POW, or prisoner of war, is a person captured by the enemy during a war. MIA, or missing in action, is a person that has gone unaccounted for during a war. These terms are not to be used lightly because of the pain and suffering that comes with them.
When captured by the enemy, you are considered a POW. In the years before the 17th century, any and all POW's were killed or put into slavery. This was finished in 1648, at the end of The Thirty Years War. It was ruled that prisoners were released without ransom. During the American Civil War, a German US political reformer Francis Lieber draf…
