British and French POWs were treated according to the Geneva Convention, though some French POWs such as the French North Africans were used as forced labour. There was also a program between the Vichy government and the Germans to allow for French POWs to be released and returned home, in small numbers of course.

Soviet POWs, on the other hand, were in what could only be described as hell. 3.2 Million Red Army POWs were captured between June 1941 and the beginning of 1942; it is estimated that 2.8 million of them died in that period, from starvation, disease, exposure, abuse, torture and execution at the hands of their German captors. Of the 5.7 million Red Army POWs captured during the war, 3.5 million never saw the Soviet Union again. Beginning in 1942, Soviet POWs were used as slave labour, some were subjected to human experimentation involuntarily, or conscripted into organizations such as the Eastern Battalions. Many of those that survived the war were repatriated, and suffered at the hands of the Soviet government for their presumed treachery.