Prisoners of war in World War II
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.
In the early phases of the war, following German occupation of much of Europe, Germany also found itself unprepared for the number of POWs it held.
[1]: 381–482 In most places they were warmly received by the populace, major exceptions included France, where society "preferred to forget about them", and the USSR, where they suffered from much discrimination.
[1][3]: 192, 196 A few exceptions include stories such as András Toma, considered the last POW of WWII released from captivity, who was discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000 and was returned to Hungary some fifty-six years after his capture.
[4][1]: 483 In mid-90s Simon MacKenzie observed that "Obtaining an exact figure for the number of POWs [in WWII] is made virtually impossible by the inexactness or unavailability of the records kept by many of the belligerents".
[2] In some cases, where entire countries surrendered (for example, Belgians), most if not all soldiers who were not killed in action were captured at some point during the fighting, but many were quickly released unofficially; while others were imprisoned for years.
[2][6]: 322 [7] MacKenzie cites the figure of 35 million following the 1960s estimate by German historian Kurt W. Böhme [Wikidata].
[8]: 235 Bob Moore, who in his monograph focused on the European theater, gave an estimate of "more than 20 million", which he considered inflated with the number of Axis troops that surrendered after the war.
[3]: 2 [10]: 256–262 Images of WWII POWs in popular culture have been highly selective, obscured by the story of victory for the allies (in which those taken prisoner played little role or were even considered traitors, like in the USSR), and driven by Cold War narratives.
Those movies also popularized the concept of prisoner-of-war escapes, creating a misleading impression that this was a relatively common occurrence.
[3]: 2 [10]: xxii, 256–262 Similarly, as noted by Mark Edele, in the Soviet Union, "Any claim that the glorious Red Army might have committed war crimes was dismissed as slanderous enemy propaganda".
