Prisoners of war are a product of any war. Aside from these Danube German soldiers, over 70,000 Germans  who had served in regular Wehrmacht died in Yugoslav captivity  from revenge murders or as slave laborers in dangerous work.  These were mostly troops of "Army Group E" who surrendered  to British forces in southern Austria on May 8, 1945 only to have the  British turn about 150,000 of them over to vengeance fueled  Communist Yugoslav partisans who dealt with them as brutally as  they could. That is not only perfectly legal, but also prevents the  danger of the returning prisoners of war becoming the core of a  new national movement. How many World War II German prisoners of war interned in the United States stayed in the United States after the war? By 1915, Germany held over a million prisoners of war. A site recently uncovered at  Harmica, 50 kilometres northwest of Zagreb, holds the bodies of 4,500 soldiers, including 450 German officers, executed by communist partisans. The last prisoner did not return to Germany until 1948. Far more than half the Soviet soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans during the course of World War II died in captivity. We hold: 1. some records of those held captive by German, Italian or Japanese forces 2. some questionnaires which may reveal personal information as well as details of experiences in the prisoner of war camps 3. some individual reports which may reveal details about capture or escape attempts from prisoners of war camps in central Europe 4. selected records of Merchant Navy prisoners of war 5. documents which reveal information about some prisoner of war camps 6. records of enquiries into mis… In the Bad Kreuznach cage, up to 560,000 men were interned in a congested area and denied  adequate food, water, shelter, or sanitary facilities and they died like flies of disease, exposure, and illness after surviving on less than 700 calories a day. The  death rate for prisoners in these U.S. camps was at that point 30 per cent per year, according to a U.S. medical survey. Food shortages for the Soviet Army led to forced labor of some prisoners. The victims were troops of the 392 Infantry Division, set up by the  German command in Croatia in August 1943 and placed under the leadership of Lt. General Hans  Mickl. His point was that as war-ravaged Europe looked for leadership and while the Soviet Union had ample physical strength, Britain, in contrast, had “enormous moral power”. Highly regarded by the French  for their discipline and bravery, an estimated 35,000 Germans took part in France's war in Vietnam.  Germans made up over half the Foreign Legion units in Vietnam that bore much of the heaviest  fighting against the communist Viet Minh forces of Ho Chi Minh. Fear of secret … POWs swept up the rubbish after VE day celebrations and helped construct Wembley Way for the 1948 Olympics. In May 1946, the politician and writer Harold Nicolson argued that the repatriation of German POWs should begin immediately. Between 1941 and 1952, millions of German POWs died in the Gulag. At the end of  September, 1945 all the initial camps were dissolved. Very few ever saw home again. Later, Special Camp  No. Treating the defeated in this way was cruel, behaviour expected of the Nazis had they been victorious. For example, when the food available for use in camps became incredibly scarce, Colonel Eduard Wagner issued an order to let prisoners starve to death.. Soviets again somehow got the worst out of this deal when German officials barred Allied soldiers from … From  the date Germany unconditionally surrendered, May 8, 1945, Switzerland was dismissed as the  official Protecting Power for German prisoners, and the International Red Cross was informed that,  with no Protecting Power to report to, there was no need for them to send delegates to the camps. In 1946 the argument was that German POWs had inalienable rights, whatever their status, which Britain must respect. Many were sent to gulags and work camps, and unlike in the West - where PoWs were repatriated to Germany within a few years - those in Soviet captivity were held into the 1950s. The world was so excited when World War II ended and just so glad to move on that many people completely forgot about some of the worst atrocities that happened directly after the war. Here’s what happened to the enemy leaders after their final surrender: An eyewitness stated: "The Americans forced the Germans to walk in front of them with raised hands in  groups of four. Some married American women, but most were sponsored by a resident to be eligible for residency, including former farmers supporting their former farm hands. At the time of the German … 26,000 of these soldiers died, over half  after the end of the war in Yugoslav camps. But these men were lucky. In this brutal conflict, more than  10,000 Legionnaires were killed out of about 70,000 who fought. Nearly all the surviving records of the Rhineland death camps were destroyed. Because the German POWs had been conveniently redefined as "disarmed enemy forces," Allied  captors did whatever they wanted with their German captives, even bartering them away to others  for use as slaves. After the Battle of Moscow and the retreat of the German forces the number of prisoners in the Soviet prisoner of war camps rose to 120,000 by early 1942. None were released by the Soviets until 1948, and most prisoners remained there until 1950, and some were sent on to the Soviet gulags or handed over to the East German Communist government for even more punishment. Soviet prisoners of war held by the Germans had it no better than the German prisoners held by the … German POWs were labelled “disarmed enemy forces” (DEF) rather than “prisoners of war” in order to skirt provisions of the Hague Land Warfare Convention which mandated humane treatment, including that which stated: “After the peace treaty, prisoners of war should be dismissed into their homeland within shortest period.” By this manipulation of justice, German POWS could be taken to the lands of their … It was an affront to their human rights and therefore a betrayal of … Large numbers of captured soldiers were taken away to be enslaved.  If captured in smaller groups, even the US Army policy was to slaughter the prisoners where they  stood, especially if they were SS. The German Wehrmacht was demobilized following the Unconditional Surrender on May 8, 1945 but not all of the Third Reich’s armed forces were demobilized immediately. 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