• DOI:10.1086/244883
• Corpus ID: 143467546

The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II

@article{Mackenzie1994TheTO,
  title={The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II},
  author={S. P. Mackenzie},
  journal={The Journal of Modern History},
  year={1994},
  volume={66},
  pages={487 - 520}
}

• S. Mackenzie
• Published 1 September 1994
• History
• The Journal of Modern History

In any examination of the treatment afforded prisoners of war (POWs), the Second World War stands out both in terms of scale-approximately thirty-five million military personnel spent time in enemy hands between 1939 and 19451-and in terms of the sheer range of behavior exhibited by captor states. Depending on the nationality of both captive and captor and the period of the war, treatment could range from strict adherence to the terms of the 1929 Geneva Convention to privation and brutality severe enough to claim approximately five million lives by the time the last prisoners were repatriated.2 The historical literature concerning POW affairs in the Second World War is substantial. Both professional and lay historians, however, have tended to concentrate their attention on the experiences and behavior of the prisoners themselves.3 What analysis there has been of captor policy, moreover, has in