Prisoner of war POW

what is p o w

A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured as prisoners of war by a belligerent power in time of war. As warfare changed, so did the treatment afforded captives and members of defeated nations or tribes. Enslavement of enemy soldiers in Europe declined during the Middle Ages, but ransoming was widely practiced and continued even as late as the 17th century. Civilians in the defeated community were only infrequently taken prisoner, for as captives they were sometimes a burden upon the victor.

  1. The Code of Conduct also requires service members to resist giving information to the enemy (beyond identifying themselves, that is, “name, rank, serial number”), receiving special favours or parole, or otherwise providing their enemy captors aid and comfort.
  2. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed; their families would have to send to their captors large sums of wealth commensurate with the social status of the captive.
  3. The 1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War established certain provisions relative to the treatment of prisoners of war.
  4. As prisoners were taken, commanders usually worked out exchanges among themselves.

prisoner of war

World War IIIn the largest war of the Twentieth Century — World War II – thousands of Americans were held as prisoners of war. Many of these had been shot down while flying missions over Germany or had fought in the Battle of the Bulge. As American and Russian forces closed in from opposite directions, many American POWs were taken from camps and forced to march for weeks as the Germans tried to avoid the Allied forces. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons.

In the 18th century a new attitude of morality in the law of nations, or international law, had a profound effect upon the problem of prisoners of war. The French political philosopher Montesquieu in his L’Esprit des lois (1748; The Spirit of Laws) wrote that the only right in war that the captor had over a prisoner was to prevent him from doing harm. The captive was no longer to be treated as a piece of property to be disposed of at the whim of the victor but was merely to be removed from the fight. Other writers, such blockchain guides as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Emerich de Vattel, expanded on the same theme and developed what might be called the quarantine theory for the disposition of prisoners.

Prisoner-of-war camp

The idea was generally taking hold that in war no destruction of life or property beyond that necessary to decide the conflict was sanctioned. The Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which released prisoners without ransom, is generally taken as marking the end of the era of widespread enslavement of prisoners of war. The men and women of this country who have been forced by circumstances to become prisoners of war truly know the selghe – author meaning of freedom. Their story is one of sacrifice and courage; their legacy, the gift of liberty.

The British government went to great lengths to provide food of a quality at least equal to that available to locals. The senior officer from each quadrangle was permitted to inspect the food as it was delivered to the prison to ensure it was of sufficient quality. Despite the generous supply and quality of food, some prisoners died of starvation after gambling away their rations. Most of the men held in the prison were low-ranking soldiers and sailors, including midshipmen and junior officers, with a small number of privateers.

Axis camps

During the conflict prisoners might be repatriated or delivered to a neutral nation for custody. At the end of hostilities all prisoners are to be released and repatriated without delay, except those held for trial or serving sentences imposed by judicial processes. In some recent combat situations, such as the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks of 2001, fighters captured on the battlefield have been labeled “unlawful combatants” and have not been afforded protections guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions.

what is p o w

Life as a POW meant many forced marches in subfreezing weather, solitary confinement, brutal punishments and attempts at political “re-education.” Here prisoners received their first systematic dose of indoctrination techniques by their captors. This was revolut cryptocurrency review a relatively new phenomena and resulted in the Code of Conduct that now guides all American servicemen in regards to their capture. After an armistice was signed in 1953, a major exchange known as “Operation Big Switch” finally brought Americans home.

POWs held in North Vietnam were used for propaganda, psychological warfare, and negotiating purposes. They were tortured, isolated, and psychologically abused in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949, to which North Vietnam was a signatory. Some POWs were paraded before reporters and foreign visitors and forced to confess to war crimes against the people of Vietnam. The Pentagon made no effort to court-martial those individuals who had cooperated with the enemy, with the exception of one marine who did not return to the United States until 1979. In general, aviators were older and more mature, more highly trained, and better educated than the average soldier in Vietnam, and possibly as a consequence they fared much better in captivity. Army Special Forces Capt. Floyd James Thompson, who was captured on March 26, 1964, was the longest-held POW.

Peace camps and reform camps were for POWs that were either sympathetic to the cause or who had valued skills that could be useful to the North Korean military; these enemy soldiers were indoctrinated and sometimes conscripted into the North Korean army. While POWs in peace camps were reportedly treated with more consideration,137 regular prisoners of war were usually tortured or treated very poorly. The International Committee of the Red Cross held a conference in Geneva, Switzerland in September 1917. The conference addressed the war, and the Red Cross addressed the conditions that the civilians were living under, which resembled those of soldiers in prisoner of war camps, as well as “barbed wire disease” (symptoms of mental illness) suffered by prisoners in France and Germany.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘prisoner of war.’ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. American pilots continued to be captured over the north between 1965 and 1968 as part of Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained aerial bombing campaign against North Vietnam. After President Lyndon Johnson initiated a bombing pause in 1968, the number of new captures dropped significantly, only to pick up again after his successor, President Richard Nixon, resumed bombing in 1969. Significant numbers of Americans were also captured during Operation Linebacker between May and October 1972 and Operation Linebacker II in December 1972, also known as the “Christmas Bombings”. Many camps were only lightly watched, and as such, many Germans attempted escape.