Best time/nationality to be taken as Axis POW?
- Thread starter naraht
- Start date
POW's
My uncle (dads brother) was captured during the 1940/1 desert campaign and shipped off to Italy. He and another escaped north in 1943 heading towards the Swiss border - unfortunately, the Italians surrendered and they were picked up by Nazi forces heading south. Obviously they were slung right back into a camp (it could have been nasty as they both were Jewish). They escaped again! This time going south and picked up by US troops. The idea of a 'good' time to be a POW seems a bit naive in some ways.
I understand that my uncle (a lovely gentle man) was changed dramatically by his experiences and turned from an extrovert into a very quiet and contemplative guy. He never spoke about his experiences to me and we are only now piecing together the whole story.
My uncle (dads brother) was captured during the 1940/1 desert campaign and shipped off to Italy. He and another escaped north in 1943 heading towards the Swiss border - unfortunately, the Italians surrendered and they were picked up by Nazi forces heading south. Obviously they were slung right back into a camp (it could have been nasty as they both were Jewish). They escaped again! This time going south and picked up by US troops. The idea of a 'good' time to be a POW seems a bit naive in some ways.
I understand that my uncle (a lovely gentle man) was changed dramatically by his experiences and turned from an extrovert into a very quiet and contemplative guy. He never spoke about his experiences to me and we are only now piecing together the whole story.
Wasn't there something like only 30 or 40 Chinese POW's who survived Japanese captivity?
I seem to recall something along similar lines myself, that is, German POW's in Canada--in fact some were even *invited* to do local work in some of the towns, without escort....then again, if your in Saskatchewan, where the hell are ya going to Escape To?
I have a book about German POWs and how they were treated. Those POWs that was sent to the American south were better treated than the Afro-americans and had such freedom that they could ride into the nearest town and eat ice cream
Exactly 56 Chinese POWs left in 1945.
But we should also tak account the fact these POWs could be sent in Collaborationist Armies, which should hopefully raise this horrifically low number
.America? But then he would miss his daily ration of Maple syrup and Beer. Truly another great Canadian prison.
Sigged.
The notion that one should blames soldiers for wars is really something that got going in the Vietnam era. In the 1940s that conception was an extreme fringe minority view.
Soldiers were held to the standards of their own actions in the wars not to what their government policies were.
Now the Japanese soldiers were hated because Americans did blame the common Japanese soldiers for cutting off the heads of American servicemen among other things. That they blamed the soldiers for that not the Emperor.
While the comparatively few Soviets captured during the Winter War fared pretty well in Finland, during the early Continuation War it was different. The chances of the Soviet POWs in Finland were very bad in 1941-1942, due to several factors including unpreparedness for housing large numbers of POWs, a very cold winter, a food shortage, hostile (and racist) attitudes towards Russians post-Winter War and an often poor physical condition of many of the captured Soviets (malnutrition and prevalence of disease). In the winter of 41-42, especially, the mortality among Soviet prisoners in Finnish POW camps was almost as bad as if they would have been captured by the Germans.
Also later, Finns exchanged Soviet ethnically Russian or "political" POWs for ethnically Finnic POWs with Germany, and often going to Germany in these transports meant certain death.
After 1942, the conditions in the POW camps in Finland got a lot better, and Red Army soldiers who were captured during 43-44 and managed to stay in camps in Finland most likely survived the Finnish camp system. Many were sent as work force to farms, etc, and could get more and better food and so on. At this point many might have actually been better off than in the Red Army, and definitely their conditions would get worse after the war ended and they were returned to the USSR - to be sent to the gulag for the transgression of getting themselves captured by the enemy.
So on balance, if I was a Soviet POW taken by Axis forces, I would have wanted to be of Finnic ethnicity and taken by Finns (or even Germans) from late 42 to early-mid 44. This way I would have stood a chance of going to a reasonably lenient Finnish POW camp and getting the chance to join a Finnish "heimo" unit - a position in which I might be able to sneak to Sweden some point in mid-late 44 to avoid getting returned to Stalin's USSR.
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I seem to recall something along similar lines myself, that is, German POW's in Canada--in fact some were even *invited* to do local work in some of the towns, without escort....then again, if your in Saskatchewan, where the hell are ya going to Escape To?
In my opinion, among the luckiest people in the war were the German airmen who crashed but survived uninjured in Ireland--or who made forced landings there. "Furthermore, Irish policy toward captured Allied and German servicemen (in case of forced landings or crashes in Irish territorial waters) was effectively pro-Allied. The government distinguished between operational and non-operational flights, and used this distinction to hand back most British and American planes and their crews. By contrast, almost all German airmen were interned. " Dermot Keogh, *Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State,* p. 110. The internees, according to Keogh, were allowed to visit swimming baths, the local Curragh golf links, and a tennis club. All in all, I'd say they were *slightly* better off than had they been returned and reposted at the eastern front...
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I seem to recall something along similar lines myself, that is, German POW's in Canada--in fact some were even *invited* to do local work in some of the towns, without escort....then again, if your in Saskatchewan, where the hell are ya going to Escape To?
I believe that some of the German POWs arrived in Canada before the US entered the war, so it wouldn't have been too bad to get to the US Border, But by Mid 1942, if I've got things right they would have had to walk to Columbia.