Those Allied soldiers that did surrender to the Japanese went against what the Japanese perceived as honour. This belief in honouring your family and country also explains the thousands who volunteered to be kamikazes. To a Japanese soldier, the greatest shame was to surrender вЂ“ such a belief had been literally beaten in to all recruits. Hence why the Japanese treated those who had surrendered to them with such barbarity вЂ“ starting with their campaign in China in 1937.

If the Geneva Convention barely existed in Eastern Europe, it was not even recognised by the Japanese military which could not even understand why someone would want to shame their family and country by surrendering. There were exceptions to this when escaped prisoners were shot, but this was rare. There was an expectation that men would try to escape and if caught, those men knew that they would be suitably treated вЂ“ usually within the rules of вЂthe gameвЂ™. The same was true for Germans and Italians held in British POW camps. However, in camps run by the military, given the circumstances, life tended to be generally вЂfairвЂ™. For a British POW in a German POW camp, life could be monotonous and strict. The treatment of these men varied considerably. In the intervening years, millions of people had been involved in fighting in some capacity or another, with the expected consequence that many tens of thousands were taken prisoner and put into POW camps. War In Europe ended on May 7th 1945, while VJ Day was celebrated on September 2nd, 1945. At the same time, Soviet Russia attacked from the east. Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1st, 1939. The rules of the Geneva Convention barely existed on the Eastern Front. Those captured in the later stages of the war were sent to Russia and made to carry out heavy labour in prison camps dotted about the USSR.

Few of the 91,000 Germans captured at the end of the Battle of Stalingrad ever returned to Germany after the war. Those that did survive then had to face accusations in post-war Russia that they, somehow, had been collaborators how else would they explain their survival? German POWвЂ™s captured by the Russians faced similar prospects. Many died as slave labourers and some ended up in the death camps вЂ“ Russian POWвЂ™s were involved in the break-out from Sobibor.

Fitting in with HitlerвЂ™s view of racial superiority вЂ“ and racial inferiority вЂ“ these men were at best treated with indifference and at worst, with sheer brutality. After the success of вЂ Operation BarbarossaвЂ, Germany captured vast numbers of men from the Red Army. However, on the Eastern Front, a completely different picture emerged.

Prisoner of war game