Y'all raise a bunch of great points re POWs.
Consider an alternative- the POWs integrate into the local society. It's not as far-fetched as it may seem.
Stephen Ambrose recounted the following story in Citizen Soldiers:
During WWII, an African-American G.I. passing through Texas observed, "about two dozen German prisoners of war, with two American guards, came to the station. They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time."
This sort of thing wasn't all that uncommon. Some ex-POWs from Germany and Italy enjoyed their time in US POW camps so much that, after the war, they returned to the USA to pursue citizenship.
In Germany, some Allied POWs were literally farmed out to local German families to act as manual labor on their actual farms. Over time, some Germans came to see these POWs as almost part of the family (although other families treated these live-in parolees as slave labor).
If surrounding communities are deprived of their own young men by the draft and such, they might be desperate for a source of same to help provide labor and, perhaps, marriageable partners.
I turned this concept into an encounter in a CONUS-based campaign I ran a few years back. The PCs show up at a little town in SE Arkansas and noticed that most of the men of military age were speaking English with heavy [Slavic] accents...
The PCs struggled with the scenario a bit. Initially, they though the men must be escapees holding the townsfolk hostage. Once they learned of the voluntary, cooperative nature of the arrangement, they had to decide whether to leave the situation alone or intervene in some way.
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