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Learn about the types, administration, nomenclature and list of German POW camps during WWII. Find out how Germany treated different nationalities of POWs, especially the Soviets, and how many died in captivity.
For lists of German prisoner-of-war camps, see: German prisoner-of-war camps in World War I. German prisoner-of-war camps in World War II. This set index article includes a list of related items that share the same name (or similar names).
This article is a list of prisoner-of-war camps in Germany (and in German occupied territory) during any conflict. These are the camps that housed captured members of the enemy armed forces, crews of ships of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft.
The German word for POWs is “kriegsgefangenen” which inevitably became shortened to “kriegie”. When we arrived, we were the first kriegies apart from 20 or so who had been ‘purged’ from the North Compound.
The Rheinwiesenlager (German: [ˈʁaɪnˌviːzn̩ˌlaːɡɐ], Rhine meadow camps) were a group of 19 concentration camps built in the Allied-occupied part of Germany by the U.S. Army to hold captured German soldiers at the close of the Second World War.
German POW camps during World War Two were widely spread throughout German-occupied territories and gave varying treatment based on soldier nationality
German prisoners captured by the Red Army suffered greatly; approximately 91,000 were captured at end of Battle of Stalingrad but few returned home, being sent instead for work in labour camps. At the end of war, POWs are usually repatriated swiftly , which was relatively straightforward for Allied POWs in Germany.
