The Geneva Conventions: Allied Prisoners Of War

World War II carried on for six, long years. For most of the soldiers, that was it. They got to go home and see their family and friends. But some soldiers never got to see their loved ones, because they were held in captivity. During and after World War II, Allied soldiers were captured, brutally tortured, pressed for information, and used as a source of amusement for Axis powers. They were known as prisoners of war or POWs. Prisoners of war, or POWs, were soldiers that had been captured and held in concentration camps.
The Geneva Conventions are a series of treaties… on the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war and soldiers, who are otherwise rendered out of the fight, or incapable of fighting (“Geneva Conventions”). Allied soldiers
The most used ones were beating, waterboarding, and solitary confinement. When the Axis powers beat a POW it would be for “simple reasons”. Some of the “simple reasons” were things like looking at an officer the wrong way, communicating with each other, stealing, and not doing a job correctly. Sometimes when the torturers would beat the Allies, they would use the wooden handle of a pickaxe (Rimmer). Waterboarding was considered worse than being beat. “A towel was put over his mouth and nose. Then one of the guards picked up a long rubber hose, turned a faucet on full force, and directed the stream onto the towel. The water soaked through, blocking Lomax’s mouth and nose. He gagged and frantically gasped for breath as water filled his throat. His stomach began to swell. He was drowning on dry land,” writes Lee Rimmer as he talks about the torture Eric Lomax had to go through. Waterboarding is used to simulate drowning on land. It puts you at the brink of conscious and unconscious. It is a barbaric method of getting information. Solitary confinement was a way to make a man go mad. The Axis powers would take a POW and put him in a windowless room for days, even weeks, at a time. Jeremiah Denton, a former POW, was placed in solitary confinement for three days. He was placed on two stools with his hands tied behind his back. There was no food, no water, and no sunlight. On the third day he claimed to see angels and saints in the bricks. After his torture, he agreed to tell the Japanese everything they wanted to know