The Law of War

The United States handed over 740,000 German prisoners to France, a signatory of the
Geneva Convention. The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention.
According to Edward Peterson, the U.S. chose to hand over several hundred thousand
German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship". U.S.
forces also refused to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender to
them in Saxony and Bohemia, and handed them over to the Soviet Union instead. It is
also known that 6000 of the German officers who were sent from camps in the West to
the Soviets were subsequently imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp,
which at the time was one of the NKVD special camp.
Post World War II
During the Korean War, the North Koreans developed reputation for severely
mistreating prisoners of war (see Crimes against POWs). Their POWs were housed in
three camps, according to their potential usefulness to the North Korean army. Peace
camps and reform camps were for POWs that were either sympathetic to the cause or
who had valued skills that could be useful in the army and thus these enemy soldiers
were indoctrinated and sometimes conscripted into the North Korean army. The regular
prisoners of war were usually very poorly treated. POWs in peace camps were
reportedly treated with more consideration.
In 1952, the 1952 Inter-Camp P.O.W. Olympics were held during 15 and 27 November
1952, in Pyuktong, North Korea. The Chinese hoped to gain worldwide publicity and
while some prisoners refused to participate some 500 P.O.W.s of eleven nationalities
took part. They were representative of all the prison camps in North Korea and
competed in: football, baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, track and field, soccer,
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