The paper is based upon a study of dispatches, letters, diaries, memoirs and other sources left by participants and contemporaries of the World War I; 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 and enabled captives to come through, survive and, moreover, keep hoping for salvation and resist the enemy in various forms and with various activity. The paper singles out the conditions which deprived captives of such opportunities. 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 periods of World War I.