A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
The Rheinwiesenlager were a group of 19 concentration camps built in the Allied-occupied part of Germany by the U.S. Army to hold captured German soldiers at the close of the Second World War. Officially named Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures (PWTE), they held between one and almost two million surrendered Wehrmacht personnel from April until September 1945.
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) held by the Axis countries, especially Nazi Germany; and helping Allied military personnel, especially downed airmen, evade capture after they were shot down or trapped behind enemy lines in Axis-occupied countries. During World War II, about 35,000 Allied military personnel, many helped by MI9, escaped POW camps or evaded capture and made their way to Allied or neutral countries after being trapped behind enemy lines.
Disarmed Enemy Forces is a US designation for soldiers who surrender to an adversary after hostilities end, and for those POWs who had already surrendered and were held in camps in occupied German territory at the time. It was General Dwight D. Eisenhower's designation of German prisoners in post–World War II occupied Germany.
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured as prisoners of war by a belligerent power in time of war.
During World War I and World War II, Switzerland maintained armed neutrality, and was not invaded by its neighbors, in part because of its topography, much of which is mountainous. Germany was a threat, and Switzerland built a powerful defense. It served as a "protecting power" for the belligerents of both sides, with a special role in helping prisoners of war. The belligerent states made it the scene for diplomacy, espionage, and commerce, as well as being a safe haven for 300,000 refugees.
Tatura is a town in the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria, Australia, and is situated within the City of Greater Shepparton local government area, 167 kilometres (104 mi) north of the state capital (Melbourne) and 18 kilometres (11 mi) west of the regional centre of Shepparton. At the 2021 census, Tatura had a population of 4,955.
In Germany, stalag was a term used for prisoner-of-war camps. Stalag is a contraction of "Stammlager", itself short for Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschaftsstammlager, literally "main camp for enlisted prisoners of war". Therefore, "stalag" technically means "main camp".
In customary international law, an enemy alien is any native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed. Usually, the countries are in a state of declared war.
Herzogenbusch was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. The camp was opened in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before Herzogenbusch was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war, the camp was used as a prison for Germans and for Dutch collaborators. Today there is a visitors' center which includes exhibitions and a memorial remembering the camp and its victims.
Gurs internment camp was an internment camp and prisoner of war camp constructed in 1939 in Gurs, a site in southwestern France, not far from Pau. The camp was originally set up by the French government after the fall of Catalonia at the end of the Spanish Civil War to control those who fled Spain out of fear of retaliation from Francisco Franco's regime. At the start of World War II, the French government interned 4,000 German Jews as "enemy aliens", along with French socialist political leaders and those who opposed the war with Germany.
Stalag XIII-D Nürnberg Langwasser was a German Army World War II prisoner-of-war camp built on what had been the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg, northern Bavaria.
German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including puppet governments, by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 and 1945, during World War II, administered by the Nazi regime under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
Wilhelm Reinhold Johannes Kunze was a German World War II prisoner of war (POW) held at Camp Tonkawa, Oklahoma. He was a Gefreiter in the Afrika Korps. Following a trial before a kangaroo court on November 4, 1943, he was beaten to death by his fellow POWs since he had been spying for the Americans. He became a suspect of fellow prisoners of war after expressing defeatist comments and indifference to the outcome of the war.
The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. The Germans abducted approximately 12 million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds came from Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Many workers died as a result of their living conditions – extreme mistreatment, severe malnutrition and abuse were the main causes of death. Many more became civilian casualties from enemy (Allied) bombing and shelling of their workplaces throughout the war. At the peak of the program the forced labourers constituted 20% of the German work force. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15 million men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war.
The Gau March of Brandenburg was formed in March 1933 initially under the name Gau Electoral March in Nazi Germany as a district within the Free State of Prussia. In January 1939, Kurmark was renamed March of Brandenburg. The Gau was dissolved in 1945, following Allied Soviet occupation of the area and Germany's formal surrender. After the war, the territory of the former Gau became part of the state of Brandenburg in East Germany except for areas beyond the Oder-Neisse line, which were given to the Polish People's Republic. Most of its territory is now divided between Germany's State of Brandenburg and Poland's Lubusz Voivodeship.
Members of the German military were interned as prisoners of war in the United States during World War I and World War II. In all, 425,000 German prisoners lived in 700 camps throughout the United States during World War II.
Large numbers of German prisoners of war were held in Britain between the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and late 1948. Their numbers reached a peak of around 400,000 in 1946, and then began to fall when repatriation began. The experiences of these prisoners differed in certain important respects from those of captured German servicemen held by other nations. The treatment of the captives, though strict, was generally humane, and fewer prisoners died in British captivity than in other countries. The British government also introduced a programme of re-education, which was intended to demonstrate to the POWs the evils of the Nazi regime, while promoting the advantages of democracy. Some 25,000 German prisoners remained in the United Kingdom voluntarily after being released from prisoner of war status.
A neutral state, the United States entered the war on the Allied side in December 1941. The American government first became aware of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe in 1942 and 1943. Following a report on the failure to assist the Jewish people by the Department of State, the War Refugee Board was created in 1944 to assist refugees from the Nazis. As one of the most powerful Allied states, the United States played a major role in the military defeat of Nazi Germany and the subsequent Nuremberg trials. The Holocaust saw increased awareness in the 1970s that instilled its prominence in the collective memory of the American people continuing to the present day. The United States has been criticized for taking insufficient action in response to the Jewish refugee crisis in the 1930s and the Holocaust during World War II.
