Prisoner of War: Captivity Amidst Chaos, A Soldier's Struggle for Survival

By Fouad Sabry

What is Prisoner of War

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.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Prisoner of war

Chapter 2: Other Losses

Chapter 3: End of World War II in Europe

Chapter 4: Disarmed Enemy Forces

Chapter 5: Prisoner-of-war camp

Chapter 6: Stalag III-C

Chapter 7: Stalag XX-A

Chapter 8: Stalag

Chapter 9: Allied war crimes during World War II

Chapter 10: Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (1929)

(II) Answering the public top questions about prisoner of war.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Prisoner of War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Jun 3, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Prisoner of war

Prisoner of war (POW) refers to a person kept hostage by a belligerent power during or immediately following an armed conflict. The oldest recorded use of the phrase war prisoner was in 1610.

Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a variety of legitimate and illegitimate reasons, including isolating them from enemy combatants still on the battlefield (releasing and repatriating them in an orderly fashion after hostilities), demonstrating military victory, punishing them, prosecuting them for war crimes, exploiting them for their labor, recruiting or even conscripting them as their own combatants, and gathering military and political intelligence from them.

Throughout most of human history, enemy warriors on the losing side of a conflict who surrendered and were taken as prisoners of war may expect to be either slain or enslaved, depending on the culture of the victor. In Homer's Iliad, Greek and Trojan troops offer gold in exchange for clemency to those who have defeated them on the battlefield, but their offers are not always accepted; for example, Lycaon.

In general, conquerors did not differentiate between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, but they were more likely to spare women and children. Occasionally, the objective of a battle, if not a war, was to kidnap women, a practice known as raptio; the Rape of the Sabines, according to legend, entailed a large-scale mass abduction by the founders of Rome. Typically, women lacked legal rights and were treated as property.

According to myth, during Childeric's siege and blockade of Paris in 464 the nun Geneviève (later canonised as the city's patron saint) pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response.

Later, Clovis I (r. 481–511) liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so.

This was done in reprisal for the French murder of youths and other noncombatants who handled the army's baggage and equipment, And because the French were resuming their assault, Henry feared that the French would break through and release the prisoners to fight anew.

A number of religious conflicts fought in the late Middle Ages sought not only to defeat but also to exterminate their opponents. Authorities in Christian Europe viewed the annihilation of heretics and heathens as acceptable on several occasions. Such conflicts include the Albigensian Crusade in Languedoc in the 13th century and the Northern Crusades in the Baltic region.

Similarly, during Christian Crusades against Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries, the populations of seized cities were frequently killed. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed; their relatives would be required to submit ransom payments proportional to the captive's social position.

Feudal Japan had no tradition of ransoming war prisoners, who typically faced swift execution.

In the thirteenth century, the expanding Mongol Empire distinguished between cities and towns that surrendered (where the people was spared but obliged to serve the conquering Mongol army) and those who fought (in which case the city was ransacked and destroyed, and all the population killed). At Termez, on the Oxus, all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, divided according to their regular habit, and then all of them were slaughtered. In the case of the Banu Qurayza in 627, Muhammad sanctioned the mass death of male prisoners who participated in conflicts when he believed the enemy had violated a deal with the Muslims. The Muslims divided the executed women and children into ghanima (spoils of war).

Between the 16th and late 18th centuries, the treatment of prisoners of war in Europe grew increasingly centralized. Previously, prisoners of war were considered the private property of the captor; however, captured enemy soldiers are now viewed as the property of the state. From the question of who would be designated a prisoner of war through their final release, the European powers endeavored to establish a greater degree of control over all phases of imprisonment. Officers, who negotiated the surrender of their entire unit, were tasked with legitimizing the act of surrender.

In exchange for privileges, the parole, or discourse right evolved, in which a captured officer relinquished his weapon and provided his word as a gentleman. If he vowed he would not flee, he may receive better housing and be released from prison. If he pledged to end hostilities against the nation that held him hostage, he could be released or exchanged, but he could not serve in a military capacity against his former captors.

There are a number of early historical accounts of abducted European settlers, including the viewpoints of literate women captured by the indigenous peoples of North America. The tumultuous combat of King Philip's War captivated the works of Mary Rowlandson, for example. Such accounts were popular, establishing a genre known as the captive story, and had a lasting impact on early American literature, most notably through the legacy of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Some Native Americans continued to capture Europeans and use them as slaves and bargaining chips well into the 19th century; for instance, John R. Jewitt, a sailor who wrote a memoir about his years as a captive of the Nootka people on the Pacific Northwest coast from 1802 to 1805, is one such example.

The earliest known purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp was erected at Norman Cross in Huntingdonshire, England in 1797 to host the growing number of French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars inmates. The average prison population consisted of approximately 5,500 male inmates. The lowest number reported was 3,300 in October 1804 and the maximum was 6,272 on 10 April 1810, according to an official document. The Norman Cross Prison was designed to be a model facility for the most compassionate treatment of war captives. The British government went to tremendous lengths to provide food of comparable quality to that which was accessible locally. As the food was being delivered to the prison, the senior officer from each quadrant was able to inspect it to ensure that it was of appropriate quality. Despite the ample supply and high quality of food, some inmates starved to death after spending their rations on gambling. The majority of prisoners were low-ranking soldiers and sailors, including midshipmen and junior officers, plus a few privateers. About 100 senior officers and several excellent social standing civilians, primarily passengers on captured ships and the wives of certain officers, were granted parole outside of the prison, primarily in Peterborough but sometimes in other cities. They were accorded the respect due to their position in English society.

During the Battle of Leipzig, both sides utilized the city's cemetery as a hospital and prison camp for approximately 6,000 prisoners of war who lived in the burial vaults and used the coffins as firewood. When food was