Prisoners of War

This is the first book that brings together the experiences of prisoners of war of all the major belligerent powers in the Second World War. It contrasts the relatively benign German treatment of captured British, French, and American servicemen with that inflicted on Soviet soldiers which led to more than 3 million deaths. It also examines other specific categories of prisoners, including Jews, colonial soldiers, and women, before incorporating the many German prisoners in Allied hands and taking the story beyond the end of the war to look at the different experiences of repatriation before the last releases of Germans from the USSR in 1956.