WWII Prisoners of War
A remarkable compilation, nominal registers (including locational and other details) of over 107,000 British Army prisoners of war (POW) held in Germany and German occupied territories. Originally published in parts by HMSO under the title 'Germany and German Occupied Territories, Imperial Prisoners of War; Alphabetical Lists'.
Produced in limited numbers for internal reference, the registers were updated periodically until the last, most comprehensive printing in May 1945. These final editions have now been digitised to provide this valuable data in an easy to use form, which complements The Army Roll Of Honour which lists the British Army dead from WW2 (over 145,000 records).
Here, in most instances, you'll find the following information:
- Name
- Rank
- Regiment
- Army number
- Camp number
- Prisoner of War number
- Camp type
- Camp location
- Notes (where applicable)
Below you can see further information about the types of camp that British Prisoners of War found themselves incarcerated in.
Types of camp
- Transit camp (Dulag or Durchgangslager) – these camps were a collection point for POWs before they were reassigned
- Transit camp of the Luftwaffe (Dulag Luft or Durchgangslager der Luftwaffe) – transit camps for Airforce POWs
- Base camp (Stalag or Stammlager) – enlisted personnel POW camps
- Officer camp (Oflag or Offizier-Lager) – the officers' POW camps
- Luftwaffe base camp (Stalag Luft or Luftwaffe-Stammlager) – POW camps that the German Air Force for Allied aircrews administered
- Marine camp (Marlag or Marine-Lager) – POW camps for Navy personnel
- Marine internment camp (Milag or Marine-Internierten-Lager) – internment camps for merchant seamen
- Internment camp (Ilag/Jlag or Internierungslager) – internment camps for civilians
- As always with database searching, less is more: begin by entering limited information and then, if necessary, refine your search by adding extra information.
Within your search you can use an asterisk (*) in place of any character or string of characters to widen your search or a question mark in place of a single character. In some search fields we have included automatic wildcards to help your search, as detailed below.
- Last name You must enter something for this field. There is no automatic wildcard for this field. In other words, if you search for Smith, you will not be returned entries for the last names like Smithers. You can of course add your own wildcard, if you wish, to obtain these names. This can be useful when looking for hyphenated or unhyphenated double-barrelled last names.
- Initials For this record set full forenames have not been recorded, only the initials. Optionally enter the first and/or second forename initial
- Regiment An automatic leading and trailing wildcard applies to this field. For example if you enter 'Lancashire' the search results returned might include regiments like 'The Lancashire Fusiliers' and 'The East Lancashire Regiment'
