Editing Disarmed Enemy Forces (section)

==Historical precedents==

After [[Invasion of Poland|defeating Poland]] in 1939, and [[Invasion of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] two years later, many troops from those nations were "released" from POW status by Nazi Germany and turned into a "virtual conscript labor force".<ref name=MacKenzie-487-520>S. P. MacKenzie "The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II", ''[[The Journal of Modern History]]'', Vol. 66, No. 3. (Sep., 1994), pp. 487-520.</ref>

Germany had either broken up or absorbed the countries in question, and the German argument was that neither country remained as a recognized state to which the POWs could still claim to belong, and that since belonging to a recognized nation was a formal prerequisite for POW status, "former Polish and Yugoslav military personnel were not legally prisoners of war".<ref name=MacKenzie-487-520/><ref>Further referenced in footnote to: J. Wilhelm, Can the Status of Prisoners of War Be Altered? (Geneva, 1953) p.10</ref>

The Allied argument for retracting Geneva convention protection from the German soldiers was similar to that of Nazi Germany ''vis à vis'' Polish and Yugoslav soldiers; using the "disappearance of the Third Reich to argue that the convention no longer operated-that POW status did not apply to the vast majority who had passed into captivity on and after May 5".<ref name=MacKenzie-487-520/> The motive was twofold: both an unwillingness to follow the Geneva convention now that the threat of German reprisals against Allied POWs was gone, and also they were "to an extent unable to meet the high standards of the Geneva code" for the large number of captured Germans.<ref name=MacKenzie-487-520/>

Following the [[surrender of Italy to the Allies]] in September 1943, German forces took around one million Italian military personnel prisoner. These personnel were designated "[[Italian military internees]]" and not granted the rights of POWs under the Geneva Conventions, as the German government claimed that they were not POWs as the two countries had not been at war. This continued, despite Italy’s subsequent declaration of war on Germany on October 13, 1943.<ref>{{cite book|last1=O'Reilly|first1=Charles T.|title=Forgotten Battles : Italy's War of Liberation, 1943-1945|date=2001|publisher=Lexington Books|location=Lanham|isbn=0739101951|page=68}}</ref> Approximately 600,000 of the captured Italians were subsequently transported to Germany and required to work as forced labourers in generally harsh conditions.<ref>{{cite book|editor-last1=Plato|editor-first1=Alexander von|editor-last2=Leh|editor-first2=Almut|editor-last3=Thonfeld|editor-first3=Christoph|title=Hitler's Slaves Life Stories of Forced Labourers in Nazi-Occupied Europe|date=2010|publisher=Berghahn Books, Inc.|location=New York|isbn=978-1845459901|page=5}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|editor1-last=Crew|editor1-first=David|title=Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945|date=2012|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1134891078|page=232}}</ref>