Prisoners of war in World War II

Prisoners of war during World War II faced vastly different fates due to the POW conventions adhered to or ignored, depending on the theater of conflict, and the behaviour of their captors. During the war approximately 35 million soldiers surrendered, with many held in the prisoner-of-war camps. Most of the POWs were taken in the European theatre of the war. Approximately 14%, or 5 million, died in captivity.

Early in the World War II, Nazi Germany, overwhelmed by the number of POWs, released many, though some became used as forced labor. As the war progressed, POWs became strategic assets, increasingly used as forced labor, or considered an important leverage for reciprocal treatment. Within a few years of the war ending, most of POWs were repatriated, though notable exceptions persisted, with Axis POWs in Chinese and Soviet camps held into the 1950s.

The mortality rate was disproportionately high in the Eastern and Pacific theaters, where atrocities, forced labor, and starvation were common, especially for Soviet and Chinese captives under Axis powers and German POWs in Soviet hands. Axis POWs were treated very well by the Western Allies and very harshly by the USSR. Western Allied POWs generally experienced better conditions than most other belligerents, although their treatment by the Japanese was harsh.

Post-war trials, including the Nuremberg Trials, prosecuted violations of POW treatment, though public awareness of such crimes emerged much later, particularly in Germany, while in Japan and the USSR the issue is still mostly ignored. WWII POWs have been selectively depicted in popular culture, often romanticized in Western media through escape narratives like The Great Escape, while harsher realities, such as Axis and Soviet treatment of captives, remain underrepresented.