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List of prisoners of war

This is a list of famous prisoners of war (POWs) whose imprisonment attracted media attention, or who became well known afterwards.

A

B

  • Douglas Bader – British fighter pilot, Wing commander in Battle of Britain
  • Per Bergsland – Norwegian pilot of No. 332 Squadron RAF. Escapee #44 of the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, successfully made it to Sweden with Jens Müller
  • Leonard Birchall – the "Saviour of Ceylon"
  • Gregory "Pappy" Boyington – US Marine Corps Fighter Ace during WWII, Medal of Honor recipient
  • Fernand Braudel – historian, was a POW in WWII
  • Frank Buckles – the last surviving American veteran of WWI, was a civilian during WWII when imprisoned by the Japanese
  • Roger Bushell – South African-born RAF Squadron Leader. Masterminded the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III in 1944, but was one of the 50 escapees to be recaptured and subsequently murdered by the Gestapo
  • Peter Butterworth – actor, Fleet Air Arm officer, shot down 1940, imprisoned in Stalag Luft III
  • Hubert Brooks – Canadian RCAF officer, partisan in Home Army in occupied Poland, awarded Military Cross and the Polish Cross of Merit with Swords

C

D

E

G

H

J

K

L

M

N

  • Airey Neave – British politician, made the first British home run from Colditz on 5 January 1942
  • A. A. K. Niazi – commander of Pakistan Army in East Pakistan who surrendered along with nearly 93,000 other soldiers

O

P

  • Friedrich Paulus – German field marshal, surrendered Stalingrad to the Soviets in 1943
  • Pete Peterson – American diplomat and member of Congress, Air Force pilot who spent more than six years as a POW in Vietnam
  • Donald Pleasence – English film and stage actor, WWII RAF airman shot down and placed in a German POW camp; later acted in the film The Great Escape

R

  • John Rarick – U.S. Representative from Louisiana
  • Sławomir Rawicz – Polish Army lieutenant who was imprisoned by the Soviets after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. Ghost-wrote the book "", where he claimed he and six others escaped from a Siberian Gulag camp and trekked on foot through the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas before finally reaching British India
  • Pat Reid – author of historical non-fiction
  • James Robinson Risner – USAF Brigadier General, first living recipient of the Air Force Cross
  • Yevgeny Rodionov – Russian soldier captured by rebel forces in Chechnya and beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam
  • Giles Romilly – nephew of Winston Churchill, war correspondent, Prominente (celebrity prisoner) in Germany 1940-45
  • James N. Rowe – Colonel, US Army Special Forces, held by the Viet Cong from 1963 to 1968, one of only 34 American soldiers to escape captivity in Vietnam

S

T

  • Floyd James Thompson – America's longest-held POW, he spent 9 years in POW camps in Vietnam (1964 – 1973)
  • Josip Broz Tito – president of Yugoslavia, Austrian soldier in WWI, captured by Russians in 1915
  • András Toma – last known WWII POW, a Hungarian soldier who lived in a psychiatric asylum in Russia for 55 years before being identified and returned home in 2000
  • Jakow Trachtenberg – Russian Jewish mathematician who developed the mental calculation techniques called the Trachtenberg system
  • Mikhail Tukhachevsky – Soviet military leader and theorist, captured by Germans in WWI

U

V

W

Z

  • Louis Zamperini – American athlete, member of Olympic team, captured by Japanese forces in 1943

References