The Enemy in Our Hands: America's Treatment of Enemy Prisoners of War from the Revolution to the War on Terror

By Robert C. Doyle

Casting a wide net, this book delivers a scholarly, lucid overview of America's handling of POWs of all stripes: military, civilian, and irregular. Historian Doyle (A Prisoner's Duty) emphasizes that uniformed foreign soldiers received humane treatment from the Revolution through the Iraq invasion, peaking during WWII when hundreds of thousands of German troops brought to the U.S. received "relatively benign" treatment. Prisoners fared worse when Americans fought Americans. Loyalists during the Revolution were abused and often killed. Both sides during the Civil War neglected prisoners disgracefully. Historically, irregular fighters enjoyed no protection, but while soldiers rarely objected to mistreating opponents who didn't play fair, civilians were often outraged. In Korea, the screening of prisoners to separate combatants from noncombatants, and their future repatriation, led to prisoner uprisings. No ideologue, Doyle explains that sometimes abuse is unavoidable; at other times it's ineffective, infuriates world opinion, and puts American soldiers at risk for reprisals. Doyle delves deeply, and military buffs will consider it the definitive treatment.

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