The Angler breakout was the single largest escape attempt orchestrated by German POWs (28) in North America during the war. The December 23, 1944, breakout of 25 Kriegsmarine and merchant seamen from Papago Park, Arizona, was the second largest. In both instances, all escapees were recaptured or killed.
It was believed that the only German PoW to have made it home from Britain was Franz von Werra, whose story was made into the film The One That Got Away. In fact, although Von Werra did escape from a prison camp in Britain his home run was made from Canada where he was transferred after his recapture.
Oberleutnant Franz Baron von Werra, known as 'The One that Got Away' was the only German prisoner of war during the Second World War who escaped and got back to Germany.
NARRATOR: Of the prisoners at Stalingrad only 6,000 survive. The western powers also establish camps for millions of German POWs. By the end of the war, the so-called Rheinwiesen camps were set up by the U.S. Army on German soil. The American are ill prepared for such large numbers of prisoners.
Of the 170,000 British and Commonwealth prisoners of war in Germany in the Second World War, fewer than 1,200 of them managed to escape successfully and make a 'home run'. Prisoners were hungry, weak and often tired from backbreaking labour. They were guarded twenty-four hours a day.
Although they expected to go home immediately after the end of the war in 1945, the majority of German prisoners continued working in the United States until 1946—arguably violating the Geneva Convention's requirement of rapid repatriation—then spent up to three more years as laborers in France and the United Kingdom.
The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet wartime economy and post-war reconstruction. By 1950 almost all surviving POWs had been released, with the last prisoner returning from the USSR in 1956.
The Soviet government kept roughly 1.5 million German POWs in forced-labor camps after the end of World War II through 1956. The POWs constituted the largest and longest held group of prisoners for any victor nation.
During World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (towards Soviet POWs and Western Allied commandos) were notorious for atrocities against prisoners of war.
The experiences of these prisoners differed in certain important respects from those of captured German servicemen held by other nations. The treatment of the captives, though strict, was generally humane, and fewer prisoners died in British captivity than in other countries.
The Great Papago Escape was the largest Axis prisoner-of-war escape to occur from an American facility during World War II. On the night of December 23, 1944, twenty-five Germans tunneled out of Camp Papago Park, near Phoenix, Arizona, and fled into the surrounding desert.
Editor's Note: On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 Allied prisoners of Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp in Sagan, 100 miles southeast of Berlin, escaped through a tunnel named "Harry." Within days most were recaptured.
Officially, none of the more than 425,000 Axis POWs kept in the United States should have stayed there after the war—POWs are supposed to be repatriated after the war is over.
Death toll
Around 3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody, out of 5.7 million. Estimates range from that provided by Christian Streit of 3.3 million to between 2.8 and 3 million according to Dieter Pohl. The majority of the deaths, around 2 million, took place before January 1942.
All in all, 2 million POWs returned from the Soviet Union. Biess argues that, in the immediate postwar period, there were indications that the Germans would be prepared to confront guilt, including Wehrmacht guilt.
The Japanese used many types of physical punishment. Some prisoners were made to hold a heavy stone above their heads for many hours. Others might be forced into small cells with little food or water. Tom Uren described how a young Aboriginal soldier was made to kneel on a piece of bamboo for a number of days.
Many of the women and children were held in prison camps in terrible conditions and forced on death marches. Some women were killed on sight and others were raped, beaten, and forced to become sex slaves.
The POWs suffered frequent beatings and mistreatment from their Japanese guards, food was the barest minimum, and disease and injuries went untreated. Although the POWs finally received Red Cross packages in January 1944, the Japanese had removed all the drugs and medical supplies.
After Germany's surrender in May 1945, millions of German soldiers remained prisoners of war. In France, their internment lasted a particularly long time. But, for some former soldiers, it was a path to rehabilitation.
After a brief period of captivity in France, most of the prisoners were deported to Germany. In Germany, prisoners were incarcerated in Stalag or Oflag prison camps, according to rank, but the vast majority were soon transferred to work details (Kommandos) working in German agriculture or industry.
In 1940 1.8 million French soldiers were taken as prisoners of war by Germany. During the coming months most of these men were deported into Germany for use as slave laborers. Nearly a million were still held in Germany in 1945 when they were liberated by Allied and Soviet forces.
Like hundreds of thousands of other German soldiers, they were imprisoned at a POW camp in the countryside, and had been hired out to ease the wartime labor shortage. For months, they spent all their waking hours at the Camlin farm, building barns and repairing fences.
According to postwar German estimates, more than 35,000 soldiers were convicted by military courts of leaving their units during the course of the war. Some 23,000 were sentenced to death, and at least 15,000 of these were actually executed.
It was the biggest Prisoner of War escape attempt in Britain - as 70 German World War Two PoWs tried to tunnel to freedom. Now, 75 years on from the breakout on the 10 March, 1945, hundreds of visitors will get a rare chance to view the Island Farm camp in Bridgend for themselves.