List of prisoners of war

This is a list of famous prisoners of war (POWs) whose imprisonment attracted media attention, or who became well known afterwards.

Senior officers held captive in Oflag IV-C in Colditz Castle, including Admiral Józef Unrug and General Tadeusz Piskor.

Winston Churchill in Durban after escaping from captivity in 1899. He had written the Boer Secretary of War a polite departure note, "I have the honour to inform you that as I do not consider that your Government has any right to detain me as a military prisoner, I have decided to escape from your custody..."

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

A

• Ron Arad – Israeli fighter pilot, shot down over Lebanon in 1986; not seen since 1988 and is presumed dead
• Everett Alvarez, Jr. – Navy aviator, Vietnam War POW, held for 8 years, second longest period as a POW in American history (after Floyd James Thompson)

B

• Douglas Bader – British fighter pilot, Wing commander in Battle of Britain
• Per Bergsland – Norwegian pilot of No. 332 Squadron RAF. Escapee #44 of the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, successfully made it to Sweden with Jens Müller
• Leonard Birchall – the "Saviour of Ceylon"
• Gregory "Pappy" Boyington – US Marine Corps Fighter Ace during WWII, Medal of Honor recipient
• Fernand Braudel – historian, was a POW in WWII
• Frank Buckles – the last surviving American veteran of WWI, was a civilian during WWII when imprisoned by the Japanese
• Roger Bushell – South African-born RAF Squadron Leader. Masterminded the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III in 1944, but was one of the 50 escapees to be recaptured and subsequently murdered by the Gestapo
• Peter Butterworth – actor, Fleet Air Arm officer, shot down 1940, imprisoned in Stalag Luft III
• Hubert Brooks – Canadian RCAF officer, partisan in Home Army in occupied Poland, awarded Military Cross and the Polish Cross of Merit with Swords

C

• Anthony Chenevix-Trench – future headmaster of Eton, artillery officer, prisoner 1942-45 at Changi Prison and on the Burma Railway
• Winston Churchill – during the Second Boer War; escaped
• James Clavell – prisoner in Singapore, based his novel King Rat on his experiences during WWII
• George Thomas Coker – US Navy aviator, POW in North Vietnam, noted resistor of his captors

D

• Rupert Davies – actor, Fleet Air Arm observer, POW in Stalag Luft III 1940-45
• Charles de Gaulle – French general and political leader, captured at Verdun, POW 1916-1918
• Dieter Dengler – United States Navy pilot who escaped a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos
• Jeremiah Denton – awarded the Navy Cross for resistance in captivity during the Vietnam War
• Roy Dotrice – British actor
• John A. Dramesi – USAF Colonel, Vietnam POW, lead the only organized escape from the Hanoi Hilton with Edwin Atterberry
• Werner Drechsler – killed by fellow German POWs during WWII for informing on other prisoners
• Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop – Australian surgeon and legend among prisoners of the Thai Burma Railway in WWII
• Clive Dunn – British Dad's Army actor, captured following the Battle of Greece in 1941 and held in German captivity until the end of WWII
• Yakov Dzhugashvili – Joseph Stalin's first son, captured by Germans early in WWII, lived in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943

E

• Denholm Elliott – British actor

G

• Henri Giraud – French general, escaped German captivity in both WWI and WWII
• Ernest Gordon – POW of Japanese in WWII, author of Through the Valley of the Kwai and former Presbyterian Dean of Princeton University chapel

H

• James Hargest – New Zealand Brigadier captured in WWII, escaped from captivity into Switzerland
• Heinrich Harrer – Austrian mountaineer, sportsman and author, detained in British India during WWII until he escaped in 1944, described in his Seven Years in Tibet
• Erich Hartmann – "The Blond Knight of Germany", number one air ace of all air forces in WWII
• Jack Hawkins (U.S. Marine Corps officer)
• Rudolf Hess – Deputy Führer of Germany, POW in England 1941-45, before his trial for war crimes
• Bob Hoover – American WWII pilot, test pilot and airshow performer; captured in 1944 and escaped from Stalag Luft I
• Brian Horrocks – British WW2 general, WWI POW in Germany and Russia
• Wilm Hosenfeld – Soviet POW in WWII, most remembered for saving the life of Polish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman
• William Hull – American Brigadier General who surrendered Fort Detroit to the British at the outbreak of the War of 1812

J

• Andrew Jackson – seventh President of the United States, captured in the American Revolutionary War as a thirteen-year-old courier
• Charles R. Jackson – captured in Battle of Corregidor, as described in memoir I Am Alive: A United States Marine's Story of Survival in a WWII Japanese POW Camp
• Harold K. Johnson – US Army Chief of Staff 1964; captured at Bataan (1942–1945)

K

• Bert Kaempfert – German orchestra conductor in WWII at a Danish POW camp
• Emil Kapaun – Roman Catholic priest in US Army, Medal of Honor recipient, Servant of God candidate for sainthood
• George Kenner – German artist interned as a civilian POW in Great Britain and the Isle of Man during WWI, which he documented in 110 paintings and drawings
• Tikka Khan – Japanese POW during WWII, Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistani Army
• Wajid Khan – Canadian politician, Pakistan-India War 1971 fighter pilot
• Yahya Khan – German POW during WWII, last president of a united Pakistan
• Maximilian Kolbe – Roman Catholic priest from Poland, interned in Auschwitz, and canonized as a saint
• Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski – Commander of the Polish Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising
• Gustav Krist – adventurer and traveler, Austrian soldier in WWI, captured by Russians and Interned in Russian Turkestan
• Sam Kydd – British actor

L

• George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood – captured in Italy 1944, one of the Prominente (celebrity inmates) at Colditz
• Desmond Llewelyn – actor, most famously as Q in the James Bond film series
• Jessica Lynch – American servicewoman during the Iraq war

M

• Herbert Massey – RAF Air Commodore. Senior British Officer at Stalag Luft III who authorized the "Great Escape"
• Keith Matthew Maupin – captured on April 9, 2004, date of murder unknown, remains found March 30, 2008
• Charles Cardwell McCabe – a POW and chaplain at Libby Prison during the American Civil War
• John McCain – Republican nominee for president in 2008, POW for over five years in Vietnam
• Olivier Messiaen – French composer
• George Millar – journalist, British soldier, SOE agent, writer
• Dusty Miller – executed for his faith during internment under the Japanese in Thailand in 1945
• François Mitterrand – French president, captured during WWII in 1940, escaped 6 times before arriving home in December 1941
• Jens Müller – Norwegian pilot of No. 331 Squadron RAF. Escapee #43 of the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, successfully made it to Sweden with Per Bergsland
• Ethel Rogers Mulvany – Canadian POW during WWII, later gained national media attention for her fundraising efforts for former prisoners of war
• W. H. Murray – German POW during WWII, Scottish mountaineer

N

• Airey Neave – British politician, made the first British home run from Colditz on 5 January 1942
• A. A. K. Niazi – commander of Pakistan Army in East Pakistan who surrendered along with nearly 93,000 other soldiers

O

• Richard O'Connor – British General who commanded the Western Desert Force 1940-41

P

• Friedrich Paulus – German field marshal, surrendered Stalingrad to the Soviets in 1943
• Pete Peterson – American diplomat and member of Congress, Air Force pilot who spent more than six years as a POW in Vietnam
• Donald Pleasence – English film and stage actor, WWII RAF airman shot down and placed in a German POW camp; later acted in the film The Great Escape

R

• John Rarick – U.S. Representative from Louisiana
• Sławomir Rawicz – Polish Army lieutenant who was imprisoned by the Soviets after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. Ghost-wrote the book "The Long Walk", where he claimed he and six others escaped from a Siberian Gulag camp and trekked on foot through the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas before finally reaching British India
• Pat Reid – author of historical non-fiction
• James Robinson Risner – USAF Brigadier General, first living recipient of the Air Force Cross
• Yevgeny Rodionov – Russian soldier captured by rebel forces in Chechnya and beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam
• Giles Romilly – nephew of Winston Churchill, war correspondent, Prominente (celebrity prisoner) in Germany 1940-45
• James N. Rowe – Colonel, US Army Special Forces, held by the Viet Cong from 1963 to 1968, one of only 34 American soldiers to escape captivity in Vietnam

S

• Jean-Paul Sartre – French philosopher and writer, POW 1940-1941
• Kazuo Sakamaki – first POW captured by US forces in WWII
• Winfield Scott – American Lt Col who surrendered at the Battle of Queenston Heights; later Commanding General of the United States Army from 1841 to 1861
• Ronald Searle – English cartoonist
• Léopold Senghor – Senegalize writer and political leader, captured 1940 in France
• Gilad Shalit – Israeli soldier captured in 2006 by Hamas, released in a prisoner exchange in 2011
• Vladek Spiegelman – Polish private captured by Germany on first day of WWII, father of Art Spiegelman
• William Stacy – Lieutenant Colonel of the Continental Army, captured during the Cherry Valley massacre; General George Washington made failed attempt to retrieve him via prisoner exchange
• James Stockdale – candidate for Vice President in 1992; decorated member of the US Navy; POW in Vietnam
• E W Swanton – captured by Japanese in Singapore; after war, was BBC sports commentator

T

• Floyd James Thompson – America's longest-held POW, he spent 9 years in POW camps in Vietnam (1964 – 1973)
• Josip Broz Tito – president of Yugoslavia, Austrian soldier in WWI, captured by Russians in 1915
• András Toma – last known WWII POW, a Hungarian soldier who lived in a psychiatric asylum in Russia for 55 years before being identified and returned home in 2000
• Jakow Trachtenberg – Russian Jewish mathematician who developed the mental calculation techniques called the Trachtenberg system
• Mikhail Tukhachevsky – Soviet military leader and theorist, captured by Germans in WWI

U

• Charles Upham – most decorated Commonwealth soldier of WWII, awarded the Victoria Cross twice

V

• Arthur W. Vanaman – Major General, Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence for the Eighth Air Force. Highest-ranked American POW in the European Theater during WWII
• Laurens van der Post – South African writer and war hero, captured by Japanese forces in 1942
• Bram van der Stok – Dutch pilot of No. 41 Squadron RAF. Escapee #18 of the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III, successfully crossed Europe with help from the French Resistance to reach a British consulate in Spain
• Abhinandan Varthaman – Indian Air Force pilot, shot down and captured during Indo - Pak standoff in Feb 2019
• Dietrich von Choltitz – German general, military governor of Paris, POW in England 1944-45, then in American custody till 1947
• Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach – German general captured at Stalingrad
• Kurt Vonnegut – American writer; captured in the Battle of the Bulge and witnessed the bombing of Dresden

W

• Jonathan Wainwright – Commanding General US forces in Philippines; captured at Bataan (1942–1945)
• George Washington – first US President, captured in 1754 by the French during the French and Indian War
• Peter Wyngarde – British actor, imprisoned as a young British citizen in Langhua POW camp in WWII

Z

• Louis Zamperini – American athlete, member of Olympic team, captured by Japanese forces in 1943