DD Anniverserly coming up...Did we do this to German POWs too?

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

Just curious about this.

Did we do this kind of stuff to German and Japanses POWs in WWII, or not. Just wondering if what happened in Iraq is somehthing that has happened in the past?

[troublemaker]

1. We treated German POWs very well

[HawkerHurricane]

2. PoW's...

German PoW's tended to be robbed of valuables (especially things of souvineer value), fed things they weren't used to, and overworked. Most of the abuse occured when they were loaned out to local farmers, who would spit on them and such. But, to the best of my knowledge, they were not publicly stripped (they were stripsearched and deloused), sodomized, walked on leashes, made into naked pyramids, and photographed doing it...

Japanese PoW's were so rare, and because Japanese soldiers were expected to die rather than surrender, they had no code of conduct. Japanese prisoners considered themselves disgraced, and did not see giving away military secrets as any big deal, since they were already horribly disgraced...

[madrchsod]

3. i don`t think so, many

were here in the usa. many soldiers stayed after the war in areas where they were held. i don`t think there is any record of this kind of treatment,remember germans were soldiers and were white. shit happens in war

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. There were accusations

And frankly I have not researched this carefully enough to claim it's historical accuarcy, that Eisenhower had German POW's on starvation rations and hundreds of thousands died.

Google "Eisenhower POW starvation Europe"

[bobbieinok]

7. first time I heard this was that David Irving said this

[HawkerHurricane]

9. At the very end of WW2 in Europe...

as the German government collapsed, there was a severe food shortage and a typhus epidemic. Many German PoW's were released (minus weapons) and told to 'go home, it's over'. U.S. soldiers refused to provide food for these released prisoners, and many died due to lack of food and the epidemic. It was not intentional.

[MikeG]

5. I remember seeing an author on Booknotes who said that

300,000 German POWs died after WW2 from starvation.

[bobbieinok]

6. this number maybe in Russia??

[punpirate]

8. German POWs were in a work camp...

... near the town where I now live. By and large, accounts in the local paper by Germans interned here were of decent treatment. In fact, they seemed proud of the work they did on a local park.

Most noted that they had more to eat here than they did in the German army, and only rarely encountered hostility from the locals.

It was a different time.

[Kellanved]

10. No - the American treatment of German POWs is renowned to this day

The POWs taken during the North Africa campaign were shipped to the US and handled extremely well.
The POWs taken near the end of the war in the European Theater had less luck: the "Rheinwiesen" camps (Rhine Meadows) were never fully investigated: they have a very bad name, but I'd say no worse than the German handling of Allied POWs.