My inlaws had a good German friend who had been in a POW camp in America. He was from Silesia. When he was repatriated, he had the good sense to stay in the Western zone, from which he eventually got clearance to immigrate to the U.S. A couple he worked for on work release from the camp sponsored him. Great guy - always had beer in the fridge.
My dad was an engineer who helped design industrial processes. He worked with a plant engineer he knew as “Gus,” a former German POW who spent the war on a farm in Louisiana. Same story; Gus found a way to get back to the USA as a citizen. He said that all the German POWs he was with lived in a barracks with minimal supervision, went to the farms during the day, came back at night, and got Sunday passes to go into town.
I don’t think that would have happened had Gus been a POW in the east. He was lucky.