Millions of servicemen of the belligerent powers were taken prisoner during World War II. Until recently, the popular image of these men has been framed by tales of heroic escape or immense suffering at the hands of malevolent captors. For the vast majority, however, the reality was very different. Their history, both during and after the War, has largely been ignored in the grand narratives of the conflict. This collection brings together new scholarship, largely based on sources from previously unavailable Eastern European or Japanese archives. Authors highlight a number of important comparatives. Whereas for the British and Americans held by the Germans and Japanese, the end of the war meant a swift repatriation and demobilization, for the Germans, it heralded the beginning of an imprisonment that, for some, lasted until 1956. These and many more moving stories are revealed here for the first time.

Overview--Pieter Lagrou, University of Brussels * The Repatriation of POWs at the End of Hostilities--Rudiger Overmans, University of FreiburgPrisoners and their Captors * British Perceptions of Italian Prisoners-of-War, 1940-1947--Bob Moore, University of Sheffield * Hatred within Limits: German Prisoners of War and Polish Society 1945-1950--Jerzy Kochanowski , GHI Warsaw * Japanese Deserters and Prisoners of War In the Battle of Okinawa--Hirofumi Hayashi, Kanto Gakuin University, YokohamaRe-Education * Re-Educating the German Prisoners of War: Aims, Methods, Results and Memory in East and West Germany--Andreas Hilger, University of Hamburg * Antifascist Propaganda Among Italian War Prisoners in the USSR: 1941-1946--Maria-Theresa Giusti, University of Bologna * The Nucleus of a New German Ideology? The Re-Education of German Prisoners of War in the United States During World War II--Matthias Reiss, University of HamburgHomecoming * Coping in Britain and France: a Comparison of Family Issues Affecting the Homecoming of Prisoners of War Following the Second World War--Barbara Hately-Broad, University of Huddersfield * The Unhomeliness of their Homeland: Japanese POWs in Siberia and their Return to Postwar Japan--Yoshikuni Igarashi, University of Nashville * After the Burma-Thailand Railway: The 'Homecoming' of Dutch Prisoners of War--Mariska Van Bruggen, NIOD Amsterdam * The Internment of Returning Soviet Prisoners of War after 1945--Pavel Polian, University of Kln and University of MoscowMemory * The Framing of Memory: The War Experience of German POWs in Psychiatric Records--Svenja Goltermann, University of Bremen * Retaining Integrity? Sex, Race and Gender in Narratives of Western Women Detained by the Japanese in World War II, Christina Twomey, University of Adelaide * Australian Prisoners of War in Australian National Memory--Joan Beaumont, University of Deakin