Prisoners of War during World War 1 I The Great War Special

Millions of men were captured during World War 1 and most of them spent years in prison camps as pawns of the nation that captured them. However, their experience was a taboo in the post war society. We take a look at the hardships of being a prisoner and how the world powers used the POWs as leverage. » HOW CAN I SUPPORT YOUR CHANNEL? You can support us by sharing our videos with your friends and spreading the word about our work.You can also support us financially on Patreon: ****** You can also buy our merchandise in our online shop: ****** Patreon is a platform for creators like us, that enables us to get monthly financial support from the community in exchange for cool perks. » WHERE CAN I GET MORE INFORMATION ABOUT WORLD WAR I AND WHERE ELSE CAN I FIND YOU? We’re offering background knowledge, news, a glimpse behind the scenes and much more on: reddit: ****** Facebook: ****** Twitter: ****** Instagram: ****** » CAN I EMBED YOUR VIDEOS ON MY WEBSITE? Of course, you can embed our videos on your website. We are happy if you show our channel to your friends, fellow students, classmates, professors, teachers or neighbours. Or just share our videos on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. We are also happy to get your feedback, criticism or ideas in the comments. If you have interesting historical questions, just post them and we will answer in our OUT OF THE TRENCHES videos. You can find a selection of answers to the most frequently asked questions here: ****** » CAN I SHOW YOUR VIDEOS IN CLASS? Of course! Tell your teachers or professors about our channel and our videos. We’re happy if we can contribute with our videos. If you are a teacher and have questions about our show, you can get in contact with us on one of our social media presences. » WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES? Videos: British Pathé Pictures: Mostly Picture Alliance Background Map: ****** Literature (excerpt): Gilbert, Martin. The First World War. A Complete History, Holt Paperbacks, 2004. Hart, Peter. The Great War. A Combat History of the First World War, Oxford University Press, 2013. Hart, Peter. The Great War. 1914-1918, Profile Books, 2013. Stone, Norman. World War One. A Short History, Penguin, 2008. Keegan, John. The First World War, Vintage, 2000. Hastings, Max. Catastrophe 1914. Europe Goes To War, Knopf, 2013. Hirschfeld, Gerhard. Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg, Schöningh Paderborn, 2004 Michalka, Wolfgang. Der Erste Weltkrieg. Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse, Seehamer Verlag GmbH, 2000 Leonhard, Jörn. Die Büchse der Pandora: Geschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges, C.H. Beck, 2014 If you want to buy some of the books we use or recommend during our show, check out our Amazon Store: ****** NOTE: This store uses affiliate links which grant us a commission if you buy a product there. » WHAT IS “THE GREAT WAR” PROJECT? THE GREAT WAR covers the events exactly 100 years ago: The story of World War I in realtime. Featuring: The unique archive material of British Pathé. Indy Neidell takes you on a journey into the past to show you what really happened and how it all could spiral into more than four years of dire war. Subscribe to our channel and don’t miss our new episodes every Thursday. » WHO IS REPLYING TO MY COMMENTS? AND WHO IS BEHIND THIS PROJECT? Most of the comments are written by our social media manager Florian. He is posting links, facts and backstage material on our social media channels. But from time to time, Indy reads and answers comments with his personal account, too. The Team responsible for THE GREAT WAR is even bigger: - CREDITS - Presented by : Indiana Neidell Written by: Indiana Neidell Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig Director of Photography: Toni Steller Sound: Toni Steller Sound Design: Marc Glücks Editing: Steven Roberts Motion Design: Philipp Appelt Research by: Markus Linke Fact checking: Markus Linke A Mediakraft Networks Original Channel Based on a concept by Spartacus Olsson Author: Indiana Neidell Visual Concept: Astrid Deinhard-Olsson Executive Producer: Spartacus Olsson Producer: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig Social Media Manager: Florian Wittig Contains licenced Material by British Pathé All rights reserved - © Mediakraft Networks GmbH, 2016

So far I’ve talked a lot about the fighting, the killing, and the dying during the war. Mainly because that’s what most people and even most historians primarily focus on when they talk about the war, but by 1916 soldiers by the millions had been taken as prisoners of war, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today. I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about prisoners of war during World War One. The experiences of the POWs in the First World War were, for a long time in post war society, a social taboo, and even today they struggle for their place in war commemorations. However it was a mass phenomenon shared by millions of men. By the end of the war Russia had lost around 3.4 million soldiers to captivity, Austria-Hungary had lost 2.8 million. A million German soldiers, 600,000 French and 600,000 Italians, and around 200,000 English troops became prisoners of the enemy. Back in the 19th century, the European military elite prided itself on ideals of glory and chivalry. The soldier who fights bravely for his country should deserve the honor of keeping his dignity intact, even after suffering defeat. The commanding general, knowing victory is impossible, would step out in front of his troops and present his saber to the enemy commander as a token of an honorable surrender. The captured men would be treated with respect and protected from further harm. Probably no one expressed this concept of martial chivalry better than German artist Anton von Werner in his painting “Kriegsgefangen”, where he portrays a French soldier surrounded by German soldiers after the battle of Sedan in 1870, who is allowed to kiss his wife and baby goodbye before he is escorted into captivity. The reality, as always, painted a different picture. Because of the total unpreparedness of the Prussian army to take over 100,000 prisoners in one day at Sedan, the French captives endured great hardships, and in the early weeks of this war the French government proclaimed it would treat German prisoners far better than the Prussians had 40 odd years earlier, but we know that the harsh and cruel realities of modern war would not stop for moral codes or promises. Prisoners were mostly taken big catches during periods of mobile warfare. In the colossal offensives on the Eastern Front tens of thousands of prisoners could be taken in a matter of days. By comparison only a few prisoners could be taken at once in the trenches. Trench assaults were most often kill or be killed, and enemy soldiers were often shot even after they’d thrown down their weapons. (Ferguson). There were also soldiers like the French “nettoyeurs des tranchées”, whose job was to kill wounded and scattered soldiers, rather than capture them. Article 7 of the Hague Convention of 1907 clearly regulates the treatment of prisoners of war. It states that every man that surrendered should be clothed, fed, and housed just as the soldiers of their captors’ nation were, but of course that didn’t happen in the war, and in addition to often being poorly treated, prisoners were often in a state of depression. Many were afraid of the stigma of being branded as cowards or deserters by military command. There was also the crippling fear of being already forgotten. Packed in overloaded livestock cars, they would arrive in one of the many towns that housed prisoners in barracks, camps, or on military practice fields. They were greeted by crowds who shouted insults, threw stones, and spat on them. Xenophobia was an integral part of the new total war culture, spread throughout the citizens who bonded over the common enemy. The young schoolboy Heinrich Himmler, wrote in his diary about a station in Landshut: “Curious Landshuter who were crude and almost violent as the severely wounded Frenchmen - who are surely worse off than our wounded in that they are prisoners - were given bread and water." Shocked by the violence, hungry and depressed, the men finally arrived at their designated campsite, but it was only then, when the grim reality of a prisoner of war camp began. Imagine being captured in the first weeks of the war. You would have to face years behind barbed wire with hundreds or thousands of other men, living in small huts that were sometimes not even big enough to stretch out in, or even weatherproof. Much as shell shock became the symbol of the horrors of trench warfare, the barbed-wire-disease stood for the trauma of men who couldn't cope with the stress of confinement. It was a mental illness that caused depression. Some men had mental breakdowns or became aggressive towards other prisoners, and those breakdowns poisoned the atmosphere. And the daily routine of prison camps was: Breakfast - Parade - Dinner - Parade - Supper - Lights out. That's it. No space, no privacy. Only noise. Thousands of men cramped together for months or years. Prison camp societies were in themselves, though, very diverse. You had civilians as well as soldiers, some were captured in the beginning of the war, others had experienced many battles. Young men and old men, men from the working class or men from the middle or even upper class, students, teachers, artists… all of them from different formerly civilian lives. But always men. No women. Most of them wouldn´t come in contact with women for years. Now, all army commanders recognized their soldiers’ need for *** relief, but these men obviously weren't allowed that “distraction”. But they needed some sort of distraction, and they built societies where watchmakers, typographers, and barbers worked. Where plays were produced, sporting groups formed, where flowers, vegetable gardens, and libraries were ways to fight the common enemy: time. Throughout the war, many prisoners were used as forced labor, and in Germany, prisoners even became vital to the economy. Some worked in the war industry, but they were mostly sent to work in agriculture, railroad construction, mining, and logging. For many, this was a welcoming alternative to the boredom of captivity, and if you worked on a farm, you probably got better nutrition than the German civilians in cities. But as much as prisoners were now separated from combat, they were still part of the war, and were hostages and pawns in the game. The Germans tried to influence Russian prisoners to rebel against the czarist regime and sent some of them home to do so, then the Bolsheviks tried the same trick with German prisoners. The “Half-moon-camp” was also something unique. It was a special prison camp for Muslims. The German high command thought they could convince captured Muslims to rise up against colonial overlords so the camp was even built with a mosque, Germany´s first. Should the Germans withhold food or post from their prisoners, the British would do the same. Had German prisoners been withdrawn from the hard labor camps of North Africa, French prisoners wouldn´t have to work in the marshes of northern Germany anymore. Prisoners had to suffer punishments and penalties for events far away from their camps, and the toughest punishment of all was to send them to the frontlines to repair the bunkers and trenches of the enemy, or bury the dead, all the while under fire from their own artillery. And the longer the war waged on, the worse the food in the camps became, particularly in Germany and Austria-Hungary where even the civilians had a hard time getting enough food. Malnutrition was common in many camps, and they were plagued by typhus and other illnesses. The humanitarian effort to prevent nations from abusing their captives was mostly done by the International Red Cross. By the end of 1917 they had over 1200 employees who answered up to 18,000 written requests daily about the whereabouts of prisoners. They visited prison camps and monitored their conditions, while contacting prisoners’ relatives about how they were doing. By 1918 over 5 million prisoners were registered. When the war ended, most prisoners were sent home, but it took time, and the final German, Austrian, and Russian prisoners went home in July 1922. Actually, the French held over 300,000 Germans after the war until Germany agreed to the terms of Versailles. You probably have questions about outbreaks, death rates, separations of ethnic groups, and things like that, and I’ll get to them in a future special. Today was just a general look at the realities of a war in which millions of men were taken prisoner by nations that were often woefully unprepared to care for such numbers, and the basic conditions of life for those millions of men, hungry, sick, and perhaps above all bored, but at least alive, unlike millions of their comrades. If you want to find out more about the German agitation among Russian Prisoners of War, you can check out our episode right here. And if you have an idea for another special episode and would like to help us with that, than write us a message on FB or use the contact form on our website. See you next week.