Almost everyone has heard of Nazi-German concentration camps during World War II, and that is where the Jews, and anyone else the Nazis did not like, went. But what we hear less of is the prisoner of war camps. How did the Germans treat the servicemen that they captured? Another thing people do not learn much about is the prisoner of war camps during the Civil War. And how does the Nazi-German camps compare to how the American camps? Most people would probably assume that the German camps were worse and that the prisoners were treated brutally, which is true but Civil War camps were very brutal too. The second world war was a trying time for everyone, as men served their countries and millions of people died. About sixteen million Americans …show more content…
But when a prisoner got out of the camp, if he did, he would be stick-thin from near starvation and weak from the harsh cold they had to constantly endure. They would have permanent problems from that experience, physical and mental. The Civil War is not talked about as much as World War II, probably because it is not near as recent. But it was a horrific and bloody war, on the battlefield but also behind prison doors. By the end of the war in 1865, four-hundred thousand men were in prisoner of war camps. And it is crazy to think about there even being camps like that considering they were fighting their own people. But these were very brutal prison camps. The biggest problem of camps on both the Union and Confederate side was serious overcrowding of the …show more content…
They were both times in history where people were fighting for what they think is right and where thousands of servicemen were caught and put in prisoner of war camps. And the main cause of death in both of these kinds of camps was dysentery, and other epidemics. And the only way you could get out of these kinds of camps is by either dying, escaping, the war ending, or you join the other side. And the end to either of these wars was undetermined, so the only hope for these men, if they did not want to betray their country and/or beliefs, was to escape. And in the Nazi-German and Civil War camps, if you escaped you would not have a very likely chance of getting to a safe