During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of allied troops were captured in fighting arenas around the world and held in Prisoner of War Camps in both Europe and Asia, including over 170,000 soldiers of the British armed forces who were held captive in camps in Germany and Italy.

Once captured, these men became prisoners of war (POW). They were taken from the battlefields and transported across Europe on foot and by rail and barge to be processed and interrogated at a Dulag, a temporary interrogation camp, where they were questioned and processed before being sent on to a prisoner of war camp.

There were around 1,000 POW camps operated by the German Reich. There were several different types of camp, some were divided into army, navy or air force and further divided by rank. The most well-known POW camps were called Stalags which held enlisted men and some officers, and Oflags, which were for officers only.

Not every POW camp was the same, camps varied in size, look, and layout, with some being purpose-built and others existing buildings repurposed as prisons. This variety, and very few detailed photographs from inside camps, makes it hard for us to imagine what a POW camp in Europe would have been like.

Despite these differences, there were things each camp had in common including barbed wire fencing, guard towers, overcrowding, hunger, and boredom.

This reconstruction has used photographs from archives, including our own, and spoken and written testimony from POWs, to create an impression of what a World War II prisoner of war camp in Germany would have felt like.