driving bikes together with prison guards
>prisoner count in twice week, no one knows how many are there
>Italian camp commander talk with hands
>two weeks later you released and walk back in the front lines
>prison guard present you with a wine and a bread
The US captured about 1 million German soldiers at the end of WWII, set them up in a prison camp and starved them to death. So I guess the US is the most humane.
Met an interesting old geezer once, he was an old Legionaire, managed to become POW in 1954 in Vietnam and again in 1962 in Algeria. He said he got tortured in both countries, but that the Algerians were just mere amateurs compared to the Vietnamese.
Read a pretty good autobiography called Roll Me Over by an American soldier, Raymond Gantter, in the second world war. Near the end of the book he talks about how his unit liberated a POW camp in Germany. When they arrived the camp's guards were executing several of the camp's Slavic prisoners (most of whom were Poles) but fled when the US troops arrived. A few of the guards weren't able to get away in time and the Slavs grabbed them and started to beat the shit out of them, by Gantter stopped them. He wrote after he's not sure if he regrets that or not. The prisoners treated the American troops like kings, with the strongest of them grabbing Gantter and "bouncing" him (throwing him up in the air and catching him) so vigorously that he hit the ceiling multiple times. They also tried to give the troops a feast with what they had on hand, which was thin-sliced potatoes cooked on a cast iron stove.
There were French POWs in the camp as well, who mostly kept to themselves. They received better treatment and more food than the Slavs.
Gantter also states that the only time he ever brandished his weapon at German civilians was when some of the POWs left that camp and relaxed on the lawns of the houses outside (which had a full view of the yard were corpses still hung) and the civilians came out to scream at and spit on the prisoners.
In WW2? Going by number of POWs who just decided to stay, best was US. Worst were the Soviets going by number of prisoners deliberately starved to death. But honestly I don't have any sympathy for that, if someone invaded my country I wouldn't want them treated well, I'd want them dead or worked as slaves until they died.
>most humane
Australian. POWs from some nations weren’t even kept imprisoned and had paid jobs on farms & such. Where is a demoralised Italian conscript in rural Australia gonna escape to, after all
>least humane
Japan probably edges out the USSR, barely. I don’t know how the Soviets treated non German prisoners either.
>I don’t know how the Soviets treated non German prisoners either
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin
Germany. They let American prisoners in one instance build a small glider plane recreationally that the Americans planned to use to escape. Camp fell before that though.
Though your treatment depended on your race.
Probably brits.
Argentine POWs in the Falklands were given better rations and shelter than what they had at their own base.
Why do slavs and asians love rape and torture so much?
How do you think they’re conceived?
Being any axis grunt who was sent over to a camp in the United States was objectively the best possible outcome considering
In WWII, the US threated them best
Japan and russia treated them pretty bad, hard to say which was worse, probably russia.
Ironically Germany treated POWs better than brittain did.
>Ironically Germany treated POWs better than brittain did.
3 million Red Army POWs died under German watch.