A prisoner of war (POW ) is a person, whether a combatant or a non-combatant, held by an aggressive force during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest use of the phrase "prisoners of war" dates from 1660.
Belligerents detain prisoners of war in detention for legitimate and illegitimate reasons, such as isolating them from enemy combatants who are still in the field (releasing and repatriating them in an orderly manner after hostilities), demonstrating military victories, punishing them, demanding them for war crimes , exploit them for their work, recruit or even recruit them as their own fighters, collect their military and political intelligence, or indoctrinate them in new political or religious beliefs.
Video Prisoner of war
Ancient times
For much of human history, depending on the culture of the winners, the enemy fighter on the losing side in a battle who has surrendered and is considered a prisoner of war can expect to be slaughtered or enslaved. The first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and named after their ethnic roots such as Samnite, Thracian, and Gaul (Gallus). Homer Iliad describes Greek soldiers and Trojans who offer wealth rewards to opposing troops who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but their offer is not always welcome; see Lycaon for example.
Typically, slight differences are made between enemy fighters and enemy civilians, although women and children are more likely to be spared. Sometimes, the purpose of combat, if not war, is to capture women, a practice known as raptio; Sabine's rape was a massive kidnapping by the founders of Rome. Usually women have no rights, and are held legally as property.
In the fourth century AD, Bishop Acacius of Amida, touched by the fate of the Persian prisoner who was captured in a recent war with the Roman Empire, who was held in his town under conditions of concern and destined to live as slaves, took the initiative to redeem them, with selling his valuable gold and silver vessels in the church, and letting them return to their country. For this he was finally canonized.
Maps Prisoner of war
Medieval and Renaissance
During the siege of Childeric and the Paris blockade in 464, the nun GeneviÃÆ'¨ve (later nominated as the patron saint of the city) appealed to the Frank king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favorable response. Later, Clovis I released the prisoner after Genevieve urged him to do so.
Many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. This was done in retaliation for the French killing of children and other non-combatants who handled the luggage and equipment of the army, and because the French attacked again and Henry feared they would break through and free the prisoners to fight again.
In the later Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat but eliminate their enemies. In Christian Europe, heresy annihilation is considered desirable. Examples include the 13th century Albigensian Crusade and the Northern Crusade. When asked by a Crusader how to distinguish between Catholic and Cathar after they captured the city of BÃ © Ã © ziers, Vice-Pope Arnaud Amalric famously replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own ".
Similarly, the inhabitants of the conquered cities were often slaughtered during the Crusades against Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Nobles can expect to be redeemed; their families must send to their captors a large amount of wealth commensurate with the social status of the captives.
In feudal Japan there is no custom of captive prisoners of war, most of whom are executed.
The widespread Mongol Empire was renowned for distinguishing between surrendering towns or cities, where the inhabitants were saved but needed to support the conquering Mongol forces, and those who resisted, where their city was ransacked and destroyed, and all the inhabitants were killed. In Termez, on the Oxus: "all men and women were cast into the plains, and divided according to their custom, they were all killed".
The Aztecs continued to wage war with neighboring tribes and groups, with the aim of this constant war of collecting life prisoners to be sacrificed. To re-consecrate the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, "between 10,000 and 80,400 people" was sacrificed.
During the early Muslim conquests, Muslims routinely captured large numbers of prisoners. In addition to those who repent, most are redeemed or enslaved. Christians who were captured during the Crusades, were usually killed or sold as slaves if they could not pay the ransom. During his lifetime, Muhammad made it the responsibility of the Islamic government to provide food and clothing, naturally, to the captives, regardless of their religion; But if the prisoner is in a person's custody, then the responsibility is on the individual. The release of prisoners is highly recommended as a charitable act.
Modern time
The Peace of Westphalia 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, established the rule that prisoners of war should be released without ransom at the end of the feud and that they should be allowed to return to their hometown.
There has also evolved the rights of parole, French for "discourse", in which a captured officer handed over his sword and gave his words as a gentleman in exchange for privilege. If he vows not to run away, he can get better accommodation and freedom of prison. If he vows to stop hostilities against the state that detains him, he can be discharged or exchanged but can not serve his former kidnapper in military capacity.
European settlers arrested in North America
The earliest historical narratives of captured colonial Europeans, including the perspective of educated women caught by Native Americans, are in several figures. The writings of Mary Rowlandson, who was captured in the brutal battle of King Philip's War, is an example. Such narratives enjoy popularity, bring up the genre of narrative captivity, and have a lasting influence on the early American literary bodies, especially through the legacy of James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. Some Native Americans continue to catch Europeans and use them both as laborers and chips bargain into the 19th century; see for example John R. Jewitt, an Englishman who wrote memoirs of his years as a captive of the Nootka people on the Northwest Pacific coast from 1802-1805.
French Revolutionary War and Napoleonic Wars
The earliest and most famous camp prisoners of warfare were founded in Norman Cross, England in 1797 to accommodate more and more prisoners from the French Revolutionary War and Napoleonic Wars. The average prison population is about 5,500 men. The lowest recorded number of 3,300 in October 1804 and 6,272 on 10 April 1810 was the highest number of inmates recorded in official documents. Norman Cross intended to be a model depot that gave the most humane treatment of prisoners of war. The British government strives to provide food of at least the same quality as that available to locals. Senior officers from each quadrilateral are allowed to inspect food when sent to prison to ensure adequate quality. Despite the generous supply and quality of food, some prisoners died of starvation after gambling their rations. Most of the men held in jail were low-ranking soldiers and sailors, including middle-ranking officers and young officers, with a small number of private individuals. Around 100 senior officers and some civilians "from good social standing", especially passengers on the captured ship and the wives of some officers, were granted parole outside the prison, especially in Peterborough though some further on Northampton, Plymouth, Melrose, and Abergavenny. They are rewarded for their rank in British society. The citizens of Leipzig, Rochlitz, commented on his account of the Battle of Leipzig, that many French war prisoners were being held in fields outside the city, pleading with passers-by for food, and that most of them did not survive the ordeal.
Prisoner exchange
The period of widespread conflict during the American Revolutionary War and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), followed by the Anglo-American War of 1812, led to the emergence of a cartel system for the exchange of prisoners, even when warring parties were at war.. Cartels are usually regulated by their respective armed services for the exchange of personnel of similar rank. The aim is to reduce the number of detained detainees while at the same time reducing the shortage of skilled workers in the home country.
American Civil War
At the beginning of the civil war, the paroles system was operated. The prisoners agreed not to fight until they were officially exchanged. In the meantime, they were held in camps run by their own army in which they were paid but were not allowed to perform any military duty. The exchange system collapsed in 1863 when the Confederation refused to exchange black prisoners. At the end of the summer of 1864, a year after Dix-Hill Cartel was suspended; Confederate officials approached Union General Benjamin Butler, Union Commissioner of Exchange, about continuing the cartel and including black prisoners. Butler contacted Grant for guidance on this issue, and Grant responded to Butler on 18 August 1864 with his now famous statement. He rejected the offer, stating in essence, that the Union could let their men in captivity, the Confederacy could not. After that about 56,000 of the 409,000 prisoners of war died in prison during the American Civil War, accounting for nearly 10% of the victims of the conflict. Of the 45,000 Union Union prisoners locked up in Camp Sumter, located near Andersonville, Georgia, 13,000 (28%) died. At Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, 10% of his Confederate inmates died during one winter month; and Elmira Prison in New York state, with 25% mortality rate (2,963), almost equal to Andersonville.
Amelioration
During the 19th century, there was an increase in efforts to improve the care and processing of detainees. As a result of this emerging convention, a number of international conferences were held, beginning with the Brussels Conference of 1874, with countries agreeing that it was necessary to prevent inhumane treatment of prisoners and the use of weapons that caused unnecessary harm. Although no treaty is immediately ratified by the participating countries, work is continued which results in a new convention adopted and recognized as an international law stipulating that prisoners of war are treated humanely and diplomatically.
The Hague and Geneva Conventions
Chapter II of the Annex to the Hague Convention 1907 IV - Law and Customs War on Land covers the treatment of war prisoners in detail. These provisions were further expanded in the 1929 Geneva Convention on War Crimes and were largely revised in the Third Geneva Convention in 1949.
Article 4 The Third Geneva Convention protects captured military personnel, certain guerrilla fighters, and certain civilians. This is valid from the moment a detainee is arrested until he is released or returned. One of the main provisions of the convention makes it illegal to torture detainees and declare that detainees may only be required to provide their name, date of birth, rank and service number (if applicable).
The ICRC has a special role to play, in relation to international humanitarian law, in restoring and maintaining family contact in times of war, in particular the right of prisoners of war and internees to send and receive letters and cards (Geneva Convention III), art.71 and GC IV, art.107).
However, countries differ in their dedication to following this law, and historically the treatment of POW has greatly varied. During World War II, the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany (against the Soviet POW and the Western Allied command) were notoriously cruel to prisoners of war. The German military used the rejection of the Soviet Union to sign the Geneva Conventions as an excuse not to provide living necessities for Soviet prisoners of war; and the Soviets also killed Axis prisoners or used them as slave laborers. Germany also routinely executes the Western Allied command captured behind German lines per Order of Command. North and North Korean and South Korean forces routinely kill or persecute detainees taken during the conflict.
Qualification
In order to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, the captured person must be a legitimate fighter entitled to the privilege of the fighter - who gives them immunity from the punishment for a crime which is a legitimate act of war such as killing enemy combatants. To qualify under the Third Geneva Convention, a fighter must be part of the chain of command, wearing "permanent, visible long distance marks", carrying weapons openly, and carrying out military operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. (The Convention recognizes several other groups as well, such as "[i] occupants of unoccupied territories, who in the enemy's approach spontaneously take up arms to fight off invading forces, without having the chance to form themselves into regular armed units.")
Thus, uniforms and/or badges are important in determining the status of prisoners of war; and francs, terrorists, saboteurs, mercenaries, and spies do not qualify because they do not always follow the laws and customs of war and therefore they fall into the category of unlawful fighters. In practice, these criteria are rarely interpreted strictly. Guerrillas, for example, usually do not wear uniforms or carry weapons openly, but the captured guerrillas are often given POW status.
The criteria are applied primarily to international armed conflicts ; in civil war, the rebels are often treated as traitors or criminals by government troops, and sometimes executed. However, in the American Civil War, both sides treated troops captured as POWs, possibly due to reciprocity, although the Union regarded Confederate personnel as separatist rebels. However, militants and other irregular fighters generally can not expect to receive the benefits of civil and military status simultaneously.
Right
Under the Third Geneva Convention, POWs must:
- Be treated humanely with respect for their people and their honor
- Be able to inform their closest relative and International Committee of the Red Cross to arrest them
- Allowed to communicate regularly with relatives and receive packages
- Given adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical care
- Paid for work done and not forced to do dangerous, unhealthy, or demeaning work
- Released quickly after the conflict ended
- There's no need to provide any information except for the name, age, rank, and service number
In addition, if injured or ill on the battlefield, detainees will receive assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
When a country is responsible for a violation of the prisoners of war, those responsible will be punished appropriately. An example of this is the Nuremberg Trials and Tokyo. German and Japanese military commanders were prosecuted for preparing and initiating wars of aggression, murder, ill-treatment, and individual deportation, and genocide during World War II. Most were executed or sentenced to life imprisonment for their crimes.
AS. Code of ethics and terminology
The US Military Code of Conduct was enacted in 1955 through the 10631 Executive Order under President Dwight D. Eisenhower to serve as a moral code for US service members who have been held captive. It was made primarily in response to the destruction of leadership and organization, especially when US troops were POW during the Korean War.
When a member of the military is imprisoned, the Code of Ethics reminds them that the chain of command is still valid (the highest ranked service members who qualify for orders, regardless of service branch, are orders), and require them to support their leadership. The Code also requires service members to refuse to provide information to the enemy (beyond identifying themselves, ie, "name, rank, serial number"), receiving special assistance or parole, or providing assistance and comfort to their enemies.
Since the Vietnam War, the official US military term for enemy POW is EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War). This name change was introduced to distinguish between enemies and US captives.
In 2000, the US military replaced the title "Prisoner of War" for American personnel caught with "Missing-Captured". A directive in January 2008 stated that the reasoning behind this is that "Prisoner of War" is an internationally recognized legal status for such people, it is not necessary for every country to follow it. This change remains relatively unknown even among the experts in the field and "Prisoner of War" is still widely used in the Pentagon which has a "POW/Missing Personnel Office" and a Prisoner of War prisoner award.
World War I
During World War I, about eight million people surrendered and were detained in POW camps until the war ended. All countries promise to follow the Hague rules of fair treatment of prisoners of war, and in general, POWs have a much higher survival rate than their non-captured counterparts. Individual surrender is rare; usually a large unit gives up all the people. In Tannenberg, 92,000 Russians surrendered during the battle. When the besieged Kaunas garrison surrendered in 1915, 20,000 Russians became captives. More than half of Russia's losses are prisoners as part of those arrested, injured or killed. About 3.3 million men became prisoners.
The German Empire held 2.5 million prisoners; Russia has 2.9 million, and Britain and France have about 720,000, mostly gained in the period before the Armistice in 1918. The US holds 48,000. The most dangerous moment for POW is surrender, when helpless soldiers are sometimes mistakenly shot down. After the prisoners reached the camp conditions POW was better (and often better than in WWII), partly thanks to the efforts of the International Red Cross and inspection by neutral countries.
But there are many abusive treatment of prisoners of war in Germany, as noted by the American ambassador to Germany (before the entry of America into the war), James W. Gerard, who published his findings in "My Four Years in Germany". Worse conditions are reported in the book "Escape of a Princess Pat" by George Pearson of Canada. That is very bad in Russia, where famine is common to prisoners and civilians; a quarter of the more than 2 million prisoners held there died. Nearly 375,000 of the 500,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners taken by Russians were killed in Siberia due to smallpox and typhoid. In Germany, the food is short, but only 5% die.
The Ottoman Empire often treated prisoners of war poorly. About 11,800 British troops, most of them Indians, became captives after the Siege of Kut in Kut for five months, in Mesopotamia, in April 1916. Many were weak and starved when they surrendered and 4,250 died in captivity.
During the Sinai and Palestine campaigns 217 unknown and unknown Australian, New Zealand and Indian soldiers were captured by the Ottoman Empire. About 50% of Australian prisoners are light riders, including 48 missing persons believed to be arrested on May 1, 1918 in the Jordan Valley. Pilots and observers of the Australian Flying Flying Corps were arrested in the Sinai Peninsula, Palestine, and Levant. One third of all Australian prisoners were arrested in Gallipoli including the AE2 submarine crew who traveled through the Dardanelles in 1915. Forced parades and heavy rail travel were preceded for years in camps where illness, poor diet and medical facilities not enough to win. Approximately 25% of other ranks died, many from malnutrition, while only one officer died.
The most bizarre case came in Russia where Czechoslovakian prisoners from Czechoslovakia (from the Austro-Hungarian army): they were liberated in 1917, arming themselves, briefly culminating into military and diplomatic forces during the Russian Civil War.
Release prisoner
By the end of the 1918 war there were believed to be 140,000 British prisoners of war in Germany, including thousands of internees held in neutral Switzerland. The first British prisoner was released and reached Calais on 15 November. Plans were made for them to be sent via Dunkirk to Dover and a large reception camp set up in Dover that could accommodate 40,000 people, which could later be used for demobilization.
On 13 December 1918, the ceasefire was extended and the Allies reported that on December 9, 264,000 prisoners had been repatriated. A very large number of these have been released in bulk and sent through Allied lines without food or shelter. This created difficulties to accept the Allies and many released prisoners died from exhaustion. The freed POWs were filled with cavalry troops and sent back through lane trails to reception centers where they were restored with boots and clothing and shipped to ports on trains.
Upon arrival at the receiving camp, POW is registered and "up" before being shipped to their own home. All assigned officers should write a report on the state of their arrest and to ensure that they have done everything they can to avoid arrest. Every officer and person returning a message from King George V, written in his own hand and reproduced with a lithograph. It reads as follows:
The Queen joins me in welcoming you at your release from misery & amp; the difficulties, which you have experienced with so much patience and courage.
During the months of the experiment, the initial rescue of our courageous & amp; The people of their captivity have become the most important in our minds.
We're grateful that this missed the day has arrived, & amp; that back in the old Country you will be able once again to enjoy the happiness of home & amp; to see the good days among those who anxiously seek you back. George R.I.
While the Allied prisoners were sent home at the end of the war, the same treatment was not given to the Sentral Powers of the Allies and Russia, many of whom had to be forced laborers, for example in France, until 1920. They were released after many ICRC approaches to the Allied Supreme Council.
World War II
Historian Niall Ferguson, alongside figures from Keith Lowe, tabulated the total mortality rate for prisoners of war in World War II as follows:
Care of POW by Axis
Japanese Empire
The Japanese Empire, which had signed but never ratified the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, did not treat prisoners of war in accordance with international treaties, including the provisions of the Hague Convention, either during the Second Sino-Japanese War or during the Pacific War, honorable. In addition, according to the directive ratified on 5 August 1937 by Hirohito, the constraints of the Hague Convention are explicitly deleted on Chinese detainees.
The prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the Philippines held by the Japanese armed forces were subjected to murder, beatings, summary sentences, brutal treatment, forced labor, medical experiments, starvation, poor medical care and cannibalism. The most popular use of forced labor is the construction of the Burma-Thailand Death Line. After March 20, 1943, the Imperial Navy was ordered to execute all the prisoners brought into the sea.
According to the findings of the Tokyo Court, the death rate of Western detainees is 27.1%, seven times that of prisoners of war under Germany and Italy. The death rate of the Chinese is much higher. So while 37,583 detainees from the United Kingdom, Commonwealth and Dominion, 28,500 from the Netherlands and 14,473 from the United States were released after the Japanese surrender, the number of Chinese was only 56. 27,465 United States Army and the United States. The Air Force State Air Force POWS at the Pacific Theater has a mortality rate of 40.4%. The War Ministry in Tokyo issued an order at the end of the war to kill all surviving prisoners of war.
No direct access to POW is given to the International Red Cross. The escape among Caucasian prisoners is almost impossible due to the difficulties of Caucasian men hiding in Asian societies.
Allied POW camps and transport vessels are sometimes the targets of accidents from Allied attacks. The number of deaths that occurred when Japanese "hell ships" - unmarked transport vessels where POW was transported in harsh conditions - was attacked by a very high US Navy submarine. Gavan Daws has calculated that "of all the prisoners of war killed in the Pacific War, one in three was killed in the water with friendly fire". Daves stated that 10,800 of the 50,000 POWs sent by the Japanese were killed at sea, while Donald L. Miller stated that "about 21,000 Allied Powers were killed in the sea, about 19,000 of them were killed by friendly fire.
Life in POW camps is very risky for themselves by artists such as Jack Bridger Chalker, Philip Meninsky, Ashley George Old, and Ronald Searle. Human hair is often used for brushes, plant juices and blood for paint, and toilet paper as "canvas". Some of their works are used as evidence in the trials of Japanese war criminals.
Penelitian tentang kondisi kamp telah dilakukan oleh Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
Jerman
Prajurit Prancis
After the French army surrendered in the summer of 1940, the Germans captured two million French prisoners of war and sent them to camps in Germany. About one-third released with various terms. The rest, non-commissioned officers and officers are being held in camps and not working. The soldiers are sent out to work. About half of them work for German farming, where the food supply is adequate and the control is soft. Others work in factories or mines, where conditions are harder.
Western Allies' POWs
Germany and Italy are generally treated to prisoners from the British Commonwealth, France, the United States, and other Western Allies in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by these countries. As a result, Western Allied officials are usually not made to work and some lower level personnel are usually compensated, or are not required to work. The main complaints of Western Allied prisoners of war in the German POW camps - especially during the last two years of war - are related to food shortages.
Only a small portion of the Western Allied POWs who were Jews - or who were believed to be Jewish Nazis - were killed as part of the Holocaust or subjected to other antisemit policies. For example, Major Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, a registered Palestinian Jew in the British Army, and who was captured by Germany in Greece in 1941, underwent four years of captivity under conditions wholly normal for prisoners of war.
However, a small number of Allied personnel were sent to concentration camps, for various reasons including being Jewish. As the US historian Joseph Robert White states: "One notable exception... is the lower camp for US war prisoners in Berga an der Elster, officially called Arbeitskommando 625 [also known as Stalag IX -B ] Berga is the deadliest detachment of work for American prisoners in Germany.73 participating men, or 21 percent of detachments, perished in two months 80 of 350 POWs are Jews. "Another notable example is a group Australian, British, Canadian, New Zealand and US pilots detained for two months in the Buchenwald concentration camp; two POWs died at Buchenwald. Two possible reasons have been suggested for this incident: The German authorities want to model the Terrorflieger ("terrorist aviators") and/or the crew are classified as spies, as they have been disguised as civilians or enemy troops when they are arrested.
Information about the conditions in stalags is contradictory depending on the source. Some American POWs claim Germany is a victim of circumstances and do the best they can, while others accuse their captors of brutality and forced labor. After all, the prison camps are sad places where there is very little food ration and the conditions are dirty. One American admitted: "The only difference between stalags and concentration camps is that we are not gassed or shot in the former, I do not remember an act of mercy or compassion from the German side." Typical food consists of sliced ​​bread and watery potato soup which, however, is still more important than that received by prisoners of Soviet detention camps or camp prisoners. Another prisoner stated that "The German plan is to keep us alive, yet weak enough that we will not attempt to escape."
When Soviet ground forces approached several POW camps in early 1945, German guards forced the western Allied POWs to walk far toward central Germany, often under extreme winter weather conditions. It is estimated that, of the 257,000 prisoners of war, some 80,000 were targeted by the march and up to 3,500 of them died as a result.
Italian POW
In September 1943 after the Armistice, the Italian officers and troops who in many places awaited the orders of a clear superior, were captured by German and Italian fascists and taken to German internment camps in Germany or Eastern Europe, where they were detained during the World War II. The International Red Cross can not do anything for them, because they are not considered prisoners of war, but prisoners have the status of "military prisoners". The treatment of detainees is generally bad. Author Giovannino Guareschi was among those interned and wrote about this time in his life. The book was translated and published as "My Secret Diary". He wrote about starving hunger, ordinary murder of individual prisoners by guards and how, when they were released (now from a German camp), they found an empty German city filled with groceries that they (along with other freed prisoners) ate. It is estimated that of the 1,070,000 Italians held captive by Germany, some 40,000 people died in custody and more than 13,000 people lost their lives during transportation from the Greek islands to the mainland.
POW Eastern Europe
Germany did not apply the same standard of treatment to non-western detainees, especially many Polish and Soviet POWs who suffered from harsh conditions and died in large numbers while in captivity.
Between 1941 and 1945 the Axis powers took about 5.7 million Soviet prisoners. About one million of them were released during the war, because their status changed but they remained under German authority. A little over 500,000 fled or freed by the Red Army. Around 930,000 others were found alive in camps after the war. The remaining 3.3 million prisoners (57.5% of the total captured) died during their detention. Between the launch of Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and the following spring, 2.8 million of the 3.2 million Soviet prisoners died at the hands of the Germans. According to Russian military historian General Grigoriy Krivosheyev, axis powers took 4.6 million Soviet prisoners, 1.8 million of whom were found living in camps after the war and 318,770 were released by the Poros during the war and later recruited into Soviet armed forces again.. By comparison, 8,348 Western Allied prisoners died in German camps during 1939-45 (3.5% of a total of 232,000).
Germany officially justify their policy on the grounds that the Soviet Union has not signed the Geneva Conventions. Legally, however, under article 82 of the Geneva Conventions, the signatory countries shall provide POWs of all signatories and non-signatories of rights established by the Convention. Shortly after the German invasion of 1941, the Soviet Union made Berlin an offer of mutual adherence to the Hague Conventions. Third Reich officials left the Soviet "records" unanswered. In contrast, Nikolai Tolstoy reported that the German Government - as well as the International Red Cross - made several attempts to regulate the mutual treatment of prisoners until early 1942, but received no response from the Soviets. Furthermore, the Soviets took a tough position against the captured Soviet troops, as they expected every soldier to fight to the death, and automatically exclude every detainee from the "Russian community".
Several Soviet POWs and forced labor sent by Germans to Nazi Germany, on their return to the Soviet Union, were treated as traitors and sent to gulag prison camps.
POW Treatment by the Soviet Union
German, Romanian, Italian, Hungarian, Finnish
According to some sources, the Soviets seized 3.5 million Axis warriors (excluding Japan) of which over one million people were killed. One particular example is that of the German POW after the Battle of Stalingrad, where the Soviets captured 91,000 German troops in total (really fatigue, hunger and illness) of which only 5,000 survived the captivity.
The German army was held as forced labor for many years after the war. The last German POWs like Erich Hartmann, the highest-profile warrior in the history of air war, who was found guilty of war crimes but without legal process, were not released by the Soviets until 1955, three years after Stalin died.
Polish
As a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers became prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Thousands of them were executed; more than 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians were killed in the Katyn massacre. Of the 80,000 evacuation people from the Soviet Union who gathered in the United Kingdom, only 310 had volunteered to return to Poland in 1947.
Of the 230,000 Polish prisoners of war taken by the Soviet army, only 82,000 survived.
Japanese
With the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, in 1945, Japanese soldiers became captives in the Soviet Union, where they, like all other Axis Powers, had to work.
Americans
There was a story during the Cold War stating that 23,000 Americans held in German POW camps were confiscated by the Soviets and never returned home. This myth has been immortalized after the release of the likes of John H. Noble. Careful scientific research has shown this is a myth based on a misinterpretation of a telegram that speaks of Soviet prisoners held in Italy.
Treatment of POW by Western Allied
German
During the war, soldiers of Western Allied countries such as Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States were ordered to treat Axis prisoners strictly in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But some violations of the Convention take place. According to Stephen E. Ambrose, of about 1,000 US combat veterans whom he interviewed, only one confessed to shooting a prisoner, saying he "feels sorry, but will do it again". However, a third told him that they had seen US troops kill German prisoners.
Toward the end of the war in Europe, when a large number of Poros soldiers surrendered, the US created the appointment of Trooped Enemy Forces (DEF) in order not to treat prisoners as prisoners of war. Many of these soldiers were kept in open fields in emergency camps in the Rhine valley ( Rheinwiesenlager ). Controversy has arisen about how Eisenhower arranged these prisoners (see Other Losses ).
After the German surrender in May 1945, the POW status of the German detainees was in many cases preserved, and they for several years were used as forced labor in countries such as Britain and France. Many died when forced to clear minefields in Norway, France, etc.; "In September 1945 it was estimated by French authorities that two thousand prisoners were disabled and killed every month in an accident"
In 1946, Britain had more than 400,000 German prisoners, many of whom had been transferred from POW camps in the US and Canada. Much of this for more than three years after the German surrender was used as forced labor, as a form of "reparation". The public debate took place in England, where words such as "forced labor", "slave", "slave labor" were increasingly used in the media and in the House of Commons. In 1947, the Ministry of Agriculture opposed the repatriation of working German prisoners, because at that time they constituted 25 percent of the land workforce, and they wanted to use it also in 1948.
"London Cage", the MI19 MI prisoner facility in Britain used to interrogate prisoners before they were sent to prison camps during and immediately after World War II, subject to torture allegations.
After Germany surrendered, the International Red Cross is prohibited from providing aid such as food or visiting prison camps in Germany. However, after making an approach to the Allies in the fall of 1945, they were allowed to investigate camps in the British and French occupation zones in Germany, as well as to provide assistance to the detainees held there. On February 4, 1946, the Red Cross was allowed to visit and assist prisoners also in the US occupation zone in Germany, albeit with very little food. "During their visit, delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often held in disrepair, attracting the authorities' attention to this fact, and gradually getting some improvements made."
The Allies also sent POWs among them, for example 6,000 German officers were transferred from the Western Allied camps to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp that is now under Soviet rule. The US also sent 740,000 German POWs as forced laborers to France from where newspaper reports said about the very poor treatment. Judge Robert H. Jackson, US Chief Prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trial, in October 1945 told US President Harry S. Truman that the Allies themselves:
has done or done some of the things we demand from Germany. France so violates the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of prisoners of war whose orders we take back the prisoners sent to them. We are demanding usurpation and our allies practice it.
Hungarian
Hungary became the POW of the Western Allies. Some of them, like Germany, were used as forced labor in France after the cessation of hostilities. After the war, the POW was handed over to the Soviets, and after the prisoners of war were sent to the Soviet Union for forced labor. It is called even today in the Hungarian malenkij robot - a little work. AndrÃÆ'¡s Toma, a Hungarian soldier imprisoned by the Red Army in 1944, was found in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000. He may be the last prisoner of war from World War II to be repatriated.
Japanese
Although thousands of Japanese were imprisoned, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. Of the 22,000 Japanese troops present at the start of the Battle of Iwo Jima, more than 20,000 people were killed and only 216 were imprisoned. Of the 30,000 Japanese troops defending Saipan, fewer than 1,000 people remain alive in the final battle. Japanese prisoners sent to the camp fared well; However, some Japanese were killed trying to surrender or be massacred only after they surrendered (see Allied war crimes during World War II in the Pacific). In some cases, Japanese detainees were tortured by various methods. The torture methods used by the Chinese National Revolutionary Army (NRA) include holding prisoners around his neck in a wooden cage to death. In very rare cases, one is beheaded with a sword, and a disconnected head was once used as a ball by the Chinese Revolutionary Army National Army (NRA).
After the war, many Japanese continued to survive as Japanese Persurran forces until mid-1947 and used as forced labor to perform menial tasks, while 35,000 were still held in their wartime military organizations and under their own officers and used in joint combat British forces attempted to suppress the independence movement in the Indies and French Indochina.
Italy
In 1943, Italy overthrew Mussolini and became co-aggressive with the Allies. This does not mean there is a change of status for Italian POW, because due to shortage of manpower in the UK, Australia and the United States, they are held as POW there.
Cossack
On February 11, 1945, at the end of the Yalta Conference, the United States and the United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the Soviet Union. The interpretation of this Treaty resulted in the forcible return of all Soviets (Operation Keelhaul) irrespective of their wishes. Repatriation operations occurred in 1945-1947.
Transfer between Allies
The United States handed over 740,000 German detainees to France, signatories to the Geneva Conventions. The Soviet Union has not signed the Geneva Conventions. According to Edward Peterson, the US chose to surrender several hundred thousand German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship". US forces also refused to accept the surrender of German troops who tried to surrender to them in Saxony and Bohemia, and surrendered them to the Soviet Union instead. It is also known that 6000 German officers sent from camps in the West to the Soviets were then imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which at that time was one of the NKVD special camps.
Post World War II
During the Korean War, North Korea developed a reputation as a very bad war prisoner (see Crimes against prisoners of war). Their prisoner of war was stationed in three camps, â € <â € according to their potential uses to the North Korean army. Camps of peace and reform camps are for prisoners of war who are either sympathetic to the cause or who have valuable skills that can be useful in the army and thus these enemy soldiers are indoctrinated and sometimes conscripted to the North Korean army. Ordinary war prisoners are usually treated very badly. Prisoners in peace camps are reportedly treated with more consideration.
In 1952, in 1952 Inter-Camp P.O.W. The Olympics were held for 15 and 27 November 1952, in Pyuktong, North Korea. China hopes to get publicity around the world and while some prisoners refuse to participate in about 500 P.O.W.s of eleven nationalities take part. They represent all the prison camps in North Korea and compete in: soccer, baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, track and field, soccer, gymnastics, and boxing. For P.O.Ws this is also an opportunity to meet with friends from other camps. The prisoners have their own photographers, broadcasters, and even reporters, who after every day of the competition publish a newspaper, "Olympic Roundup".
Of the approximately 16,500 French soldiers who fought at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in French Indochina, more than 3,000 were killed in battle, while nearly 11,721 captured people died in the hands of the Viet Minh in death marches to distant POW camps, and in camps it's in the last three months of war.
Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army captured many US service members as prisoners of war during the Vietnam War, who suffered persecution and torture during the war. Some American prisoners are held in a prison called Hanoi Hilton.
Communist Vietnam detained in custody by South Vietnamese and American forces was also tortured and ill-treated. After the war, millions of South Vietnamese soldiers and government workers were sent to "re-education" camps where many were killed.
As in previous conflicts, there was speculation without evidence that there were several American pilots captured by North Korea and North Vietnam who were transferred to the Soviet Union and never returned home.
Regardless of the regulations that determine the treatment of detainees, violations of their rights continue to be reported. Many cases of POW slaughter have been reported recently, including the October 13 massacre in Lebanon by Syrian forces and the June 1990 massacre in Sri Lanka.
In 1982, during the Falklands War, detainees were generally treated by both sides of the conflict, with military commanders sending enemy prisoners back to their homeland in no time.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, America, Britain, Italy, and Kuwaiti POW (mostly crew members crashed and special forces) were tortured by Iraqi secret police. An American military doctor, Major Rhonda Cornum, a 37-year-old flight surgeon, was arrested when his UH-60 Blackhawk was shot down, also targeted by sexual harassment.
During the 1990s the Yugoslav War, Serbian paramilitary troops backed by JNA troops killed POW in Vukovar and Karbrnja while Bosnian Serb forces killed POW in Srebrenica.
In 2001, there were reports of two POWs taken by India during the Indian-Indian War, Yang Chen and Shih Liang. Both were jailed for spying for three years before being interned in a mental hospital in Ranchi, where they spent the next 38 years under special detention status. The last prisoners of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) were exchanged in 2003.
Number of POW
This is a list of countries with the highest number of POWs since the start of World War II, listed in descending order. This is also the highest number in any war since the Relative Convention against Treatment of War Custody came into force on 19 June 1931. The Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva convention.
In popular culture
Movies & amp; Television
Songs
- "Prisoners of War" by Funker Vogt
- "Arrested" by Malevhhjjolent Creation
- "Take No Prisoners" by Megadeth
See also
References
Note
Bibliography
- The Rules of Law in the Armed Conflict Project (RULAC)
- John Hickman, "What is Prisoner of War For?" Scientia Militaria: Journal of South African Military Studies . Vol. 36, No. 2. 2008. pp.Ã, 19-35.
- Full text of the Third Geneva Convention, revised 1949
- "Prisoner of War". EncyclopÃÆ'Â|dia Britannica (CD ed.). 2002.
- the Gendercide site
- "Soviet and Lost Soviet Survivors in the Twentieth Century", Greenhill Books, London, 1997, G. F. Krivosheev, editor.
- "Keine Kameraden Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945", Dietz, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-8012-5023-7
- Bligh, Alexander. 2015. "The 1973 War and the Formation of the Israeli POW Policy - A DAS Line?". In Udi Lebel and Eyal Lewin (eds.), Yom Kippur War 1973 and Reformation of Israel Civil-Military Relations. Washington, DC: Lexington Books (2015), 121-146.
- Bligh, Alexander. 2014. "The development of the Israeli POW policy: The 1967 War as a trial case", Paper presented at the Seventh Annual ASMEA Conference: Seeking a Balance in the Middle East and Africa (Washington, DC, October 31, 2014).
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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