Prisoners of War, Escapers, Evaders, Internees and War Crimes

The phrase ‘Prisoners of War’ also covers Evaders, Escapers, Internees and the victims of War Crimes.

In general the records of prisoners of war fall into two categories:

1. general with descriptions of camps, correspondence with the Camp records from the international bodies such as the Red Cross etc.
2. individuals with records of their experiences of evasion; assistance rendered by local populations; capture, interrogation; camp life; escape attempts etc.

No single authority was responsible for prisoners of war and there is a very wide range of sources of information on this subject. The most numerous records are those of the War Office.

Some men evaded capture for periods of time that varied from one to another, some quite considerable. Some men successfully evaded and arrived at a neutral country from where they were able to return to the United Kingdom or other friendly territory. Some arrived in a neutral country to find that, apart from not being hunted, they were little better off and were unable to return to friendly territory without first escaping again from the neutral country. Some men assisted local resistance organisations. Others evaded for a period of time, but were subsequently captured.

Conditions in POW Camps were rarely ideal and most prisoners suffered varying degrees of hardship, if only from lack of knowledge of their time of incarceration. Many prisoners suffered much worse up to and including death through lack of medical care, lack of food or hygiene or through causes that were more deliberate. Some were beaten in what was euphemistically described as ill-treatment; others were murdered and of those some were cremated or buried, while others bodies have never been found.

On return to the UK prisoners were debriefed on their experiences and many of those records have survived. Their descriptions were of experiences of evasion from the enemy with information about those from whom they had obtained assistance. There are also supplementary reports on the effectiveness of escape aids.

Those who were captured gave descriptions of camp life with additional information of assistance with escapes; intelligence gathering and writing in codes; particular positions of authority held in the camp hierarchy etc. As the result of those experiences, some POWs were awarded honours.

Prisoners of war were held in Germany, Italy, Japan and many of the countries conquered by those nations in Europe and Asia etc. Internees were held in countries not engaged in the wars such as Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal.

There are many other sources of information of individual reports and Richard S Robinson’s database now extends to more than 2,200 entries from the First World War and 20,000 entries from the Second World War.

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