Here is a wonderful (and for us old fogeys, resonant) essay by Chris Kelly at The Huffington Post on the use of the Geneva Convention by both Nazis and Allies during the second world war. The money quote:
In real life, bombing Germany killed a half million civilians, but interned American and British airmen were generally treated according to the Geneva Conventions. They weren't systematically tortured. They weren't deliberately humiliated. They weren't held in solitary cells. International organizations were given their names and their families were informed of their capture. Their mortality rate was less than 1%.
And they were being held by the worst government on earth.
Till now, that is...
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The first thing one has to understand about the Nazis was that they were a political entity whose direct military forces were restricted to the SS. Underneath all of that was the Prussian Army, one of the most potent and disciplined military forces the planet had ever seen, and most certainly, like most of the European armies of the time disciplined in a strict code of honor. I don't know how much you can attribute this to the Geneva Convention so much as to the history and ethic of the Prussian Army.
Since, by and large, the Army had responsibility over POWs, I don't think it's surprising that they were fairly well treated.
Certainly the Allied Powers sullied themselves on many occasions. The bombing campaigns over Germany were pretty much designed to kill and demoralize the civilian population, much as the Blitz had been designed by the Germans to do the same in Britain. The strategic accomplishments of such campaigns were questionable at best, and even those that planned and ordered their execution for fully aware of the moral implications, but were justified as bringing a great threat to the world down.
Not to defend the current US administration's treatment of prisoners in its "War on Terrorism", but I suspect the reasons are similar to those of the Allies during WWII, that the enemy was so horrible that normal rules of war had to be dispensed with.
In my humble opinion, I think the root of the problem isn't Gitmo or secret CIA prisoner holding centers in Eastern Europe and who-knows-where-else, but rather that you can't actually wage a war against terrorists, and the application of military power to the problem as a general solution is flawed. This is a problem more befitting international law enforcement, which has not only the tools, but the psychological makeup to actually go after what ultimately amounts to international criminal organizations. The best example I can think of is Israel's Mossad (not that Israel hasn't misapplied military force itself, as it did in Lebanon).
Compare and contrast with the German treatment of Soviet POWs, of whom at least two million were systematically starved to death within a few months of their capture.
The controlling factor was neither the Geneva Conventions nor Prussian "military honor" - it was that the US & British captives were considered Aryans, while the Slavs were deemed subhuman.
What a dopey article! (but does the Huffington Post do anything else other than autism-vaccine quackery?) Did he get all his knowledge of WW2 from Hogan's Heroes?
How did the Nazi's treat insurgents in Western European countries? Did the Gestapo treat Dutch and French resistance fighters according to the Geneva Convention? No, they were tortured and killed.
Those ignorant of history blah blah blah
http://www.mitchellbard.com/articles/pows.html
During WWII, German POW's held at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis were allowed to travel to Chicago, Minnesta, etc. to visit relatives. I wonder if any US POW's were allowed to visit relatives in Germany.