One of my favorite wartime books is Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby. For those that haven't read it, the author was captured and interned by the Italians during the war, escaped in the chaos of the Italian Armistice, hid about for a long time and was, eventually, recaptured by the Nazis and their RSI allies. Anyway, it got me to thinking; what was the general treatment of Allied POWs by their Italian captors? How did it compare to the Germans and Japanese? Thanks for sharing.
Better than Japanese for sure. Japanese generally treat everyone who isn't a Japanese like an animal. As for Germans, they treat different POWs differently. Soviet POWs were treated worse than British and Americans. Then again, Italians did not capture that many POWs throughout the war. I guess when the POW camps are overwhelmed, the living conditions would suffer too.
Men of Lt. Tomiyasu practiced cannibalism, ate Indian POWs, and there are pages after pages available to Explore the unreadable atrocities during Malayan Cmpgn'42 and later years! My grand uncle never returned as been captured and taken away alongwith other comrades of their small detachment retreating somewhere near Johora Bahru (5-7th Feb'42). One may know atleast the Alexandra Hosp massacre ... one of the most common types of Their atrocities! Once my dad told my mom that one of the POWs both the ear-canals been 'cleaned and channelised' with a bicycle spoke in such a way that They could 'look through' after inserting a broken car fuel pipe....the poor comrade didnt understood that he was told to bring water to clean the ' .... ' that did by the entire camp members! Stalin's men amputed Lt Col Baur's wounded leg with a 'penknife' without anesthetic, without scalpel, though they knew his ranks etc., also used SS before his name, politically. Hanna, Immelmann, etc were no nazis, had they became POWs either of the Hirohito's or Stalin's men, I'm for sure, the world would have known a different story of them .... !
Some interesting readings ... 'older' but 'golden' threads within Our forum! http://www.militarian.com/threads/pows-experiance-in-sulmona-italy.5237/ Thanks to you all ..
