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In Defense of WWII: Part 4 of 5
Niall Ferguson, author of The War of the World, describes the Allies in WWII as just as brutal as the German and Japanese opposition. In rebuttal, Hitchens makes the point that Germany and Japan we...
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The town that my father grew up in housed a German POW camp. They were treated with respect and decency and regularly held Christmas pagents and other celebratory events.
Allies were treated a little differently when captured.
This is one of the reasons, by the way, why the GITMO issue is so important. We are Americans, we're better than detention and torture.
Chinese POWs held by Japan: > 99%[citation needed] (only 56 survivors at the end of the war)[66]
U.S. and British Commonwealth POWs held by Germany: ~4% [65]
Soviet POWs held by Germany: 57.5% [67]
Western Allied POWs held by Japan: 27% [68]
German soldiers held by Soviet Union: 15-33%[67])
Japanese POWs held by Soviet Union: 10%
German POWs in British hands 0.03%[67]
German POWs in American hands 0.15%[67]
German POWs in French hands 2.58%[67]
Japanese POWs held by U.S.: relatively low, mainly suicides according to James D. Morrow[69] or according to Ulrich Straus high as many prisoners were shot by front line troops.[45]
See the Supreme Court case, "Ex parte Richard Quirin", 317 U.S. 1 (1942).