154 THE WIDENING WAR 1942
Rapid advances made by the German army
in the opening stages of the war meant that
the Germans soon held several million
French and Polish prisoners, and opened
a network of camps to hold them. The
invading Germans also encircled vast
numbers of Soviet soldiers, and by December
1941 they had captured 3.2 million of them.
However, the tables turned in Stalingrad in
1942, when the Germans experienced their
first major defeat, and ultimately around 1.5
million German troops fell into Soviet hands.Variable conditions
The Geneva Convention of 1929 had laid down standards for
captured POWs, but the Soviet Union had not signed it and Japan
had not ratified it, so conditions in Soviet and Japanese camps during
World War II were often appalling. The Germans generally treated
prisoners from Britain, France, the US, and other western Allies
according to the Geneva Convention, but not so the Soviets. As
a result, almost 60 percent of Soviet POWs held by the Germans died,
many of typhus, dysentery, exposure, or starvation.
Prisoners taken on the Western Front usually fared better: officers
did not have to work, while rank-and-file soldiers were supposed
to do work without military value, and the Red Cross dispatched
36 million food parcels to supplement their diet. Most were released
soon after the war, although the last German POW held by the
Soviet Union was not repatriated until 1956.PRISONERS
OF WAR
Millions of Allied and Axis solders were captured
during World War II and sent to prisoner-of-war
(POW) camps. Despite international agreements
that were supposed to protect such prisoners,
conditions in the camps could be dire.
△ Bare necessities
Prisoners had few possessions
and so were forced to
improvise, creating their own
utensils such as this hand-
carved spoon in a box with
the prisoner’s inmate number.COLDITZ CASTLE
The Renaissance castle
at Colditz in Saxony,
Germany, was used by the
German army from 1940
to detain POWs who had
tried to escape from other
camps. Security was tight,
but escape attempts were
rife, and a total of 30
prisoners managed to
break out to freedom. One
notable attempt involved
a homemade glider.US_154-155_F_prisoners_of_war.indd 154 24/05/19 1:16 PM