Article The Treatment Of Prisoners Of War

The Treatment of Prisoners of War
A brief Introduction

Today the prisoner of war is a spoilt darling.... He is better treated than the modern criminal....The wonder is that any soldiers fight at all

James Maloney Spaight, 1911

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were among the first formal statement of the laws of war and war crimes.

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POWs captured by Germany and the Allies were treated relatively well during the first world war, with one POW - Lawrence Hartle stating during an interview that the worst aspect was the lack of food. He added that this was not mistreatment, but due to the German’s having no food to offer.


A British officer interrogating an Austrian officer

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Within the first 6 months of the war, more than 1.3 million prisoners were held in Europe.
Both British and German propaganda reported that the other side was systematically persecuting POWs, but this was designed to encourage their soldiers to continue the fight, rather than surrender.
Complaints of British soldiers returning home centred on inadequate sanitation, housing and food, and the nature of work assigned to prisoners.

An amazing Story

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READ MORE ON BBC WEBSITE




· A perfect example of how POWs were treated fairly.

· A British officer captured during World War I was granted leave to visit his dying mother on one condition - that he return.

· Capt Robert Campbell kept his promise to Kaiser Wilhelm II and returned from Kent to Germany, where he stayed until the war ended in 1918.

· Capt Campbell would have felt a duty to honour his word.

· Twenty-nine-year-old Capt Campbell, of the 1st Battalion East Surrey Regiment, had been captured in northern France on 24 August 1914 and then sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Magdeburg, north-east Germany.

· Capt Campbell would have felt a duty to honour his word and "he would have thought 'if I don't go back no other officer will ever be released on this basis'".

· No other British prisoners of war were afforded compassionate leave after Britain blocked a similar request from German prisoner Peter Gastreich, who was being held at an internment camp on the Isle of Man.

· As soon as Capt Campbell returned to the camp he then set about trying to escape.

· As well as feeling honour bound to keep his word to return to the camp, as an officer, Capt Campbell was also honour bound to try to escape.



Compare this with reports from WW2 regarding mistreatment and torture of POWs:-


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•Beatings
•Waterboarding / mock drowning
•Psychological torture
•Dislocating limbs

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•Electrocution
•Mock execution
•Burning with flame or heated implement


The 1929 Geneva Convention went further, stating that POWs must “be humanely treated and protected, particularly against acts of violence, from insults and from public curiosity. Pressure to extract information was also ruled out.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland ran the ‘London Cage’
He Interrogated ‘Very Important Prisoners’
He Testified at Nazi trials regarding POW confessions
He Used physical and psychological methods to gain information, including:-

Sleep deprivation
Beatings
Stress positions
Degrading treatment
Threatened one POW that his appendix would be removed by a fellow prisoner with no medical training unless he confessed
 
Excellent Article @Wasp and a good starting point for what could be a very interesting discussion

Here are some American Prisoners of war from WW2
Creative Commons licence - Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J28589 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

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A union soldier (American civil war). This poor guy was clearly not treated very well at all.
no Geneva convention could save him from brutal treatment

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My God that is terrible, but as you say no rules were in place to protect him other than the rules of common and decent men.
Come to think of it were there any rules clearly set out in those days?
 
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