Based on archival research in Germany, Great Britain, the USA and Canada, this study provides the first complete examination of the relationship between the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces High Command), and Anglo-American prisoners of war. German military policy is compared with reports of almost one thousand visits by Red Cross and Protecting Power inspectors to the camps, allowing the reader to judge how well the policies were actually put into practice, and what their impact was on the lives of the captured soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Using German and previously closed or underutilized Soviet archives, this work brings to date the historiography of one of the most important aspects of twentieth-century international relations: the steps by which Germany and Soviet Russia, the two pariah states of the First World War, would find common ground and establish a relationship whose impact would be felt through the Second World War. It focuses especially on the earliest secret contacts between the German military and the fledgling Soviet regime.