A German prisoner of war captured near Ubach, Germany, wears a tag telling his captors that he has an injured back and should be handled carefully. 1 December 1944. 
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person, whether combatant or non-combatant, who is held in custody by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates to 1660.
During the World War II, the armies of Western Allied nations such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the US were ordered to treat Axis prisoners strictly in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Some breaches of the Convention took place, however.
According to Stephen E. Ambrose, of the roughly 1,000 US combat veterans that he had interviewed, only one admitted to shooting a prisoner, saying that he "felt remorse, but would do it again". However, one-third told him they had seen US troops kill German prisoners.
Towards the end of the war in Europe, as large numbers of Axis soldiers surrendered, the US created the designation of Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF) so as not to treat prisoners as POWs.
A lot of these soldiers were kept in open fields in makeshift camps in the Rhine valley (Rheinwiesenlager). Controversy has arisen about how Eisenhower managed these prisoners.
After the surrender of Germany in May 1945, the POW status of the German prisoners was in many cases maintained. In 1946, the UK had more than 400,000 German prisoners, many had been transferred from POW camps in the US and Canada.
After the German surrender, the International Red Cross was prohibited from providing aid such as food or visiting prisoner camps in Germany. However, after making approaches to the Allies in the autumn of 1945 it was allowed to investigate the camps in the British and French
occupation zones of Germany, as well as to provide relief to the prisoners held there.
On 4 February 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to visit and assist prisoners also in the US occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food.
On 4 February 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to visit and assist prisoners also in the US occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food.
The Allies also shipped POWs between them, with for example 6,000 German officers transferred from Western Allied camps to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp that now was under Soviet Union administration.
The US also shipped 740,000 German POWs as forced laborers to France from where newspaper reports told of very bad treatment. Judge Robert H. Jackson, Chief US prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, in October 1945 told US President Harry S. Truman that the Allies themselves:
"have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them.
We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it."
This text does not express my personal opinion and was not written by me. As an artist, my goal is not necessarily to express what I think but to reproduce and tell stories.
To be able to do this correctly, both sides of the same story needs to be mentioned so you have a broader understanding of what happened. Feel free to use the comments to discuss, but please do not turn it into a war zone.
