The Allies generally repatriated their men held in Germany within a month or so, while they themselves held on to German prisoners into 1920. While that sounds cruel, in fact Germany was aflame and returning discharged German soldiers to what was already a state of slow revolution involving discharged servicemen would have not been wise, nor would it have been particularly kind to the POWs, who were at least housed and fed.
An exception for Allied POWs was that of Russian POWs. I don't know what became of them, but they continued to be housed in Germany following the end of the war. The country that had sent them into war no longer existed in the form it had. Imperial Russia was gone. Men like this probably had no strong desire to fight for the Whites or the Reds but that would have been their fate had they been immediately repatriated. Neither Germany nor the Allies wanted them in Red arms, and there was no way to guarantee that they'd end up as loyal combatants for the Whites.
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