Did the Germans in WWII treat POW's well or badly?

Question: Did the Germans in WWII treat POW's well or badly!?

The way the Japanese mistreated POW's during WWII is well known!.

But how did the Germans treat their POW's (such as American POW's) during WWII!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

1!. In all wars, a certain percentage of those surrendering are killed outright by any side!. Our guys did it, their guys did it!.

2!. But when surrendering in mass or once you make it to the rear, the rules should change!. Generally speaking, treatment of US and British POWs by the Germans wasn't bad!. They starved, some camps were denied Red Cross packages but there were few outright mass atrocities like there were with the Japanese!. To put this in perspective, mortality rates for Allied POWs in Japanese captivity were around 45%!. Mortality rates for US-British POWs in German hands were no more than 3%!.

3!. The fate of Russian POWs was far, far worse!. The mortality rate for captured Germans (by the Russians) was 85%!. The numbers I've seen (none authoritative) match that for Russians in German captivity!.

4!. There were allied POWs in limited numbers who were sent to concentration camps!. For instance, some of the Great Escape captures went to concentration camps!. Many of the SOE agents who were captured were sent to concentration camps!.

5!. And of course there were instances were there were mass killings!. Malmedy (by Jochen Peiper's bunch) is probably the most obvious one!. My understanding is that half of those recaptured in the Great Escape were executed!.

Another way to contrast this is: there were almost no Germans who served war crime penalties for their actions as POW guards or commandants!. But there were plenty of Japanese who were executed for beheading or eating POW's during the war!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

In a general way most POW's were treated in accord with the Geneva conventions!. No treat but survivable!. There were instances of abuse and forced labor but generally not many, the International Red Cross did have access to most camps!. The officer's POW camps were much better then the enlisted men's camps!. If the POW's followed the rules they were not mistreated!.

The horrible exception was the Russians!. The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva conventions so the Germans did not follow the international rules!. They recruited and armed some Russians to fight against their native country (not all that successful), which is illegal!. They forced them in labor camps and let thousands starve to death!. They withheld medical treatment also!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

In general, Japan treated prisoners worsde than the Germans, but how you were treated also had a lot to do with where you were from!. The death rate of Americans in German camps was very low (<5%) while the death rate for Americans in Japanese camps was 37% (according to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal)!. For the Soviets, out of 5!.7 million prisoners taken by the Germans, 3!.5 million, or 58%died!. The mortality rate of Chinese prisoners of the Japanese is unknown but was probably over 90%!.
Estimates of the number of German prisoners of the Soviets who died range from 35% (German sources) to 18% (Russian sources) and was probably somewhere in the middle!. The Stalingrad case, where only 5000 survived out of 91,000 prisoners taken was an anomoly that resulted from the condition of the men when they surrendered, the extreme cold, and the fact that all available nearby shelter had been destroyed in the battle!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

On the average pretty well!. But if the Gestapo got involved pretty bad!. The different services ran their own POW camps!. Airforce POW's from various Allied countries in Luftwaffe custody got pretty good treatment!. It was just mutual respect and common sense!. To do otherwise invited retilation against their own POW's in Allied hands!. But the executions in the old movie "The Great Escape" really happened!. The Gestapo wanted to make an example!. Resistance fighters in any country that were captured, any age, religion, and sex were routinely tortured and executed!. In Russia it was particularly barbaric!. Russian POW's were treated much worse on average than the Western Allies as well!. POW's seen as particularly troublesome were often sent to particularly hard to escape facilities!. Douglas Bader the great RAF ace lost both legs at the hip in a prewar flying accident!. After being shot down and captured he repeatedly tried to escape and ended up in a high security facility!. But the systemitic brutality that the Japanese subjected POW's to was largely absent in the case of British and American POW's!. The fact is later in the war USAAF prisoners preferred to be captured than caught by German civilians who often lynched them out of hand!. They did not like being on the recieving end of the bombing!.!.!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I agree with the other answers!. Talking to a person who was 'relocated' to Germany from Latvia during the war he said the main problem was lack of food!. The miliary and government got the most of it, the civilians went hungry and the prisoners starved!. Food was a huge issue, even after the war!. The German civil population was on tight, tight food rations for years!. There just wasn't any and many blamed the Americans for holding back on food!. But so much of the supplies had been gone through or destroyed there just wasn't much available!. People who were lucky had producing gardens and those saved many from absolute starvation!.
Many people were were waiting to be relocated in displaced persons camps in Germany were fiercely resented by Germans because they recieved rations from the British and Americans IF they were located in those sections of Berling!.
American aid also helped the Russian prisoners who were waiting to go back home (and be shot by Stalin for being traitors to the USSR by being captured) !.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It all varied!. Most US POW's in German custody were treated well!. Flyers were treated particularly well!. Many US POW's were taken to live with German families in the country, where they would provide labor and receive food!. This system worked fairly well!. The biggest complaints of POW's was crappy food, which all Germans were victims of!. On the battlefield, it was generally civil!. The big exception was Waffen SS troops!. They were so rabidly dedicated that they rarely surrendered, so they could not understand the concept of surrender!. The Totenkopf SS Division once massacred an entire unit of Brits who surrendered!. SS troops in the Ardennes killed many American troops who surrendered!. But this was tghe exception, not the rule!. The Eastern front was insane though! Russian prisoners fared little better than Jews, and Germans were massacred in Gulags!. At Stalingrad, 58,000 German troops under Paulus surrendered!. None ever returned home!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It was better than the Japanese, but not good!. I remember seeing a picture of American POWs being forced by the Nazis to carry big rocks up a huge hill!. Not good!.

All in all, though, being a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII was probably about the worst POW situation ever!. Certainly in the 20th century!. What happened at the "Bataan Death March" was horrible, and should never be forgotten!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

On the western front: apart from the occassional atrocities, they generally honoured the Geneva convention!.

This was a hedging bet, they knew they would be more favourably treated than by the Russians if, which they obviously did, lose the war!.

On the eastern front, they butchered and couldn't care less about the Geneva convention!.

I have not sighted the holocaust west or east, because I was asked about the war!. Nothing else, though that was disgusting!.

Read the rise and fall of the third Reich by William Shirer!. He was an American correspondant who saw the rise of Hitler in the thirties, reporting from Berlin!.

His work is regarded as an authority on the subject!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Far better!. Americans also treated German prisoners well!. One example was a camp in Illinois (Ellis) with 5000 prisoners held for about two years!. Only 4 prisoners died while there, all of natural causes!. There were no escapes!. Prisoners were paid for their manual labor in the camp, and also, gangs for work crews were send around the area to harvest crops, etc!. etc!.

After the war, many of the former prisoners brought their families to the US and, especially, to Illinois, where they settled and became citizens!.

It is also clear that both sides, in the heat of battle or in the aftermath of a battle, would sometimes kill the prisoners before they could be delivered behind the lines to the officers responsible for putting them into camps!. It is not easy to control a bunch of men with weapons who have just seen their friends killed and wounded by the same enemy who surrendered when they were out of ammo!.

Conventions for treatment of prisoners are wonderful but more often than not, the ordinary soldier would as soon take revenge!. It is much easier for them, too, to kill prisoners who don't look like themselves!.

If you don't want attrocities, don't have wars!. Americans don't have any moral high ground in this matter, particularly where the 'race' is different!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The Russians and Poles were treated worse ,often starved and worked to death!.
Most other prisoners were treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention with some exceptions notably the mass escape from Stalag Luft III when the recaptured prisoners were murdered by the Gestapo and any POWs who ended up in concentration camps suffered the same fate as the othersWww@QuestionHome@Com

Depends on what country you were from!. They killed POW at will at times!. Particularly bad off were the Polish and Russian POW's, who were often put into slave labor camps and killed off by working them to death on short rations!.
English and Americans were treated better for the most part!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The Germans treated Soviet POWs extremely badly, starving millions to death!. Allied POW were largely accorded the protections of the Geneva conventions!. Even Jewish POWs in the Allied Forces were treated correctly!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

compared to what!?

There were many cases of torture and murder by the German's in the camps!.

People complain about Gitmo and similar things!. Our worst treatment compares with their best!.Www@QuestionHome@Com