Prisoners of war in World War II is currently a Warfaregood article nominee.Nominated byPiotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here at 06:04, 22 February 2025 (UTC) An editor has placed this article on hold to allow improvements to be made to satisfy thegood article criteria. Recommendations have been left onthe review page, and editors have seven days to address these issues. Improvements made in this period will influence the reviewer's decision whether or not to list the article as agood article. Short description: none

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A fact fromPrisoners of war in World War II appeared on Wikipedia'sMain Page in theDid you know column on 11 January 2025 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that as many as 35 million soldiers becameprisoners of war in World War II, according to some estimates? A record of the entry may be seen atWikipedia:Recent additions/2025/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen atTemplate:Did you know nominations/Prisoners of war in World War II.

This review istranscluded fromTalk:Prisoners of war in World War II/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator:Piotrus (talk ·contribs)06:04, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer:Sturmvogel 66 (talk·contribs)00:14, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'll get to this shortly--Sturmvogel 66 (talk)00:14, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Sturmvogel 66 Please ping me with any comments, I have this watchlisted by my watchlist is cluttered and the next week I'll be extra busy IRL._{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}02:10, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Earwig reports 7.4%
• All images properly licensed
• Your system of consolidating cites into one source with separate page numbers in the text makes it very hard to reference specific cites.
  • Fair point, but it's a system allowed by MoS; it has other advantages such as being able to quickly see how much a given source is used. To deal with the drawback you mentioned, you can just paste in the cite and page number. like [3]: 2, or cite the relevant sentence when reporting issues with refs. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:33, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's fine for the editor and the reader, but it's a serious PITA for the reviewer.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk)00:58, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• In cite 3, pp. 76-77, page 76 says perhaps 62,000 and page 77 has no numbers at all
  • @Sturmvogel 66: True. I've corrected the number to "at least 62,000" and narrowed the range. At least, since it is pretty reasonable to assume Filipiono prisoners were taken at other places too, although I was unable to locate any estimate of the total. Do you think we should remove the qualification? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:03, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Cite 3, p. 2 doesn't cover Japanese ignorance of Japanese crimes against POWs
  • The full sentence this cite supports, together with other cite, is "The harsh treatment of Allied POWs by Japan became infamous in the West and remains widely known; it is however still mostly ignored or glossed over in Japan". The cite in question is used to support the first claim (source says: "The suffering of POWs in the Pacific is so familiar in popular culture that it can be invoked and immediately recognized without any context or explanation"). But it also supports the second one, since the same page says "the suffering and death of Allied POWs became infamous in the United States and the British Commonwealth, while it hardly figures in Japanese popular memories of the Pacific War"--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:33, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Cite 3, p. 169 doesn't mention French prisoners following the coup d'état, that is given in page 200
  • Page 200 was alraedy cited. Page 169 does not seem to be relevant - must be some sort of copypaste error (weird, I am not even citing it anywhere else on the page). I have removed it. Good catch, thank you.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:39, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Checked cite 3, pp. 192, 196; p. 2, 4
• Checked cite 40, p. 133; 133–134
• Checked cite 35, pp. 4, 6; 4-9
• Checked cites 4, 36
• Why is cite 21 not consolidated into cite 22 like every other cite?
  • Probably b/c I've copied it from some other wiki article and did forgot to c/e it. Fixed. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:41, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Cite 19 needs needs publication information and an ISBN
  • ISBN was not listed in WorldCat:[1], which has publisher, but I found it at[2]. I formatted the cite with what I could find. This info was copied fromGerman prisoners of war in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, that very useful number (400,000) is missing a page number, sigh. The primary contributor to that article,User:StylusGuru, is no longer active. I need to double check that number - it make take a day or two. For now, I found[3] which gives us ~200,000 at the time of surrender and ~400,000 a year later (as presumably more forces were taken into custody). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}02:03, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• 1 039 800 why is this formatted European style?
  • Copypaste formatting? Dunno. Fixed. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:43, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Cites like[2][9]: 78–79  often lack page numbers for the first cite
• All pdfs need page numbers
  • Hmmm. That may take a while to address. Is this a requirement at this level? I thought page numbers for PDFs were optional (granted, that's a good practice I'll addopt going forward). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:43, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• @Piotrus: I'm seeing a bunch of sourcing issues and that need to be dealt with before I proceed. If you lack time to deal with it, I'll fail it and you can let me know when it's ready so I can review it again. Otherwise, I'll leave it on hold while you work on it.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk)15:52, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Sturmvogel 66 Replied to above, I think. Your turn again :)_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}01:55, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Sorry for the delay
  • Np.
• Might be useful to add a short explanation as to why the Danish soldiers arrested in 1943, only to be released again.
  • Good idea:done
• 5,000 have been transferred to the custody of Free French were transferred
• 400,000 have been held Tenses are a major recurring problem, fix them
  • I am not a native English speaker, so this happens. I hope the overuse of "have/has been" is fixed now, but if you see something else let me know. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}03:30, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• while Germans quickly captured while "the" Germans quickly captured "the"
  • Ditto.
• Fix the dead link in the last bullet of By country of capture
  • Ummm, I just removed the template. The archive version works and is linked properly, I think:[4]. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}03:30, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• (approximately million fatalities, how many?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk)00:58, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, approximately that many. For large numbers like this, nobody can give an exact count. I use the word 'approximately' 12 times in the current version of the article - why do you ask about that number? SeeGerman prisoners of war in the Soviet Union (the lead is sufficient). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}03:30, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    PS. I've added some inline citatons of the estimate, and updated the range based on sources cited_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}03:49, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Sturmvogel 66_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}03:31, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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