The paper is based upon a study of various sources left by participants and contemporaries of the World War II (The Great Patriotic War), documents and reports of the Red Cross and other organizations that helped captives and examined their hard conditions, as well as information from publications by specialists in captivity history for the 20th century. As a result, based upon the findings obtained, many conditions and factors were studied, which influenced separate captives or group of captives. It was established that the situation of captives depended on the nature of antagonisms that caused wars. The article showed that the institute of captivity was influenced by civilization peculiarities of the warring nations, and differences were considered as to how the winners treated their prisoners of war at the front and on the home front in the period of World War II (The Great Patriotic War). Also the authors characterized the acts of prisoners of war, which would enabled them to come through, survive, do harm to the enemy, and break free in order to save themselves, and help their comrades and homeland, and came back home.