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 sexual 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.