America's Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror

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Overview

Notwithstanding the long shadows cast by Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the United States has been generally humane in the treatment of prisoners of war, reflecting a desire to both respect international law and provide the kind of treatment we would want for our own troops if captured. In this first comprehensive study of the subject in more than half a century, Paul Springer presents an in-depth look at American POW policy and practice from the Revolutionary War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Springer contends that our nation's creation and application of POW policy has been repeatedly improvised and haphazard, due in part to our military's ...

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Overview

Notwithstanding the long shadows cast by Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the United States has been generally humane in the treatment of prisoners of war, reflecting a desire to both respect international law and provide the kind of treatment we would want for our own troops if captured. In this first comprehensive study of the subject in more than half a century, Paul Springer presents an in-depth look at American POW policy and practice from the Revolutionary War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Springer contends that our nation's creation and application of POW policy has been repeatedly improvised and haphazard, due in part to our military's understandable focus on defeating its enemies on the field of battle, rather than on making arrangements for their detention. That focus, however, has set the conditions for the military's chronic failure to record and learn from both successful and unsuccessful POW practices in previous wars. He also observes that American POW policy since World War II has largely sought to outsource POW operations to allied forces in order to retain American personnel for frontline service—outsourcing that has led to recent scandals.

Focusing on each major war in turn, Springer examines the lessons learned and forgotten by American military and political leaders regarding our nation's experience in dealing with foreign POWs. He highlights the indignities of the Civil War, the efforts of the United States and its World War I allies to devise an effective POW policy, the unequal treatment of Japanese prisoners compared with that of German and Italian prisoners during World War II, and the impact of the Geneva Convention on the handling of Korean and Vietnamese captives. In bringing his coverage up to the so-called War on Terror, he also marks the nation's clear departure from previous practice—American treatment of POWs, once deemed exemplary by the Red Cross after Operation Desert Storm, has become controversial throughout the world.

America's Captives provides a long-needed overarching framework for this important subject and makes a strong case that we should stop ignoring the lessons of the past and make the disposition of prisoners one of the standard components of our military education and training.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
In his well-documented survey, Springer (leadership & strategy, Air Command & Staff Coll.) argues that America has improvised and haphazardly managed its treatment of prisoners of war (POWs), from the thousands of British prisoners exchanged on a rank-for-rank basis during the Revolution to the Guantánamo prisoners in legal limbo today. In addressing a predictable problem in ad hoc ways, the United States has reckoned with issues of humanitarianism, military expediency, retaliation, the rule of law, and public perception. Springer uses the Revolution and the Civil War to highlight the difficulties; in both cases one side was reluctant to recognize the rights of POWs for fear of legitimizing the existence of the rebel state—a problem that persists with today's nonstate combatants. Neither Springer nor Doyle is an easy or popular read, but these complementary titles are mandatory for all interested readers—students, scholars, and informed lay persons. [Watch for this reviewer's next military history roundup in LJ 4/1/10.—Ed.]—Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib. Fort Leavenworth, KS

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780700617173
  • Publisher: University Press of Kansas
  • Publication date: 3/28/2010
  • Pages: 288
  • Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.20 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction American POW Policy and Practice 1

1 Struggling into Existence: The American Revolution 13

2 The First Declared War: The War of 1812 42

3 Prisoners on Foreign Soil: The War against Mexico 67

4 Brother against Brother: The American Civil War 80

5 America Becomes a World Power, 1865-1919 119

6 America Becomes a Superpower: World War 142

7 Containing Communism: The Korean War 163

8 The Dominoes Begin to Fall: The Vietnam War 179

9 POW Policy in the Post-Cold War Era 191

Conclusion: The Future of American POW Policy 203

Notes 207

Bibliography 251

Index 269

A photograph section follows page 102

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