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To: Arthur McGowan
I'm sure the Nazis were REALLY concerned about it.
5 posted on 01/29/2002 12:18:55 PM PST by AppyPappy
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To: AppyPappy
The regular German Army were fairly decent in treating prisoners. The German SS Army were brutal.

It is interesting to note that some 30% plus prisoners died in Japanese Prison camps whereas only 2% did in Germany. Appparently Germans made a better attempt to follow the Geneva Convention than the Japanese did.

7 posted on 01/29/2002 12:23:58 PM PST by Sen Jack S. Fogbound
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To: AppyPappy
Actually the German military was very concerned about the treatment given to U.S. and U.K. POWs. They were quite aware that the U.S. alone had 250K German POWs in the U,S, while the Brits had more in Canada.

You might be interested to know that the survival for U.S. and U.K. POWs in Germany was around 99%.Also, little or no effort was made to interrupt the delivery of home packages or Red Cross relief. So little effort, that American and British Intel were able to deliver radio equipment and escape equipment, like maps, papers, cameras with no German resistance.

It's natural to believe that the state that murdered 10 million civilian prisoners would not take care of the POWs in its charge, but the reality is quite different.

19 posted on 01/29/2002 1:15:41 PM PST by xkaydet65
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To: AppyPappy; Sen Jack S. Fogbound; Leto; Intolerant in NJ
I knew an Royal Navy sailor who was captured off of the Canary Islands soon after Suez closed, and spent the war in Germany. The Germans treated their POWs according to how captured Germans were being treated by the other countries. Her Majesty's Subjects and the GIs were treated quite well, the French less so, and the Poles and Russians came at the bottom, the Western POWs would smuggle smokes and food to them to keep them going. Prisoners were allowed to write home and speak about the quality of their care, thanks to the ICRC.

The camp commandants were required to interrogate the prisoners, but the soldiers on both sides looked at it as more of a game that had to be done for those above than as a serious undertaking, and thus the man I knew would tell of the cabbage patches that members of the Home Guard were obliged to tend. Honestly, the man was almost wistful, and certainly not competely traumatised by his time there, even though he managed 2 escapes.

The only part of world war 2 that was run according to virtually all the rules of law was the fighting in North Africa; Allied POWs would stand to attention and salute Rommel when he walked passed, in that theater both sides understood themselves as professionals involved in a professional disagreement, and, unlike what you saw in Eastern Europe, in a race to the bottom to dispense with as many conventions of human society as possible.

I think our government is to be praised for doing everything to help the POWs, and, I hope that this lesson of world war 2 has not been forgotten in our newest war. This war is as much a war for hearts and minds as it is to rid us of malefactors,

23 posted on 01/29/2002 3:12:39 PM PST by a history buff
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