List of prisoners of war

This is a list of notable prisoners of war (POW) whose imprisonment attracted notable attention or influence, or who became famous afterwards.

• Ron Arad — Israeli fighter pilot, shot down over Lebanon in 1986. He has not been seen or heard from since 1988 and is widely presumed to be dead.
• Everett Alvarez, Jr. Navy Commander who endured one of the longest periods as a prisoner of war (POW) in American history. Alvarez was the first American pilot to be shot down and held as a POW in North Vietnam. He spent over 8 years in captivity, making him the second longest-held POW in American history.
• Douglas Bader — British fighter pilot, Wing commander in Battle of Britain
• Leonard Birchall — The "Saviour of Ceylon"
• Fernand Braudel — the famous historian, was a POW in World War II.
• Frank Buckles — the last American veteran of World War I, was imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II, as a civilian.
• Winston Churchill — during the Second Boer War; escaped
• James Clavell — prisoner in Singapore, based his novel King Rat on his experiences during World War II
• George Thomas Coker — U.S. Navy aviator, POW in North Vietnam, noted resistor of his captors
• John Cordwell — forged documents to help fellow English soldiers get out of Germany as part of the Great Escape
• Charles de Gaulle — French general and political leader, captured at Verdun, POW 1916-1918
• Dieter Dengler — a 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
• Werner Drechsler — killed by fellow German POWs during World War II for informing on other prisoners
• Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop — an Australian surgeon and legend among prisoners of the Thai Burma Railway in World War II
• Yakov Dzhugashvili — Joseph Stalin's first son, was captured by Germans early in World War II. lived in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943.
• Denholm Elliott — British actor
• Henri Giraud — French general, escaped German captivity in both World War I and World War II
• Ernest Gordon — Japanese POW in World War II, author of "To End All Wars" and former Presbyterian Dean of Princeton University chapel
• Tom Greenway — American actor, imprisoned for more than a year in Italian and German camps during World War II
• James Hargest — Brigadier in World War II. Highly decorated New Zealand politician in World War I and World War II. Escaped from captivity into Switzerland.
• Heinrich Harrer — Austrian mountaineer, sportsman and author, detained in British India during World War II until he escaped in 1944, as related in his autobiography Seven Years in Tibet.
• Erich Hartmann — "The Blond Knight of Germany". Number one air ace of all air forces in World War II.
• Bob Hoover — American World War II pilot, test pilot and airshow performer; captured in 1944 and escaped from Stalag Luft I
• Wilm Hosenfeld — Soviet prisoner in World War II, most remembered for saving Polish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman from death in the ruins of Warsaw.
• 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 and notable for memoir I Am Alive: A United States Marine's Story of Survival in a World War II Japanese POW Camp
• Stanley D. Jaworski — Polish POW freed by American soldiers
• Harold K. Johnson — U.S. Army Chief of Staff 1964; captured at Bataan (1942–1945)
• Bert Kaempfert — German Orchestra conductor in World War II at a Danish prisoner of war camp
• George Kenner — German artist interned as a civilian POW in Great Britain and the Isle of Man during World War I. Documented his experience in 110 paintings and drawings.
• Tikka Khan — Japanese POW during World War II, Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistani Army
• Wajid Khan Canadian politician — former Pakistan-India War 1971 fighter pilot
• Yahya Khan — German POW during World War II, last president of a united Pakistan
• Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski — Commander of the Polish Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising
• Gustav Krist — Adventurer and traveler, Austrian soldier in World War I, captured by Russians in 1914. Interned in Russian Turkestan
• Desmond Llewelyn — went on to a notable acting career, most famously as Q in the James Bond film series
• Jessica Lynch — American servicewoman during the Iraq war.
• Keith Matthew Maupin — captured on April 9, 2004. Date of murder unknown. Remains found March 30, 2008.
• Charles Cardwell McCabe — a prisoner and chaplain at Libby Prison during the American Civil War
• John McCain — American political leader and Republican nominee for president in 2008, prisoner 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 World War II in 1940, escaped 6 times before arriving home in Dec. 1941
• W. H. Murray — German POW during World War II, Scottish mountaineer
• 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 prisoners
• Manuel Noriega — Panamanian dictator, captured by U.S. troops in 1990, convicted of drugs trafficking and held by U.S. federal authorities as a PoW
• Friedrich Paulus — German field marshal, surrendered Stalingrad to the Soviets in 1943
• Donald Pleasence — English film and stage actor. Was shot down while serving in the RAF during World War II, taken prisoner, and placed in a German prisoner-of-war camp. He later acted in the film "The Great Escape".
• Pat Reid — non-fiction/historical author
• 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
• James N. Rowe — Colonel, U.S. Army Special Forces, held by the Viet Cong from October 1963 until December 1968. One of only thirty-four U.S. soldiers to escape captivity in Vietnam. Author of Five Years to Freedom. Assassinated by the New People's Army in the Philippines on April 21, 1989.
• Jean-Paul Sartre — French philosopher and writer, POW 1940-1941
• Kazuo Sakamaki — First POW captured by U.S. forces in World War II
• Ronald Searle — English cartoonist
• Léopold Senghor — Senegalize writer and political leader, captured 1940 in France
• Gilad Shalit — Israeli soldier captured in 2006 by Hamas. He was released in a prisoner exchange on October 18, 2011.
• Vladek Spiegelman — Polish private captured by Germany on September 1, 1939, father of Art Spiegelman
• William Stacy — lieutenant colonel of the Continental Army, captured during the Cherry Valley massacre; General George Washington attempted to orchestrate a prisoner exchange for Lt. Col. Stacy but was unsuccessful.
• James Stockdale — candidate for Vice President in 1992; decorated member of the U.S. Navy; POW in Vietnam
• E W Swanton — captured by Japanese in Singapore; after war, was renowned BBC sports commentator.
• 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 World War I, captured by Russians in 1915
• András Toma – Hungarian soldier, lived in a psychiatric hospital in Russia for 55 years after being captured as a POW. He was identified and returned home in 2000.
• Jakow Trachtenberg — A Russian Jewish mathematician who developed the mental calculation techniques called the Trachtenberg system.
• Mikhail Tukhachevsky — Soviet military leader and theorist, captured by Germans in World War I
• Charles Upham — Most decorated British soldier of World War II. Awarded the Victoria Cross twice.
• Laurens van der Post — South African writer and war hero, captured by Japanese 1942
• 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 in World War II
• Jonathan Wainwright — Commanding General U.S. forces in Philippines; captured at Bataan (1942–1945)
• George Washington — first U.S. President, captured in 1754 by the French during the French and Indian War.
• D. C. Wimberly — POW in World War II from Springhill, Louisiana; educator and a past commander of American Ex-Prisoners of War
• Louis Zamperini — American athlete, member of Olympic team, captured by Japanese 1943