By September 1946, more than a year after the end of World War II, 402,000 German POWs were still being held in camps stretching across Britain. They were set to work on tasks including road repair and brickmaking. POWs swept up the rubbish after VE day celebrations and helped construct Wembley Way for the 1948 Olympics. In March 1947, 170,000 were working in agriculture, helping farmers bring in the harvest.
International law stipulated that POWs should be repatriated after a peace treaty was signed, but with Germany occupied, a peace treaty was a remote possibility. So Britain kept its German POWs – who were proving useful as a labour force – without announcing when they might be sent home. The practical issue of arranging transports hindered plans; at the same time, repatriating ardent Nazis among the POWs was considered imprudent. [...]
Public dissatisfaction was formally expressed in August 1946 when Save Europe Now, a post-war pressure group, sent a petition to then-prime minister, Clement Attlee. Attlee soon announced that 15,000 POWs would be repatriated per month. While this was celebrated, criticism of the slowness of repatriation continued until it was completed in 1948.
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