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Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were captured during the war. Their fate depended on whether the Red Army or the British or Americans took their armistice. Prisoners of the Western Allies had a much better chance of survival.

Huge numbers of Allied POWs were captured by the Japanese between December 1941 and May 1942.

Deep racial hatred, led many Allied soldiers to prefer death to capture. But the large numbers of soldiers surrendered by their commanders in the Philippines and Singapore did not have much choice. They entered captivity at the start of the war, and only about half of them would leave the POW camps alive.