List of prisoners of war

Senior officers held captive in Oflag IV-C in Colditz Castle, including Admiral Józef Unrug and General Tadeusz Piskor.

Winston Churchill in Durban after escaping from captivity in 1899. He had written the Boer Secretary of War a polite departure note, "I have the honour to inform you that as I do not consider that your Government has any right to detain me as a military prisoner, I have decided to escape from your custody..."

This is a list of famous prisoners of war (POWs) whose imprisonment attracted media attention, or who became well known afterwards.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Contents

• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z

• References

A

• Ron Arad – Israeli fighter pilot, shot down over Lebanon in 1986; not seen since 1988 and is presumed dead
• Everett Alvarez, Jr. – Navy aviator, Vietnam War POW, held for 8 years, second longest period as a POW in American history (after Floyd James Thompson)

B

• Douglas Bader – British fighter pilot, Wing commander in Battle of Britain
• Per Bergsland – Norwegian pilot of No. 332 Squadron RAF. Escapee #44 of the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, successfully made it to Sweden with Jens Müller
• Leonard Birchall – the "Saviour of Ceylon"
• Gregory "Pappy" Boyington – US Marine Corps Fighter Ace during WWII, Medal of Honor recipient
• Fernand Braudel – historian, was a POW in WWII
• Frank Buckles – the last surviving American veteran of WWI, was a civilian during WWII when imprisoned by the Japanese
• Roger Bushell – South African-born RAF Squadron Leader. Masterminded the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III in 1944, but was one of the 50 escapees to be recaptured and subsequently murdered by the Gestapo
• Peter Butterworth – actor, Fleet Air Arm officer, shot down 1940, imprisoned in Stalag Luft III
• Hubert Brooks – Canadian RCAF officer, partisan in Home Army in occupied Poland, awarded Military Cross and the Polish Cross of Merit with Swords

C

• Juan Crisóstomo Centurión - Paraguayan Army officer, POW at the end of the Paraguayan War
• Anthony Chenevix-Trench – future headmaster of Eton, artillery officer, prisoner 1942-45 at Changi Prison and on the Burma Railway
• Winston Churchill – during the Second Boer War; escaped
• James Clavell – prisoner in Singapore, based his novel King Rat on his experiences during WWII
• George Thomas Coker – US Navy aviator, POW in North Vietnam, noted resistor of his captors

D

• Rupert Davies – actor, Fleet Air Arm observer, POW in Stalag Luft III 1940-45
• Charles de Gaulle – French general and political leader, captured at Verdun, POW 1916-1918
• Dieter Dengler – United States Navy pilot who escaped a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos
• Jeremiah Denton – awarded the Navy Cross for resistance in captivity during the Vietnam War
• Roy Dotrice – British actor
• John A. Dramesi – USAF Colonel, Vietnam POW, lead the only organized escape from the Hanoi Hilton with Edwin Atterberry
• Werner Drechsler – killed by fellow German POWs during WWII for informing on other prisoners
• Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop – Australian surgeon and legend among prisoners of the Thai Burma Railway in WWII
• Clive Dunn – British Dad's Army actor, captured following the Battle of Greece in 1941 and held in German captivity until the end of WWII
• Yakov Dzhugashvili – Joseph Stalin's first son, captured by Germans early in WWII, lived in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943

E

• Denholm Elliott – British actor

G

• Henri Giraud – French general, escaped German captivity in both WWI and WWII
• Ernest Gordon – POW of Japanese in WWII, author of Through the Valley of the Kwai and former Presbyterian Dean of Princeton University chapel

H

• James Hargest – New Zealand Brigadier captured in WWII, escaped from captivity into Switzerland
• Heinrich Harrer – Austrian mountaineer, sportsman and author, detained in British India during WWII until he escaped in 1944, described in his Seven Years in Tibet
• Erich Hartmann – "The Blond Knight of Germany", number one air ace of all air forces in WWII
• Jack Hawkins (U.S. Marine Corps officer)
• Rudolf Hess – Deputy Führer of Germany, POW in England 1941-45, before his trial for war crimes
• Bob Hoover – American WWII pilot, test pilot and airshow performer; captured in 1944 and escaped from Stalag Luft I
• Brian Horrocks – British WW2 general, WWI POW in Germany and Russia
• Wilm Hosenfeld – Soviet POW in WWII, most remembered for saving the life of Polish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman
• William Hull – American Brigadier General who surrendered Fort Detroit to the British at the outbreak of the War of 1812

J

• Andrew Jackson – seventh President of the United States, captured in the American Revolutionary War as a thirteen-year-old courier
• Charles R. Jackson – captured in Battle of Corregidor, as described in memoir I Am Alive: A United States Marine's Story of Survival in a WWII Japanese POW Camp
• Harold K. Johnson – US Army Chief of Staff 1964; captured at Bataan (1942–1945)

K

• James Kasler - Vietnam, ONLY three time recipient of the Air Force Cross.
• Bert Kaempfert – German orchestra conductor in WWII at a Danish POW camp
• Emil Kapaun – Roman Catholic priest in US Army, Medal of Honor recipient, Servant of God candidate for sainthood
• George Kenner – German artist interned as a civilian POW in Great Britain and the Isle of Man during WWI, which he documented in 110 paintings and drawings
• Tikka Khan – Japanese POW during WWII, Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistani Army
• Wajid Khan – Canadian politician, Pakistan-India War 1971 fighter pilot
• Yahya Khan – German POW during WWII, last president of a united Pakistan
• Maximilian Kolbe – Roman Catholic priest from Poland, interned in Auschwitz, and canonized as a saint
• Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski – Commander of the Polish Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising
• Gustav Krist – adventurer and traveler, Austrian soldier in WWI, captured by Russians and Interned in Russian Turkestan
• Sam Kydd – British actor

L

• George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood – captured in Italy 1944, one of the Prominente (celebrity inmates) at Colditz
• Desmond Llewelyn – actor, most famously as Q in the James Bond film series
• Jessica Lynch – American servicewoman during the Iraq war

M

• Herbert Massey – RAF Air Commodore. Senior British Officer at Stalag Luft III who authorized the "Great Escape"
• Keith Matthew Maupin – captured on April 9, 2004, date of murder unknown, remains found March 30, 2008
• Charles Cardwell McCabe – a POW and chaplain at Libby Prison during the American Civil War
• John McCain – Republican nominee for president in 2008, POW for over five years in Vietnam
• Olivier Messiaen – French composer
• George Millar – journalist, British soldier, SOE agent, writer
• Dusty Miller – executed for his faith during internment under the Japanese in Thailand in 1945 ^[2]
• François Mitterrand – French president, captured during WWII in 1940, escaped 6 times before arriving home in December 1941
• Jens Müller – Norwegian pilot of No. 331 Squadron RAF. Escapee #43 of the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, successfully made it to Sweden with Per Bergsland
• Ethel Rogers Mulvany – Canadian POW during WWII, later gained national media attention for her fundraising efforts for former prisoners of war
• W. H. Murray – German POW during WWII, Scottish mountaineer

N

• Airey Neave – British politician, made the first British home run from Colditz on 5 January 1942
• A. A. K. Niazi – commander of Pakistan Army in East Pakistan who surrendered along with nearly 93,000 other soldiers

O

• Richard O'Connor – British General who commanded the Western Desert Force 1940-41
• Domingo Antonio Ortiz - Paraguayan Supreme Court justice and Navy officer, captured during the Paraguayan War

P

• Friedrich Paulus – German field marshal, surrendered Stalingrad to the Soviets in 1943
• Pete Peterson – American diplomat and member of Congress, Air Force pilot who spent more than six years as a POW in Vietnam
• Donald Pleasence – English film and stage actor, WWII RAF airman shot down and placed in a German POW camp; later acted in the film The Great Escape

R

• John Rarick – U.S. Representative from Louisiana
• Sławomir Rawicz – Polish Army lieutenant who was imprisoned by the Soviets after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. Ghost-wrote the book "The Long Walk", where he claimed he and six others escaped from a Siberian Gulag camp and trekked on foot through the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas before finally reaching British India
• Pat Reid – author of historical non-fiction
• James Robinson Risner – USAF Brigadier General, first living recipient of the Air Force Cross
• Yevgeny Rodionov – Russian soldier captured by rebel forces in Chechnya and beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam
• Giles Romilly – nephew of Winston Churchill, war correspondent, Prominente (celebrity prisoner) in Germany 1940-45
• James N. Rowe – Colonel, US Army Special Forces, held by the Viet Cong from 1963 to 1968, one of only 34 American soldiers to escape captivity in Vietnam

S

• Jean-Paul Sartre – French philosopher and writer, POW 1940-1941
• Kazuo Sakamaki – first POW captured by US forces in WWII
• Winfield Scott – American Lt Col who surrendered at the Battle of Queenston Heights; later Commanding General of the United States Army from 1841 to 1861
• Ronald Searle – English cartoonist
• Léopold Senghor – Senegalize writer and political leader, captured 1940 in France
• Gilad Shalit – Israeli soldier captured in 2006 by Hamas, released in a prisoner exchange in 2011
• Vladek Spiegelman – Polish private captured by Germany on first day of WWII, father of Art Spiegelman
• William Stacy – Lieutenant Colonel of the Continental Army, captured during the Cherry Valley massacre; General George Washington made failed attempt to retrieve him via prisoner exchange ^[3]
• James Stockdale – candidate for Vice President in 1992; decorated member of the US Navy; POW in Vietnam Medal of Honor recipient.
• E W Swanton – captured by Japanese in Singapore; after war, was BBC sports commentator

T

• Floyd James Thompson – America's longest-held POW, he spent 9 years in POW camps in Vietnam (1964 – 1973)
• Josip Broz Tito – president of Yugoslavia, Austrian soldier in WWI, captured by Russians in 1915
• András Toma – last known WWII POW, a Hungarian soldier who lived in a psychiatric asylum in Russia for 55 years before being identified and returned home in 2000
• Jakow Trachtenberg – Russian Jewish mathematician who developed the mental calculation techniques called the Trachtenberg system
• Mikhail Tukhachevsky – Soviet military leader and theorist, captured by Germans in WWI

U

• Charles Upham – most decorated Commonwealth soldier of WWII, awarded the Victoria Cross twice

V

• Arthur W. Vanaman – Major General, Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence for the Eighth Air Force. Highest-ranked American POW in the European Theater during WWII
• Laurens van der Post – South African writer and war hero, captured by Japanese forces in 1942
• Bram van der Stok – Dutch pilot of No. 41 Squadron RAF. Escapee #18 of the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, successfully crossed Europe with help from the French Resistance to reach a British consulate in Spain
• Abhinandan Varthaman – Indian Air Force pilot, shot down and captured during Indo - Pak standoff in Feb 2019
• Dietrich von Choltitz – German general, military governor of Paris, POW in England 1944-45, then in American custody till 1947
• Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach – German general captured at Stalingrad
• Kurt Vonnegut – American writer; captured in the Battle of the Bulge and witnessed the bombing of Dresden

W

• Jonathan Wainwright – Commanding General US forces in Philippines; captured at Bataan (1942–1945)
• George Washington – first US President, captured in 1754 by the French during the French and Indian War
• Peter Wyngarde – British actor, imprisoned as a young British citizen in Langhua POW camp in WWII

Z

• Louis Zamperini – American athlete, member of Olympic team, captured by Japanese forces in 1943 ^[4]

References

1. Sir Winston S. Churchill (10 December 1899), The Boer War: London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton's March, Bloomsbury, p. 70, ISBN   9781472520838
2. Gordon, Ernest (2005). Miracle on the River Kwai. Royal National Institute of the Blind. p. 173. OCLC   939628465.
3. Sparks, Jared: The Writings of George Washington, Vol VII, Harper and Brothers, New York (1847) p. 211.
4. Hillenbrand, Laura (2010). Unbroken: A WWII story of survival, resilience, and redemption . New York, NY: Random House. ISBN   978-0-81297-449-2.