Internment During The First World War: A Mass Global Phenomenon 0415787440, 9780415787444, 1351848356, 9781351848350

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“A welcome contribution to the global reach and varieties of internment in the First World War – from Britain to New Zealand. The volume highlights a neglected but important dimension of total warfare. It is indispensable reading for students of contemporary history.” Arnd Bauerkämper, Professor of Modern History at the Freie Universität, Berlin

Internment during the First World War

Although civilian internment has become associated with the Second World War in popular memory, it has a longer history. The turning point in this history occurred during the First World War when, in the interests of ‘security’ in a situation of total war, the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ became part of state policy for the belligerent states, resulting in the incarceration, displacement and, in more extreme cases, the death by neglect or deliberate killing of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. This pioneering book on internment during the First World War brings together international experts to investigate the importance of the conflict for the history of civilian incarceration. Stefan Manz is Professor of German and Global History at Aston University, Birmingham. His book Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914 is also published by Routledge. Panikos Panayi is Professor of European History at De Montfort University, United Kingdom. His publications include The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War and Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees during the First World War. Matthew Stibbe is Professor of Modern European History at Sheffield Hallam University. His edited volume titled Captivity, Forced Labour and Forced Migration in Europe during the First World War and his co-edited volume (with Ingrid Sharp) titled Women’s International Activism during the Inter-War Period, 1919–1939 are both published by Routledge.

Routledge Studies in First World War History Series Editor by John Bourne The University of Birmingham, UK

The First World War is a subject of perennial interest to historians and is often regarded as a watershed event, marking the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the ‘modern’ industrial world. The sheer scale of the conflict and massive loss of life means that it is constantly being assessed and reassessed to examine its lasting military, political, sociological, industrial, cultural and economic impact. Reflecting the latest international scholarly research, the Routledge Studies in First World War History series provides a unique platform for the publication of monographs on all aspects of the Great War. Whilst the main thrust of the series is on the military aspects of the conflict, other related areas (including cultural, visual, literary, political and social) are also addressed. Books published are aimed primarily at a post-graduate academic audience, furthering exciting recent interpretations of the war, whilst still being accessible enough to appeal to a wider audience of educated lay readers. Also in this series Internment during the First World War A Mass Global Phenomenon Edited by Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe War Time First World War Perspectives on Temporality Edited by Louis Halewood, Adam Luptak and Hanna Smyth Eric Bogle, Music and the Great War ‘An Old Man’s Tears’ Michael J. K. Walsh Military Service Tribunals and Boards in the Great War Determining the Fate of Britain’s and New Zealand’s Conscripts David Littlewood For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/history/ series/WWI

Internment during the First World War A Mass Global Phenomenon Edited by Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-415-78744-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-22591-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Notes on contributors Preface 1 Internment during the First World War: a mass global phenomenon

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1

STEFAN MANZ, PANIKOS PANAYI AND MATTHEW STIBBE

2 The internment of civilian ‘enemy aliens’ in the British Empire

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STEFAN MANZ AND PANIKOS PANAYI

3 Adding colour to the silhouettes: the internment and treatment of foreign civilians in Germany during the First World War

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CHRISTOPH JAHR AND JENS THIEL

4 The internment of enemy aliens in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–18

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MATTHEW STIBBE

5 The internment of enemy aliens in France during the First World War: the ‘depot’ at Corbara in Corsica

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SIMON GIUSEPPI

6 Enemy aliens and colonial subjects: confinement and internment in Italy, 1911–19 DANIELA L. CAGLIOTI

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Internment and destruction: concentration camps during the Armenian genocide, 1915–16

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KHATCHIG MOURADIAN

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Internment in Canada during the Great War: rights, responsibilities and diplomacy

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BOHDAN S. KORDAN

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Control and internment of enemy aliens in the United States during the First World War

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JÖRG NAGLER

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The New Zealand occupation of German Samoa during the First World War, 1914–18: enemy aliens and internment

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SANDRA BARKHOF

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Internment in neutral and belligerent Romania, 1914–19

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ANDREI ŞIPERCO

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The internment of prisoners of war and civilians in neutral Switzerland, 1916–19

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ANJA HUBER

Bibliography Index

273 292

Notes on contributors

Sandra Barkhof is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Plymouth where she teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and world history with special focus on the First World War, German and Japanese history, and the Cold War. Her research is centred on the German colonies in the Pacific during the First World War. Her recent publications include an edited collection titled War and Displacement in the Twentieth Century (2014), and ‘German Prisoners of War in Japan during the First World War: Letters from the Colonial Frontline’, Journal of War and Culture Studies 10.3 (2017). Daniela L. Caglioti is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Università di Napoli Federico II. She has published extensively on nineteenthcentury migration, minorities, social classes and, more recently, on enemy aliens and citizenship in the First World War. Her latest outputs include: ‘Waging War on Civilians: The Expulsion of Aliens in the Franco-Prussian War’, Past & Present, 221.1 (2013); the edited special issue ‘Aliens and Internal Enemies: Internment Practices, Economic Exclusion and Property Rights during the First World War’, Journal of Modern European History, 12.4 (2014); and ‘Subjects, Citizens and Aliens in Time of Upheaval: Naturalizing and Denaturalizing in Europe during WWI’, Journal of Modern History, 89.3 (2017). She is currently writing a global history of the treatment of enemy aliens between the French Revolutionary Wars and the First World War. Simon Giuseppi had a career in international sales and marketing in the paper industry, working mostly outside the United Kingdom, in continental Europe and overseas. He has written extensively on various aspects of local history in Corsica, including L’internement à Corbara en Corse de civils austroallemands 1914–1920 (2014), winner of the Prix du Livre Corse in 2015; and, more recently, Corse, terre d’accueil, terre d’exil – 1914–1918 (2017). Anja Huber completed her PhD on the migration of people from and to Switzerland during the First World War at the History Department of the University of Bern in 2017. Her book, Fremdsein im Krieg: Die Schweiz als Ausgangs- und

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Notes on contributors Zielort von Migration, 1914–1918, was published in 2018. She is currently employed as an academic researcher and consultant at the city archives in Zurich.

Christoph Jahr is Privatdozent at the Humboldt University, Berlin. His main research areas include the history of anti-Semitism and Jewish history; legal history; and military history (the First World War in particular). His major publications are Gewöhnliche Soldaten: Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer 1914–1918 (1998); Antisemitismus vor Gericht: Debatten über die juristische Ahndung judenfeindlicher Agitation in Deutschland (1879– 1960) (2011); ‘Ahlwardt on Trial: Reactions to the Antisemitic Agitation of the 1890s in Germany’, The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 48.1 (2003); ‘War, Discipline and Politics: Desertion in the German and British Armies 1914–1918’, in Justices militaires et guerres mondiales: Europe 1914–1950 / Military Justices and World Wars: Europe 1914–1950 (2013); and (co-edited with Jens Thiel) Lager vor Auschwitz: Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (2013). He is currently writing a biography of the German-Jewish politician and philanthropist Paul Nathan (forthcoming, 2018). Bohdan S. Kordan is Professor of International Relations at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, and Director of the Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage. Over the years, he has written on various aspects of First World War Canadian internment. His publications in this area include (with Peter Melnycky) In the Shadow of the Rockies: Diary of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, 1915–17 (1991); Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War: Internment in Canada during the Great War (2002); (with Craig Mahovsky) A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and Ukrainian Canadian Redress (2004); and No Free Man: Canada, the Great War and the Enemy Alien Experience (2016). Stefan Manz is Professor of German and Global History at Aston University, Birmingham, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His latest monograph Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914, was selected a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2014. He is currently working on a co-authored monograph, with Panikos Panayi, on civilian internment in the British Empire during the First World War. The project is supported by a research grant from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and Dr Manz also holds an impact grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to communicate the topic to the general public. Khatchig Mouradian is a lecturer at the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department (MESAAS) at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many articles and book chapters on the Armenian Genocide, unarmed resistance and concentration camps, including ‘The Meskeneh Concentration Camp, 1915–1917: A case study of power, collaboration, and humanitarian resistance during the Armenian Genocide’, Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies, 24 (2015); ‘Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance in

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Ottoman Syria, 1915–1916’, Études arméniennes contemporaines, 7 (2016); and ‘“The Very Limit of our Endurance”: Unarmed Resistance in Ottoman Syria during WWI’, in Hans-Lukas Kieser, Seyhan Bayraktar, and Thomas Schmutz (eds.), End of the Ottomans: The Genocide of 1915 and the Politics of Turkish Nationalism (forthcoming, 2018). Jörg Nagler is Senior Professor of North American History at the University of Jena. He has published extensively in the field of American social, political and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and on transnational and comparative aspects of American history. Among his many publications are the edited volume Nationale und Internationale Perspektiven amerikanischer Geschichte (2002); the monograph Nationale Minoritäten im Krieg: ‘Feindliche Ausländer’ und die amerikanische Heimatfront während des Ersten Weltkrieges (2000); and most recently, a co-edited volume with Don Doyle and Marcus Gräser, The Transnational Significance of the American Civil War (2016). Panikos Panayi is Professor of European History at De Montfort University. He is a leading expert on the position of minorities and internment during the Great War. His most important publications in this field include The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War (1991); Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees during the First World War (2012); and, as editor, Germans as Minorities during the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (2014). Andrei Şiperco is Professor of History at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters, Department of Cultural Studies. He has published on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the First and Second World Wars, and on the Holocaust in Romania. His many outputs include three monographs, six edited volumes and three co-edited volumes. A third edited volume from a series of seven volumes is forthcoming, containing former Romanian Communist Party and state officials’ recollections of Gheorghiu-Dej’s regime, as noted down by his late father Alexandru Şiperco, writer and member of the International Olympic Committee (1955–98). Matthew Stibbe is Professor of Modern European History at Sheffield Hallam University. He has published extensively on twentieth-century German, Austrian, East European and international history. His many outputs include the monograph British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914–18 (2008); the edited volume Captivity, Forced Labour and Forced Migration in Europe during the First World War (2009) and three coedited volumes with Ingrid Sharp: Aftermaths of War: Women’s Movements and Female Activists, 1918–1923 (2011); Women Activists Between War and Peace: Europe, 1918–1923 (2017); and Women’s International Activism during the Inter-War Period, 1919–1939 (2018). He continues to research and write on the history of First World War internment, and another monograph is forthcoming.

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Notes on contributors

Jens Thiel is a research fellow at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster. He has published monographs, edited volumes and articles on forced labour, internment and violence in the twentieth century, but also on the history of sciences and scientific institutions. His most important outputs include: ‘Menschenbassin Belgien’: Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg (2007); with Matthias Berg and Peter Th. Walther, Mit Feder und Schwert: Militär und Wissenschaft – Wissenschaftler im Krieg (2011); co-edited with Christoph Roolf, Der Erste Weltkrieg: Texte und Quellen in Auswahl (2013); co-edited with Christoph Jahr, Lager vor Auschwitz. Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (2013); co-edited with Sybille Gerstengarbe, Rüdiger vom Bruch and Simon Renkert, Wissenschaftsakademien im Zeitalter der Ideologien (2014); and with Sybille Gerstengarbe und Rüdiger vom Bruch, Die Leopoldina: Die Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher zwischen Kaiserreich und früher DDR (2016).

Preface

Although civilian internment has become associated with the Second World War in popular memory, it has a longer history. The turning point occurred during the First World War when, largely in the interests of ‘security’ in a situation of total war, the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ became part of state policy for the belligerent governments, resulting in the incarceration, displacement and even murder of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. This volume emerges from a conference which took place at the Imperial War Museum North in Trafford, Greater Manchester, on 13–14 May 2015. The dates of this event coincided with the centenary of the decision of the British government to introduce wholesale internment of German and other ‘enemy alien’ males of military age in Britain, announced in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith on 13 May 1915. This decision had implications not simply for enemy aliens in Britain, but throughout the Empire as well, as national governments followed the lead of the imperial capital. At the same time, what happened in Britain found replication in other parts of the world, both in Europe and elsewhere beyond the Empire, including in non-belligerent states. The articles which follow therefore demonstrate the global nature of internment during the First War, from the Canadian Rockies to the Swiss Alps, and from the Great Salt Lake Desert in Utah to the Syrian Desert in the Ottoman Empire. Although the focus upon Europe reflects the fact that most internment took place here, we argue (particularly in the introduction to the volume) that a truly global lens is necessary to encapsulate the geographical, political and humanitarian dimensions of the phenomenon. The original thirtyminute papers presented at the Manchester conference underwent significant revision for the volume, while Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi produced a new joint chapter on the British Empire, rather than replicating their papers on South Africa and India, respectively. The conference formed part of a broader project supported by the Higher Education Innovation Fund via De Montfort University under the title ‘Internment during the First World War: Remembering, Forgetting and Experiencing on a Local, National and Global Scale’. The project looked at the Ahmednagar camp (in India) in wider context and financed two public conferences held at the Manx Museum in September 2014 (covering the local) and the Imperial War Museum North (examining the global).

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Preface

The twelve essays collected here are ordered to reflect and foreground the imperial aspects of First World War internment as a central element in its development as a global system, before going on to examine some specific national case studies. As Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi argue in the first chapter after the introduction, Britain and its Empire were the true pioneers of this phenomenon. They demonstrate this by tracing the global reach of the British camp system, by providing a typology of imperial camps and by outlining the worldwide ramifications of decisions taken in London, including the mass transportation of Germans from one part of the Empire to another. Despite facing criticism for being brutal and inhumane, the British system found replication throughout the world, not simply as a measure to deal with enemy aliens, but also to control alien and suspect populations in other ways. The next two chapters – by Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel on Germany and Matthew Stibbe on the Habsburg Empire – look at the internment policies of Britain’s principal Central European enemies in the war, demonstrating that these imperial entities both borrowed from Britain and had their own motives and drivers: in the German case, the need for labour, and in the Austro-Hungarian case, the quest for military security in border regions. Focusing on France, Simon Giuseppi’s chapter recognises the importance of the Ministry of Interior in establishing central guidelines for the treatment of enemy aliens in metropolitan territories but notes that this was modified in the case of Corsica, where German and Austrian internees were afforded greater freedoms and more benign treatment than those held captive in camps on the Atlantic coast. The Italian internment system, while connected to internment practices in other countries, especially Austria-Hungary and Germany, had its own peculiarities, as Daniela L. Caglioti argues in her chapter. In particular, it focused on dispersion and isolation, as opposed to concentration; and in some ways, it harked back to earlier, late nineteenth-century practices of domicilio coatto (forced residence) which had been used to curb brigandage, political dissent and resistance in colonial territories. Khatchig Mouradian, meanwhile, in writing his chapter on concentration camps for Armenians in Ottoman Syria, provides an in-depth analysis of the one instance where internment was used in the First World War as part of a deliberate policy of physical annihilation. While the concentration camps established during the 1915 Turkish genocide against the Ottoman Armenians might be placed on a continuum of imperial military extremism evident in other belligerent empires – and as such mark a point of transition from the colonial to the modern, post-1914 use of the camp as an instrument of wartime persecution of national minorities – they also drew much from a centuries-old Ottoman experience in demographic engineering. In North America, global internment took two different paths, the Canadian and the American. In Canada, as Bohdan S. Kordan argues in his contribution, while the initial War Measures Act treated enemy aliens primarily as a security problem, this was soon superseded by the more contentious use of internment as a means of isolating destitute enemy civilians and putting them to work on public construction projects as if they had the same status as rank-and-file prisoners of war. This raised questions, both internally and in terms of Canada’s wartime diplomatic relations,

Preface

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concerning the rights of non-combatant detainees and what protections they should enjoy under domestic law and international conventions. In the United States, on the other hand, the emphasis from 1917 was consistently on internal security, an issue which influenced both public fears of the ‘enemy within’ and measures taken by the federal administration. Internment of a few thousand German and Austro-Hungarian nationals, and police surveillance of much larger numbers of aliens and left-wing radicals, reflected domestic concerns more than considerations of America’s place in the world. Paranoias already well-established during the neutrality period helped give shape to what became an extensive set of controls designed to protect the American home front from a perceived ‘enemy within’. The last three chapters in the volume also look at countries which were, continued to be, or in theory should have been, regarded as neutral in the war – and yet developed internment systems of their own. Sandra Barkhoff in her chapter examines the fate of German Samoa after its occupation by New Zealand forces in 1914. Because of the lack of a Treaty of Surrender, German civilians as well as military personnel were vulnerable to being treated as potentially dangerous aliens under proclamations issued by the New Zealand Administrator, Colonel Robert Logan. A considerable proportion of military age male German Samoans were indeed interned, some in New Zealand and others in a camp in Samoa itself. Andrei Şiperco in his chapter demonstrates how Romania’s period of neutrality between 1914 and 1916, during which it was obliged to hold captive deserters from belligerent armies, provided a set of experiences which were then funnelled into the internment of enemy aliens and domestic suspects in the non-occupied parts of Romania – notably Moldavian villages close to the border with Imperial Russia – after 1916. Finally, Anja Huber explains how, during the years from 1916 to 1919, a total of 67,700 wounded and sick prisoners of war from several warring European states and from British dominions and colonies came to be interned in neutral Switzerland under a series of international agreements. The motive here was humanitarian, although there were also certain practical advantages for Switzerland. In particular, the financially stricken tourist industry profited from the need to house foreign prisoners of war in appropriate accommodation. The above case studies provide a vivid illustration of the different imperial, national and local variations in the practice and experience of First World War internment, while also doing justice to the modern, global and inter-connected nature of this phenomenon. Although much still needs to be done by way of empirical research on particular camps, regions and empires not included in this volume, we believe that our collection provides an essential springboard for future engagement with the internment phenomenon, both during the 1914– 18 period and in subsequent wars and conflicts. Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe January 2018

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Internment during the First World War A mass global phenomenon Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe

The First World War led to a step change in the use of internment as a constituent element of twentieth-century warfare. The Red Cross International Prisoners of War Agency estimates that around eight million military prisoners of war (POWs) and two million civilians worldwide experienced some form of forced detention during the course of the war. Other estimates arrive at a comparable grand total but a different distribution with nine million POWs and close to one million civilians, highlighting the difficulties in clearly separating the two categories.1 For most of the twentieth century, these millions of men, women and children did not experience the same degree of scholarly and public memorialisation as the combatants who fought or died on the battlefields. In her groundbreaking study of 1998, Annette Becker rightly called those who had found themselves behind barbed wire ‘the forgotten of the Great War’.2 A number of studies have since added to our understanding of captivity for military POWs.3 Comparatively fewer studies are concerned with the plight of civilians.4 The current volume aims to redress this imbalance by bringing together studies from a range of empires and countries to present a multifaceted and global picture of civilian internment during the First World War. The fact that the war was not just one of nations, but one of multi-ethnic and global empires had a wide-ranging impact on civilian populations. After a century of mass emigration, many found themselves in countries which were at war with their country of origin. Commonly labelled ‘enemy aliens’, they experienced hostility as potential collaborators and spies. Many men of military age were interned to prevent them from travelling back and filling the ranks of their respective armies. In some cases, women and children were also interned, although they were more commonly repatriated. Those who experienced neither still suffered as the main breadwinner of the family was locked away for the duration of the war. One did not have to have a foreign background, though, to be viewed with suspicion. In multi-ethnic empires, some nationality groups were targeted as being ‘unreliable’ and prone to support the enemy. They often resided in border areas which were sensitive in terms of military defence and home front security. Particularly suspicious were those groups that were bi- or even tri-lingual. In an age where nationalist fervour demanded clear-cut declarations of national loyalty, multi-lingualism and complex identities did not fit into mobilisation efforts.

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Even more precarious was the situation for those civilians residing in areas occupied by foreign armies. John Horne and Alan Kramer, among others, have shown this most drastically with regard to atrocities committed by the German army in occupied Belgium;5 Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel will refine this picture in the current volume with regard to deportation and internment of Belgians. This also included forced labour in German camps. In the end, however, all contributions to the present volume show that internment was an important, but by no means the only measure to ‘deal with’ allegedly hostile minorities. It must be seen in the context of a wide range of measures which could include deportation, repatriation, property confiscation, and economic and social marginalisation. A recent volume by Hannah Ewence and Tim Grady has made important inroads into understanding the globality and inter-connectedness of these measures.6 Suffering within Europe comes to mind first when approaching our theme, reflecting a long-held fixation upon the European frontlines by scholars and collective memory cultures. This, however, only tells half the story. Repercussions were felt around the globe, as exemplified most poignantly by Sandra Barkhof in an antipodean context. New Zealand forces occupied German Samoa and subsequently deported the majority of its German residents to a small prison island in Auckland Harbour, Motuihi Island. These and other case studies in the current volume gain a new significance through integration into global contexts. Internment emerges more strongly as a global policy pursued by all belligerent (and some neutral) powers, disseminated through a transnational ‘learning process’ and the idea of reciprocity whereby civilians became bargaining pawns in the hands of political and military elites. Regional examples in the volume such as Corsica (Simon Giuseppi) and Ottoman Syria (Khatchig Mouradian) serve to highlight the wide spectrum of camp conditions: whilst confinement on Corsica was relatively benign, with ‘enemy aliens’ being allowed to pursue cultural activities and being housed in civilian accommodation, camps in Ottoman Turkey were essentially set up as extermination centres through deliberate neglect and mistreatment of Armenians. Even within empires, conditions could differ. Austro-Hungarians and Germans in Canada, for example, were used as forced labour in the emerging national parks, whilst other dominions did not pursue this policy. The range of conditions highlights that it is next to impossible to filter out a single representative experience of internment. This complexity makes it all the more important to unearth case studies in order to underpin our theoretical understanding of the mass phenomenon, and in particular the question why and how internment spread across the globe during this particular point in time. The technological modernisation of warfare has been amply described as a pre-condition of mass killing on the battlefields,7 but how did it affect mass internment? The logistics and large scale deportations around the globe would have been impossible without efficient means of communication (telegraph) and mass transportation on land and sea (steamship, train). The barbed wire had been invented during the North American conquest of the West, and the very idea of isolation on ethnic, political, economic and social grounds owed a great deal to novel ideas about scientific racism, hygiene,

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welfare and social control. The topography of modern camps is deeply engrained in the collective memory of twentieth-century minority persecution, with watchtowers, barbed wire enclosure and accommodation in military-style barracks. This generic structure did, in fact, develop and spread during the First World War. It thus constitutes a symbolic end-point of nineteenth-century globalisation and modernisation on the one hand, and the starting point of twentieth-century warfare mechanisation on the other hand. Internment is one of many facets which make the First World War a hinge between the two centuries.

Internment as a global phenomenon During the First World War internment became a truly global phenomenon but this globality had already begun to emerge in the later nineteenth century, especially during colonial wars. Iain R. Smith and Andreas Stucki argue that the term ‘concentration’ first appeared during the Ten Years’ War involving the Spanish on Cuban soil between 1868 and 1878, although they also point out that the actual term ‘concentration camp’ emerged during the Boer War.9 Sibylle Scheipers identified ‘the four most prominent examples of the use of camps’ in her analysis of this phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century as ‘the Cuban War of Independence (1895), the Philippine War (1899–1902), the Boer War (1899– 1902) and the Herero and Nama Revolt in German South West Africa (1904– 07)’.10 These episodes have a common characteristic of the concentration of civilians by the imperial or invading power, supported by an ideology driven by racial hierarchy, in specific locations, whether in the form of a camp or in a particular part of the controlled territory to prevent civilians from assisting the forces at war with the invading power. The case of German South West Africa (GSWA) and the Boer War have attracted most attention. In the former case, much research has focused upon the actions of General Lothar von Trotha, who used concentration camps as part of his genocidal campaign against the Herero, thereby starting a process that – for some historians – led from Windhoek (the then capital of GSWA) to Auschwitz.11 The Boer War demonstrates the importance of the British Empire in the evolution of the concentration camp, as well as its global nature. As many as one hundred places of incarceration emerged during this conflict.12 B. E. Mongalo and Kobus du Pisani have asserted that 116,000 white Boers and 115,700 blacks experienced internment.13 Concentration during the conflict did not simply take place in South Africa, as some people found themselves deported to Britishruled India, St Helena, Ceylon and Bermuda. As many as 9,000 people were incarcerated in seventeen camps in India, initially in the Punjab, Bengal, Madras and Bombay commands.14 Aidan Forth has recently placed the concentration camps which emerged during the Boer War into a wider context of control of suspect populations throughout the Empire including the poor in Britain and the development of plague and famine camps in India and South Arica.15 While incarceration of civilian populations had emerged as a global phenomenon before the outbreak of the First World War, this conflict became a turning

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point in the history of civilian internment, as all the participants controlled enemy aliens, ‘internal enemies’, ‘suspect’ nationalities and ethnic outsiders. Such control included the use of emergency legislation, as several of the contributions below indicate.16 We can partly understand the spread of the concentration camp throughout the world after 1914 as a consequence of the victory of extreme nationalism during the First World War which left little space for minority ethnic groups to maintain their pre-war identities. The mistreatment of such groups, which had characterised imperial adventures in Africa and elsewhere before 1914, now also became heavily focused upon Europe. While racial ideas drove the actions of the British, German and American Empires before 1914, nationalism became the determining ideology in this process during the First World War,17 although, as Matthew Stibbe has shown in the case of the multinational Habsburg Empire, anti-nationalist imperial ideologies and concerns for military security in border regions could also play a role.18 The growth of concentration camps during the conflict finds additional explanation in the fact that the boundaries between civilians and soldiers as participants in, and therefore victims of, war became even more blurred than had become apparent in the extra-European colonial sphere.19 This targeting of civilians in wartime receives further understanding from the fact the First World War became – to use a concept pioneered by Arthur Marwick – a ‘total war’.20 As Tammy Proctor has demonstrated more recently in her study of civilians between 1914 and 1918, total war brought the population of the belligerent states into the conflict not simply as victims, but also as active participants, whether as munitions workers, nurses or experts.21 The First World War transformed incarceration into a global mass phenomenon which impacted upon millions of people. While the overwhelming majority of internees may have consisted of male captured soldiers,22 beyond the scope of this volume, their diverse nature meant that they also included women and children, whether in the case of Armenians,23 those deported from war zones by invading armies, or refugees and internally displaced persons interned by their own governments.24 Enemy alien internees, especially Germans held within the British Empire and British internees held by Germany, tended to be men of military age, although women also faced incarceration on a more limited scale, often because they wished to stay with their husbands.25 The British Empire, which globalised internment before the First World War, also did so during the conflict through the implementation of a system of mass transportation. While Aidan Forth has focused upon the development of camps throughout the Empire during the late nineteenth century, we need to take an even longer-term perspective because British imperial internment during the conflict did not simply mean incarcerating local enemy alien (especially German) populations, but also transporting them throughout the world, emerging from long-term traditions of global population displacement whether it involved convicts, rebels or slaves.26 The globalisation of internment within the British Empire therefore took place in two ways. Firstly, by means of the establishment of camps throughout its territories. London, Sydney, Delhi, Wellington and Ottawa each controlled their own

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camps and devised their own specific internment policies and procedures, as Bohdan Kordan indicates in his contribution to this volume However, as Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi also demonstrate in their chapter, First World War internment within the British Empire used global transportation as a series of internment hubs emerged, which meant that Germans did not simply face incarceration in the places where they lived but could also experience transportation to other parts of the world. The centre of the whole system consisted of Knockaloe on the Isle of Man, which, as well as holding British prisoners, also brought in enemy alien internees from Africa, as well as others captured on transatlantic voyages. Those taken captive in the western hemisphere in Canada and the West Indies, eventually faced incarceration in the former. South Africa, especially Fort Napier, held Germans from all over the southern half of the African continent. Ahmednagar held not only Germans living in India but also others from East Africa, as well as Germans from Siam which subcontracted internment to the Empire. Finally, Holsworthy near Sydney, together with camps in New Zealand, as Barkhoff demonstrates in her chapter, held Germans captured throughout the Pacific. The British Empire, as a uniquely globalised political entity, perfected internment on a global scale during the First World War. While no other state operated on such a level, internment became globalised because, as the contributions in this volume demonstrate, it became part of the practice of warfare after 1914 because actions by one belligerent state could often trigger counter measures by another belligerent state; and because, as Anja Huber shows in her chapter, even neutral states like Switzerland were drawn into the internment system.

The local in the global and the global in the local While internment was certainly a global phenomenon, the individual case studies presented in this volume also show that there were connections between different spatial levels too. One way of identifying this is to look for the local in the global and the global in the local. In the many frontier districts of Habsburg Austria and Habsburg-occupied Bosnia, for instance, as Stibbe demonstrates in his chapter, army commanders on the ground often found willing collaborators among local imperial officials and ‘patriotic’ citizens who participated in the identification and deportation of ‘suspicious’, ‘irredentist’ and ‘alien’ elements living on the outer perimeters of the Monarchy. Their vision of the future of the empire and the need for continuous military security was often at odds with that of civilian ministries in Vienna, for whom suspension of the rule of law and restrictions on the inward and outward movement of foreigners could only be temporary wartime measures – not least in view of the need to safeguard the empire’s future global trading relationships and economic prosperity. As the Austrian example suggests, there is a need for more micro-historical studies of internment to understand better the complexities of decision-making and the hitherto largely unexplored interplay between local, national and imperial factors. Simon Giuseppi’s chapter on the ‘depot’ for German and Austro-Hungarian internees at Corbara on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, based on two

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award-winning books he published in French for the specialist local history market in 2014 and 2017,27 is another case in point. His conclusions significantly nuance Jean-Claude Farcy’s earlier findings, conducted on a national level, that French policy towards enemy aliens was uniformly harsh and focused on isolation and punishment.28 In Corsica, a variety of issues on the ground – loss of local men to the French army and the subsequent need for labour, Corsican traditions of hospitality towards outsiders, the security offered by geographical distance from the fighting front on the mainland, and the need to accommodate new refugee groups from Serbia and Syria, the latter earmarked under the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 as a new sphere of French imperial interest in the Middle East – combined to ensure that the German and Austrian internees there experienced surprisingly little hostility either from local inhabitants or from French officials and ‘depot’ commandants, and also enjoyed a considerable amount of contact with the island’s economy and natural environment. Another site on which local, national and imperial considerations could all come in to play is the link between internment and pre-war fears of the ‘alien pauper’. According to Eric Hobsbawm, the word ‘pauperism’ first acquired its ‘modern meaning’ during the Age of Revolution between 1789 and 1848, when it became associated with the rise of capitalist industry, including its constant speculation over new markets, increasing exploitation of labour for profit, and mass population displacement from countryside to town.29 However, modern fear of the alien pauper – or the out-of-work immigrant – most probably had its origins in the 1830s and 1840s, when the expansion of railways and steamships, and the falling price of overseas trade, travel and communications, allowed for considerably greater movement of people within and between countries and even continents.30 The 1905 Aliens Act in Britain was the last of a long line of examples where state, national or imperial governments took administrative measures – ranging from refusal of entry to overseas workers without contracts and/or forced removal of the same after the expiration of their work agreements to imposition of monetary bonds and even compulsory inclusion in nation-wide social insurance schemes, albeit often with inferior or negligible benefits – to reduce the threat of foreign migrants falling into destitution and becoming a financial burden on local communities or state coffers.31 It is also no coincidence that the Ruhleben camp in Germany was situated next to the Emigrants’ Railway Station (Auswanderer Bahnhof) to the west of Berlin, which prior to the war had been used as a stop-off point for refugees from Tsarist persecution hoping to travel onwards to America via the German ports of Hamburg and Bremerhaven;32 or that the United States’ Justice Department itself used immigration stations, including Ellis Island in New York, as places of temporary confinement for captured German merchant seamen in 1917 and for a handful of female enemy aliens taken into custody after the war, as Jörg Nagler shows in his contribution to the volume. Poorer enemy aliens were of course at even greater risk of unemployment, and therefore of destitution, during and after the war than they had been prior to the outbreak of hostilities, not least as they were now often separated from their

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families and home states. Local authorities – who were also often responsible for meeting the welfare needs of refugees and internally displaced persons living in their area – typically resented this extra burden. Some belligerent countries – notably Canada, as Kordan shows and Austria-Hungary, as Stibbe illustrates – even presented internment as a ‘humane’ solution to this problem, whereby alien immigrants would be rehoused in camps and provided with work on public projects so that they could pay their own way and to relieve local communities of the need to feed them. In the Canadian case, officials even managed to convince United States’ diplomats that the enemy aliens held in prison camps and forced to earn their own keep were not being placed under an unduly harsh burden, as they were mostly from poor backgrounds and were used to living in sub-standard accommodation and working as common labourers. Pauperism among migrant and itinerant workers (Ein- und Durchwanderer) was thus still recognised globally and locally as a ‘problem’, even though the war had cut off many pre-war labour migration routes. This too impacted on internment decisions and on the experience of internees.

The experience of internment The experience of civilian internment during the First World War has largely come to us from a male perspective because much of the surviving material and consequent research has focused upon Germans living behind barbed wire in Britain and its Empire, as well as the experiences of those Britons held in Germany, especially in Ruhleben near Berlin. While mistreatment occurred in some of the German camps, especially beyond Ruhleben, most of those held by the British lived in humane conditions, although the record of the British did not remain stain free. The reason for relatively benign experiences in Britain and Germany partly receives explanation from the fact that the two countries had signed the Hague Convention of 1899 (revised in 1907), but also that they held captives belonging to their foes, which meant that they became a bargaining chip: mistreatment by one side could lead to a withdrawal of privileges on the other.33 However, this relative humanity provides just one paradigm. Heather Jones has documented routine violence against military captives in the western France involving Britain, France and Germany.34 At the same time, as Khatchig Moruadian outlines below, the camps which the Ottoman Empire established during the First World War formed part of the mechanics of genocide, meaning that those transported to them had experiences closer to Nazi death camps than to those established, for example, on the Isle of Man from 1914 to 1919. The case of the Ottoman camps, as with those set up in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, as Andrei Şiperco demonstrates when tackling Romania, did not focus simply upon men, but also held women and children. A few places of incarceration within the British Empire, such as Belgaum, Bellary and Sholapur in India also held women, partly on a voluntary basis because women wanted to live near their husbands.35 In the somewhat different and more securityobsessed environment of the United States, as Nagler shows, a small number of

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‘suspect’ female enemy aliens were forcibly interned from 1918 onwards, at first in a house of correction in New York usually reserved for prostitutes and criminals, and later on Ellis Island and in the Fort Oglethorpe camp. Returning to the predominantly male camps which existed in France, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and in Britain and its Empire, two perspectives emerged during the course of the twentieth century. The first revolved around the concept of ‘barbed wire disease’, the psychosis caused by years of captivity and first described by A. L. Vischer, a Swiss embassy official and camp inspector who visited the camps established on the Isle of Man regularly during the war. The causes of this psychosis, from which ‘very few prisoners who have been over six months in the camp are quite free’36 included: the ‘social standing of the prisoners before internment’,37 which meant that middle-class males used to physical space and control of their time became particularly prone to mental illness;38 ‘the general camp conditions and treatment of the prisoners’; lack of contact with the outside world, especially womenfolk; and the uncertainty of the length of captivity.39 The fact that civilian prisoners in Britain and British civilian prisoners in Germany and Austria-Hungary did not work also played a role. While creativity and community may have emerged, the lack of real employment impacted on many internees because, as Paul Cohen-Portheim, the Austrian internee who spent most of the war in the privilege camp in Wakefield in the north of England, stated, ‘Time here really had to be killed, for it was the arch-enemy, and everyone tried to achieve this as best he could and according to his nature’.40 In fact, according to the alternative perspective, numerous opportunities evolved to kill time, as suggested by John Davidson Ketchum, a professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, who, writing decades after the war, coined the phrase ‘prison camp society’ to describe his experiences in Ruhleben.41 Ketchum asserted that after the British ‘settled’ here, they took part in a range of activities and formed associations which essentially created a community structure. Although he recognised the deprivations faced by the Ruhlebenites, he took a basically positive view of their experience, as the prisoners collectively survived by creating community, a point also emphasised more recently by Stibbe in his account of Ruhleben,42 and by Rainer Pöppinghege in his comparative treatment of prison camp journals and newspapers.43 Ketchum focused much attention upon the sporting, educational and cultural activities of the prisoners.44 These activities fostered community, both between prisoners of the same social groups, who would have participated in similar activities, but also between different classes, as educational activity would suggest, with the teachers and lecturers interacting with less educated internees. At the same time, the mass of activity which developed also allowed prisoners to pass their time and to give further structure to their existence beyond meal times and parades. As the chapter by Manz and Panayi, as well as contributions by other scholars on the experience of internment within Britain and its Empire, demonstrate, prison camp societies emerged throughout the world.45 Not all internees had free time on their hands, however. As Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel suggest in their chapter, more research is needed on the practice of

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wartime forced labour as it affected enemy alien internees and deportees. While it was generally accepted that rank-and-file military prisoners could be expected to work, as stipulated in the 1899 and 1907 Hague conventions, there was more disagreement over the position of civilians as a unique category of war prisoners, and also more scope for belligerents to enter into the ‘grey zone’ between voluntary and forced forms of labour. The situation in Canada, as outlined by Kordan, is very interesting in this respect, as officials here moved towards representing alien civilian internees (including Germans) as prisoners of war on a par with enemy soldiers. Germany’s diplomatic protests against Canada’s actions are equally intriguing, not least as the German military devised the most extensive system of civilian forced labour during the war – and one which went well beyond the bounds of what was then permitted under international law – while continuing to insist that civilians could not, in an administrative or legal sense, be categorised as prisoners of war in the same sense as combatants captured on the battlefield.46 In Europe, the use of coerced labour was also common practice in the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, as well as in Bulgaria and Tsarist Russia and in territories occupied by the same.47 Britain and France used only ‘voluntary’ labour (except in the case of military POWs), but were able to rely on a steady supply of impoverished and under-paid foreign workers recruited from their overseas colonies and from an apparently willing China instead.48 In some but by no means all instances in which it was granted access to camps, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to secure improvements in conditions for civilian prisoners and/or deter abuses.49 Using Red Cross sources, in this volume Andrei Şiperco points to the fact that ‘the general situation of the civilian internees, enemy aliens and domestic political suspects (internal enemies) on the Romanian home front was very similar to the fate of the Romanian civilian population as a whole’. Similarly, the relatively humane treatment of enemy aliens behind barbed wire in Britain reflects the fact that the population as a whole did not suffer the type of privations experienced in Germany and Austria, where the allied blockade impacted upon all sections of the civilian population, including internees.50 In the case of Italian civilians deported from territories occupied by Habsburg troops after the battle of Caporetto in late 1917, as Stibbe shows in his chapter, a combination of Italian neglect and Austrian shortages led to widespread hunger and malnutrition in the last months of the war. Even this however, remains a long way from the experience of Armenians held in camps in the Ottoman Empire, as Mouradian demonstrates. These essentially acted as death camps with a leading role in the Armenian genocide, claiming the lives of over 250,000 people in 1915–16 as a result of ‘starvation, disease, exposure and violence’. Internment during the Great War therefore covers a vast array of experiences from that of the men held for years on the Isle of Man against their will, many of whom bitterly resented their incarceration but who, nevertheless, received humane treatment, to the 60,000 to 80,000 Armenians sent to the Meskeneh camp in the depths of Syria to die. The contrasting treatments find partial

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explanation in the more general wartime situation of the countries in which incarceration occurred, but also in traditions of intolerance. The First World War as a total war meant that civilians became victims in all arenas,51 albeit with substantial variations depending on the vagaries of time, space and past experiences. The Ottoman Empire had gone a long way toward marginalising its Armenian population before 1914, as massacres had occurred against them from the 1890s, meaning the step towards genocide remained a relatively small one. In contrast, while liberal Britain may have embraced illiberalism in the nationalistic fervour of the Great War, it played by the recently established rules of war, at least on the home front.52

Internment experiences outside camps A number of contributions to this volume also indicate that civilian internment could take place outside camps, leading to even more diversity in experiences of wartime captivity. As Huber shows in her chapter, 67,700 wounded military POWs and civilian internees from both sides were allowed to enter neutral Switzerland under a series of international agreements reached in 1916 and were accommodated in luxury hotels and sanatoria – much to the delight of the Swiss tourist industry, which was suffering from loss of business due to the war. A number of belligerent states, notably Italy and Austria-Hungary, and on a smaller scale Germany and Romania, also used a form of internment known as confinement (Konfinierung) in Habsburg Austria and forced domicile (domicilio coatto) in Italy, as an alternative to, or alongside use of, internment in camps. Confinement usually meant forcing alien subjects to relocate away from major cities or sensitive border areas and requiring them to reside in a designated location where they could be closely supervised. It allowed for a greater degree of freedom of movement than the camp environment, albeit within spatial limits set by the local police or military authorities. In Austria, as Stibbe shows, Konfinierung seems to have evolved more or less spontaneously in 1914 and was targeted in particular at well-off and ‘nonsuspicious’ enemy civilians who could afford to support themselves and pay for their own private accommodation rather than being a financial burden to the state or local authorities. In Italy, on the other hand, as Daniela Caglioti demonstrates, domicilio coatto had a much longer history dating back to the period immediately after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s, when it was used as an internal weapon to counter certain types of brigandage and political agitation; and in the late 1880s and 1890s, when it was deployed as a means of subduing unrest in Italian colonies in east Africa – a practice taken up again in Italianoccupied Libya after the Italo-Turkish war of 1911–12. Italy indeed was the only major belligerent to rely solely on confinement as an alternative to barbed-wire enclosed camps as a means of interning enemy aliens after it entered the First World War on the Allied side in 1915. Across Europe, experiences in confinement varied as much as experiences in enclosed camps. In Italy, confinees were usually deported to remote parts of the country far away from the fighting zones and the seat of government in

Internment during the First World War 11 Rome. Germans and Austro-Hungarians, for instance, were sent to disparate parts of the island of Sardinia, where they were often obliged to live in tiny groups, pairs or even in complete isolation from their compatriots. In Austria, on the other hand, confinees were sent to a number of closely linked and densely populated villages in the Waidhofen district of Lower Austria, not too far from Vienna. In Italy confinees were generally required to work to support themselves; in Austria, they were expected to live from their private wealth or from contributions from home; and in Hungary – where confinees were scattered all over the kingdom, rather than being concentrated in one district – they could rely on payments from Hungarian state funds if they fell into destitution. In Germany, as Jahr and Thiel show, forced residency orders were mainly directed at ‘internal enemies’ – ‘suspect’ Alsace-Lorrainers and left-wing domestic political agitators such as the anti-war poet Erich Mühsam. At Traunstein in Upper Bavaria, they had to report to the authorities each day but could live beyond the perimeters of the camp. In Hungary and Hungarian-ruled Croatia, as Stibbe notes, the choice between concentration in camps or confinement could be used to reinforce pre-existing patterns of ethnic discrimination, with Bosnian, Habsburg-subject and Reich Serbs almost invariably being sent to the most overcrowded and hellish barbed-wire enclosures, and British, French and Italian internees usually being considered for confinement only. In the Austrian half of the Monarchy it was Italian nationals who were regarded as the most ‘suspect’ alien group; after May 1915 they could be expelled to Switzerland or interned in camps, but unlike British and French citizens, they were seldom placed in confinement. Deserters from the pre-war Italian army and draft-dodgers who had sought refuge in Austria-Hungary before 1915 were considered to be an especially dangerous group because of their anarchist or socialist leanings. By contrast, British and French aliens were assumed to be ‘patriotic’ but less of a political or military threat to the security of the empire – especially if they had lived in the Monarchy for some time and had established families there. Confinees, like internees, were often cut off from families for long periods of time and/or found their businesses or professional careers placed at risk as a result of their enforced long-term absence from home. Towards the end of the war, confinees in Austria in particular found that they were also in a worse position in terms of food and other necessities than their compatriots interned behind barbed wire. This is because they did not have direct access to supplementary Red Cross food parcels from home and found it increasingly difficult to procure food locally, given the acute shortages on the Austrian home front. Yet as Huber shows, even in neutral Switzerland, attitudes towards interned foreign military and civilian prisoners of war became more hostile as the war continued and as food and raw material shortages grew. From ‘welcome’ war guests they became ‘undesirable foreigners’, and by 1918, the Swiss Federal Council was forced to take measures to reassure the native population that these ‘outsiders’ were not being favoured in the local job market and would anyway be required to leave Switzerland once the war was over.

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Finally, as the various cases cited above illustrate, civilian prisoners could move between different forms of captivity, for instance from enemy to neutral internment, or from permanent to temporary internment, and vice versa. Furthermore, confinement was not the only alternative to incarceration in camps. French and Belgian civilians deported to Germany as hostages or forced labour might find themselves returned to their homes in the occupied territories after serving a certain amount of time in camps or ‘industrial labourers’ lodgings’. Others might be freed after agreeing to sign ‘voluntary’ work contracts. But whether this represented real freedom or simply a move from one form of coercive labour to another is a matter of debate. For contemporary critics of German occupation policy, such as future US president Herbert Hoover, Belgium and Northern France were ‘in every respect . . . like a vast concentration camp’.53 Movement there was restricted for all occupied civilians, whether or not they were suspected of committing an actual crime, and special permission was needed from the German military authorities to travel from one district or Etappe to another. Tens of thousands were also forcibly recruited into civilian work gangs, the socalled ZABs (Zivil–Arbeiter–Bataillone).54 Occupied Serb civilians faced even harsher forms of surveillance, with the Habsburg army being less systematic in its use of forced labour but ever more determined to root out and isolate politically ‘suspicious’ or ‘subversive’ elements as time went on. After 1915–16 the entire Serb political, cultural and military elite who remained in the country rather than going into exile were held in suspicion and targeted for deportation followed by concentration in extremely brutal camps in the Habsburg interior. As Stibbe suggests in his chapter, this would call into doubt ideas about a ‘deescalation’ of violence and return to ‘traditional’ or ‘colonial-style’ policing methods in Habsburg-occupied Bosnia and Serbia in the later stages of the war.55

The legacy of internment While the First World War ended in a formal military sense on 11 November 1918, for many interned aliens incarceration continued for a lot longer than this, in the worst instances until well into 1919 and even into 1920.56 Some of the Germans held in India, for instance, did not arrive home until the autumn of 1920.57 In some of the short but violent post-1918 conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe, internment camps were again opened as places to hold suspect civilians and POWs – as Şiperco shows in the case of the Hungarian non-combatants and Red Guardists held by Romania in 1919 in the wake of its brief military campaign against Béla Kun’s pro-communist Soviet regime. Humanitarian organisations like the ICRC campaigned against the use of civilian internment as a ‘novel feature’ of war, both in 1917–18 and again in 1919 and in the 1920s, but to little or no avail.58 Over the next three decades, deportation and internment camps for civilians were a common feature both of civil wars (as in Spain, 1936–39); conflicts between nations (especially during and after the Second World War); and in colonial contexts (for instance in the case of Britain’s campaign against the Mau Mau rebels during the ‘Kenyan Emergency’ of the 1950s).59

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What lessons, if any, did the protagonists in later twentieth-century conflicts gain from the practice of civilian internment (including deportations and exploitation of forced labour) during the First World War? This is an important, but somewhat difficult question to answer. On the one hand, some very alarming new precedents had been set, allowing belligerent states and foreign occupiers to believe that they could now isolate, imprison without trial, forcibly deport or (in the case of the Turkish genocide against the Ottoman Armenians) even commit genocide against enemy civilians, ‘internal enemies’ or colonial subjects without much fear of the consequences. The existing international rules in respect to land warfare indeed continued to offer little protection to civilians in enemy captivity until the Geneva Convention of 1949.60 On the other hand, an important array of domestic and international humanitarian organisations had mobilised after 1914 to try and mitigate the consequences of internment for individuals and families, and to campaign for their release during and after the war. In the Swiss case, internment itself had arguably been carried out to meet a pressing, and widely recognised, humanitarian need – namely the safe recovery of soldiers and civilian prisoners considered too sick to withstand the rigours of long-term enemy captivity. As well as the ICRC and other humanitarian bodies like the International Labour Organisation (ILO), radical feminist and pacifist organisations drew attention to the human and gendered injustices caused by First World War internment, forced labour and deportation, pointing in particular to the threat posed to women and children.61 For instance, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), drew up a list of recommendations to the peacemakers in Paris at its second congress in Zurich in May 1919, point 34 of which noted: Mass deportations have become a worldwide phenomenon since 1914, and inflict suffering and death in many forms upon innocent people. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom recommends that this subject should receive attention at the earliest possible moment. The expulsion of thousands of innocent people cannot be treated as an internal affair of any of the nations concerned.62 After 1920, the reason why the first, more negative set of lessons concerning civilian internment seemed to triumph over the second, humanitarian-internationalist ‘learning process’ insisted upon by organisations like WILPF, lies not in the war itself – and not even in its ‘total’ nature – but in developments in the immediate post-1918 period, or more specifically from the beginning of 1919 to the middle of 1920. This was a moment, in the words of Steffen Kailitz, when westernstyle democracy triumphed over older autocracies, and when the number of democracies in the world literally ‘exploded’.63 Yet it was also a time when existing inequalities in the global distribution of power and privilege – whether based on nationality, race or gender – were re-affirmed and incorporated into the new international order established at the Paris peace talks. At the level of world politics, Germans in particular suffered from a series of expulsions and expropriations during and immediately after the war. In Britain, for instance, the well-established

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German community, which stood at 57,500 in 1914, had fallen to 22,254 by 1919.64 German settlers were also initially refused permission to return to African colonies and Pacific islands invaded by Allied troops in 1914–16 and later expropriated under the Treaty of Versailles, and, to take one further example, the self-governing dominion of Australia expelled some 6,150 Germans in 1919.65 In Central and Eastern Europe, the collapse of old imperial sovereignties and the drawing of new borders created a fresh set of inequalities between the stateless and those who enjoyed the relative security of citizenship in one of the successor states. Crucially, the protection of the rights of national minorities in Eastern Europe – one of the key concerns of the newly established League of Nations – was offset by a commitment to the principle of state sovereignty, making it difficult for international bodies to interfere in the domestic affairs of individual nations.66 In the worst case scenarios, where intervention became necessary, the peacemakers preferred forced deportation – even if they thought it morally indefensible – as a politically more convenient alternative to enforcing minority rights, as seen under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne which gave formal sanction to the compulsory exchange of 1.5 million people between Christian Greece and Muslim Turkey.67 In the new, post-1918 world order, national self-determination (defined in political, ethnic and even racial, but not gendered terms) was also given priority over self-determination for both sexes, to the extent that women – even in countries that had granted female suffrage in the aftermath of the war – were still not allowed to determine their own nationality, but had it determined for them by dint of the national status of their fathers or husbands.68 Married women whose husbands were aliens or stateless persons automatically acquired the status of aliens or stateless persons themselves, irrespective of their position prior to marriage (and irrespective of the wishes or citizenship needs of their husbands). In the inter-war years, stateless couples were the most likely to suffer from enforced separation as a result of inability to travel together across borders, and/or as a result of internment and/or deportation as unwelcome or ‘illegal’ ‘aliens’. Admittedly after 1939 (in parts of Europe) and after 1941 (in the United States), aliens of all kinds, irrespective of whether they were stateless or nationals of an enemy state, were equally vulnerable to being interned, deported or barred from entry. Finally, while some empires in Europe collapsed in 1918, others survived into the post-war world, such as the Italian and the Belgian, while others still – first and foremost the British and French – even grew in size as a result of the confiscation of German overseas colonies and the establishment of League of Nations mandates in the Middle East in 1919–20. In the British Empire, discrimination against German nationals continued into the early 1920s and went hand in hand with a refusal to offer self-rule to black, Arab or Asian colonial subjects in the aftermath of the war. Although black and Asian British subjects had been interned in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the war – as Stibbe and Jahr and Thiel show in their respective contributions – this had not been enough to secure equality with their white compatriots. In Italy, as Caglioti notes, deportation and internment (in the form of confinement) continued to be

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used as a means of fighting colonial rebels in Libya long after the First World War, peaking for a third time between 1918 and 1936. As with memory of the Boer War, so with the First World War, black internees were the least likely to be recognised or remembered after the fighting had ended. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that even white male internees were hardly welcomed home with open arms after their repatriation from First World War camps. Many were suspected of having collaborated in some shape or form with the enemy, or of being ‘cowards’ or ‘traitors’. Even Britain, which went further than most countries in honourimg its returning civilian prisoners from Germany at the turn of the year 1918–19, soon lost interest in commemorating their experiences.69 Very quickly the fallen soldier rose to the top of the ‘commemorative hierarchy’ as the masculine, spiritual and national embodiment of the sacrifice made during the war.70 By contrast, the wartime and post-war suffering of prisoners of war, and especially of civilian prisoners and deportees who had not experienced combat in any form but had still come face to face with wartime violence and oppression, was hardly recognised at all – whether at local, national or global level. Thus, while a variety of administrative and other kinds of ‘lessons’ may have been drawn from internment during the First World War, the imprisonment and mistreatment of civilian prisoners in subsequent conflicts and wars was necessarily founded on an even larger portion of forgetting.

Notes 1 http://grandeguerre.icrc.org/Content/help/Introduction_en.pdf (accessed 11/12/2017); and Matthew Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment’, in 1914–1918 online. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keane, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Onlineenemy_ aliens_and_internment-2014–10–08.pdf (accessed 11/12/2017). 2 Annette Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: Humanitaire et Culture de Guerre 1914–1918. Populations Occupées, Déportés Civils, Prisonniers de Guerre (Paris, 1998). 3 See, for example, Heather Jones, Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France and Germany (Cambridge, 2011); and Uta Hinz, Gefangen im Großen Krieg: Kriegsgefangenschaft in Deutschland 1914–1921 (Essen, 2006). 4 See, for example, Tammy Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1914–1918 (New York, NY, 2010), chapter 7. Both categories are discussed in Panikos Panayi, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees During the First World War (Manchester, 2012). 5 John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT and London, 2001). 6 Hannah Ewence and Tim Grady (eds.), Minorities and the First World War: From War to Peace (London, 2017). 7 Angela Schwarz, ‘Science and Technology (Germany)’, in 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (as note 1), https://encyclopedia.19141918-online.net/article/science_and_technology_germany 8 Alan Kramer, ‘Einleitung’, in Bettina Greiner and Alan Kramer (eds.), Die Welt der Lager: Zur ‘Erfolgsgeschichte’ einer Institution (Hamburg, 2013), pp. 7–42. See also Hubert Kolling, Die kurhessischen ‘Straf- und Besserungsanstalten’: Institutionen

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25 26 27 28 29

Stefan Manz et al. des Strafvollzugs zwischen Fürsorge, Vergeltung und Abschreckung (Frankfurt/Main, 1994). Iain R. Smith and Andreas Stucki, ‘The Colonial Development of Concentration Camps (1868–1902)’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39.3 (2011), pp. 417–37 (here p. 420). Sibylle Scheipers, ‘The Use of Concentration Camps in Colonial Warfare’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 43.4 (2015), pp. 678–98 (here p. 679). See the discussion in Jürgen Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust (Münster, 2011). www2.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/bccd/Camps/1/, British Concentration Camps of the South African War, 1900–1902 (accessed 24/03/2016). B. E. Mongalo and Kobus du Pisani, ‘Victims of a White Man’s War: Blacks in Concentration Camps During the South African War (1899–1902)’, Historia, 44.1 (1999), pp. 148–82 (here p. 149). Isabel Hofmeyr, ‘South Africa’s Indian Ocean: Boer Prisoners of War in India’, Social Dynamics, 38 (2012), pp. 363–80; and Floris Van der Meuwe, Sport in die Boerekrygsgevangekampe tydens die Anglo-Boereoorlog, 1899–1902 (Stellenbosch, 2013), pp. 121–46. Aidan Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876–1903 (Berkeley, CA, 2017). See also Panikos Panayi, ‘Germans as Minorities During the First World War: Global Comparative Perspectives’, in Panikos Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities During the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham, 2014), pp. 10–17. As an introduction to these issues see Panikos Panayi, ‘Minorities’, in Jay Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, Volume III, Civil Society (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 216–41; and the contributions to Ewence and Grady (eds.), Minorities and the First World War. Matthew Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918’, Journal of Modern European History, 12.4 (2014), pp. 479–99. Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford, 2007). Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London, 1965); idem., War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century (London, 1974). Proctor, Civilians in a World at War. Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London, 1998), p. 369, suggests a global total of as many as 8,730,073. Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London, 2011), pp. 647–72. See also the contribution of Khatchig Mouradian below. Matthew Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe, 1914–20’, Immigrants and Minorities, 26.1–2 (2008), pp. 49–81 (here pp. 61–6). On refugees and IDPs see also Peter Gatrell and Liubov Zhvanko (eds.), Europe on the Move: Refugees in the Era of the Great War (Manchester, 2016). Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, pp. 203–38; and Panikos Panayi, The Germans in India: Elite European Migrants in the British Empire (Manchester, 2017), pp. 201–13. As an introduction see Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, Banishment in the Early Atlantic World: Convicts, Rebels and Slaves (London, 2013). Simon Giuseppi, L’internement à Corbara en Corse de civils austro-allemands 1914– 1920 (Ajaccio, 2014); idem., Corse, terre d’accueil, terre d’exil – 1914–1918 (Ajaccio, 2017). See Jean-Claude Farcy, Les camps de concentration français de la première guerre mondiale (1914–1920) (Paris, 1995). E. J. Hobsbawn, Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789–1848 (London, 1962), p. 13.

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30 Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson, Geschichte der Globalisierung: Dimensionen, Prozesse, Epochen (Munich, 2003), pp. 52–5. 31 For examples, see Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept (New Haven, CT and London, 2007), esp. pp. 75–85 and 106–12. On the 1905 Aliens Act, which, among other things, allowed the British Home Secretary to expel individual aliens or bar them from entering the country if they were considered ‘undesirable’ on a variety of grounds, including ‘[l]unacy, disease, a sentence abroad for an extraditable offence (except for political crimes), and the existence of [a previous] expulsion order’, see also Colin Holmes, A Tolerant Country? Immigrants, Refugees and Minorities in Britain (London, 1991), pp. 22–3. 32 On the Auswanderer Bahnhof see Tobias Brinkmann, ‘“Grenzerfahrungen” zwischen Ruhleben und Ellis Island: Das System der deutschen Durchwandererkontrolle im internationalen Kontext, 1880–1914’, Leipziger Beiträge zur jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur, 2 (2004), pp. 209–29. 33 Matthew Stibbe, ‘The German Empire’s Response: From Retaliation to the Painful Realities of Defeat’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 47–68. 34 Jones, Violence Against Prisoners of War. 35 Panayi, The Germans in India, pp. 211–13. 36 A. L. Vischer, Barbed Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War (London, 1919), p. 53. 37 Rudolf Rocker, ‘Alexandra Palace Internment Camp in the First World War’, British Library Typescript, p. 4. 38 Paul Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still: My Internment in England (London, 1931), p. 85. 39 Rocker, ‘Alexandra Palace’, p. 4. 40 Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, p. 91. 41 John Davidson Ketchum, Ruhleben: A Prison Camp Society (Toronto, 1965). 42 Ibid., pp. 153–4; and Matthew Stibbe, British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914–18 (Manchester, 2008), pp. 79–110. 43 Rainer Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt: Deutsche, englische und französische Kriegsgefangenen-Zeitungen im Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen, 2006). 44 Ketchum, Ruhleben, pp. 192–311. 45 See, for example, Andrew Francis, ‘To Be Truly British We Must Be Anti-German’: New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War Experience, 1914–1919 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 113–52; Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront Experience in Australia, 1914–1920 (St. Lucia, Queensland, 1989), pp. 199–266; Panikos Panayi, ‘“Barbed Wire Disease” or a “Prison Camp Society”: The Everyday Lives of German Internees on the Isle of Man, 1914–1919’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 99–121; and the works by Simon Giuseppi cited in note 27 above. 46 See Begriff: ‘Kriegs- und Zivilgefangene’ – communiqué issued by the Prussian War Ministry, 17 April 1916, in Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 901/82017. 47 Jens Thiel, ‘Between Recruitment and Forced Labour: The Radicalization of German Labour Policy in Occupied Belgium and Northern France’, First World War Studies, 4.1 (2013), pp. 39–50 (here pp. 40–1). 48 See, for instance, Guoqi Xu, ‘Asia’, in Jay Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, Volume I: Global War (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 479–510 (here esp. pp. 492–503). Also Susanne Kuß, ‘Chinesische Arbeitslager des britischen Militärs in Frankreich 1917 bis 1919: Kolonialismus en miniature’, in Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel (eds.), Lager vor Auschwitz: Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2013), pp. 140–57. 49 Matthew Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians by Belligerent States During the First World War and the Response of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41.1 (2006), pp. 5–19.

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50 Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, here esp. p. 26. 51 See, for example, Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction; and Alexander B. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (London, 2008). 52 For a more in depth comparison see Panikos Panayi, ‘Dominant Societies and Minorities in the Two World Wars’, in Panikos Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime: National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America and Australia During the Two World Wars (Oxford, 1993), pp. 3–23. 53 Helen McPhail, The Long Silence: Civilian Life Under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918 (London, 2000), p. 55. 54 See also Annette Becker, Les cicatrices rouges: 14–18, France et Belgiques occupées (Paris, 2010); and Philippe Nivet, La France occupée, 1914–1918 (Paris, 2011). 55 ‘De-escalation’ is a key part of the argument put forward in Jonathan E. Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2009). See also Benjamin Ziemann, Gewalt im Ersten Weltkrieg: Töten, Überleben, Verweigern (Essen, 2013), pp. 32–3. 56 Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees’, pp. 71–2. 57 Panayi, The Germans in India, pp. 217–18. 58 Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians’, pp. 5 and 18–19. 59 On the British in Kenya, see Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London, 2005); and on camps in Spain, in Second World War Europe and Asia, and in the post-1945 world, see the various contributions to Greiner and Kramer (eds.), Welt der Lager. 60 The Geneva Convention of 1929 was especially disappointing in this respect, although it did do something to improve conditions for military prisoners of war. For further details see, Neville Wylie, ‘The 1929 Prisoner of War Convention and the Building of the Inter-War Prisoner of War Regime’, in Sibylle Scheipers (ed.), Prisoners in War (Oxford, 2010), pp. 91–108. 61 Important here is Bruno Cabanes’ recent book The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge, 2014), here esp. pp. 113–15. 62 See Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, ‘Resolutions presented to the Peace Conference of the Powers in Paris’, Zurich, May 1919, at http://wilpf.org/ wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1919.pdf 63 Steffen Kailitz, ‘Einleitung’, in Kailitz (ed.), Nach dem ‘Großen Krieg’: Von Triumph zum Desaster der Demokratie 1918/19 bis 1939 (Göttingen, 2017), pp. 9–24 (here p. 13). 64 Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain During the First World War (Oxford, 1991), p. 97. 65 Fischer, Enemy Aliens, pp. 301–2. See also Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment’ (as note 1). 66 Eric D. Weitz, ‘From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations and Civilizing Missions’, American Historical Review, 113.5 (2008), pp. 1313–43. 67 Ibid., p. 1334; and Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, p. 135. 68 Glenda Sluga, ‘Female and National Self-Determination: A Gendered Re-Reading of the “Apogee of Nationalism”’, Nations and Nationalism, 6.4 (2000), pp. 495–521. 69 Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, p. 167. 70 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the Two World Wars (Oxford, 1990).

2

The internment of civilian ‘enemy aliens’ in the British Empire Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi

Investigating civilian internment in the British Empire feeds into a number of new perspectives in First World War studies. The overarching connector of these new perspectives is a recalibration away from the traditional focus on Western battle fronts and military combatants. They stress the truly global repercussions of the conflict which led to significant social, cultural, political and economic transformations in virtually all world regions.1 The wider focus has also been applied to the political units entering into conflict. These did not necessarily consist of nation-states, but of empires. In August 1914, it was not ‘Britain’ declaring war. Rather, it was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the associated Dominions and Colonies of the British Empire.2 If we take this context seriously as a methodological stepping stone for further analysis, our notion of the First World War as a clash of European nation-states has to be widened. A convincing framework speaking of ‘Empires at War’ has been suggested by scholars such as Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela. The authors show that these multi-ethnic and polymorphous empires mobilised millions of imperial subjects, mainly combatants but also non-combatant labourers, turning the conflict into a truly global war in multiple locations.3 This approach, however, largely focuses on military operations. The following chapter takes the Imperial scope seriously but complements it by concentrating on civilian victims of imperial internment policies. In doing so, our chapter builds on a recent scholarly strand which focuses primarily on the war’s impact on civilians rather than active combatants. Scholars such as Alexander Watson and Tammy Proctor have shown that the First World War had a devastating effect on many civilian communities, leaving deep traumas and resentment which would eventually lead to further military conflict during the twentieth century.4 Within this conceptual framework, the following chapter will be the first to investigate British internment policies vis-à-vis civilian German, Austrian and, to a lesser extent, Turkish and Bulgarian ‘enemy aliens’ from an imperial perspective. We argue that this methodological perspective adds significant explanatory value to those studies that are confined to specific dominions. Examples of the latter include the contributions on New Zealand and on Canada in this volume.5 What connects these and other colonial possessions with each other and, in turn, with the metropole? To understand the pace with which the policy

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of internment radiated across the world from August 1914 onward, one has to identify established imperial structures as efficient transmission belts. These include the administration, military, chains of command, transport and communication structures. The case history of Wilhelm Kröpke shall serve to illustrate the extent to which metropole and colonial possessions were, in fact, inter-linked. Kröpke had been living and working in British colonies for fifteen years before settling in Nigeria in 1913. After the outbreak of war, Nigeria, as a crown colony, followed direct instructions from Whitehall to round up its tiny ‘enemy alien’ population. Kröpke was detained in Lagos prison on 9 August 1914 together with a number of his German countrymen. After several weeks, the cohort was transported to the central Nigerian internment camp, Ibaddan, about 250 miles inland from Lagos. This was a former banana plantation surrounded by barbed wire where many prisoners contracted malaria. In mid-November, the group was taken back to Lagos and shipped to Britain on board the Accassa, on its way picking up more Germans in other West African ports. After arriving in Liverpool on 22 December in a ‘sick and run-down state’,6 the prisoners were distributed to internment camps throughout Britain. For Kröpke, an odyssey through various facilities ended in the Alexandra Palace Camp in London in early January 1916, from where he managed to escape and make his way back to Germany. The normal route, however, was for former internees to be repatriated to Germany during or after the termination of war. Wilhelm Kröpke’s fate epitomises the fact that Britain was the epicentre of global mass internment and deportation operations. In November 1918, 91,428 military prisoners of war and 24,522 civilian ‘enemy aliens’ of German, AustroHungarian and Turkish nationality were held in numerous camps on the British Isles. The peak number of civilian internees was 29,511 in November 1917.7 We have to add those held in the colonies and dominions. A compilation for the Home Office from February 1918 tried to assess the extent of potential repatriation operations. The total internment figure of 14,421 in overseas territories was composed of 11,707 civilians and 2,714 combatants. The civilians had either settled abroad in the decades before the war; or were taken from ships crossing the oceans; or were deported from seized German colonies in Africa and the South Pacific. The latter policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ played into British war aims of colonial expansion. Internment did, however, not only affect those behind barbed wire, but also their families. The Home Office report continues: To these must be added women and children dependent on civilian prisoners and women and children whose nearest relatives are in enemy countries. Of these no statistics are available. . . . There are also the people of occupied territory to be considered. About 1,600, mostly women and children are in German East Africa. It is very desirable to get rid of them. 200 women and children from Nyasaland are at Tempe [Camp] in the Union of South Africa. There is a large number of soldiers, officials and civilians in South West Africa and a few in New Guinea.8

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The Home Office figures are corroborated by a report written for the German Reichstag in 1927. Its slightly higher figure of 14,767 civilian internees in the colonies is due to the fact that it also includes women and children and that a wider time framework is considered (August 1916 to March 1919). Figures on individual camps in this report are, however, in line with those in other sources, including neutral inspection reports, and therefore not exaggerated.9 If we add the 29,511 civilian internees in Britain (November 1917) to just under 15,000 in the colonies, and also consider several thousand who, by then, had been interned and often repatriated in earlier stages of the war, a total figure of 50,000 civilian internees in Britain and its Empire during the First World War is a realistic approximation. The narrative which follows will demonstrate how internment in the British Empire needs understanding as a global experience. It will outline how transportation could take place from one part of the globe to another, although a series of hubs would evolve so that incarceration tended to take place near the place of arrest for an individual internee. The chapter will also create a typology of camps within the Empire and investigate life behind barbed wire. Although each individual camp may have had its own distinct characteristics and while each internee may have experienced internment uniquely, the chapter will demonstrate the global nature of British imperial internment.

Bureaucracy and transport Britain had decades of experience in deporting or concentrating groups which were deemed to operate on the margins of legal, political and social norms. These included paupers and criminals in workhouses and labour camps, convicts being sent to penal colonies, the internment of plague affected and starving Indian colonial subjects, and Boers’ mass internment during the South African War in 1899–1902, which included deportation to Ceylon, the Bermudas and Canada.10 These examples were relatively localised in that they took place in, or emanated from, one specific location. The First World War presented a new organisational challenge since mass internment on a global scale was unprecedented.11 Now subjects of the Central Powers who were literally spread across all corners of the Empire12 had to be registered and contained to preserve the safety of the realm. This presented a challenge to bureaucratic structures and processes. There was no single authority responsible for the matter, and despite efforts to streamline administration, a number of ministries continued to fulfil various functions right through the war. A comment from 1916 by Robert Cecil, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, gave an indicative assessment of the situation: Yesterday there was a meeting held in my room, of representatives of the War Office, the Home Office, the Colonial Office, the India Office, and the Prisoners Department of the Foreign Office. It appeared from that meeting that the present organisation of prisoners’ questions was chaotic in the extreme.13

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Administrative units were established to bring some coordination into crossministerial responsibilities. Most importantly, these were the Prisoners of War Department and the Destitute Aliens Committee. Nevertheless, the ministerial ‘chaos’ continued to apply on the Imperial scale. The India Office was responsible for its own sphere and the Colonial Office for the other colonies. The Dominions organised internment largely through their own administrations but were firmly integrated, in matters of warfare which included internment, into Whitehall command structures. Although fractured, there was a high degree of central coordination from London, in particular when it came to prisoner capture, deportation and transportation between different camps, countries and continents. Distinct prisoner types and transport routes can be identified. One prisoner type consisted of those taken from ships on the high sea and in British ports. A circular from Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt stipulated in November 1914 that ‘enemy reservists . . . should be removed on the high seas as well as in British territorial waters’.14 Three months later, a similar circular stated that ‘any enemy subjects, whether crew or passengers, on board neutral vessels’ entering forty-seven listed ports from Otago to St John’s would ‘be liable to removal and detention’.15 The policy was implemented from August 1914 onwards as revealed in a range of personal accounts. One case is that of Karl Wrischek, a fourteen-year-old cabin boy working on the Derfflinger docked in Port Said on 2 August 1914, who received an order from ‘an English higher officer’ not to proceed further. Passengers and crew were transported to a collection camp in Malta. Wrischek remained here until March 1916, returning home to Germany via the Stratford camp in East London.16 The camp established in Gibraltar, meanwhile, took 882 German, Austrian and Turkish nationals landed here immediately after the war broke out.17 These included one of the most celebrated First World War internees, the aerial explorer, adventurer and author Gunther Plüschow. When travelling back to Germany from Kiao Chow via the United States and across the Atlantic, he docked in Gibraltar and was captured. After a spell in the Gibraltar camp, he was transported to England where he spent time in several camps, including the officers’ camp at Donington Hall, from where he managed to escape.18 Others held in Gibraltar included a group removed from the Italian steamship Re Vittorio which docked here on 24 August 1914: ‘About 500 Germans, among them 42 officers, were held back as prisoners of war’.19 On 4 January 1915, eight German passengers, including one doctor, three architects, one painter and one mechanic on the Italian steamship Principe de Udine ‘were captured by the English in Gibraltar and brought to land’.20 The Royal Navy seized numerous ships on the high seas sailing in all directions, taking the passengers to the nearest port and internment camp, in some cases thousands of miles away. Often this involved neutral ships and ports. In August 1917, for example, a total of 323 internees from Camp 4 in Knockaloe (Isle of Man) sent a letter to the German Foreign Office in Berlin, stating that they ‘were taken from neutral ships by representatives of the English regime while we found ourselves on a journey from one neutral land to another’,

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believing that sailing under a neutral flag offered them protection. The signatories all provided details of their Atlantic journeys, for example Botho Lilienthal (Rosario to Copenhagen on the Swedish Alida), and nine others travelling on the Belgian Zeeland from New York to Amsterdam before being intercepted and forced to dock in Liverpool. Other journeys included, for example, Las Palmas to Rotterdam, Buenos Aires to Malmö and Mississippi to Stockholm.21 All oceans were scoured for ‘enemy aliens’. Dr Friedrich Hacker sailed on the Austrian steamship Koerber from Hong Kong to Trieste: ‘At the end of October [1914] all the Germans and Austrians – perhaps 1,000 persons – were carried to Port Said on the transport steamer Osmanieh and transferred to Malta’. Meanwhile, on 12 August 1914 ‘the Cargo boat Walkure was seized by the Gunboat Zelee and taken to Papeete in Tahiti, where the captives faced short-term internment’.22 Paul Helbig, a baker who had boarded the steamship Lothringen bound for Australia on 24 June 1914 became a prisoner of war when his vessel approached Melbourne on 15 August and was greeted by a British warship. ‘On our arrival in Melbourne there were already anchored several other German steamships’.23 Australia, together with New Zealand, became the destination for most of the Germans captured by the British throughout South East Asia, not only at sea, but also in both German and British colonies throughout the area. In fact, of the total of 6,890 persons interned in Australia, only 4,500 had lived in the country by the outbreak of war. The remainder had been transported from other parts of the Pacific during the first year of the conflict.24 The principle of concentration in strategic ‘hotspots’ was applied throughout the world. ‘Enemy aliens’ seized in the Mediterranean and Middle East would end up in the camps in Gibraltar, Malta and Egypt. For example, in 1918, following the British advance in Palestine, as many as 450 Germans in Jaffa were deported to Egypt, together with those in Jerusalem.25 Those captured in the Caribbean would be brought together in camps on Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and the Bermudas. The American consul on Trinidad reported in July 1915 that there were two prisons on the island: In the larger prison, known as Camp ‘A’ are interned those prisoners arrested on various vessels calling at this port, most of them being sailors, seamen, stokers, cooks, firemen, etc.; in the smaller prison, known as Camp ‘B’ are interned those Germans who were residents of Trinidad, business men, accountants, etc.26 Germans in sub-Saharan Africa need consideration in three geopolitical areas. First were those in West Africa both in the German colonies of Togo and Cameroon as well as in British possessions, who experienced transportation to Britain. The latter included the above-mentioned Wilhelm Kröpke. Second were those in British and German East Africa. They first spent some time in temporary camps near their places of residence before being mainly transported to the Ahmednagar camp in India by the end of 1914. Smaller numbers ended up in Malta and in the Sidi Bishr camp in Alexandria.27 Third, Germans in South Africa and in German

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South West Africa would spend time in camps in both of these areas. The main place of concentration in South Africa was Fort Napier in Pietermaritzburg. After South African troops had taken German South West Africa by mid-1915, places of internment in the (now former) German colony included Aus, Okanjande and Swakopmund, although some Germans, including women and children, were temporarily transported to Pietermaritzburg.28 The location of the camps in which Germans in sub-Saharan Africa were interned therefore depended on which part of the continent they lived. Those in the West travelled towards Britain, those in the East mostly ended up in India, and those in the South remained on that part of the continent. The Germans transported to Australia and New Zealand divide into a series of groups. The first and best documented were those who lived in the German colonies in the Pacific. By the summer of 1915, over ninety were interned in the New Guinea administrative capital of Rabaul, and an additional 168 had been deported to Australia, mostly to the Holsworthy Camp near Sydney.29 As the rest of the German Pacific Islands fell to the forces of Australia and New Zealand, deportations took place towards these countries from a variety of locations, including Nauru, Samoa and Fiji. Some Germans in Samoa, however, remained in a camp in Sogi in Apia for most of the war.30 Australian camps also took in Germans from elsewhere in South East Asia and even further afield. Male Germans in Singapore had first been interned locally, on St John’s Island and in the Tanglin Barracks, while women and children were sent to Kuala Lumpur.31 By the summer of 1916, 296 ‘enemy aliens’ had been transported from Singapore to Australia. This plight also befell those in Hong Kong. Internment had begun locally on 28 October 1914. Men faced incarceration in a camp in Kowloon, while fourteen of their wives, together with their children, experienced confinement nearby. At the beginning of 1916 the government of Australia agreed to take the internees from Hong Kong, which meant that 337 prisoners arrived in Sydney on four different transports. In August and September 1915, four ships took a total of 338 people from Colombo to Sydney, while in November 1917 a smaller group from Borneo and Fiji, mostly naturalised British citizens, arrived in Australia.32 The system of global transportation and internment was highly complex, but it was not, as the above frustrated quote from Under-Secretary Robert Cecil suggested, entirely ‘chaotic’ or dysfunctional. The various government departments involved in its administration managed to establish a number of clear routes and hubs, depending on distance and availability and capacity of suitable facilities. The most substantial German ethnic communities which had settled in Britain and its largest colonial possessions were simply incarcerated in the countries in which they lived, most notably Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and India. Ports throughout the Empire became traps which caught any Germans and Austrians who may have found themselves on ships within them in the early stages of the war. In addition, the Royal Navy intercepted ships throughout the world, dragged Germans from these vessels and took them to the nearest port and internment camp. The pattern of entrapment used a series

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of routes which revolved around the existence of major internment facilities as follows. First there was Great Britain, which essentially interned those in the country, whether short- or long-term residents, together with others captured in the North Atlantic and others sent from West Africa. Second, Canada incarcerated its own Germans as well as some of those who arrived from the western hemisphere. Third, the Mediterranean, especially Malta and Gibraltar, became an internment hub. While the latter took in people captured at sea, Malta incarcerated Germans and Austrians from North Africa and the Middle East. Africa proves more complicated but represents the fourth hub. South and South West Africa became the major internment place for Germans living in these areas, but those in west Africa faced deportation to Britain, while those in the East went to India. The fifth hub consisted of India which not only interned local ‘enemy alien’ residents, but also those transported from East Africa and Siam. Finally, the camps in Australia and New Zealand need consideration together, housing not only their own German residents, but also those found anywhere in the South Pacific as far away as Ceylon, whether captured on land or at sea.

Extent and typology of camps It is impossible to determine the exact number of civilian camps and their inmates in the Empire. This is due to a number of reasons. Many camps, especially in the early stages of the war up to mid-1915, were of a transitory nature. They merely existed to concentrate ‘enemy aliens’ in a given area for later dispatch to permanent camps. Throughout the war, camps were established or abandoned, depending on situational needs. The number of inmates in most places of internment fluctuated constantly, depending on practical and policy decisions such as intensified incarceration after the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915. In addition, many inmates were moved around from camp to camp, often over great distances. And whilst in Britain there was a clear distinction between military and civilian camps (or compounds in camps), this distinction was often blurred in overseas territories, not least because reservists were both civilians as well as potential combatants. The following data should therefore be seen as the best possible approximation based on primary sources which often only provide synchronic snapshots on a given date. Despite these limitations, the overview will give an insight into the extent of the camp system. The transition from provisional to permanent camp structures can be studied throughout the Empire. In the metropole, temporary solutions included facilities such as Newbury race course, the exhibition hall in Olympia (London) and several prison ships, before consolidation took place, especially in the Knockaloe camp on the Isle of Man.33 In Gibraltar, 882 prisoners had gone through the camp by March 1915. Most of them, 709, had been shipped to England and the remainder released and allowed to return home. Thereafter it continued to function as a low-key transit point for around fifteen enemy aliens at a time.34 In South Africa, although the main camp, Fort Napier in Pietermaritzburg, was established in August 1914, other camps acted as transit stations before feeding into Fort

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Napier. There was also an element of experimentation because at this stage, no one knew how long internment operations would have to be conducted and whether provisional camps might have to develop into permanent ones. ‘Enemy Aliens’ in Johannesburg were first brought together in the local Agricultural Show Ground, which existed from 19 August to 11 September 1914 and held 1,055 prisoners. The equivalent in Pretoria was the Roberts Heights military base, which held ‘enemy aliens’ between September 1914 and May 1915. When the expansion of operations after the Lusitania sinking necessitated a sudden increase in capacity, the compound of a diamond mine in Kimberley was quickly turned into a provisional camp, holding 963 in July 1915. By the end of 1915, these had all been concentrated in Fort Napier, which held an average of 2,500 until operations ceased, and the last prisoners were released in August 1919.35 In the Pacific, temporary makeshift camps existed in various places before their inmates were shifted towards Australia. On Ceylon, the Diyatalawa camp survived for less than a year, holding local embassy and company staff, planters, hotel owners and employees, eighteen Catholic clerics and one Austrian and seven German Buddhist monks.36 Internment in Hong Kong initially took place on Stonecutter’s Island, but as the number of prisoners and the threat of malaria grew, the internees were moved to Kowloon to an encampment area sometimes used by British troops.37 Another short-term camp in the Pacific was Tenom in North Borneo, which, according to a US consular official, consisted of ‘the most commodious house in the district and affords all the comforts and conveniences usually found in tropical residences’. Apart from boredom and the loss of freedom, one complaint was that ‘their beer supply had been shut off’ due to the fact that three of the six Germans held there had previously ‘got drunk and created a disturbance in the town of Tenom by parading up and down the streets singing German songs’.38 Australia itself also opened camps which only existed during the early stages of the war. Claremont, about six miles from the capital of Tasmania, held sixty Germans and four Austro-Hungarians in August 1915, but this closed by the end of the year as the prisoners were removed to New South Wales.39 Rottnest Island, just off the coast of Perth, held 214 prisoners in the summer of 1915 who were transferred to Sydney during the course of the autumn.40 Torrens Island held about 400 in some of the worst conditions in Australia before these internees went to Holsworthy in New South Wales in August 1916.41 A number of characteristics connected these short-lived camps. The time they existed varied from a few weeks to almost two years, depending on decisions for further concentration. Inspection reports written by US consular officials in the Pacific usually viewed them in a positive light. Like the longer established camps, some of them developed camp communities with a rich social life. Diyatalawa, Kowloon, Roberts Heights and some of the other camps which emerged in these early days of the war had a section for women and children, but no longterm facilities were established to hold these family members. Permanent mass internment facilities were a male only affair, although some low-scale exceptions existed in India and in South Africa. British incarceration of Boer women and

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children during the South African War (1899–1902) had caused international criticism, and not least the lessons learnt from this ‘PR-disaster’ led to a BritishGerman agreement to restrict large scale internment to male adults.42 Apart from the differentiation into short-term and long-term, there are a number of further criteria working towards a typology of camps. The examples in the remainder of this section all fall under the category ‘permanent’. One type were those facilities that had initially been built for British troops but were turned into internment camps after the outbreak of war. In fact, the biggest camp in India, Ahmednagar, had a long history as a military station and had also been used as an internment facility for Boers during the South African War.43 The central camp in Scotland, Stobs near Hawick, had been used as a military training ground since 1903 but received completely new buildings to house up to 4,500 ‘enemy alien’ prisoners.44 Similarly, the camp in Malta, Fort Verdala situated above Valetta, opened on a site previously used by British troops. In August 1915, the camp held 1,355 civilians and 141 military POWs. By April 1918, numbers had risen to 1,906, including 1,325 Germans, 320 Austro-Hungarians, 326 Turks and twenty-seven Bulgarians. The US consular reports were broadly positive, focusing on the well-developed social activity including celebration of the Kaiser’s birthday on 27 January. The reports also mention frictions between the inmates, which were viewed as inevitable because of the amount of time the men spent together.45 A fourth example of a pre-existing military facility was Fort Napier. With British troops gradually withdrawing from the newly established Union of South Africa after 1910, Fort Napier had recently been abandoned as a garrison fort for colonial troops. It presented itself as an ideal facility with sufficient capacity and security. The site was surrounded by solid corrugated iron fence with barbed wire entanglements. Armed guards were stationed in elevated tower platforms around the whole. The site was divided into four main camps, and these were in turn separated by the same corrugated iron and barbed wire structure.46 Notwithstanding some minor differences, this topography was also representative of another type of camp, namely those that were newly built from August 1914. The prototype of this category was Knockaloe, which started off as one new compound on an open plain on the western coast of the Isle of Man, but it was gradually extended to a maximum of 23,000 as demand increased. Kapuskasing in northern Ontario held 934 Austro-Hungarians, 135 Turks and seven Bulgarians in March 1916, reflecting the tendency in Canada to have separate camps for Germans on the one hand, and other nationalities on the other hand.47 Australia’s largest camp, Holsworthy near Sydney, was also a newly built structure. This camp ‘grew from a collection of tents to a small town of huts complete with theatres, restaurants and cafes, other small businesses, an orchestra and sporting and educational activities’.48 Holsworthy had the same significance in the southern hemisphere as Knockaloe did in the north because of the range of geographical origins of prisoners, coming not simply from other places of internment closed down in Australia, but also from other parts of the Pacific, while others would have spent virtually all of their experience of incarceration

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here. Its population increased from 1,695 in August 1915 to 4,299 by May 1916 (including 3,421 Germans and 811 Austro-Hungarians) and 4,500 by July 1916, a total which would remain stable until 1919.49 The camp typology includes a number of former civilian structures which were turned into camps. Oldcastle Camp in County Meagh, Ireland, had been a former workhouse, signifying clear continuities of social group confinement in the British Empire since the nineteenth century. In October 1914, the military authorities took command of the site and fortified it. Two blocks of stone-built structures contained twenty-six dormitories, housing 435 German and ninety-nine Austrian prisoners in June 1915. When prisoners climbed on rooftops to watch anti-conscription and pro-independence demonstrations in the nearby town centre in April 1918, the camp was considered a security risk, evacuated, and its inmates transferred to Knockaloe.50 Former factory sites were another type of civilian buildings. The camp at Handforth in Cheshire came into existence in November 1914 on the site of a former print works. Although it had developed into a camp for military internees by 1916, it initially held a combination of local Germans largely from Manchester, the crews of German trawlers, and people brought from the colonies. Numbers totalled between 2,000 and 2,500. According to inspectors’ reports, by early 1915, it had become fairly well organised and the factory buildings held acceptable accommodation.51 Less favourable reports emerged about the Amherst camp in Nova Scotia, Canada. This was the former Malleable Iron foundry, consisting of one building that was 100 feet wide and a quarter of a mile long, holding around 800 internees. In an unusually blunt way, the inspecting American local consul reported in October 1916 that ‘originally the building in which they are situated was not in all respects entirely suitable for the uses to which it has been adapted’. Recent improvements, however, had made the premises ‘comfortably habitable’.52 The German Red Cross received a litany of complaints, some censored, but others smuggled out in full in encoded form or invisible ink. Inmates complained about filthy conditions, odour in combination with boarded-up windows, iron dust remaining from the building’s previous function, cramped conditions in bunk beds and a shooting in which one prisoner was killed by a guard.53 There were also prison islands. By this we do not mean Knockaloe on the Isle of Man and Fort Verdala on Malta, both of which were situated on large populated islands. We rather refer to very small islands with little or no population which were turned into places of internment. In Australia, these included the above-mentioned Rottnest Island off the Perth coast, and Torrens Island near Adelaide. New Zealand had two prison islands, Somes Island in Wellington Harbour and Motuihi Island in Auckland Harbour.54 Another prison island in an entirely different world region was Ports Island in the Bermuda Great Sound. The inspecting American consul described the island as ‘a small piece of ground about one-half mile in circumference. There are no residents on the island other than the prisoners and a guard varying from twelve to fifteen men’. There were fifty-six German and two Austrian prisoners, mostly taken from merchant vessels at the beginning of the war, but also some residents of

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Bermuda. Fifteen former officers resided in the first-class compound, the remaining crew in the second-class compound. The American consul found Ports Island an ideal location for a detention camp. It is conveniently situated, being easily accessible to Hamilton and is of such size that only a small guard is required. . . . The prisoners are permitted to bathe as much as they wish, but are warned not to swim further than thirty yards from the island. After the American entry into the war, camp inspections were conducted by Swiss officials who found the general conditions equally satisfactory. In their report, they also mention long-term continuities of British imperial internment since ‘during the South African War of 1899–1902 the island hosted a large number of Boer prisoners of war’.55 ‘Enemy Aliens’ were usually arrested by the police and taken to the next police station where they would spend a short spell in a prison cell before removal to a camp. The short period Wilhelm Kröpke spent in Lagos prison is indicative of this pattern. There were, however, also a number of prisons which were converted into long-term internment facilities for ‘enemy aliens’. Berrima and Trial Bay Gaols were both in New South Wales, ‘thus establishing a clear and distinct link with the colony’s penal system’.56 In Trial Bay Gaol, two or three detainees were accommodated in one stone gaol cell, and others in newly built huts outside the main building. A US consular inspection from June 1916 described ‘a spirit of contentment as well as satisfaction’ and asserted that the camp ‘is in excellent condition’.57 The 580 internees held here in June 1917 had developed orchestras, a library of 2,500 books and a theatre with 240 seats.58 The two prisons in Trinidad have been mentioned above. Another prison facility was the Glendairy Prison on Barbados which continued to hold ordinary criminals alongside those who were incarcerated as enemy aliens. The American consul, visiting in August 1916, found fifty-eight inmates and described the topography as follows: This camp is situated within the walls of the criminal prison of this Island, but is detached from the balance of the prison buildings, and there is no communication between the prisoners of war and the criminal prisoners, except that a portion of the camp sanitary work is done by the criminal prisoners. The camp compound is separated from the prison yard by a strong barbed wire barricade, the wall of the prison enclosure form the other three sides of the compound.59 Although the consul found general conditions to be satisfactory, he also remarked that this setting was not conducive to internees’ mental health: ‘The proximity of the convicts, the prison walls, and the cries of the convicts receiving corporal punishment, according to the testimony of [internees], affects their nerves and makes them restless and irritated’.60 The typological overview has given an insight into the complexity of the internment experience. Knockaloe with its endless rows of wooden huts, built

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on an open plain, is often seen as the prototype, but in reality, there existed a whole series of different camp forms, sizes and durations. Some camps only existed for weeks, others for the whole duration of the war and, indeed, beyond. Some were newly built, modelled on the layout of military barracks. Others were accommodated in former military bases. Pragmatic solutions in situ led to further conversions: race courses, exhibition halls, ships, agricultural showgrounds, plantations, factories, a diamond mine, a workhouse, islands and prisons. Some of them (for instance Holsworthy and Forth Napier) were in urban locations, others (such as Kapuskasing and Knockaloe) in very isolated ones. The term ‘internment camp’ encapsulates very different shapes and locations.

Camp communities and cultural life The notion of ‘prison camp societies’ was first put forward by John Davidson Ketchum, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, writing decades after his First World War confinement in the Berlin civilian camp in Ruhleben. Ketchum described that after a period of accommodation, the British internees took part in a range of activities and formed associations leading to a community structure, which helped them to survive years of confinement.61 Part of the reason for engaging in social activity lay in the fact that civilian prisoners were not forced to work,62 which meant that they had to kill time ‘for it was the arch-enemy’.63 In actual fact, despite the Hague Convention, work did take place amongst civilian internees in Canada.64 Although this forced labour appears unique within the Empire and certainly caused controversy and complaint, voluntary employment for the purpose of ‘killing time’ certainly took place elsewhere. In South Africa, prisoners could even be sent to do agricultural work on the Standerton Government Farm as a reward for good behaviour in Fort Napier.65 The sporting, educational and cultural activities in Ruhleben described by Ketchum also developed in camps run by the British throughout the world, as well as in establishments opened by the other belligerents. Gilly Carr and Harold Mytum have seen internment camps during both World Wars as spaces of creativity. Despite ‘traumas’ caused by separation from families, ‘the years of internment were coupled with unprecedented leisure time for many which led to a flowering of creativity in numerous forms and across a variety of media’.66 A range of activities therefore developed within British and other camps during the First World War, supported by organisations such as the Red Cross and the Society of Friends. Prison camp communities emerged in a variety of ways, especially the celebration of major festival days in the German calendar, including those of a religious nature. Christmas proved particularly important for interned Germans as it did for those beyond the wire, even though it caused mixed feelings as internees reflected on their situation and separation from families.67 German nationalism surfaced in the celebration of the Kaiser’s birthday on 27 January, which had become established beyond the wire before the outbreak of the war in many diasporic communities.68 This resulted in festivities such as the one in the Tanglin Barracks in Singapore on 27 January 1915.69 German regionalism

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also survived as revealed in the celebration of the birthday of King William II of Württemberg on 27 February 1915 by forty-seven Württembergers interned in Malta.70 Community also developed through a range of regular activities. Theatre became perhaps the most important of these, bringing together a wide range of people as actors, spectators and technical staff. Cross-dressing actors helped to keep the image of women alive in camps.71 A total of sixty-nine camp theatres existed in Britain alone, made up of nine for officers, twenty-seven for privates and thirty-three for civilians.72 In Holsworthy, the 125th new performance took place on 31 August 1918, on this occasion featuring a play by Henrik Ibsen.73 Camps developed their own orchestras, helped by the fact that many Germans, especially those from middle-class backgrounds, played instruments. An advanced musical life evolved on the Isle of Man with symphony orchestras, choirs and ensembles, music critics and the use of music in plays and religious festivities.74 This found reflection in camps throughout the Empire. With some pride, a former inmate of Fort Napier wrote that ‘musicians established genuine music schools. It is right to say that nowhere in the whole of South Africa were to be found better classical performances than in the internment camp in Pietermaritzburg’.75 Another example was the orchestra in the St. Clement’s Camp in Malta which held a symphony concert on 11 May 1918 featuring Beethoven’s first symphony, a Chopin nocturne, Grieg’s piano concerto and Wagner’s entry of the Gods into Valhalla from Das Rheingold.76 Another major form of popular culture which played a central role in creating community consisted of sport and exercise, which may have involved more people than any other type of activity in view of the range of games which the prisoners developed, both competitive and non-competitive and encompassing English and German sports. The Verdala ‘Camp Nachrichten’ from 28 March 1915 pointed to tennis, boxing, football and fencing here.77 While some Germans played sport as individuals, others participated in team games which would lead to the development of football leagues. Sporting festivals allowed prisoners to again develop their sense of community as happened in Holsworthy on Christmas Day 1917 where the games played included football, athletics and hockey. Such events also allowed those who did not participate in sport to take part as this particular festival also included a concert by the camp brass orchestra.78 On Ports Island, regular football games between guards and inmates were organised. When the American consul visited on 8 March 1916, ‘the best of feeling was exhibited by all concerned during the progress of the game, which was won by the prisoners by a score of three goals to nothing’.79 Community and creativity were also apparent in the ubiquitous newspapers which became a phenomenon amongst German, English and French internees held in camps throughout the world. At least seventeen emerged in Great Britain during the course of the war together with many more in overseas camps. These evolved in cooperation with camp censors and necessitated the existence of some form of printing press. Those who ran them invariably came from educated middle-class backgrounds. While these publications initially devoted space to

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events beyond the barbed wire, they increasingly became focused on the camps themselves. One of their key functions consisted of providing information on social and educational activity within individual camps, although they also allowed prisoners to express their feelings about internment, especially through literary sketches and poems. They had an overarching aim of creating community within specific camps. Many prisoners sent editions, which might have a print run of several thousands, to their relatives, keeping them informed about camp life. These newspapers also helped to create a sense of Heimat (homeland), fuelled by the feeling of alienation which the prisoners felt as a result of their incarceration and encouraged by the exclusively male environment in which they usually found themselves.80

Conditions The treatment of internees throughout the Empire was in essence humane. Food rations were adequate, there was little deliberate mistreatment, and with the exception of Canada,81 there was no forced labour. While the incarceration of tens of thousands of men in the Empire constituted an act of liberty infringement which those affected understandably resented, the British authorities did not want to repeat the mistakes of the Boer War, as revealed in the views of a Government of India civil servant determined to avert the attention of the ‘atrocity mongers’ by not interning women and families in Ahmednagar.82 Since the Boer War the 1907 Hague Convention had also come into operation, and the British now played by the rules of warfare when it came to civilian internees. This included allowing US and then Swiss Embassy officials access to camps where they could meet the prisoners and discuss problems and complaints.83 While some of these protests focused on serious issues, others seem minor as a culture of complaining emerged. These protests, however, reflected a deeper anxiety about the loss of freedom which the internees experienced, often leading to the development of ‘barbed wire disease’, the psychosis caused by years of captivity. This was first described by A. L. Vischer, a Swiss embassy official and camp inspector. The causes of this psychosis, from which ‘very few prisoners who have been over six months in the camp are quite free’,84 included: the ‘social standing of the prisoners before internment’,85 which meant that middle-class males used to physical space and control of their time became particularly prone to mental illness;86 ‘the general camp conditions and treatment of the prisoners’; lack of contact with the outside world, especially womenfolk; and the uncertainty of the length of captivity.87 The fact that prisoners did not work also played a role. While creativity and community may have emerged, the lack of real employment impacted on many internees. The spread of ‘barbed wire disease’ provides the best example of the negative consequences of internment in the Empire during the Great War. Sometimes the depression caused by confinement led to suicide. Those who took their own lives included Karl Kibbert who hung himself in Malta ‘whilst under the influence of alcohol’.88 The German-American Dr Walter Gellhorn took an overdose of

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morphine in the Stobs Camp in Scotland because ‘I really cannot help it being sick and tired of everything’.89 But such extreme cases of depression remained rare, and the relatively small number of internees who did perish behind barbed wire mostly did so as a result of physical rather than mental conditions.90 One prisoner, Arno Friedrich, actually drowned while swimming at the Trial Bay camp.91 In February 1915, E. F. Senftleben was accidentally shot in the Singapore camp by Indian mutineers who attacked the barracks in protest against their pending transfer to the Ottoman Empire, where they would have to fight against fellow Muslims.92 One prisoner drowned in the Nile on his escape route from the Maadi camp in Egypt.93 Some prisoners also died at the hands of the camp authorities. The worst incident occurred in the Douglas Camp on the Isle of Man on 19 November 1914, caused by the poor living conditions in a rapidly expanding camp. The guards suppressed a riot using live ammunition, causing the death of five internees.94 Individual soldiers also sometimes fired on internees for breaking camp rules as happened, for example, to Max Arndt in Holsworthy who ‘was shot when deliberately running away to avoid arrest, after being ordered to stand, the sentry having no other means of preventing his escape’.95 A propaganda conflict ran alongside the military operations in which both the German and British authorities and public opinion tried to prove that the other side behaved in a less civilised manner towards its enemy citizens.96 The German press played a key role in this, publishing stories about alleged mistreatment. The Tägliche Rundschau recounted the experiences of Dr Walter Kain who spent ten months in Malta. He gave a negative account of the conditions which he and his fellow prisoners had experienced, focusing especially on medical facilities.97 Similar stories of the experiences of captured Germans appeared in newspapers throughout the war.98 The authorities also collected stories of mistreatment by interviewing individual Germans when they arrived home after a period of internment. The information gathered in this way fed the commission established for the purpose of recording violence against German civilians abroad (Reichskommissar zur Erörterung von Gewalttätigkeiten gegen deutsche Zivilpersonen in Feindeshand), which also invited individuals to speak to them. They included Rudolf Krüger who had worked as a clerk in the German Consulate in Alexandria and was interned in the Ras-el-tin camp in the city despite recent hospital treatment for typhus. He was then moved to Malta. While he provided a matter-of-fact account, he also pointed to the problems he encountered which included, in the Verdala Barracks, living with five other Germans in one room, which still compared favourably with other rooms that ‘were covered with dirt and full of bugs’.99 Walter Kain’s series of articles addressed a range of issues in addition to medical facilities including the summer heat, the monotony of the diet and the water supply, although he believed that conditions in Malta were not as bad as those in Russia, the French colonies or the experiences of ‘our soldiers in the field whose lives were in danger’.100 In the Tanglin camp in Singapore, ‘all members of the Teutonia Club’, an educated middle-class group, entered into correspondence with the American consul, which was fairly representative for camps in the Empire. The complaints in

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Singapore included objection to the very fact of internment under international law; the unsuitability of the accommodation ‘for gentlemen who have spent so many years in Tropical climate’ as the ‘barracks with about 50 men in each compartment are to say the least overcrowded’; and the food, which, while the same as that ‘provided for British soldiers in this part of the wold . . . are absolutely insufficient for anybody living out here’.101 The American consul had previously replied to this group of internees in an objective manner, but his letter included a rather barbed comment: It is unfortunate of course, that civilians who have been accustomed to home comforts and luxury as is procurable in this community, should be deprived of same, but considering the misfortunes of war, an internment camp conducted on a basis comparing favourable with the usual military camps is all that can be expected.102

Conclusion: British internment as a global experience The individual experience of internment in the British Empire was much dependent on the location and type of camp. In the severe climate of north Ontario temperatures went down to −40° Celsius, and prisoners suffered from asthmatic and rheumatic pains. Kurt Zöllner wrote to his family from the Kapuskasing camp, asking them to send ‘thick socks, felt hat with ear flaps, thick gloves, sweater and woollen underwear’.103 In contrast, those who found themselves in the camp near Kingston, Jamaica, suffered from ‘burning summer heat’, and for this reason some were taken to the Amherst and Halifax camps in Nova Scotia.104 In many camps, social class determined the quality and space of accommodation since inmates were separated into first- and second-class compounds. And although most camps brimmed with cultural life, this was not the case everywhere, especially in smaller camps holding inmates with less varied social backgrounds. The fifty-eight internees on tiny Ports Island, for example, were made up almost entirely of seamen. The Swiss inspectors stated that ‘some individuals exercised a little music’, but there existed ‘neither sport nor other clubs for the purpose of entertainment among the prisoners. The people entertain themselves with gardening and keep poultry and rabbits’.105 The global perspective has shown that it proves difficult to generalise the experience of internment in the Empire. At the same time, however, this wide perspective allows for a number of observations which cannot necessarily be drawn from approaches which only focus on one camp or overseas territory. Overall, internment was a humane experience. Unlike in the Boer War, little mistreatment took place. Conditions were as good as they could be in a situation where the detention of tens of thousands of ‘enemy aliens’ had to be organised – on top of having a war to fight. Despite complex challenges to governmental and administrative departments, transport and internment across countries and oceans was conducted in a relatively coordinated fashion. But this does not change the injustice experienced by tens of thousands of Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Taken away

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from their wives and families, incarcerated in camps which, in some cases, lay thousands of miles away from the homes they had established abroad, they felt that they had lost control of their existence. To stabilise their lives they managed to create the type of prison camp societies suggested by Ketchum in Ruhleben, with patterns of social activity and creativity replicating themselves in camps throughout the world, whether run by the British or by the other interning empires. Internment in the Empire was a truly global affair. Although no single order emerged at any time from the Colonial or Foreign Office in London calling for the internment of all Germans throughout the imperial domains, the dominions were quick to follow London’s lead and issue their own internment orders. Arrest on the high seas and in ports, as well as prisoner transport between different parts of the Empire point to a centrally coordinated policy which spanned the world. As the war dragged on and the numbers of internees increased following the sinking of the Lusitania, the need to create more long-term camps meant that temporary establishments disappeared, resulting in the emergence of hubs in Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australasia and India. The infrastructure of the Empire facilitated the transport and housing of military troops across continents and oceans. The chapter has shown that this infrastructure was also conveniently used to do the same to approximately 50,000 civilian ‘enemy aliens’. Ethnic diaspora communities which had grown over decades of German mass emigration disintegrated. The conflict had both immediate and long-lasting repercussions on this diaspora group. This finding supports, and indeed broadens the concept of ‘total war’106 by putting the lens on global and civilian aspects, which were far more than a sideshow of the Great War.

Notes 1 Hew Strachan, The First World War (London, 2005); John Horne (ed.), A Companion to World War I (Malden, MA, 2010); Daniel Marc Segesser, Der Erste Weltkrieg in globaler Perspektive (Wiesbaden, 2010); and Santanu Das, Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict: Colonials, Neutrals and Belligerents During the First World War, www.cegcproject.eu (accessed 27/07/2017). 2 Adrian Gregory, ‘Britain and Ireland’, in Horne (ed.), Companion, pp. 403–17 (here p. 403). 3 Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (eds.), Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Oxford, 2014). 4 Tammy M. Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1914–1918 (New York, NY, 2010); and Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War (London, 2014). 5 Also see Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront Experience in Australia, 1914–1920 (St Lucia, Queensland, 1989); Andrew Francis, ‘To be Truly British We Must Be Anti-German’: New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War Experience, 1914–1919 (Bern, 2012); Panikos Panayi, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees During the First World War (Manchester, 2012); and Stefan Manz and Tilman Dedering, ‘“Enemy Aliens” in Wartime: Civilian Internment in South Africa During World War I’, South African Historical Journal, 68.4 (2016), pp. 536–56.

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6 Wilhelm Kröpke, Meine Flucht aus englischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1916: Von Afrika über England nach Deutschland zur Flandern-Front (Flensburg, 1937), p. 20. 7 Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, p. 44. 8 Report ‘Repatriation Overseas’, filed 5 June 1918, in The National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth TNA) FO 383/297. 9 See ‘Die Zivil- und Kolonialgefangenen’, in Deutscher Reichstag (ed.), Das Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses. 1919–1928. Reihe 3: Völkerrecht im Weltkrieg, Bd. III, 2. Teil (Berlin, 1927), pp. 719–855 (here pp. 820–2). 10 Aidan Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876–1903 (Berkeley, CA, 2017). 11 See also Matthew Stibbe, ‘Ein globales Phänomen: Zivilinternierung im Ersten Weltkrieg in transnationaler und internationaler Dimension’, in Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel (eds.), Lager vor Auschwitz: Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2013), pp. 158–76. 12 While Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman citizens faced incarceration within the Empire, both imperial policy and public opinion focused especially upon the Germans, who had become a global minority by the First World War. See John R. Davis, Stefan Manz and Margrit Schulte Beerbuhl (eds.), Transnational Networks: German Migrants in the British Empire, 1670–1914 (Leiden, 2012); Stefan Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora: The “Greater German Empire”, 1871–1914 (Abingdon, 2014); and Panikos Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities During the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham, 2014). 13 War Committee, Prisoners of War, Confidential Minute by Lord Robert Cecil, 24 October 1916, in TNA FO 383/241. 14 Lewis Harcourt, Circular Confidential, 30 November 1914, in TNA FO 383/239. 15 Lewis Harcourt, Circular Confidential, 5 February 1915, in TNA FO 383/239. 16 Report Wrischek, 27 July 1916, in Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg (Federal Military Archive, henceforth BA-MA) RM3/5386. 17 Behandlung der auf Gibraltar (Spanien) internierten Kriegsgefangenen, 21 March 1915, in BA-MA RM3/5373. 18 Gunther Plüschow, My Escape From Donington Hall (London, 1922), pp. 136–83. 19 Letter From Hassermann, 1 December 1914, in BA-MA RM3/5371. 20 Kaiserlich Deutsches Generalkonsulat Genua, 22 January 1915, in BA-MA RM3/ 5372. 21 Gesuch der von neutralen Schiffen genommenen Gefangenen des Lagers IV, Knockaloe, to Auswärtiges Amt, Abteilung Kriegsgefangene Berlin, 16 August 1917, in Bundesarchiv Berlin (henceforth BArch), R901/83967. 22 American Consulate, Tahiti, Society Islands to Secretary of State, Washington, 15 December 1914, in BA-MA, RM3/5371. This episode appears to have involved the British operating in a French possession. 23 Martin Heinrich, ‘Ein Internierter. Tagebuchblätter von Paul Helbig, 1914–1919’, in BA-MA MSG200/1211, p. 3. 24 Fischer, Enemy Aliens, p. 77. 25 Secret Operations, Egypt to War Office, 10 May 1918, in TNA FO 383/439. 26 Andrew J. McConnico, American Consul Trinidad to Secretary of State, Washington, DC, 17 July 1915, in BArch, R901/83829. 27 Daniel Steinbach, ‘Challenging European Colonial Supremacy: The Internment of “Enemy Aliens” in German East Africa During the First World War’, in James E. Kitchen et al. (eds.), Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War (Newcastle, 2011), pp. 153–76; and Mahon Murphy, Colonial Captivity During the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914–1919 (Cambridge, 2017). 28 Manz and Dedering, ‘Enemy Aliens’.

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29 List of Germans Interned in Rabaul; and List of Persons Sent From New Guinea to Australia, in TNA FO 383/434 [n.d.]. 30 Correspondence Respecting Operations Against German Possessions in the Western Pacific (London, 1915); Hermann Joseph Hiery, The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I (Honolulu, HI, 1995); and Report on the Island of Nauru [n.d.], in TNA FO 383/434. 31 American Consulate-General, Singapore, to Secretary of State, 7 April 1915, in BArch, R901/83829. 32 Fischer, Enemy Aliens, pp. 139–40; and Überführung der in Ceylon internierten Zivilgefangenen nach Australien, 8 August 1916, in BArch, R901/83019. 33 Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, pp. 78–122. 34 American Consulate Report on ‘Treatment of Prisoners Interned at Gibraltar’, 25 March 1915, in BArch, R901/83070. 35 Manz and Dedering, ‘Enemy Aliens’. 36 Interner Bericht, 20 March 1915, in BA R67/255; ‘Ceylon’, BArch, R67/1329; and Bericht über die Ceylonlager Ragama und Diyatalawa, 2 August 1916, in BArch, R901/83019. 37 Inspektion des Gefangenenlagers zu Hongkong auf Ansuchen der Englischen Regierung, 15 December 1914, in BArch, R67/824; Inspection of Camp for German and Austrian Prisoners at War at Hongkong, 28 August 1915, in BArch, R901/83830; and Bericht über das Internierungslager bei Hunghon (Hong Kong), in BA-MA/ MSG200/1585. 38 Report on Civil Camp at Tenom, British North Borneo, 25/26 November 1915, in TNA FO 383/180. 39 Interner Bericht 16, Tasmanien, 20 March 1915, in BArch, R67/1641; and Report by American Consul on Tasmania, 14 September 1915, in BArch, R901/83830. 40 Interner Bericht 37, Rottnest Island, 25 August 1915, BArch, R67/1367; and Fischer, Enemy Aliens, pp. 188–94. 41 Fischer, Enemy Aliens, p. 194. 42 Isabel V. Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War (Ithaca, NY, 2014), p. 132; and Manz and Dedering, ‘Enemy Aliens’. 43 Swiss Consular Report on Ahmednagar, 23 April 1917, in National Archives of India (henceforth NAI), Home/Police/April1918/180. 44 www.stobscamp.org (accessed 27/07/2017) 45 Danish Consular Report on Malta, 26 April 1918, in BArch, R901/83109; and Bericht über Zivil- und Kriegsgefangenenlager in Verdala, 1 August 1915, in BArch, R901/ 83001/a, TNA FO 383/239. 46 Manz and Dedering, ‘Enemy Aliens’. 47 Inspection Report American Consulate-General, Ottawa, 17 March 1916, in TNA FO 383/239. 48 www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/enemyathome/holsworthy-internmentcamp/index.html (accessed 27/07/2017). 49 American Consular Report on Visit to German Concentration Camp, Liverpool, New South Wales, 13 August 1915, in BArch, R901/83830; American Consular Report on Visit to German Concentration Camp, Liverpool, New South Wales, 20 May 1916, in TNA FO 383/239; Camp President and Camp Secretary, German Concentration Camp, Liverpool, N.S.W., to Australian Minister of Defence, 20 July 1916, in TNA FO 383/240; Report of Visit to German Concentration Camp, by Swiss and Danish Consuls, 17 February 1919, in TNA FO 383/536; and Fischer, Enemy Aliens, pp. 199–228. 50 Declan O’Connor, ‘Das Kriegsgefangenenlager/The Prisoner of War Camp Oldcastle, Co. Meath, 1914–1918’, Die Harfe, 33.130 (2015), pp. 38–41. 51 Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, p. 92.

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52 Report E. Verne Richardson, American Consul at Moncton, N.B., 2 October 1916, in TNA FO 383/240. 53 Red Cross Hamburg to German Foreign Office, Reports and Letters on Amherst, 18 June 1915, 11 August 1915, 10 September 1915, 20 September 1915, 16 October 1915, all in BArch, R901/83090, R901/83088 and R901/83089. 54 See the contribution of Sandra Barkhoff to the present volume. 55 Bericht der Schweizer Kommission, Inspektion des Kriegsgefangenenlagers auf Ports Island, Bermuda, 1., 3., 5. and 8. January 1918, and Report American Consul, Hamilton Bermuda, 12 July 1916, both in BArch, R901/83031. 56 Fischer, Enemy Aliens, p. 247. 57 American Consular Report on Trial Bay, 4 June 1916, in TNA FO 383/239. 58 Report of Visit of Inspection of the German Detention Barracks at Trial Bay, 17 June 1917, in BArch, R67/1646. 59 Report American Consul, Barbados, 14 August 1916, in TNA FO 383/240. 60 Governor of Barbados to Walter H. Long, M.P., 28 January 1917, in TNA CO 28/ 291/48; ‘Zur Lage der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen auf Barbados’, Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 March 1916, 61 John Davidson Ketchum, Ruhleben: A Prison Camp Society (Toronto, 1965), pp. 153–4. 62 According to J. C. Bird, Control of Enemy Alien Civilians in Great Britain, 1914– 1918 (London, 1986), p. 280, this stemmed from the Hague Convention of 1907. However, while Article 6 of the Annex mentions the fact that ‘The State may utilize the labour of prisoners of war according to their rank and aptitude, officers excepted’, it makes no mention of the civilian internees, perhaps because they were not recognised as a distinct group before 1914 See https://ihl-databases.icrc. org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/0/1d1726425f6955aec125641e0038bfd6, Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and Its Annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907. 63 Paul Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still: My Internment in England (London, 1931), p. 91. 64 See Chapter 7, this volume. 65 Manz and Dedering, ‘Enemy Aliens’. 66 Gilly Carr and Harold Mytum, ‘The Importance of Creativity Behind Barbed Wire: Setting a Research Agenda’, in Carr and Mytum (eds.), Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire (Abingdon, 2012), pp. 1–15 (here p. 1). 67 See, for example, Verdala Camp Nachrichten, Weihnachts-Nummer 1915, in BArch, R901/83107; interview with Stefan Manz in BBC History Magazine, Christmas Edition December 2014, pp. 9–10. 68 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora. 69 Feier des Geburtstages Sr. Majetät Kaiser Wilhelm II. im Kriegsgefangenen Lager Tanglin Barracks, Singapore, 27 January 1915, in BA-MA/MSG200/2067. 70 Festordnung zur Geburtstagsfeier S. M. König Wilhelm II. von Württemberg, 25 February 1915, in BArch, R67/1803. 71 Alon Rachamimov, ‘The Disruptive Comforts of Drag. (Trans) Gender Performances Among Prisoners of War in Russia, 1914–1920’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), pp. 362–82; and Jennifer Kewley Draskau, ‘Drag Performance and Its Effects in Great War Internment Camps on the Isle of Man’, Proceedings of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 12 (April 2007–March 2009), pp. 187–204. 72 Hermann Pörzgen, Theater ohne Frau: Das Bühnenleben der kriegsgefangenen Deutschen 1914–1920 (Königsberg, 1933), p. 166. 73 DTL Programm, in BA-MA/MSG200/1084. 74 Jutta Raab Hansen, ‘Die Bedeutung der Musik für 26000 internierte Zivilisten während des Ersten Weltkrieges auf der Isle of Man’, in Richard Dove (ed.),

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75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

39

‘Totally un-English?’: Britain’s Internment of ‘Enemy Aliens’ in Two World Wars (Amsterdam, 2005), pp. 63–81. Hans Weiland and Leopold Kern (eds.), In Feindeshand: Die Gefangenschaft im Weltkriege in Einzeldarstellungen, Vol. 2 (Vienna, 1931), p. 112. Sinfonie Konzert des Streichorchesters, Malta, in BArch, R67/1803. Verdala ‘Camp Nachrichten’, 28 March 1915, in BA-MA/MSG200/2138. Programm des Allgemeinen Sportfestes, Weihnachten 1917, Deutsches Kriegsgefangenenlager zu Liverpool, in BA-MA/MSG200/1084. Inspection Report American Consul, 8 March 1916, in TNA FO 383/239. Rainer Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt. Deutsche, englische und französische Kriegsgefangenen-Zeitungen im Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen, 2006), pp. 183–294 and 318–20; and Jennifer Kewley Draskau, ‘Relocating the Heimat: Great War Internment Literature From the Isle of Man’, German Studies Review, 32 (2009), pp. 83–106. See the contribution of Bohdan Kordan below. Grant of allowance to the wives and children of prisoners of war interned at Ahmednagar, in NAI Home/PoliticalA/September1914/394–397. Richard B. Speed III, Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (New York, NY, 1990), pp. 19–25. A. L. Vischer, Barbed Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War (London, 1919), p. 53. Rudolf Rocker, ‘Alexandra Palace Internment Camp in the First World War’, British Library Typescript, p. 4. Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, p. 85. Rocker, Alexandra Palace, p. 4. Death Certificate of Karl Hibbert, in BArch, R67/909. Suicide Farewell Letter Walter Gellhorn to Capt. C. B. Dobell, 11 July 1916, in TNA FO 383/293. See, for example, the following Prisoners of War Information Bureau Death Certificates: Willi Kromm (Holsworthy) and Hans Wagener (Ahmednagar), in BArch, R67/909; Heinrich Janzen (Malta), in BArch, R67/1039; August Monthy (Holsworthy), in BArch, R67/1040; and Paul Garth, Maximilian Wiedemann, Georg Carl Krafft, Henry Naserowsky (all Holsworthy) and Franz Xaver Dietrich (Ahmednagar), in BArch, R67/1041. Details of the circumstances of his death can be found in TNA FO 383/440. Downing Street to Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 13 May 1915, in TNA FO 383/62; Interner Bericht, Singapore, 12 April 1915, in BArch, R67/1614; and Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 80. Hermann Röseler, ‘Bilder aus englischer Gefangenschaft im deutsch-ostafrikanischen Kolonialgebiet, in Ägypten und in England’, in Weiland and Kern (eds.), In Feindeshand, Vol. 2, pp. 105–9 (here p. 108). Disturbance at the Aliens Detention Camp at Douglas on Thursday November 19th, 1914: Inquiry by the Coroner of Inquests on Friday, November 20th, and Friday, November 27th, 1914 (Douglas, 1914). Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to United States Ambassador, 3 March 1916, in TNA FO 383/184. Matthew Stibbe, British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914– 18 (Manchester, 2008), pp. 3–4; and Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, pp. 231–3. Tägliche Rundschau, 21, 22, 23 February 1916. See, for example, ‘Wie England einen deutschen Gouverneur behandelt’, Neue Preussische Zeitung, 23 July 1915; ‘Die Behandlung der Samoanischen Deutschen’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 22 August 1916. Königliches Amtsgericht Berlin Mitte, 2 July 1915, in BArch, R901/83012.

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100 Tägliche Rundschau, 21, 22, 23 February 1916. 101 Letter to the American Consul-General in Charge of the Interests of German Subjects, Singapore, 27 March 1915, in BArch, R901/83010. 102 American Vice-Consul, Singapore, to W. Woelber, 25 March 1915, in BArch, R901/ 83007. 103 Letter Kurt Zöller, 22 May 1917, in BArch, R67/1631. 104 Internal Government Reports, 9 March 1915, 24 April 1915, 11 September 1915, 13 November 1915, in BArch, R67/1598. 105 Report Swiss Commission, January 1918, in BArch, R901/83031. 106 Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1919 (Cambridge, 2000).

3

Adding colour to the silhouettes The internment and treatment of foreign civilians in Germany during the First World War Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel*

The internment of civilians during the First World War is now an established field of research. However, many aspects and details of this global phenomenon are still more or less unexplored. Our knowledge of the internment of enemy civilians in First World War Germany is rather selective and very much determined by the case of the British internees held at the Ruhleben camp near Berlin. Ruhleben offers a plethora of sources and is probably the best documented and best researched internment camp of the First World War.1 Consequently, our picture of what internment meant to foreign civilians in Germany is somewhat distorted and unbalanced. As Matthew Stibbe has pointed out, until the 1990s, it was widely assumed that First World War ‘civilian captivity was confined to men of military age caught on enemy territory at the outbreak of hostilities and held as potential combatants’.2 Since then, other, hitherto forgotten civilian victims of internment have come into view, exposing many new dimensions of wartime detention. Today, the broad contours of internment are clear, but many details are still vague. In our article, we will try to add colour to some of these silhouettes. Firstly, we will take a closer look at the numbers of internees and the places of confinement. Secondly, we will examine internment practices after 1914. Thirdly, the example of the internment camp at Traunstein in Upper Bavaria will reveal a snapshot of the complexities and inconsistencies of internment in Germany during the First World War. Finally, and in much more detail, the case of the Belgian forced labourers will be presented because (forced) labour played a far more important role in the experience of civilian internment than hitherto acknowledged. The basic argument we put forward is that the practices of internment in Germany were much more multifaceted and inconsistent than previously assumed.

The myriad faces of internment: numbers and places Internment, defined as a custodial deprivation of liberty without trial,3 has a long pre-history dating back to the late eighteenth century. But it only became a mass phenomenon during the First World War and has remained an accompanying element of total war ever since. Up to 800,000 enemy aliens were interned by the belligerent powers in Europe, together with 50,000 to 100,000 in other parts of the world.4 By the end of 1915, both Britain and France held approximately

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Table 3.1 Number of civilian internees held in Germany at particular census dates during the war Date

Civilian Internees in Absolute Numbers

Civilian Internees as a Percentage of All POWs in Germany

10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

48,513 68,694 73,934 76,988 84,457 87,342 90,323 98,621 98,866 104,501 111,879

5.41% 6.17% 5.57% 5.46% 4.92% 4.84% 4.89% 5.24% 5.18% 4.54% 4.43%

June 1915 August 1915 September 1915 October 1915 July 1916 October 1916 January 1917 April 1917 June 1917 May 1918 October 1918

Source: Wilhelm Doegen, Kriegsgefangene Völker. Bd. 1: Der Kriegsgefangenen Haltung und Schicksal in Deutschland, im Auftrage des Reichswehr-Ministeriums (Berlin, 1919), p. 29.

45,000 German and Austrian-Hungarian nationals. In both countries provisions had been made prior to 1914 to deal with alien nationals in case of war. In August 1914, Germany had much lower numbers of enemy nationals within its borders, a maximum of 15,000.5 However, the total number of civilians interned in Germany during the war was more than twice the number interned in Britain and France. By 1915, the vast majority of them were deportees from German-occupied territories rather than ‘enemy aliens’ in the classical sense. The absolute figures rose from 48,513 in June 1915 to 111,879 in October 1918.6 Nonetheless, set in relation to the number of military prisoners of war held in German custody, no significant rise or decline could be noticed in the first three years of the war. During this period, civilian internees made up between 4.8 per cent and 6.2 per cent of the total number of POWs, as indicated in Table 3.1. It was only in the final stage of the war that the relative number of civilian internees began to decline significantly, at least in the official figures. The fact that the number of interned civilians by and large kept pace with the steadily increasing number of military prisoners of war indicates that the range of civilians interned in Germany was considerably widened in the course of the conflict. During the first months of the war alien civilians were detained in police stations, jails, ships moored in a harbour or in the nearest prisoner of war camp. The authorities often had difficulties in finding appropriate accommodation facilities for enemy alien nationals. It was not until the end of 1914 that the major internment camps for civilians, namely Ruhleben and Holzminden, were operational. The ten sites with the largest civilian internee population in October 1918 are indicated in Table 3.2. Ruhleben was exceptional in that it was exclusively reserved for civilian prisoners of British nationality. In all other camps, the civilians had to share their

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Table 3.2 Sites in Germany with the largest civilian internee population on 10 October 1918 Camp

Numbers of Interned Civilians on 10 October 1918

Holzminden Senne Ruhleben Havelberg Rastatt Limburg/Lahn Frankfurt/Oder Traunstein Hameln Wünsdorf

4,240 2,462 2,318 1,820 1,223 1,174 634 623 367 342

Source: Wilhelm Doegen, Kriegsgefangene Völker. Bd. 1: Der Kriegsgefangenen Haltung und Schicksal in Deutschland, im Auftrage des Reichswehr-Ministeriums (Berlin, 1919), Table E, pp. 12–19.

involuntary homes with military prisoners of war. A total of 2,462 civilians lived among 73,000 military prisoners of war in Senne camp, where they made up 3.37 per cent of the total population. In Limburg/Lahn, 1,174 civilians shared the fate of 72,000 military prisoners of war, so that they accounted for only 1.63 per cent of the inmates. In most of the other prisoner of war camps the civilians formed an even smaller minority. In Kassel-Niederzwehren only 119 civilians (i.e. 0.33%) lived amidst 36,105 military prisoners of war. In Minden/Westphalia it was a mere eight civilians (0.032%) compared with 25,232 military prisoners of war. Finally, 101 civilians were interned in the ‘Zuchthaus an der Fulda’7 in Kassel, built in 1720. It is a rare example of a camp that was both under civilian control (in this case through the Prussian Ministry of the Interior) and under military control (the Deputy Commanding General of the XI Army Corps). As a rule, the civilians were held alongside military prisoners of ‘other rank’ (i.e. in so-called Mannschaftslager). The only officers’ camp that contained a considerable number of civilians was Schloß Celle. According to Doegen, it was specifically reserved for 124 ‘civilian prisoners of higher social position’ (Zivilgefangene höherer Lebensstellung) and was described as a camp with ‘excellent’ living conditions by The Times History of the War in 1916.8 It seems to be a telling illustration of the rigidity of the class and military order of that time, and the disdain for civilians, that they were usually not granted the ‘privilege’ of internment in an officers’ camp. Little information is available about some camps, such as Hassenberg near Coburg (until 1920 in Thuringia, since then in Bavaria) beyond the bare fact that they existed at all.9 Ruhleben became in effect a ‘showpiece’ camp because it was ‘very much in the public limelight’.10 Other places of incarceration, like Havelberg, were notorious for their dire living conditions. One Indian internee, for example, noted in his memoirs in the spring of 1919 that ‘[w]e Indians suffered very much . . . at

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Havelberg’.11 Another Indian captive who ‘was against the Germans’12 was sent to Havelberg to serve out a two-month prison sentence. Later he was transferred to Holzminden camp for his refusal to work.13 Deportation to either camp served as a punishment for those internees in Ruhleben who were identified as notorious troublemakers by the German authorities.14 But Holzminden was probably even more infamous for the internment of 300 civilians in November 1916 and another 600 in January 1918 from occupied Northern France, many of whom belonged to the local elites and were in effect held as hostages.15 After the war, some of these deportees successfully claimed the ‘Medaille de la Reconnaissance française’ to ensure public recognition of their suffering.16 Besides that, Holzminden – and not Ruhleben, as one might expect – served as an internment site for British merchant seamen captured at sea by German vessels. One case in point here is the crew of the New Zealand Shipping Company’s SS Otaki that was sunk by the German armed merchant cruiser SMS Moewe on 10 March 1917.17

Policies of internment: the great disorder In contrast to France, no forward planning concerning the internment of enemy alien nationals in case of war had taken place.18 Consequently, German policy was somewhat improvised and inconsistent during the early weeks of the conflict. National, class and race biases played an important role from the outset. Although there was no grace period permitting civilians to leave the country via one of its neutral neighbours (namely the Netherlands, Denmark or Switzerland), some alien enemies in Germany were only subject to restrictions concerning their freedom of movement. They had to report regularly to a police station and were at times exposed to hostile attitudes from the German population. Besides that, they ‘were left largely unhindered to go about their business’.19 In fact, many British nationals described this phase of their detention as a sort of ‘enforced holiday’.20 Russian civilians stranded in Germany attracted much more attention from the authorities and the home front population. The ‘spy fever’ that spread like an epidemic throughout the German Empire in August 1914 affected all foreign nationals, but above those who came from the East.21 They were seen as particularly dangerous and ‘undesirable elements’. In the early days of the war the office of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden (Aid Society of German Jews) in Berlin, whose task until then had been the management of Jewish migration from Russia to America, served as the contact point for stranded Russian nationals of all denominations. Despite initial reservations on the part of the military authorities, Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg issued an executive order that assigned the Hilfsverein as the central department for organising support and to finally ensure the exchange of all Russians deemed ‘harmless’. In late September 1914, the Hilfsverein’s General Secretary, Bernhard Kahn, was granted permission to organise the return of Russian citizens. He faced serious opposition from some quarters, although the Deputy General Staff in Berlin

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fully supported the exchange of Russian civilians. The Deputy Commanding General of the II Army Corps, based in Stettin, for instance, felt otherwise and forbade trains carrying Russian expatriates to pass through his district. Despite such obstacles Kahn managed to empty what until then had been known as the ‘Russenlager Ruhleben’ just in time so that from 6 November 1914 it was ready to host the 4,000 or so British civilians arrested on that day. The humanitarian intervention in favour of the Russian citizens in Germany was facilitated by Kahn’s diplomatic missions to Sweden and the Netherlands and kept the Hilfsverein busy until well into 1915.22 As this episode demonstrates the policy towards alien civilians did not follow any ‘masterplan’ but underwent constant transformations during the war. One decisive factor was Germany’s insatiable hunger for labour. This can be illustrated by the treatment of Italian nationals living in Germany in the summer of 1914. Given its geographical position, Bavaria was one of the major transit routes for those Italians trying to get home. During the first week of hostilities, 17,000 Italians applied to leave Germany. After appropriate transit arrangements had been reached between Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, 12,500 Italians made their way home, mainly via Basel, Lindau and Bregenz. In the following months, as the situation calmed down, thousands of Italians even returned to Germany. Since their labour was badly needed in Germany, they were offered good wages and working conditions. Negotiations soon began between the German and Italian governments. When Italy finally declared war on Germany in August 1916 the remaining Italians were mostly left in freedom; their labour was too important for the German war economy to be wasted in an internment camp.23 The number of Italian residents in Germany in 1914 made them an important factor in the calculations of the military, economic and political authorities. Other nationalities, like the Japanese, only counted in small numbers. At the outbreak of war, 600 of them lived in the German Empire.24 By the time Japan declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914, most of them had left country. Now that diplomatic relations had been broken, the local authorities were uncertain about how to treat those who remained in Germany. The sixty to seventy Japanese men of military age, and some others believed to be a threat to national security, were sent to Senne, Frankfurt-am-Main and Ruhleben, where they were temporarily accommodated in separate barracks. After Japan released its interned German subjects, Germany also set free the Japanese prisoners in late September, but it was not until March 1915 that all the Japanese nationals who wished to leave Germany had been able to. The handful who remained in the country did so entirely voluntarily. The civilian internees in Germany from South Asia totalled around 860 people, the largest group consisting of Indians. They were mostly, but not exclusively, interned in Havelberg. Some, however, were transferred to Ruhleben, Wittenberg, Langensalza, Parchim, Güstrow, Goldap and other camps.25 Clearly, there had never been an established or consistent policy to concentrate all alien nationals in designated civilian internment camps (except in the case of the British at

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Ruhleben) or even in the ‘civilian sections’ of selected prisoner of war camps (like Holzminden, Rastatt and so on). Rather, German policy was reactive and in many cases dependent on prior measures taken by enemy countries. Another point that needs further research is contacts and encounters between enemy alien civilians and the German population. It is no easy task to capture the attitude of the ordinary German population towards enemy nationals. Sexual relationships between Germans and alien internees, real or alleged, formed the centre of the German authorities’ concern. One woman, for example, who had made the acquaintance of a French civilian prisoner in a local pub, was sentenced to two weeks’ imprisonment even though that relationship ‘never moved beyond a casual pub acquaintance’.26 Rumours were afloat depicting the internees’ Elysian lifestyle; they were allegedly even ‘proffered champagne’.27 The military authorities repeatedly admonished the population not to ‘molest them, not to be pushy and not to sneer at them’. Additionally, it was clarified that the majority of the internees were ‘decent folks who were incarcerated for formal reasons only’. Despite such official pronouncements, foreign civilians repeatedly became the target of denunciations. In August 1914, an anonymous writer communicated to a newspaper the startling news ‘that the schooling and upbringing of the Bavarian princes is still entrusted to foreigners, English subjects’.28 In February 1915, a retired civil servant demanded the confiscation of alien property and pointed out the names of several English individuals who owned ‘substantial assets’ in the municipalities of Garmisch and Partenkirchen.29 But not all Germans were affected by xenophobia. As previously mentioned, many Russian citizens were taken into ‘protective custody’ immediately after the outbreak of war. But some professors at the University of Göttingen acted as guarantors for their students from Tsarist Russia and thereby made their release possible. The right to leave Germany was denied to them throughout the war, but they were not sent to an internment camp either.30 In some cases employers filed petitions on behalf of their foreign employees to prevent their detention or to achieve their release from captivity. The main argument was that their employees owed their alien citizenship to chance only; to all intents and purposes, their employers claimed, they were ‘good Germans’. Another frequently used argument was that the aliens contributed significantly to Germany’s war effort.31 In most cases, however, the German authorities seemed to respond negatively to such petitions.32 British and French nationals in particular found it difficult, if not impossible, to secure their release by such means.

Internment in a rural setting: the case of Traunstein The internment camp at Traunstein displays the multifaceted reality of internment in First World War Germany. Traunstein is a small town in Upper Bavaria approximately seventy miles south-east of Munich. For centuries, its inhabitants had made a living from the salt industry, but in 1914, these glorious times lay in the past.33 The salt works in Traunstein-Au had been shut down in 1912 but

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attracted the attention of the Bavarian authorities after the war had broken out. In September 1914, the disused building was prepared to host 250 ‘civilian prisoners of war’ (bürgerliche Kriegsgefangene) who had been rounded up in Bavaria during the early weeks of the conflict. They were transferred from Oberhaus gaol in Passau and from the barracks in Lagerlechfeld near Augsburg. Traunstein was initially conceived as a temporary solution, but it proved to be permanent. As a matter of fact, it remained the only internment camp in Bavaria that hosted large numbers of civilians throughout the war. The majority of ‘enemy aliens’ in southern Bavaria, namely 2,000 out of 3,000, remained in Germany voluntarily, although they had been given the opportunity to leave the country via Switzerland in the first weeks of the war. For the British and French internees, Traunstein turned out to be a short-lived experience since they were transferred to Ruhleben and Holzminden respectively in November and December 1914. However, even after this twelve British and sixty French internees remained in Traunstein for unknown reasons (the official records remain silent on that point). On Armistice Day 1918, the 340 civilians still held at Traunstein included 191 Serbs, eighty Poles, thirty-one Belgians, thirty-one Italians, two stateless ‘gypsies’ and one American, Argentinian and Finnish citizen, respectively. Finally, there was one internee from the neutral Netherlands.34 It is also noteworthy that Traunstein not only harboured ‘external enemies’, but a number of ‘internal enemies’, mostly German and Austrian citizens accused of sabotaging the war effort. The majority of them were civilians from AlsaceLorraine who were detained ‘for political reasons’.35 Whatever the exact reasons for their detention might have been, it is evident that the boundaries between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ enemies became blurred during the war. The camps were not only used for the internment of those clearly identified as ‘enemy aliens’, but also to lock away other ‘suspects’ of any kind. Internment camps are also places where history condenses into space, as the example of Traunstein clearly illustrates. One of the involuntary inhabitants of Traunstein was the left-wing poet and writer Erich Mühsam, who would later become one of the leading figures in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet republic in 1919. In March 1918, Mühsam was banished from Munich by the acting military authorities and forced to take up residence in Traunstein. In his own words: ‘I was detained in Traunstein because I refused to serve the fatherland as a medical orderly. I stayed there until the “Great Time” ended in defeat and collapse’.36 Although Mühsam was not compelled to live inside the internment camp he had to report in person twice a day to the camp commander. That was none other than Theodor von der Pfordten, later an early supporter of Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP who became one of the Nazi martyrs after he was shot by the Bavarian police during the ill-fated ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ on 9 November 1923. Hitler himself served two months as a camp guard in Traunstein from December 1918 to January 1919. But by that time the camp had been by and large cleared of its civilian internees; its inmates were almost exclusively Russian prisoners of war. Mühsam’s second encounter with a camp ended

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much more dramatically: he was tortured and murdered by the SA guards at Oranienburg concentration camp near Berlin in February 1934.

The forced deportation of Belgian workers We can now move on to the more exceptional case of occupied Belgian civilians deported against their will to Germany and the fighting zones of Belgium and Northern France following the introduction of forced labour in the autumn of 1916. Compelling foreign civilians to work and interning them for this purpose alone marked a new turning point in the treatment of enemy civilians during the First World War. Before then there had admittedly been many instances where civilian prisoners held by both sides had agreed to work on a more or less voluntary basis. There were also a number of ‘grey areas’ between voluntary and forced labour, especially when it came to the many thousands of civilian workers recruited in China and in French and British colonial possessions and brought to Europe to support the allied war effort on the western front. However, in no other country was forced labour so clearly and blatantly established as in Germany, especially in the years 1916 to 1918.37 Prior to 1914, international conventions concerning forced labour and deportation remained vague. Nevertheless, there was a more or less binding set of principles setting out the rights and responsibilities of occupiers and occupied populations. The Hague Convention of 1899 (revised in 1907), which remained the key document for conduct according to international law during the First World War, did not explicitly prohibit the use of forced labour. Rather, it was permissible under certain circumstances, particularly where the interests of occupier and occupied were deemed to be jointly served by the maintenance of public services and amenities. The only practice that was expressly prohibited was the recruitment of civilians in occupied territories for military and auxiliary service or for tasks that directly served the occupiers’ military interests. It was also prohibited for the occupying power to purposefully cause unemployment. By contrast, rank-and-file prisoners of war could be forced to work, and this was an undisputed principle of international law. Indeed, every state involved in the war used POW labour. Within strict boundaries, occupied civilians could also be ordered to fulfil so-called public relief works that directly serve the common good.38 After the occupation of Belgium in August 1914, the German Reich quickly established administrative structures to govern the occupied territory. On 2 September, the Generalgouvernement (Government-General of Belgium) was proclaimed, with Brussels as its capital. But, the Government-General, headed by a German Governor-General, always a military person in a higher generalship, did not encompass all of Belgium. East and West Flanders and other smaller regions close to the front-line formed the so-called Operations- und Etappengebiet, the operational area covered by the frontline and the army staging areas immediately behind it. Whereas the Governor-General was in charge of the military and civilian administration in the Government-General, the military

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authorities alone – the German supreme military command (the so-called Oberste Heeresleitung or OHL) and their subsidiary authorities – governed the front and staging areas behind it. They were responsible for all economic and socio-political issues in their jurisdiction, including labour issues. With the occupation of the country, finding a solution to the labour and unemployment problem in Belgium soon became a central task of German policy in the General-Government. While the food issue, closely related to unemployment, could be more or less satisfactorily resolved with the help of the US Commission for Relief in Belgium and the Belgian Comité National, the civil administration failed to reduce the continually high unemployment rate, which already directly affected 500,000 people soon after the invasion.39 Germany’s objective was the recruitment of as much manpower as possible for the German war economy and for the German army’s own interests. For the entire duration of the war, the General-Government was considered to be an especially important reservoir of manpower due to the high unemployment there. The reason for this was very simple: Already by the autumn of 1914, the German war economy was marked by an acute manpower shortage. Conscription into the army and the transition to heavy arms production created a continuous need for labour. The use of prisoners of war and the hiring of more youths and women in Germany alone could not compensate the shortage. Thus, the responsible departments in the Prussian War Ministry, but also war industry itself, focused increasingly on the occupied territories and their recruitment potential. Apart from prisoners of war captured on the battlefield, who were brought to Germany and dispatched as agricultural and mining workers, Russian-Polish seasonal workers who happened to be in Germany when the war broke out were the first victims of the forced labour system established on the home front. Whereas in peacetime they were ordered to leave Germany when their work contracts expired, in 1914 they were prohibited from returning home at the end of the season. They also were forbidden to change jobs or relocate to another part of Germany without first securing official permission. As far as their legal status was concerned, they were deemed to be ‘freie feindliche Ausländer’ – in other words, ‘free’ enemy aliens. That means de jure that they were free to move about, but only within the bounds of a certain, clearly defined district and subject to the requirement to register at regular intervals with the local police authorities. In practice, however, those Polish labourers who worked together in larger groups, and especially those who lived in barrack-style camps, were more limited in their freedom of movement. The working and living conditions of the approximately 500,000 Russian–Polish workers were generally very bad. As a rule, they were treated worse than their Belgian counterparts. Within the hierarchy of foreign workers, labourers from the East occupied the lowest rank.40 For other groups of foreign civilian workers or ‘enemy aliens’ the situation could be different. Often their treatment depended on how much discretion the local military or civilian authorities enjoyed. For example, it often made a crucial difference if civilians from enemy countries were interned in camps or if they lived relatively freely as single persons or, in some cases, with their

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families in smaller towns. Profession could also entail different kinds of treatment or restrictions. Students, for instance, sometimes enjoyed greater freedom of movement to continue with their studies. But some of them also became victims of deportation and forced labour.41 Recruitment of civilian labour in occupied Belgium was organised by the Deutsche Industrie-Büro, a body founded by a group of important iron and steel companies in the Rhineland-Westphalian district. The Industrie-Büro’s only task was the recruitment of Belgian workers for heavy industry in this part of Germany. From the summer of 1915 a dense network of recruitment centres had evolved in the General-Governorship. But up until the first forced deportations in the autumn of 1916, the recruitment offices had comparatively little success. Only an average of 500 labourers a week were allocated work placements in Germany; by late October 1916, the total number of recruits was approximately 30,000.42 Although they were repeatedly requested by hard-liners, extra-economic or coercive administrative measures for labour recruitment were the exception in Belgium until the autumn of 1916. In general, there were two, evenly matched, schools of thought. The Prussian War Ministry, some of the more influential Rhineland-Westphalian industrialists, and the main part of the army Supreme Command were in favour of coercive measures. The Governor-General, Freiherr Max Ferdinand von Bissing, his civil administration and the heads of all civilian Imperial offices of state in Berlin were against it. The decisive impetus to forcibly bring Belgian labourers to Germany came in March 1916 from the Prussian War Ministry, itself pressured by Rhineland-Westphalian industrialists. The civil administration of the Government-General rejected the plans presented to it for solving the manpower and unemployment problems in Germany. In May 1916 demands for forcibly procuring Belgian labourers could still be resisted. But, in a concession to hard-line demands, the Governor-General enacted a stricter decree against ‘Refusal to work’ (Arbeitsverweigerung) in May 1916.43 For the first time forced deportation to Germany was threatened as a punishment for those individuals who refused offers of employment in Belgium. This would later become important for determining the legal status of deportees. After the establishment of the third Supreme Command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff in August 1916, the advocates of coercive measures gained the upper hand once and for all. To fulfil the unrealistic objectives of the so-called Hindenburg Programme, far more labourers than before were to be recruited: German women and youths, enemy prisoners of war, and especially civilian deportees from the occupied territories in the East and West. Business leaders such as Carl Duisberg, Alfred Hugenberg, Hugo Stinnes and Walther Rathenau also saw the possibility of solving manpower problems by deporting the approximately 500,000 Belgian labourers who were reckoned to be unemployed. Hard-liners like these pushed through their policy towards occupied Belgium and its inhabitants in spite of numerous objections and warnings from the Reich government in Berlin and the German civilian administration in Brussels.44

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The matter now came to a head, first in the territories which were directly controlled by the military authorities, and then in the territories under the control of the Governor-General. On 3 October 1916, the Supreme Command introduced a comprehensive compulsory labour system in the frontline and staging areas of Belgium and Northern France as well as in occupied Poland and the so-called military territory ‘Ober Ost’ in the Baltic area. Or to be more precise, the deportations from these areas represented an intensification of a system of forced labour which already existed. The main difference was that the previous system had more or less stuck within the existing international rules of warfare, whereas the new system went beyond what was permitted under these rules.45 For purposes of registration and effective use of the population in the frontline and staging areas of Belgium and northern France, and to facilitate effective access to this new pool of labour, the army Supreme Command had already divided the civilian population into special categories of labourer. They were mostly to be deployed for ‘emergency tasks’ (Notstandsarbeiten) in the occupied territories, as was permitted under the Hague Convention. However, some labour assignments now entered into a grey zone in terms of maritime and international law, or even dispensed with legal considerations altogether. In terms of their legal status, foreign civilian labourers from occupied territories were divided into six groups: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Free labourers Labourers under military supervision Convicts Female free labourers Male and female youths between fourteen and sixteen years of age Children under fourteen years of age.

To further standardise the registration process for work on ‘emergency tasks’, civilian labourers were also classified according to the type of labour they might be assigned to. Again there were six groups: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Professional farmers Skilled labourers Men I Men II Women I Women II46

The category ‘Men I’ consisted of all male inhabitants aged sixteen and over who were fully able to work and, in terms of their level of education and social or property-owning status, belonged to neither group I nor II, the skilled labourers and the farmers. The category ‘Men II’ included all males aged fifteen to sixteen or over fifty-six. Men over sixty-one years of age were no longer considered capable of working. However, the regulations even allowed this category of men

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to be assigned to labour projects under special circumstances. The category ‘Women I’ included all women between fourteen and forty years of age who were able to work. Women between forty-one and fifty were placed in the ‘Women II’ category. The women of the first group were usually considered for agricultural labour, while women in the second group were generally assigned to domestic labour and similar tasks. The labourers placed under direct military supervision were recruited into socalled civilian labour battalions or Zivil–Arbeiter–Bataillone (ZABs).47 Between October 1916 and spring 1918, a total of twenty-five ZABs were established in the occupied territories in Belgium and Northern France. The first five ZABs were set up in October 1916 for the military rail transport authority. By November, nineteen civilian labour battalions were already in operation. An additional five were set up to support the expansion of the crucial ‘Siegfried’ and ‘Michael’ lines. The ZABs in the operational areas were placed under the command of the responsible Army Commander; in the staging areas they came under the authority of the relevant Rear Area Commander.48 The labourers were divided into four companies of 500 each; a Landsturm company was assigned to guard them. Members of the ZABs were formally considered civilian prisoners.49 They were subject to military control, had to wear special brassards on their upper arms, and were usually housed in small camps. Their living and working conditions were abysmal, with at least 1,200 of them, and possibly more, dying from illness and over-work. This forced labour system continued until the end of the war, by which time about 62,000 Belgians had been drafted into the ZAB.50 Alongside the members of the ZAB and civilians assigned to ‘emergency tasks’, the system of forced labour in the operational and staging areas of Belgium and Northern France also encompassed military prisoners of war and criminal convicts.51 As part of their sentence, Belgian convicts had been deployed from the beginning of the occupation on tasks directly related to German military operations. The use of convicts as forced labour complied with legally sanctioned practices in all belligerent states. However, in this case, the convicts had been found guilty not only of criminal offences under pre-1914 Belgian law, but of violations of German occupation law. ‘Refusal to work’ or acts of resistance of any kind were prosecuted as criminal offences rather than being seen as legitimate acts of opposition to the military occupation. As early as May 1915 the army Supreme Command ordered that all able-bodied Belgian convicts in its field of jurisdiction (i.e. the frontline and staging areas – not the General-Government) be deported to German prisoner of war camps.52 From 1917 the Supreme Command also began the implementation of convict labour battalions (Strafgefangenen– Arbeiter–Bataillone). In April 1917, the first convict labour battalion was initiated for military prisoners of war who had been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the occupied area; in early August 1917, a second group of penal labour battalions was initiated for Belgian and French civilian convicts sentenced to six weeks or more and judged fit for work.53 Like the ZAB, the convict labour battalions were made up of four companies of 500 labourers each. Working conditions, housing and food allowances were equivalent to those of prisoners of war who

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were assigned to forced labour. There was no legal claim to sick pay, accident insurance or wages. The convicts were required to wear red armbands on the left sleeve of their jackets or coats. Furthermore, any head covering they wore had to be adorned with a steel plate with their battalion and list numbers.54 Between 26 October 1916 and 10 February 1917, approximately 60,000 Belgians from the Government-General were also deported to Germany itself for forced labour. The selection and deportation process in the various Belgian communes was carried out by the local military commanders. The adult male population in different parts of the General-Government was ordered by public notice to assemble at control points before the date of deportation. Here the deportees were selected, put under military guard and carted away by train – often in unheated cattle cars. Worries about the fate of loved ones left behind, the completely inadequate supply of food and clothing and the hardship of the coming winter all paint a grim portrait of misery and despair for the deportees. Even German eyewitnesses commented on the ruthlessness with which these measures were carried out. In Germany, the deportees were initially housed in ‘distribution centres’ (Verteilungsstellen) and ‘industrial labourers’ lodgings’ (Unterkunftsstellen für Industriearbeiter) – names deliberately chosen to avoid the term ‘concentration camp’ which by then had already acquired a negative connotation.55 The official phrasing revealed considerable uncertainty about the deportees’ legal status and the status and legality of this particular forced labour operation. As if to add to the confusion, Belgian deportees were often labelled, classified and treated by the German military or civilian authorities as Zivilgefangene.56 Even according to the Ministry of War’s own conception, coerced labour was permissible only for prisoners of war, not civilian deportees. Also for the German authorities on the home front it was anything but clear how to treat the deportees in this respect. To refuse to work in Belgium was in fact a breach of the decrees against ‘reluctance to work’ – a criminal act under German occupation law. Yet deportation itself was of questionable legality under the Hague and other conventions, especially if it came under the heading ‘collective punishment’ and involved individual persons who had not been convicted of any criminal offence and, at least in theory, were entitled to presumption of innocence unless, or until, they were found guilty. For this reason, the fundamental principles ‘stipulated’ that no distinctions were to be made between prisoners of war, civilian prisoners and other, unspecified enemy aliens. In fact, a new directive of the Prussian Ministry of War in November 1916 allowed each of these groups to be assigned to labour tasks ‘by means of coercion’.57 This is also an important reason why the Ministry put pressure on the deportees to sign work contracts. As soon as the deported Belgian forced labourers signed a contract, they officially became ‘voluntary civilian labourers’ – at first glance a relatively clear and distinct status. That meant that the special ‘Guidelines for the Recruitment of Work-Shy Belgians’ (Grundsätze über die Heranziehung arbeitsscheuer Belgier) no longer applied to them, but instead the general registration and surveillance regulations for ‘free enemy aliens’ which, at least in theory,

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were more generous in terms of mobility and freedom of movement.58 The willingness of deportees to work ‘voluntarily’ in the German war economy nevertheless remained relatively low. Only about one-quarter of the deportees decided to sign work contracts and were thus able to leave the camps.59 The remaining deportees found themselves stuck in main and secondary camps where they were deployed in coerced labour commandos for tasks in and outside the camps. Life in the camps was marked by famine, disease, and extremely poor sanitary and hygienic conditions. The mortality rate was correspondingly high. The number of Belgian labourers who died in the camps was estimated by German sources at approximately 1,250,60 although after the war, official Belgian sources cited the higher figure of 1,316.61 The number could even be considerably greater, as new, not yet completed investigations in Belgium seem to indicate.62 By January 1917, at the latest it became clear that the mass deportations from Belgium had not achieved the desired effect. The manpower problem remained unresolved. Of those deported to Germany barely one quarter had signed employment contracts. German industrialists lost interest in employing Belgian forced labourers, especially since their experiences with the involuntarily employed Belgian workers had been largely negative. After at times turbulent negotiations, an Imperial Decree on 14 March 1917 initiated the end of the deportations from the General-Governorship. Afterwards, the workers deported to Germany who had signed a contract were re-classified as ‘free enemy aliens’, giving them equal status to the Belgian workers recruited by the Deutsche Industriebüro. The 20,000 to 25,000 deportees who still refused to work ‘voluntarily’ in Germany were allowed to return to Belgium by the summer of 1917. This did not apply to forced labourers deployed in the frontline and staging areas in Belgium and Northern France. Here, as mentioned before, forced labour and involuntary deportations continued until the end of the war. After the deportation fiasco, the German authorities in the General-Government oriented their labour policies towards an aggressive recruitment drive, which was pursued on an even larger scale. The threat of deportation and forced labour resulted in a sharp increase in the number of more or less ‘voluntary’ labour recruits supplied through the Deutsche Industriebüro. By mid-1918, approximately 130,000 Belgian civilian workers – who were not forced labourers by definition – were working in Germany. As ‘free enemy aliens’ they lived and toiled under a number of restrictions until the end of the war, but they were granted certain liberties too. After November 1918 they returned to Belgium, where they often faced stigmatisation as ‘traitors’ who had worked for the enemy.

Conclusion As we have tried to show the internment of civilians during the First World War was subject to change throughout the entire period of the conflict. Internment affected different ‘alien’ groups in very different ways and resonated strongly with German society. Therefore, it was no ‘sideshow’ but a phenomenon that contributed substantially to the First World War’s character as a total war. The

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internment of civilians on a scale unprecedented in numbers and duration is a clear example of the removal of what were hitherto considered ‘common sense’ restraints on the practice of warfare. It also created new national and ethnic tensions that overburdened states, societies and international diplomacy alike. The German example in particular illustrates that the authorities were caught on the hop as far as this new aspect of warfare was concerned. Improvisation and bureaucratic confusion not only characterised the beginning of the war, but continued to prevail right up to the very end. Even in the third year of the war, when tens of thousands of forced labourers from Belgium had to be supplied with food and shelter in Germany, the authorities were insufficiently prepared to meet these new challenges effectively. Despite increasing research in the last two decades, many aspects of the internment of civilians still merit scholarly attention. The role of (forced) labour in particular needs further investigation. Equally important are the relations between alien civilians, both interned and at liberty, and the ordinary German population. Other topics also deserve further attention, among them the confiscation of alien property,63 the repatriation of alien civilians during and after the war,64 the ‘cultural history’ of the camps, the ‘legacy’ of the experiences of internment in post-war societies, and those aspects of internment that touched on pre-existing gender, race and class inequalities.65 Intensified research into the history of civilian internment can thus contribute to a new and broadened understanding of the twentieth century’s ‘age of extremes’, for which the years from 1914 to 1918 set important precedents.

Notes * This text is an extended version of our respective papers delivered at the conference at the Imperial War Museum North in May 2015. The first three sections are written by Christoph Jahr and the fourth section by Jens Thiel. The concluding section is written jointly by both authors. 1 Matthew Stibbe, British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914–18 (Manchester, 2008); and Christoph Jahr, ‘Zivilisten als Kriegsgefangene: Die Internierung von “Feindstaaten-Ausländern” in Deutschland während des Ersten Weltkrieges am Beispiel des “Engländerlagers” Ruhleben’, in Rüdiger Overmans (ed.), In der Hand des Feindes: Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 1999), pp. 297–321. 2 Matthew Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment’, in 1914–1918 online. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keane, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-enemy_ aliens_and_internment-2014-10-08.pdf. See also Arnd Bauerkämper, ‘National Security and Humanity: The Internment of Civilian “Enemy Aliens” during the First World War’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London, 40.1 (2018), pp. 61–85. 3 Marco Sassòli, ‘Internment’, in Frauke Lachenmann and Rüdiger Wolfrum (eds.), The Law of Armed Conflict and the Use of Force (Oxford, 2017), pp. 568–82 (here p. 568). 4 Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment’. See also Iris Rachamimov, ‘“Zivilhistoriografie” des Ersten Weltkrieges: Der Erste Weltkrieg in der jüngeren akademischen Forschung’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 43 (2015), pp. 21–52. This figure is almost

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8

9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19

20 21 22

Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel double the one given by Richard B. Speed III, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (New York, NY, 1990), p. 141. Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 147. Wilhelm Doegen, Kriegsgefangene Völker. Bd. 1: Der Kriegsgefangenen Haltung und Schicksal in Deutschland, im Auftrage des Reichswehr-Ministeriums (Berlin, 1919), pp. 28–9. For the link between the workhouses and the internment of civilians during the First World War, see Hubert Kolling, Die kurhessischen ‘Straf- und Besserungsanstalten’: Institutionen des Strafvollzugs zwischen Fürsorge, Vergeltung und Abschreckung (Frankfurt/Main, 1994). According to Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 148; ‘225 civilians, 30 British, the remainder French, Belgian and Russian – were in mid-March 1915 interned in Schloss Celle’. For the quote from The Times, see David Bilton, Allied POWs in German Hands 1914–1918: Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives (London, 2016), p. 55. See Horst Thum, ‘Das Schutzhaftlager Hassenberg bei Neustadt (Coburg)’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds.), Herrschaft und Gewalt: Frühe Konzentrationslager 1933–1939 (Berlin, 2002), pp. 231–5 (here p. 232). There are, however, some records available in Coburg’s State Archive – see www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek. de/item/ADEX7N5AZ277VCFMYGPEX4DKVE2XLMWM. Matthew Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe, 1914–20’, Immigrants and Minorities, 26.1–2 (2008), pp. 49–81 (here p. 60). Franziska Roy, ‘South Asian Civilian Prisoners of War in First World War Germany’, in Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahuja (eds.), When the War Began we Heard of Several Kings: South Asian Prisoners in World War I Germany (New Delhi, 2011), pp. 53–95 (here p. 59). Ibid., p. 56, n. 8. Ibid., p. 62. For the living conditions in Havelberg and Holzminden, see Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees’, pp. 61–2. On Holzminden, see also Annette Becker, Les cicatrices rouges 14–18: France et Belgique occupées (Paris, 2010), pp. 202–11. Claudine Wallart, ‘Deportation de prisonniers civils “au camp de concentration” d’Holzminden novembre 1916-avril 1917’, Revue du Nord, 80 (1998), pp. 417–48. Cf. Moritz Föllmer, ‘Der Feind im Salon: Eliten, Besatzung und nationale Identität in Nordfrankreich und Westdeutschland 1914–1930’, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, 61.1 (2002), pp. 1–24 (here pp. 12–13). Robin McNish, ‘Commerce Warfare in the Atlantic, 1917: SMS Moewe’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 101.1 (2015), pp. 90–2. Merchant seamen captured in German ports at the beginning of the war were nonetheless sent to Ruhleben in late 1914, where most of them remained until the end of the war. On French pre-war planning, see Simon Giuseppi’s contribution to this volume. Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 147. For a lively account of the German population’s attitude towards enemy aliens early in the war, see A. D. McLaren, ‘Berlin and Ruhleben during the War’, The Contemporary Review, 109 (1 January 1916), pp. 214–22. Roy, ‘South Asian Civilian Prisoners’, p. 58; and Matthew Stibbe, ‘A Question of Retaliation? The Internment of British Civilians in Germany in November 1914’, Immigrants and Minorities, 23.1 (2005), pp. 1–29 (here pp. 8–11). Cf. Florian Altenhöner, Kommunikation und Kontrolle: Gerüchte und städtische Öffentlichkeit in Berlin und London 1914/1918 (Munich, 2007). Bernhard Kahn, Memoirs 1914–1921 – MS section ‘Beginning of World War I: Relief activities for the victims of the War’, in Leo Baeck-Institute New York (LBINY), ME 344a, pp. 4–14. See also von Stockhausen (Kommandantur der Residenz Berlin) to Bernhard Kahn, Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, 28 September 1914, in LBINY, Bernhard

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36

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Kahn Papers, AR 416, Box 2, Folder 11, p. 23; Stockhausen to Kahn, 3 November 1914, in ibid., p. 19; and Reich Office of the Interior to Kahn, 14 January 1915, in ibid., p. 17. See also Tim Grady, A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War (New Haven, CT and London, 2017), pp. 60–1; and Christoph Jahr, Paul Nathan: Publizist, Politiker und Philanthrop 1857–1927 (Göttingen, 2018), pp. 144–7. On the Italians in Germany, see René Del Fabbro, Transalpini: Italienische Arbeitswanderung nach Süddeutschland im Kaiserreich 1870–1918 (Osnabrück, 1996), pp. 277–82; and Christoph Jahr, ‘Keine Feriengäste: “Feindstaatenausländer” im südlichen Bayern während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Hermann J. W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung/La Grande Guerra nell’arco alpino. Esperienze e memoria (Innsbruck, 2006), pp. 231–45 (here pp. 235–7). Also Daniela Caglioti’s contribution to this volume. On the experience of Japanese nationals in Germany, see Rolf-Harald Wippich, ‘Internierung und Abschiebung von Japanern im Deutschen Reich im Jahr 1914’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 55.1 (2007), pp. 18–40. Roy, ‘South Asian Civilian Prisoners’, pp. 55–6. Lisa M. Todd, ‘“The Soldier’s Wife Who Ran Away with the Russian”: Sexual Infidelities in World War I Germany’, Central European History, 44.2 (2011), pp. 257–78 (here p. 265). For the following, see Franz Haselbeck, ‘Das Gefangenenlager Traunstein-Au’, in Traunsteiner Salzgeschichte (= Jahrbuch des Historischen Vereins für den Chiemgau, 7. Jg.) (Traunstein, 1995), pp. 241–90 (here pp. 246–52, all quotes p. 246). Anonymous letter, Munich, 27 August 1914, in Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich, Abteilung IV: Kriegsarchiv (BayHStA-KA), Stellvertretendes Generalkommando I. Bayerisches Armeekorps (WK) 2053. Italics in the original. Letter written by Heinrich Franz Schmidt of Munich, 17 February 1915, in ibid., 2052. Trude Maurer, ‘Weder Kombattanten noch Kommilitonen: “Feindliche Ausländer” in einer deutschen Universitätsstadt während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte, 8 (2005), pp. 185–210. See also Daniela Siebe, ‘“Nattern am Busen der Alma mater”: Ausländische Studierende an deutschen Universitäten 1914–1918’, in Trude Maurer (ed.), Kollegen – Kommilitonen – Kämpfer: Europäische Universitäten im Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 2006), pp. 39–55. For the case of the British subject Holcroft, see Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg (BA-MA), RM 3/5368, Bl. 221–4. See the case of Erich Andrews, in BA-MA, RM 3/5368, Bl. 233–8 and RM 3/5369, Bl. 13; and the case of Paul Beeg, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, Militärarchiv (HStA-MA), M 77/1, Büschel 860. For the following see Jahr, ‘Keine Feriengäste’, pp. 238–9. Haselbeck, ‘Das Gefangenenlager Traunstein-Au’, pp. 279–80. Unfortunately, no details have been preserved in the files in the Bavarian State Archives on this point. See the English translation of Mühsam’s 1919 autobiography, published in Erich Mühsam, Liberating Society From the State and Other Writings: A Political Reader, edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn (Oakland, CA, 2011), p. 26. For a biographical sketch, see ibid., pp. 1–22. For a comparative treatment and further references, see Jens Thiel and Christian Westerhoff, ‘Forced Labour’, in 1914–1918 online (as note 2 above), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-forced_labour-2014-10-08.pdf. On forced labour among German and Austro-Hungarians civilian internees in Canada, see Bohdan S. Kordan, No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience (Kingston, ON, 2016); and the chapter by Kordan in this volume. See Abkommen, betreffend die Gesetze und Gebräuche des Landkriegs [Hague Convention on Land Landwarfare], 18 December 1907, in Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl),

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42 43 44 45

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Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel 1910, pp. 107–51, esp. art. 42, 49, 51 and 52. For a contemporary view of the legal position regarding forced labour, see Josef Kohler, Grundlagen des Völkerrechts: Vergangenheit, Gegenwart, Zukunft (Stuttgart, 1918), pp. 85–90; and for a systematic modern juridical view, see Jean-Marie Henckaerts, ‘Deportation and Transfer of Civilians in Time of War’, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 27 (1993), pp. 469– 519 (here pp. 478–80). For the situation in Belgium during the First World War, see among other works, Sophie De Schaepdrijver, De Groote Oorlog: Het Koninkrijk België tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam, 2013); and De Schaepdrijver, ‘Struggle for the High Ground: Germany and Belgium in the First World War’, in Sebastian Bischoff, Christoph Jahr, Tatjana Mrowka and Jens Thiel (eds.), Belgica – terra incognita? Resultate und Perspektiven der Historischen Belgienforschung (Münster and New York, NY, 2016), pp. 77–87. On the German occupation and occupation policy, see also Christoph Roolf, ‘Anliegen, Entstehungskontexte und Thesen zu einer Geschichte der deutschen Besatzungspolitik in Belgien im Ersten Weltkrieg (1914 bis 1918)’, in ibid., pp. 88–96. For an overview of forced labour systems in Germany during the First World War, see Jens Thiel, ‘Kriegswirtschaftliche Interventionen: Die Etablierung von Zwangsarbeitsregimen im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Jochen Oltmer (ed.), Handbuch Staat und Migration in Deutschland seit dem 17. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2016), pp. 385–416. For an international overview of treatment of civilian internees, see Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment’. For the relatively small group of Belgian glass workers in Düsseldorf, who were already living in that city before the war, see Jens Thiel, ‘Menschenbassin Belgien’: Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen, 2007), pp. 63–4. For the particular situation in German university towns see Trude Maurer, ‘. . . und wir gehören auch dazu’: Universität und ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 2015), pp. 771–89. See also Maurer, ‘Weder Kombattanten noch Kommilitonen’; and Constanza Bragulla, ‘“. . . hat Erlaubnis, heute einen Ausflug nach Lobeda und Umgebung zu machen”. Über die Ortsgebundenheit “feindlicher Ausländer” während des Ersten Weltkriegs in Jena’, in Birgitt Hellman and Matias Mieth (eds.), Heimatfront: Eine mitteldeutsche Universitätsstadt im Ersten Weltkrieg (Jena, 2014), pp. 281–90. See Wilhelm Asmis, Nutzbarmachung, belgischer Arbeitskräfte für die deutsche Volkswirtschaft nach dem Kriege [Memorandum], S. 107f., Copy in BA Berlin, R 1501, 113718, Bl. 163. Verordnung gegen die Arbeitsscheu. Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt No213, 20 May 1916, in Charles Huberich and Alexander Nicol-Speyer (eds.), Deutsche Gesetzgebung, Vol. 7, pp. 209–11. For a more detailed account, see Thiel, ‘Menschenbassin Belgien’; and for a summary, see Thiel, ‘Between Recruitment and Forced Labour’. For the situation in occupied Russian-Poland and Lithuania, see Christian Westerhoff, Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg: Deutsche Arbeitskräftepolitik im besetzten Polen und Litauen 1914–1918 (Paderborn, 2012); and Westerhoff, ‘“A Kind of Siberia”: German Labor and Occupation Policies in Poland and Lithuania during the First World War’, First World War Studies, 4.1 (2013), pp. 51–63. See Arbeiterordnung für die 2. Armee, Gruppe Coudry, Generalkommando XIII, Abt. I b A.S., No. 17831, 8 October 1917 (including Arbeiterordnung für das Operations- und Etappengebiet), in HStA-MA, M 33/2, 498, Bl. 2 und Bl. 5. Also Erlaß des Generalquartiermeisters, Gen.Qu. II c, No. 40323, 16 October 1917 (B.d.G. West III d No. 61666, 25.10.1917), in [Generalquartiermeister], Verordnungen und Erlasse über die Verwaltung und Ausnutzung der westlichen Armeegebiete (Verwawest) (Berlin, 1918), No. 482, pp. 572 and ff.

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47 Traugott von Sauberzweig to German Foreign Office, 7 October 1916 (including: Dienstanweisung zu den Zivil-Arbeiter-Bataillonen), in Bundesarchiv (BA) Berlin, R 85/ 4022. 48 Erlaß des Generalquartiermeisters, Gen.Qu. II c No. 40463/16, 3 January 1917, in Generalquartiermeister, Verordnungen und Erlasse über die Verwaltung und Ausnutzung der westlichen Armeegebiete (Verwawest) (Berlin, 1918), No. 491, p. 596. Copy in BA Berlin, R 3301/862. 49 Cf. Erlaß des Generalquartiermeisters, Gen.Q. II c No. 30070, 3 October 1916, in BA Berlin, R 3001/7764, Bl. 17–18; and Erlaß des Generalquartiermeisters, Gen.Qu. II c No. 30070/16, 3 October 1917, Anlage 2 (Dienstanweisung für die Verwendung von Zivil–Arbeiter–Bataillonen), in ibid., No. 490, pp. 589–95. 50 For living and working conditions in the workers’ camps, see Jens Thiel and Christian Westerhoff, ‘Deutsche Zwangsarbeiterlager im Ersten Weltkrieg. Entstehung – Funktion – Lagerregimes’, in Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel (eds.), Lager vor Auschwitz: Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2013), pp. 117–39. 51 See the respective orders in Generalquartiermeister, Verordnungen und Erlasse über die Verwaltung und Ausnutzung der westlichen Armeegebiete (Verwawest) (Berlin, 1918), pp. 600 ff., and in BA Berlin, R 3301/862. On forced labour and military prisoners of war in Germany and across Europe during the First World War, see Heather Jones, Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France and Germany, 1914–1920 (Cambridge, 2011); and Jochen Oltmer (ed.), Kriegsgefangene im Europa des Ersten Weltkriegs (Paderborn, 2006). 52 See Erlaß des Generalquartiermeisters, Gen.Qu. Va 1 No. 22067, 15 May 1915, in Generalquartiermeister, Verordnungen und Erlasse über die Verwaltung und Ausnutzung der westlichen Armeegebiete (Verwawest) (Berlin, 1918), No. 14, p. 31. Copy in BA Berlin, R 3301/862. 53 Erlaß des Generalquartiermeisters, Gen.Qu. III/II c No. 12884, 18 April 1917, in ibid., No. 127, p. 144. 54 See ibid., No. 129, p. 145; Beauftragter des Generalquartiermeisters (B.d.G.) West III b, No. 41516, 3 August 1917 (Anweisung für das Strafgef.-Arbeiter-Bataillon, StAB No. 2), in BA Berlin, R 3301/862; and Dokumentation der Reichsentschädigungskommission des Reichsministeriums für Wiederaufbau, Kriegsschäden Belgien, Teil V: Verwendung der Bevölkerung zu Arbeitszwecken, pp. 55–6, 1921, in BA Berlin, R 3301/266, Bl. 59 ff. 55 See Thiel, ‘Menschenbassin Belgien’, pp. 140–7. 56 Ibid., pp. 148–56, esp. pp. 148–9 and 151–2. 57 Grundsätze über Heranziehung arbeitsscheuer Belgier zu Arbeiten in Deutschland. Erlaß des preußischen Kriegsministeriums, Kriegsamt, Nr. 893/10.16 A.Z.(S.) I. Ang., Geheim, 15 November 1916, in Deutscher Reichstag (ed.), Das Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses. 1919–1928. Reihe 4: Die Ursachen des deutschen Zusammenbruches im Jahre 1918, Abt. 2: Der innere Zusammenbruch (Berlin, 1926), p. 246. 58 Nachtrag zu den vom stellvertretenden Generalkommando IV. A.K.II b Gef./II b Fabrikabt. No. 89/XI unter dem 28. Dezember 1916 herausgegebenen Richtlinien über die Heranziehung belgischer Zivilarbeiter zu Arbeiten in Deutschland, 18 January 1917, in Landesarchiv Merseburg, Rep. C 50, LRA Bitterfeld II, No. 161 d, p. 341. 59 Ibid., p. 317. 60 Deutscher Reichstag (ed.), Das Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses, Reihe 4, Abt. 2, p. 375. See also Dokumentation der Reichsentschädigungskommission des Reichsministeriums für Wiederaufbau, Kriegsschäden Belgien, Teil V: Verwendung der Bevölkerung zu Arbeitszwecken, 1921, p. 34, in BA Berlin, R 3301/38, 266, p. 38. 61 Fernand Passelecq, Déportation et travail forcé des ouvriers et de la population civile de la Belgique occupée (1916–1918) (Paris, 1929), pp. 398–9.

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62 With support from the Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Donald Buyze is currently conducting research in different Belgian, French, German and Polish archives and cemeteries to compile a list and database of all victims of deportation and forced labour in Belgium and Northern France during the First World War. I would like to thank him for allowing me to look at parts of his investigations. 63 For an overview, see Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Property Rights in Time of War: Sequestration and Liquidation of Enemy Aliens’ Assets in Western Europe During the First World War’, Journal of Modern European History, 12.4 (2014), pp. 523–45; Caglioti, ‘Property Rights and Economic Nationalism’, in 1914–1918 online (as note 2 above). For a more detailed account, see Wippich ‘Internierung und Abschiebung’, pp. 33–5; and Jahr, ‘Keine Feriengäste’, pp. 240–2. 64 For an overview, see Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees’ pp. 69–72; and Margaret Gottlieb, Repatriation in Theory and in Practice Throughout the First World War (Bryn Mawr College, PA, 1945). 65 For some initial findings here, see Christoph Jahr, ‘“Mr. Goodhind, the prima donna of Ruhleben”. Theater- und Geschlechterrollen im “Engländerlager Ruhleben” 1914– 1918’, in Julia B. Köhne, Britta Lange and Anke Vetter (eds.), Mein Kamerad – Die Diva: Theater an der Front und in den Gefangenenlagern des Ersten Weltkriegs (Munich, 2014), pp. 91–9; Iris Rachamimov, ‘Camp Domesticity: Shifting Gender Boundaries in WWI Internment Camps’, in Gilly Carr and Harold Mytum (eds.), Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire (New York, NY, 2012), pp. 291–305; Matthew Stibbe, ‘Gendered Experiences of Civilian Internment During the First World War: A Forgotten Dimension of Wartime Violence’, in Ana Carden-Coyne (ed.), Gender and Conflict Since 1914: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 14–28; and Fabien Théofilakis, ‘La sexualité du prisonnier de guerre: Allemands et Français en captivité (1914–1918, 1940–1948)’, Vingtième Siècle, 99 (2008), pp. 203–19. Although Rainer Pöppinghege, ‘“Kriegsteilnehmer zweiter Klasse”? Die Reichsvereinigung ehemaliger Kriegsgefangener 1919– 1933’, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, 64.2 (2005), pp. 391–424, makes reference to the ‘Volksbund zum Schutze der deutschen Kriegs- und Zivilgefangenen’, founded on 20 December 1918 in Berlin, he does not offer any substantial data on the experience of former civilian internees. Unfortunately, the wide range of memoir literature produced by former British civilian internees in Germany is not reflected in Ian Isherwood, ‘The British Publishing Industry and Commercial Memories of the First World War’, War in History, 23.3 (2016), pp. 323–40.

4

The internment of enemy aliens in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–18 Matthew Stibbe

In the almost three decades since the start of the 1990s, historical writing on Austria-Hungary’s role in the First World War has undergone a number of significant changes.1 Firstly, at the level of war aims, strategy and diplomacy, it is now recognised that the Dual Monarchy was not reduced after 1914 to a mere ‘vassal of German policy’.2 True, when it came to the future of (Russian) Poland, the Baltic states and Ukraine, the more powerful German Kaiserreich had largely forced through its own agenda by 1916–18.3 However, this should not be taken to mean that the Habsburg Empire, through its common Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, was unable or unwilling to pursue independent territorial ambitions of its own, especially in the Balkans.4 Recent work on the Habsburg army high command (Armee Oberkommando, henceforth AOK) has also highlighted the central role played by the Austrian military in what Jonathan Gumz describes as an attempted resurrection of neo-absolutist visions of empire on the ground in occupied Serbia. While the AOK’s political agenda may have been profoundly conservative, namely opposition to the perceived ‘liberal’ or compromising attitude shown by the imperial bureaucracy in Vienna during the many disputes with and between subject nationalities in the pre-war period, the means by which it chose to pursue that agenda – in particular through establishing new security regimes in and beyond the empire’s existing border zones in southern and south-eastern Europe – represented something strikingly new.5 Secondly, international scholars of the First World War, working within paradigms established by the ‘new military history’ on topics such as mass killings, forced labour, military justice, refugees, deportees, prisoners of war, and persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, have uncovered how deeply caught up the Habsburg Empire was in a pan-European and global ‘dynamic of destruction’ involving a multitude of violent interactions between soldiers and non-combatants.6 True, there were no parallels in Habsburg-ruled Central Europe with the Turkish genocide against the Ottoman Armenians in 1915. Nonetheless, we now know a great deal more about the atrocities and mass executions committed by Austro-Hungarian troops in eastern Galicia and Bosnia at the start of the war,7 and about the extremely harsh nature of the military occupations of Serbia (after 1915/16) and of Italian territory (especially in 1917–18).8 We also know more about the fear of Bolshevism in Austria-Hungary after 1917 and how this

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impacted on the Monarchy’s attitude towards its own POWs in Russian hands,9 as well as about the impact of the Allied economic blockade on the Central European home fronts, and the hunger and starvation faced by Italian and other military prisoners in Austria in 1918.10 Thirdly, research has also been conducted into the effects of the war on particular regions and cities of the Monarchy, and on how ordinary Austro-Hungarian subjects made sense of their wartime experiences in the light of their daily struggles, desires and concerns.11 The radically altered social conditions and power relations inside the Monarchy after 1914 meant that it was possible to envisage a range of alternative futures, with full-scale imperial collapse and the end of the Habsburg dynasty only featuring as a distinct possibility in the political imaginary of most contemporaries in the final months, or even weeks of the war.12 Until then, the question of the empire’s continuing legitimacy was linked, both in the minds of lower state officials and in the minds of many ‘patriotic’ citizens, not only to its ability to win military victories against external enemies, but to its success (or otherwise) in solving a variety of pressing internal problems: ensuring an adequate food supply, taking charge of the war economy, controlling warrelated population movements, housing the tens of thousands of refugees and evacuees from war zones, and maintaining proper surveillance of ‘suspect’ groups and individuals who supposedly imperilled the safety of the empire or the welfare of its subjects.13 The research and new perspectives outlined above are also relevant to the question of the Monarchy’s treatment of enemy aliens during the war. Like other belligerent countries, Austria-Hungary placed nationals of enemy states (British, French, Belgian, Russian, Serb, Montenegrin and Japanese nationals; after 1915 Italians; and after 1916 Romanians) under various forms of state supervision, house arrest, expulsion, confinement and – in some cases – internment. While public opinion had a role to play, Habsburg policy also reflected the intense competition between the military and the imperial bureaucracy for control over the home front, as well as the army’s quest for security in border regions. Also important are previously overlooked instances, especially at the regional and provincial level, of cooperation on internal security matters between the army, the gendarmerie and petty Habsburg officialdom – particularly in areas where rapid, warrelated economic and demographic change had left officials feeling overwhelmed and anxious about the continued loyalty (or potential disloyalty) of local populations.14 Above all, policy towards enemy civilians in Austria-Hungary has to be seen in the context of an empire at war which sought new ways of protecting its communities, its borders and its citizens from perceived internal and external threats, of rousing and maintaining imperial patriotism at home and of projecting its power and prestige abroad. In total, several thousand aliens were deprived of their liberty or forced to change their place of residence. Even so, this aspect of the Monarchy’s war against enemy civilians has often been overlooked due to previous scholarly emphasis on the much larger number of Habsburg-subject refugees, deportees and domestic political suspects who ended up in camps dotted around the Austrian and Hungarian interiors.15

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The aim of this chapter is to examine Habsburg measures towards enemy aliens with special emphasis on confinement and internment. A key theme will be the experience of those national groups, especially Serbs and Italians, who faced the harshest conditions, including, in the Italian case, hunger and malnutrition. This will be contrasted with the much better treatment afforded to British and French nationals. Attention will also be given to the Habsburg Empire’s entanglement in a global system of internment, its efforts to protect the interests of its own subjects in enemy hands, and its involvement in the propaganda war over which side was the more ‘civilised’ in its treatment of military and civilian captives. While Austro-Hungarian internment policies have often been presented as a more moderate version of a European-wide, international phenomenon, the chapter will conclude by arguing that the wartime Habsburg Monarchy made its own distinctive contribution to the incarceration of enemy aliens, a contribution which also cast a dark shadow over the policies adopted by successor states towards alien populations after 1918.

Internment camps and places of civilian confinement in the Austrian interior (Cisleithania) and in Habsburg-ruled Bosnia-Herzegovina In the decades leading up to 1914, the Habsburg Empire had been relatively liberal in its approach to inward migration. Although foreigners were a legally distinct category and enjoyed fewer rights than Habsburg subjects, naturalisation was a fairly straightforward process. Until 1833, it was granted automatically after a period of ten years’ continuous residency, and even after that, obtaining it was usually a matter of jumping through a few administrative hoops for those who could demonstrate that they had established a settled existence (Ansässigkeit) in the Empire.16 Officials in the Austrian half of the Monarchy (Cisleithania) were especially keen to promote new industries and cross-border commercial ties by drawing on foreign expertise, capital and technology.17 Large cities like Vienna, Prague or Graz, had attracted a sizeable influx of aliens by the beginning of the twentieth century. According to the 1910 census, 2.2 per cent of the Cisleithanian population (or 631,515 persons) originally came from outside Austria’s borders,18 while Vienna alone had 41,399 foreigners living within its different police districts in a total population of 2,083,630.19 It is true that the state also took measures to distinguish between ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ aliens. For instance, passport checks were re-introduced on the Austrian border in 1879, while the requirement to register with the police in the district in which they resided ensured that ‘foreigners remained under special control’ and could in theory be expelled if they were considered to present a danger to internal security.20 Pauper aliens were regarded as a particular problem (as indeed they were in other countries) because they had no Heimat or established ‘place of settlement’ within Austria’s borders, meaning that no municipality could be compelled to take responsibility for them if they fell into destitution. At the same time, they could only be deported to their country of origin at

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some expense to the public purse (and if their country of origin was identifiable from police or other records).21 However, in practice, most foreigners were still protected from arbitrary state interference in their daily lives, unless they were suspected of committing actual crimes. By the end of the nineteenth century, freedom of movement for aliens as well as domestic subjects was considered vital to the economic health of the empire, an assumption built into bureaucratic procedures and even exported to the formerly Turkish-ruled province of BosniaHerzegovina, which was administered by the common Ministry of Finance and a Habsburg Governor-General from 1878 onwards, and was formally annexed by the Dual Monarchy in 1908.22 This changed in late July 1914 when the rule of law was suspended across the empire and a state of emergency was declared for the duration of hostilities. In Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina, civilian ministries were pressurised into agreeing to a series of decrees which overrode individual legal rights previously guaranteed by the imperial constitution, while especially in border regions and war zones, enemy aliens and politically suspicious domestic subjects were now the target of arbitrary house searches and ordinances issued by army commanders on the ground.23 In the worst case scenario, this might mean deportations of hundreds of individuals, a fate that befell Reich Serb subjects and Bosnian Serbs at various stages during the war; and Italian subjects in border regions in 1915 and again in territories occupied by Habsburg troops after the Battle of Caporetto in October–November 1917.24 In practice, though, once an area had been designated as belonging to the fighting zone, no enemy alien, whatever their nationality, was safe from the possibility of arrest and deportation into the interior, and the army often relied on local police officials and patriotic citizens to aid them in identifying and locating individual enemy civilians and other ‘suspicious’ persons who supposedly presented a threat to military operations. In mid-September 1914, for instance, all enemy civilians were forcibly evacuated from Kraków, the largest city in the western part of Austrian Galicia, in line with the AOK’s preparations for an expected siege by invading Russian forces.25 Likewise, in the strategically significant port cities of Trieste and Pola (Pula) in the Austrian Littoral, impoverished foreign sailors and other ‘suspect’ aliens, including white and non-white subjects of the British and French Empires, were among the many civilian inhabitants arrested and expelled in the early months of the war.26 And at Bihać, in the north-western part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a camp was set up by the AOK for Bosnian and Reich Serb civilian detainees, which already held 600 inmates by the beginning of December 1914.27 Here micro-level functioning and the contingencies of time and place could be as important as macro-level decision-making in determining who was deported and how army deportation measures were actually implemented. From August 1914, internment were also introduced as an administrative measure for some enemy aliens resident in the Austrian interior. However, at first relatively few were placed in camps or under house arrest, and most were granted what appeared to be a less rigorous form of restriction on their freedom of movement known as ‘confinement’ (Konfinierung). This involved forced

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domicile in a particular location, sometimes, with the agreement of the local police, in the individual’s existing place of residence, and sometimes, when a greater degree of surveillance was considered necessary, in special ‘confinement stations’ (Konfinierungsstationen).28 Confinees typically lived at their own expense in their own or rented accommodation, and they enjoyed freedom of movement within their place of confinement but needed permission from the local police if they wished to travel to places beyond this. In line with a decree issued on 27 August 1914, internment measures were initially reserved for enemy aliens who either presented an immediate threat to the war effort or lacked the financial means to support themselves.29 When Italy entered the war in May 1915, however, Italian subjects (Reichsitaliener) in the Austrian half of the monarchy were not considered for confinement at all, but were expelled via Switzerland.30 Others were deported by military order from the Trentino, Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and Dalmatia as a security measure some days ahead of the actual onset of hostilities, and held in various internment stations in the Interior, including a particularly harsh and overcrowded one at Steinklamm near St. Pölten in Lower Austria. In June, a further 3,000 Reichsitaliener were sent to Katzenau near Linz in Upper Austria, where they were held alongside around 800 Italian-speaking Habsburg subjects suspected of irredentism.31 The body formally in charge of internment and confinement measures was the Kriegsüberwachungsamt (War Supervisory Office, henceforth KÜA), which had been created in 1914 to oversee the implementation of various wartime emergency regulations on the home front. Its remit included state surveillance of enemy aliens, refugees and internal political suspects and censorship of mail, and it made ample use of denunciations from local officials, tip-offs from ‘concerned’ citizens, pre-war police files, army service records and other forms of intelligence for these purposes.32 Habsburg-subject POWs and civilians held captive in enemy countries were subject to similar forms of screening and monitoring. Indeed, censorship of mail was another indication of the extent to which First World War internment was a cross-border phenomenon requiring new and innovative responses from warring states, both to keep account of the conditions in which their own nationals were being held abroad and – more problematically – to spy on them even when they were in enemy captivity.33 The powers enjoyed by the KÜA were far more extensive than anything conceivable in peacetime. Previous scholarly works have portrayed it as an instrument of army rule and the extension of the AOK’s jurisdiction into virtually all spheres of Austrian civil administration, whether in the designated fighting zones or on the home front.34 Certainly a number of its early decrees on wartime civilian internment indicate militarist-absolutist thinking. Thus the inclusion of internal political suspects alongside enemy aliens among those who could be interned in the decree of 27 August 1914, and the deliberate reference to ‘military considerations’ as the deciding factor, typified the army’s view that the Monarchy was waging war on a variety of fronts and against a range of external and domestic enemies simultaneously.35 The notion that enemy civilian as well as Habsburg-subject internees could be required, when needed, to perform labour in the domestic economy,

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whether in relation to ‘trench-building, agriculture, stone quarries, brickyards or other projects of a civil or military nature’, further reflected the AOK’s desire to take control of the economy and mobilise all resources for the war effort.36 In 1916, some Italian civilian prisoners were even sent to work as miners in Germany in what was in effect a cross-border rendition of forced labour agreed in advance between the Prussian and Austro-Hungarian War Ministries.37 Finally, the use of incoming and outgoing civilian prisoners’ letters as a source of political intelligence on enemies of the state again typified the AOK’s emphasis on internal security and the close monitoring of individuals who might endanger the war effort.38 On the other hand, the practice of internment on the home front was tempered by the influence of civilian ministries in Vienna and office holders at provincial level, so that it would be wrong to talk about a total militarisation of the enemy alien question. For instance, officials from civilian ministries were privy to, and helped to monitor, the various kinds of information obtained from the POW censorship section of the Austrian Red Cross, including complaints and denunciations made by the prisoners themselves. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in particular, was concerned to maintain Austria-Hungary’s reputation as a civilised, law-abiding state, which it felt was vital in order to protect the interests of Habsburg citizens abroad and to maintain an image of imperial strength. This meant furnishing the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with regular lists of enemy alien civilian prisoners being held in Austrian territory, and also allowing such prisoners to send and receive post via the ICRC’s Agence Internationale des prisonniers de guerre.39 It meant clearly discriminating between enemy aliens and Habsburg-subject civilian internees, with the latter having no access to post or relief parcels sent from abroad (although they could send and receive post from inland).40 Civilian prisoners from Britain and France were in practice not required to perform forced labour, presumably for fear of retaliation. Finally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted on allowing teams from the ICRC and neutral states – particularly diplomats from the American and later the Spanish embassies – to visit places of incarceration.41 Space does not allow a detailed discussion of their inspection reports here, but in general terms they indicate that conditions were reasonably good for most enemy alien prisoners in the Austrian interior in the first eighteen months of the war (August 1914 – early 1916), with complaints typically centred on inadequate supplies of clothing, the unvarying diet and the slow delivery of post and supplementary relief parcels from home.42 Conditions in the latter part of the war will be discussed in more detail below. The KÜA also appointed its own inspector of civilian camps and places of confinement for enemy aliens, Hans Swoboda. Tellingly, this former police official was seconded from the Austrian Ministry of Interior rather than from the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry.43 Swoboda’s decision to classify enemy aliens not only according to their nationality and their individual loyalty towards their host country, Austria, but also according to whether they were of independent financial means (bemittelt) or without means of subsistence (mittellos), bore the hallmarks of classic peacetime police fears of the pauper alien. In general,

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British, French, Belgian and Russian aliens who were classified as bemittelt were marked out for transportation to and confinement in certain villages in the district of Waidhofen an der Thaya in Lower Austria, and they could take their families with them (class A confinees). Others were even permitted to stay in their original place of residence, especially if they were considered ‘unbedenklich’ or low risk from a social, political or security point of view (class B confinees).44 British nationals who were ‘more or less to be regarded as pro-Austrian as a result of long-term residency in the Monarchy or close family ties with subjects of the Monarchy’ were explicitly excluded from internment and confinement, especially if they also contributed to the Austrian economy.45 So too were Russian political exiles who were known opponents of the Tsarist regime, provided that they could support themselves.46 Some, including Vladimir Illych Lenin, were even allowed to leave Austria’s borders for Switzerland in the early weeks of the war.47 However, foreign draft-dodgers and deserters (mostly Russians, Russian Poles and later, Italians), and destitute aliens, including their wives and children if they refused repatriation, were more likely to end up in internment camps, alongside ‘suspicious’ aliens (verdächtige Ausländer) and other individuals deemed to pose a significant security threat to the empire.48 Until 1917, most of the British, French, Belgian, Russian, Serb and Montenegrin civilian prisoners remained in several internment and confinement stations in the Waidhofen district, among them Drosendorf, Grossau, Karlstein, Kautzen, Kirchberg, Illmau, Markl and Raabs.49 The camp at Markl was opened to accommodate orthodox Jews of Russian and Russian–Polish background in 1915.50 The internment stations were often set up in disused castles or army barracks, some of which, in the early months of the war, were also used to hold domestic political suspects. Overall numbers of enemy alien prisoners are hard to pin down, but, a snapshot is provided in a report drawn up by the District Commissioner for Waidhofen on 10 November 1914 (see Table 4.1). Just under 3,000 Italian subjects were held at Katzenau on 2 August 1915, rising to 6,039 by the end of that year.51 Following the closure of the camp at Steinklamm, some 3,100 Italians were also removed to internment stations in Waidhofen in November 1915, 2,843 of them being sent to work each day in various parts of Lower Austria and Vienna. Almost all of them had been relocated to Katzenau by May 1917, with the Italian population there peaking at 9,003 in March 1918, including 150 women.52 Katzenau itself was identified as an Italian-

Table 4.1 Number of internees and confinees in the District of Waidhofen an der Thaya, Lower Austria, 10 November 1914 Russian Serb British French Belgian Montenegrin Japanese Austrian Total Internees 673 Confinees 38 Total 711

263 53 40 29 303 82

28 20 48

3 1 4

3 0 3

1 0 1

Source: Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Kriegsarchiv, KÜA, Zl. 9634.

1 2 3

1,025 130 1,155

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only camp until the arrival of a handful of Romanian subjects in 1916–17.53 Between April and July 1917, 109 British and a larger group of French and Serb nationals were also sent there from the internment stations in the Waidhofen district.54 However, 83 British and an unknown number of French, Russian, Serb and Montenegrin internees and confinees were left behind in Waidhofen.55 The Russians, who remained the largest group by nationality in Waidhofen, and numbered 3,406 in January 1916, were only released in significant numbers after the signing of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk in March 1918.56 In 1917, Serb internees could be found at Drosendorf and at a variety of other camps, including Aschach in Upper Austria and Braunau (Broumov) in Bohemia.57 At first confinement was seen as preferable to life inside one of the internment camps, but as the war continued, conditions also worsened for the confinees, and particularly for those who were unable to rely on regular parcels or gifts of money from home. Dorothy Cocking, who was confined with her parents at Raabs from 1915, later recalled that ‘there was no control whatever on the charges made by landladies and shopkeepers – and these knew that most people would rather pay all they could afford than go into one of those horrible camps’. Only the British and French, she continued, were ‘kept going by parcels . . . from home’, while Russians and Serbs had to rely on their own resources – in the Serbs’ case at least since the full occupation of their country by the Central Powers in October–November 1915.58 As if to corroborate this, in December 1915 one of the Serb confinees at Raabs, Mihajlo T. Golubović, who before the war had been a (presumably quite wealthy) senior civil servant in the Finance Ministry in Belgrade, wrote to the Serbian ambassador in London, Čedomir Mijatović, requesting his help in what he claimed was a desperate situation: On behalf of the Serb colony living here, amounting to 14 persons, I beg you to find ways and means of supplying us at least with the bare minimum of winter clothing: shirts, trousers, sweaters and the like, since all our resources go on food and we cannot afford other things. . . . In recent times we have lost all contact with home, and everything that we once owned or had sent to us from home has been used up.59 Finally, state officials in Waidhofen and at Katzenau, through the centrally administered surveillance of letters and other means, showed a great deal of interest not only in civilian prisoners’ attempts to relay the conditions they were facing to the outside world, but in their relations with each other. Italian subjects at Katzenau were portrayed by the military censor as being divided between anarchists and socialists who opposed their country’s intervention in the war on the one hand, and patriots who naively believed that their country would triumph over the Habsburgs and free the ‘unredeemed’ Italian-speaking territories on the other.60 Conflicts between, rather than within, other nationality groups also sparked a certain curiosity. As early as September 1914 it was noted in a report submitted by the District Commissioner in Waidhofen ‘that the British and French do not get on with the Russians at all and the Serbs and the Russians hate each

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other’. On the other hand, the local population was apparently pleased to have so many foreigners in their midst, since this had ‘generated a greater circulation of money and goods’ and had helped to improve the fortunes of farmers and traders struggling to make a living in face of challenging wartime economic conditions.61 In November 1914, the same source noted that among the inmates of the internment station at Drosendorf were ‘members of various nations and classes’ including ‘10 negroes of British nationality, and one of French nationality’. A group of interned Serb doctors were praised as ‘very versatile, because they received their training in Vienna’, whereas the Russian doctors were dismissed as ‘completely unusable’. The report also ended on a sour note with regard to the British confinees at Raabs, accusing them of being ‘haughty’ and ‘arrogant’. Worse still: The local population, intolerably good-natured as they are, have shown far too much kindness towards these foreigners. I had to order a ban on tennis matches between the Englishmen and some of the girls from Raabs, and to suggest to the village mayor that these girls should devote any free time they have to knitting clothes for our soldiers.62 As time went on, however, the presence of the internees and confinees in this part of Austria probably became less of a novelty and more a source of resentment to the local residents, particularly as enemy aliens came to be seen as extra mouths to feed and unwanted ‘war guests’ who drove local food prices up. Dorothy Cocking, the above-mentioned confinee who returned from Raabs to Britain after being exchanged in February 1918, put it thus: The scarcity of food makes [things] so much worse now [than they were at the beginning of the war, M.S.] – for of course there is little food, the poor prisoners are the last to be considered, and the bread, never good, gets worse and worse.63

Internment camps and places of confinement in the Hungarian interior (Transleithania) The situation in Hungary was similar in many respects to that in Austria, except that here, the Minister President, István Tisza, did not allow the KÜA to arrogate powers that were normally the preserve of the civil administration, citing his intention to uphold the established right of the Budapest government to rule over the Kingdom of Hungary in accordance with the ‘ancient’ Magyar constitution and the Dualist system created under the ‘Compromise’ (Ausgleich) of 1867. The rendering of civilian prisoners from this part of the Habsburg Empire to Germany would therefore most probably have been impossible – unless by permission of the relevant civil authorities. On the other hand, Bosnian Serb suspects and Reich Serb civilians marked out by the AOK for removal from Bosnia and occupied Serbia in 1914–15 ended up in terrible camps in Hungary, including at Arad (for Bosnian Serbs) and Nezsider (for Reich Serbs). Together with

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equally atrocious places of incarceration set up in Bosnia itself, these camps became a significant stain on the Habsburg Monarchy’s reputation by 1917–18, and also featured strongly in post-1918 Serb/Yugoslav accounts of the war.64 With regard to the treatment of resident enemy aliens, as opposed to Serb deportees, it is worth noting that many of the emergency measures introduced by the KÜA in August 1914 were adopted in Hungary too, albeit monitored by a separate War Surveillance Commission (Hadifelügyleti Bizottság), housed within the Hungarian Ministry of Defence and answerable to various ministerial departments in Budapest.65 In particular, the same categorisation system operated, with ‘dangerous’ or destitute aliens finding themselves interned, and the remainder either being designated for confinement in certain districts close to the camps (Class A), or, if they were considered ‘harmless’ or ‘safe’, allowed to stay in the places where they already lived under police supervision (Class B).66 The Serb minority in southern Hungary was regarded as a particular threat, with mass arrests already taking place in the first weeks of the war. In September 1914, Minister President Tisza called for ‘relentless severity against the[se] criminals’.67 Resident Italian enemy aliens fared better in May 1915. Unlike in Austria, they were given the option of confinement as an alternative to internment, although a camp was set up at Tapio Süly for ‘suspect’ deportees from Fiume (Rijeka) and other parts of Hungarian-administered Croatia which held 377 inmates, including 13 women, when it was inspected by an ICRC team from Geneva in September 1915.68 At the time of this visit, the Hungarian Ministry of Interior also provided the following figures for all internees and confinees in Transleithania (see Table 4.2). As the war continued, two further developments made Hungary stand out. The first was the tendency to scatter internees around an increasing number of small camps, and to allow confinement at some distance from these centres. This was the very opposite of what happened in Austria where a decision was made in 1917 to concentrate all interned enemy aliens (with the exception of Russians, Russian Jews and Montenegrins) in one place, Katzenau, and all category A confinees in one district, Waidhofen.69 Thus, according to information supplied by the head of the Austrian Red Cross Society to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 1918, tiny numbers of British civilian prisoners were being held in internment or confinement in several different locations in the Hungarian half of the Empire, including at Aszód, Budapest, Cegléd, Gyöngyös, Koprivnica (in Table 4.2 Number of internees and confinees in Hungary, according to figures produced by the Hungarian Ministry of Interior, September 1915 British French Belgian Japanese Montenegrin Italian Russian Serb Total Internees 26 Confinees 539 Total 565

51 458 509

3 64 67

0 6 6

262 29 291

449 519 4,474 1,845 4,923 2,364

4,176 5,486 1,451 8,866 5,627 14,352

Source: Rapports de MM. G. Ador, Dr. F. Ferrière et Dr. de Schulthess-Schindler sur leurs visites à quelques camps de prisonniers en Autriche-Hongrie (Geneva and Paris, 1915), p. 25.

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Croatia), Pöstyn, Nyitra (Nitra) and Vácz (Vác). This made it difficult for the British Red Cross to supply them adequately.70 An earlier report on the camp at Vácz, undertaken by the American Vice-Consul in Budapest in January 1916, indicated a similar issue with wide dispersal of internees on work projects, and confinees living at some distance from the main camp. However, conditions were also said to be good, with internees receiving regular healthy meals ‘at the barracks’ and ‘needy’ confinees able to apply for financial assistance from the Hungarian government if they required help with food and lodging.71 The second difference was the increasing spotlight thrown on the treatment of Serb deportees held at Arad and Nezsider, both camps that were administered solely by the army (the Heeresverwaltung, meaning in effect the AOK) as they contained ‘dangerous’ enemy civilian deportees, as well as members of the minority Serb community in pre-war Hungary.72 According to the figures from the Ministry of Interior cited above, Serbs made up 76.1 per cent of all civilian internees in the Hungarian half of the empire even before the full-scale occupation began at the end of 1915. Bosnian Serbs and Reich Serb deportees were also far more likely to be interned rather than confined when compared to enemy aliens and deportees of other nationalities. Deportation as a means of punishing and pacifying a hostile population known for its opposition to the Monarchy was the primary motive, at least in the early part of the war. Credible reports of high mortality rates at Arad and Nezsider, with ‘large number[s]’ reportedly dying from ‘misery and want’, had already reached the Serb Legation in Bucharest in early 1915, leading to an exchange of notes with the American diplomatic authorities in Vienna.73 American representatives on the ground in places like Fiume also occasionally expressed unease at the severity and magnitude of army deportation orders, in this case in relation to Italian and other enemy alien residents sent to Tapio Süly in May 1915. However, the US consul general in Vienna, Ulysses Grant-Smith, was not at all sure that a formal, public protest would work: We must, all of us, disabuse our minds of the idea that we are “representing”, in any degree, any country but the United States of America. To put it bluntly, the Austro-Hungarian authorities can shoot each and every alien enemy within her borders and the United States officials would have no rights under law or treaty to protest. ‘The only possible way for us to accomplish anything in these matters’, he continued, ‘is through personal appeals to the authorities in question, and our endeavours can be successful only in the same measure as our relations are cordial with them’.74 When seen through the lens of Serb civilian prisoners, then, there was little protection from military abuses, in spite of the Hungarian government’s refusal to surrender the powers of the civil administration wholesale to the jurisdiction of the AOK. Deportees from Bosnia and Habsburg-occupied Serbia were discriminated against compared to enemy civilians of other nationalities, not least as the army authorities were reluctant to hand over lists of Serb prisoners to the ICRC in Geneva, making outside relief efforts on the part of the Serbian

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Red Cross and the London-based Serbian Relief Fund all the harder.75 Further deportations took place in late autumn 1915, summer 1916 and spring 1917, this time to a variety of places in both Austria and Hungary, although Nezsider remained the largest camp for Serbs with 9,934 inmates in May 1917.76 Women as well as children as young as nine years old were among the deportees, and there were reports of high death rates. Serb refugees in Britain, France, Italy and Switzerland were vociferous in their denunciations, and even the Spanish authorities and the Vatican complained through diplomatic channels.77 Although, as Gumz argues, there was a gradual, and at first barely perceptible, shift in the AOK’s strategy towards the occupied Serbs in general in 1917–18, from indiscriminate ‘militarized sweeps aimed at intimidation of the [entire] population’ to more restrained ‘police-style methods’ designed to single out individual suspects and divide them from those who were judged indifferent or sympathetic to imperial rule, the brutal treatment of the deportees puts a question mark over the notion that there was a significant ‘de-escalation’ of Austro-Hungarian violence towards enemy civilians in the final phase of the war.78 Rather the army’s thinking remained caught in the same destructive dynamic, the only difference being that the occupied Serb population was now to be de-nationalised and converted to the supposed benefits of (submission to) Habsburg over-lordship through the systematic targeting of members of the intelligentsia and all persons suspected of nationalist agitation or armed resistance against the Monarchy, including presumed networks of activist families. Only after all members of the Serb political class had been removed from Serbian soil, and at the same time discredited as national, cultural or guerrilla leaders, could military security be achieved for the empire.79 When the Spanish embassy in Vienna raised renewed concerns over the conditions experienced by Serb men, women and child prisoners at Nezsider at the end of 1917, the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry responded, in a note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by blaming the victims: The inmates are the cause of their own misfortunes, particularly as so many of them, and especially the women, sell their clothes or give them to local residents in exchange for Schnaps and other alcohol. . . . Shoes too are the object of shady business dealings. . . . Members of the Serb intelligentsia borrow tattered clothing from lower class internees so that they can appear in a desperate state before visiting diplomats.80 While admitting that fourteen of the 526 children in the camp had died from various illnesses over the year 1917, the note also went on to claim that this was a lower mortality rate than among the local population and continued: The War Ministry cannot avoid concluding, on the basis of many years’ experience, that complaints made by Serb internees have the sole purpose of soliciting more money and gifts from the Spanish embassy.81 In its treatment of Serb civilian prisoners, then, the Habsburg army came closest to making maximum use of its arbitrary power over conquered territories and the

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enemy populations that lived there, with the professed aim of preventing wouldbe insurrections and ending all forms of political activity. This was not simply comparable to nineteenth-century colonial punishment expeditions outside Europe,82 but also included rational planning for the extension of Habsburg military-administrative practices to occupied Serbia and a large amount of coordinated police work, as well as a move away from reliance on denunciation towards more sophisticated techniques for identifying, classifying and isolating ‘enemies’. At the same time, the practice of deportation was inter-meshed with a concerted attempt to blacken the name of the victims, and thus render them unworthy of humanitarian assistance, unworthy of diplomatic protection, and most importantly of all from the viewpoint of the military’s political-strategic goals, unworthy of independent nationhood.

Internment in the Habsburg Empire in European and global context Austria-Hungary’s internment policies were not just part of a brutal policy aimed at achieving internal security across the empire and particularly in border regions and occupied areas; they were also bound up with what happened, and what was imagined to have happened, to Habsburg subjects in enemy countries, above all in Britain, France and their respective overseas empires. True, the Ministry of War and the AOK showed little interest in intervening to shape public opinion on this issue, preferring simply to use their emergency wartime powers to supress negative or dispiriting news items. Nonetheless, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna played an active role in the global ‘war of words’ over alleged breaches of the laws and customs of ‘civilised’ warfare, the behaviour of imperial troops in occupied Serbia and Bosnia notwithstanding. In particular it held Britain responsible for supposedly instigating a worldwide system of anti-German and antiHabsburg measures in 1914–15, ranging from expropriations and expulsions to deportations and internment.83 Incoming private correspondence from AustroHungarian internees held in Britain, France, Italy and neutral Switzerland were also carefully monitored by the Habsburg military censor, with reports sent to relevant government ministries.84 When in 1916 the German Reichstag passed a motion calling for financial assistance to German nationals overseas who had fallen on hard times as a result of the war, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded a similar arrangement for Habsburg subjects.85 The Austrian Minister President Count Karl von Stürgkh wrote to the common Finance Ministry on 5 July 1916 to express his strong support for such measures, noting that they were important not only as an ‘act of humanity’ but also as a means ‘strengthening the bonds that our next-of-kin living abroad feel towards our state in these difficult times’.86 Habsburg policies were also influenced in a more negative sense by events at global level. When the acting military authorities on the German home front ordered a general internment of all British males of military age in early November 1914, in retaliation for the alleged mistreatment of Germans in Britain and British colonies, the Austro-Hungarian envoy in the Saxon capital Dresden wrote to Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold in Vienna that the German reprisal

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measures were ‘understandable, all things considered!’ and added: ‘it is no bad thing if the British are now given a tangible demonstration that they are not superior to the rest of humanity’.87 True, the authorities in Vienna had already ruled out a direct copy of Germany’s move towards blanket internment of all British nationals; but new orders released by the KÜA on 15 November 1914 made explicit reference to the need to treat British internees and confinees particularly harshly. Those held in confinement had additional restrictions imposed on their freedom of movement and – unlike aliens of other nationality – were banned from using local pubs, coffee houses or restaurants.88 Such discriminatory treatment was eventually discontinued in May 1916, mainly because it had become clear to policy-makers inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Britain treated its civilian internees relatively well compared to other enemy states. This was shown in official reports produced by the ICRC, but also in intelligence gathered by the Austrian military censor through its monitoring of prisoner-of-war correspondence.89 From 1916, indeed, Habsburg foreign ministry officials began to put more faith in bilateral exchange agreements with enemy countries, as opposed to reprisals and other discriminatory measures, as the best means of improving conditions for – and securing the possible release of – Austro-Hungarian subjects imprisoned abroad. The model here was a Franco-German agreement in January 1916, which allowed for the internment of certain categories of sick military and civilian prisoners in neutral Switzerland. Austria-Hungary joined the scheme later in the year 1916, as did Britain and Belgium.90 Further exchange agreements were hampered by Vienna’s lack of negotiating power, particularly as it held substantially fewer British and French nationals compared to the number of its own subjects in British and French hands. Britain, which by March 1917 had interned 36,000 Germans and 11,000 Habsburg subjects in camps scattered across the world, was only willing to bargain over the exchange of certain narrowly defined categories of prisoner, while ruling out an ‘all for all’ exchange on the grounds that this would only be to the Central Powers’ advantage.91 France came to a more comprehensive exchange agreement with Germany at Bern in April 1918, but this did not directly benefit Habsburg subjects in French hands.92 By early 1918, then, only a relatively small number of Austro-Hungarian internees had been able to return home, either directly or after a period of internment in Switzerland. Even so, this created challenges of its own, given that many of the returnees had lived abroad for years, did not have an identifiable Heimat or ‘place of settlement’ to take responsibility for them, and often came back penniless and in poor health. Some were also politically suspect – or at least their loyalty to the empire was in doubt. After an unknown number of former Habsburg internees from Russia had returned home via Sweden in the first two months of 1918, the AOK issued an order to the effect that all returning civilian prisoners of Austrian or Hungarian nationality were to undergo a period of quarantine in one of a number of specially designated Heimkehrlager. Those with a secure place of residence to travel on to might be released after fourteen days, provided they passed the requisite health and political checks; those without anywhere to go would be obliged to have their future accommodation and employment needs determined for them by

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the wartime refugee fund (Kriegsflüchtingsfürgsorge) administered by the Ministry of Interior.93 One country that Austria-Hungary had particular difficulties in reaching an exchange agreement with was Italy. Paradoxically here the numbers were on the Habsburg Monarchy’s side, for after 1915 it held far more Italian civilians in internment than vice versa – with the numbers increasing yet again by 16,000 following a series of deportations from the occupied parts of Friuli and Veneto after the Battle of Caporetto in 1917.94 Yet until summer 1918 negotiations were hamstrung by the negative attitude of the Italian authorities towards their own citizens in enemy captivity. In brief, the Italian state, in contrast to its British and French counterparts, actively sought to prevent the despatch of supplementary relief packages to its military and civilian prisoners in Austria, justifying this by arguing that they were deserters and traitors. The Austrian authorities knew by the spring of 1918 that the Italian POWs and civilian prisoners in their care were dangerously under-nourished and at risk of disease and starvation. They were also in part responsible for this situation, at least in the sense that they continued to hold them even though they could not feed them adequately.95 In April–May, 1918 it was already noted in a report produced by the Austrian military censor that ‘almost all of the Italian prisoners complain in their letters home about the lack of supplies from Italy’. At Katzenau the new and ‘exhausted’ arrivals from Friuli were said to be in a particularly poor state of health.96 Some of the prisoners were sent outside the camp to work for private employers, but conditions here must have been equally harsh, judging by the rise in official correspondence about escapes and escape attempts.97 In the July report, the situation was described as ‘increasingly desperate’ with constant complaints about ‘hunger and misery’ and rumours that ‘thousands’ of Italian deportees had already died.98 The exact number of deaths is unfortunately not recorded in any of the Austrian documents. However, further evidence of deteriorating conditions came to light in early September 1918, when a group of 803 Italian internees, together with one Greek national, were released from Katzenau and repatriated by train via Switzerland. A Swiss medical team that met the train in Buchs, on the Swiss side of the border, reported as follows: The passengers were in a horrific state. The doctor estimated the number of sick at around 90; 11 persons had to be transported lying down, including a woman who had given birth a few hours earlier; two prisoners with tuberculosis were close to death. . . . Due to the lack of dedicated hospital carriages, pregnant women had to be accommodated alongside prisoners suffering from a variety of diseases. Among them were cases of pleurisy in both lungs with accumulation of pus in the pleural cavity. There were also numerous cases of swelling of the lower body parts, probably caused by hunger.99 Relative to the miserable conditions faced by the Italian internees and deportees in 1918, the smaller group of British and French civilian prisoners held at Katzenau

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(amounting to no more than 235 in March 1918) faired reasonably well, although they too complained of poor accommodation and missing relief parcels.100 Enemy civilians who remained in Raabs and other confinement stations in Lower Austria in fact struggled more in the last eighteen months of the war, particularly when it came to getting enough food.101 British and French civilians who had not already been exchanged under earlier schemes were released and repatriated, with the assistance of their own governments and national Red Cross societies, in November 1918. Some even chose to stay in Austria, or to travel on to other parts of Europe.102 What had protected them or at least made them less vulnerable – and what was missing in the case of the Italians – was the principle of reciprocity, in other words, the knowledge that it was not in the Monarchy’s best interests to mistreat them, lest this come back to harm the interests of the much larger numbers of Habsburg subjects living across the English- and French-speaking worlds. Even so, the fact that by 1918 British and French enemy alien prisoners were receiving more food than the average Austrian citizen was a piece of news that the imperial authorities could hardly broadcast publicly, for fear of further undermining their legitimacy at home and fuelling ever growing national grievances and social discontent.

Conclusion Although the treatment of Austro-Hungarian civilians abroad had some impact on Habsburg policies towards enemy aliens, particularly British and French nationals, the most important drivers behind internment decisions stemmed from conditions inside the empire. State administrators deliberately targeted resident aliens who were deemed to be at risk of destitution and saw their internment as a useful safeguard against the dangers of pauperism. Suspected foreign spies and ‘irredentists’ could be more easily monitored within internment camps, while trusted British, French and Russian residents who had lived for many years in the Monarchy were generally allowed to remain in their original domiciles, or at worst were placed in confinement stations. Italian nationals were singled out for harsher treatment because of their country’s alleged treachery towards the Triple Alliance in May 1915, facing expulsion, deportation or internment. Enemy civilians deported from occupied territories into the empire, first and foremost Serbs and later on Italians, usually faced the most miserable conditions in the camps. They were at the sharp end of the AOK’s de-nationalisation policies aimed at pacifying occupied populations and border regions, or of actions ordered against particular individuals and families for reasons of military security. In addition, their own governments were either unable or unwilling to send material support from home, rendering them vulnerable to hunger, disease and death. What, if anything, changed after 1918, as the First World War and the once taken-for-granted existence of older imperial sovereignties in Central and Eastern Europe gave way to a series of localised conflicts between rival armies and paramilitary units in several regions of the former Habsburg Empire?103 In respect to the treatment of enemy aliens and hostile occupied populations, the collapse of the Monarchy was perhaps not as big a break as at first seems – at least in

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an immediate sense. True, in the successor states after 1918, nation rather than empire stood at the centre of (contested) notions of citizenship, belonging and order, while anti-communism also played a significant role in the mobilisation of new hatreds and suspicions, especially in the wake of the short-lived Soviet regimes in Bavaria and Hungary in 1919.104 More generally, the transition from empire to nation, and the complex reimagining of borders, space and cultural identity that this entailed was a process fraught with tension and uncertainty. Nonetheless, once the dust had settled, it was evident that many of the same attitudes towards policing of minority groups in and beyond sovereign territories remained in place.105 Some of the successor states were in effect run as a ‘mini-empires’ with control over ‘alien’ populations and borderlands given priority over the new politics of integrative democracy and equal representation.106 Even before the peacemakers had completed their deliberations in Paris, and pressure groups had made their case for international protections for minority national and religious groups in the new states of Central and Eastern Europe, to be enforced by the League of Nations in Geneva, the camp as a space for controlling real and imagined ‘enemies within’, and population displacement as a tool of state-building and territorial or ethnic ‘cleansing’, had entered into alternative visions of the new world order.107 The Habsburg monarchy’s wartime measures against enemy alien residents and hostile occupied populations had played a central role in making this possible.

Notes 1 For a useful overview see Hannes Leidinger, ‘Historiography 1918-Today (AustriaHungary)’, in 1914–1918 online. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keane, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin, 2014), http://encyclopedia.19141918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-historiography_1918-today_austria-hungary2014-10-08.pdf (last updated 8 January 2017). 2 The notion of Austria-Hungary’s vassal status is put forward most succinctly by Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ‘Das deutsche Reich und Österreich-Ungarn im Ersten Weltkrieg: Die Herabdrückung Österreich-Ungarns zum Vasallen der deutschen Politik’, in Helmut Rumpler and Jan Paul Niederkorn (eds.), Der “Zweibund” 1879: Das deutsch-österreichisch-ungarische Bündnis und die europäische Diplomatie (Vienna, 1996), pp. 383–407. 3 For the two best English-language works on the politics of the Dual Alliance during the war years, see Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War (London, 2014); and Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 2nd ed. (London, 2014) [1997]. For an excellent study of the cultural aspects of this relationship, see also Jan Vermeiren, The First World War and German National Identity: The Dual Alliance at War (Cambridge, 2016). 4 See now Marvin Benjamin Fried, Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans During World War I (Basingstoke, 2014). 5 Jonathan E. Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2009). 6 See Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford, 2007). Also Benjamin Ziemann, Gewalt im Ersten Weltkrieg: Töten, Überleben, Verweigern (Essen, 2013); and the different contributions to

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Matthew Stibbe Matthew Stibbe (ed.), Captivity, Forced Labour and Forced Migration in Europe During the First World War (London, 2009). Anton Holzer, Das Lächeln der Henker: Der unbekannte Krieg gegen die Zivilbevölkerung 1914–1918 (Darmstadt, 2008); Georg Hoffmann, Nicole-Melanie Goll and Philipp Lesiak, Thalerhof 1914–1936: Die Geschichte eines vergessenen Lagers und seiner Opfer (Herne, 2010); Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 140–57; and Daniel Marc Segesser, ‘Kriegsverbrechen? Die österreichisch-ungarischen Operationen des August 1914 in Serbien in Wahrnehmung und Vergleich’, in Wolfram Dornik, Julia Walleczek-Fritz and Stefan Wedrac (eds.), Frontwechsel: ÖsterreichUngarns “Grosser Krieg” im Vergleich (Vienna, 2014), pp. 213–33. Andrej Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, 1914–1918 (London, 2007); Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse; Bruna Bianchi (ed.), La violenza contro la popolazione civile nella grande Guerra: deportati, profughi, internati (Milan, 2006). See also Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction; and Hannes Leidinger, Verena Moritz, Karin Moser and Wolfram Dornik, Habsburgs schmutziger Krieg: Ermittlungen zur österreichischungarischen Kriegsführung 1914–1918 (St. Pölten, 2014). Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution und Heimkehr: Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenproblematik für die Geschichte des Kommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa (Vienna, 2003). See also Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 509–10. Giovanna Procacci, Soldati e prigionieri italiani nella Grande Guerra, 2nd ed. (Turin, 2000) [1993]; Alan Kramer, ‘Italienische Kriegsgefangene im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Hermann J. W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung/La Grande Guerra nell’arco alpino: Esperienze e memoria (Innsbruck, 2006), pp. 247–58; and Verena Moritz and Hannes Leidinger, Zwischen Nutzen und Bedrohung: Die russischen Kriegsgefangenen in Österreich 1914–1921 (Bonn, 2005). See, for example, the many valuable contributions to Kuprian and Überegger (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum; Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, 2004); Martin Moll, Die Steiermark im Ersten Weltkrieg: Der Kampf des Hinterlandes ums Überleben 1914–1918 (Graz, 2014); and Hermann J. W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (eds.), Katastrophenjahre: Der Erste Weltkrieg und Tirol (Innsbruck, 2014). Carlo Moos, Habsburg Post Mortem: Betrachtungen zum Weiterleben der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna, 2016), pp. 11–12 and 27. See also Peter Haslinger, ‘AustriaHungary’, in Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (eds.) Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 73–90 (here esp. p. 77). Here I have been particularly influenced by the account of the war years given by Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA, 2016), pp. 385–441. Martin Moll, ‘Erster Weltkrieg und Ausnahmezustand, Zivilverwaltung und Armee: Eine Fallstudie zum innerstaatlichen Machtkampf 1914–1918 im steirischen Kontext’, in Siegfried Beer et al. (eds.), Focus Austria: Vom Vielvölkerreich zum EU-Staat. Festschrift für Alfred Ableitinger zum 65. Geburtstag (Graz, 2003), pp. 383–407. See Matthew Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918’, Journal of Modern European History, 12.4 (2014), pp. 479–99; and Stibbe, ‘Krieg und Brutalisierung: Die Internierung von Zivilisten bzw. “politisch Unzuverlässigen” in Österreich-Ungarn während des Ersten Weltkriegs’, in Alfred Eisfeld, Guido Hausmann and Dietmar Neutatz (eds.), Besetzt, interniert, deportiert: Der Erste Weltkrieg und die deutsche, jüdische, polnische und ukrainische Zivilbevölkerung im östlichen Europa (Essen, 2013), pp. 87–106.

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16 Benno Gammerl, Untertanen, Staatsbürger und Andere: Der Umgang mit ethnischer Heterogenität im Britischen Weltreich und im Habsburgerreich 1867–1918 (Göttingen, 2010), pp. 75–6. 17 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 75. 18 Gammerl, Untertanen, p. 83. 19 Annemarie Steidl, ‘Ein ewiges Hin und Her: Kontinentale, transatlantische und lokale Migrationsroute in der Spätphase der Habsburgermonarchie’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 19.1 (2008), pp. 15–42 (here pp. 18 and 21); and Michael John and Albert Lichtblau, Schmelztiegel Wien – einst und jetzt: Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart von Zuwanderung und Minderheiten (Vienna, 1990), pp. 12 and 17. 20 Andreas Fahrmeir, ‘Passports and the Status of Aliens’, in Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (eds.), The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society and Politics From the 1840s to the First World War (Oxford, 2001), pp. 93–119 (here p. 107). 21 See also Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept (New Haven, CT, 2007), pp. 83–4. 22 Gammerl, Untertanen, pp. 158–64; and Robin Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism: The Habsburg ‘Civilizing Mission’ in Bosnia, 1878–1914 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 170–1. 23 For a trenchant critique of the ‘spirit’ and ‘character of the War Government and its attitude to the governed’ by a prominent jurist in pre-war Vienna who periodically returned to politics after 1918, see Joseph Redlich, Austrian War Government (New Haven, CT, 1929), esp. pp. 77–100. 24 Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 59–61 and 140–1; and Stibbe, ‘Krieg und Brutalisierung’, pp. 90–4. 25 Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 186–7. In the end, Kraków was spared a siege, unlike Przemyśl further to the east. 26 See, for example, Fiona Paisley, The Lone Protestor: A. M. Fernando in Australia and Europe (Canberra, 2012), which tells the fascinating story of the Australian Aboriginal activist A. M. Fernando, including his experience of house arrest in Trieste and internment in wartime Austria, first at Grossau and then at Katzenau (here pp. 37–53). On Italian nationals expelled from Trieste and Pola in 1915, see Alessandro Livio, ‘The Wartime Treatment of the Italian-Speaking Population in Austria-Hungary’, European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire, 24.2 (2017), pp. 185–99 (here esp. pp. 193–4). 27 See Governor-General (Landesregierung) of Sarajevo to Department 10 of the War Ministry, 1 December 1914, in Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Kriegsarchiv (henceforth ÖStA-KA), Kriegsministerium 1914, Karton 565, Zl. 18137. Also Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, p. 77. 28 The only other country to make extensive use of this instrument of control over enemy aliens was Italy, where it was known as ‘domicilio coatto’ or ‘forced residence’. For further details see Daniela Luigia Caglioti’s contribution to this volume. 29 Erlass des KÜA, 27 August 1914, in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 2336. 30 According to Matteo Ermacora, ‘Assistance and Surveillance: War Refugees in Italy, 1914–1918’, Contemporary European History, 16.4 (2007), pp. 445–59 (here pp. 446–7), 86,500 Italians had already left the Monarchy before 23 May 1915, and a further 42,216 were expelled in the period immediately following Italy’s entry into the war. 31 Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 59–60. See also Daniela Luigia Caglioti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau: Donne e uomini al confine e nei campi di concentramento’, in Stefania Bartoloni (ed.), La Grande Guerra delle italiane: Mobilitazioni, diritti, trasformazioni (Rome, 2016), pp. 249–70 (here pp. 258–60).

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32 On the KÜA, which was transformed into a less powerful body, the Ministerial Commission inside the War Ministry (Ministerialkommission im Kriegsministerium or MK/ KM) in 1917–18, see Tamara Scheer, Die Ringstraßenfront: Österreich-Ungarn, das Kriegsüberwachungsamt und der Ausnahmezustand während des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna, 2010). On denunciations in particular, which peaked in the period late July to early September 1914 when ‘thousands of citizens took active part in the implementation of emergency laws’, see also Scheer, ‘Denunciation and the Decline of the Habsburg Home Front During the First World War’, European Review of History/ Revue européenne d’histoire, 24.2 (2017), pp. 214–28 (here esp. pp. 221 and 224). 33 See also Alon Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford, 2002). 34 Redlich, Austrian War Government, pp. 80–1; and Christoph Führ, Das k.u.k. Armeeoberkommando und die Innenpolitik in Österreich 1914–1917 (Graz and Vienna, 1968). 35 Erlass des KÜA, 27 August 1914, in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 2336. 36 Ibid. Stibbe, ‘Krieg und Brutalisierung’, p. 98. 37 See ‘Abrechnung der Transportkosten für die im Jahre 1916 nach Deutschland zugewiesenen internierten Bergarbeiter’, n.d. [October 1918], in ÖStA-KA, MK-KM, Zl. 40395. According to this document, up to 140 Italian miners were sent from Katzenau or from various work detachments in Austria to Germany in 1916. 38 See the records of the Gemeinsames Zentralnachweisbureau des Roten Kreuzes – Auskunftsstelle für Kriegsgefangene (Central Information Office of the Red Cross – POW section, henceforth AOK/GZNB), Kartons 3726–3759, in ÖStAKA. On the GZNB and its role in monitoring war prisoners’ correspondence, including that of Austro-Hungarian military and civilian captives held in enemy countries, see also Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War, esp. pp. 138–45. 39 ‘Korrespondenzen der internierten und konfinierten Ausländer’, 22 October 1914, in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 6914. 40 See also ‘Unterstützungsgesuche von internierten österr. Staatsangehörigen an ausländischen Hilfsstellen’, Sonderbericht der Italienischen Zensurgruppe A, 3 November 1915, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3734, Zl. 2518. 41 See Ministry of Foreign Affairs to KÜA, 11 October 1914, in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 7583. 42 See, for example, Ulysses Grant-Smith to Frederic C. Penfield, 5 November 1915. Copy in The National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth TNA), FO 383/5; Also Bericht der Zensurabteilung des Gemeinsamen Zentralnachweisebureau, n.d. [1915?], in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3736, Zl. 2828; Bericht der französischen-englischen Zensurgruppe, 28 January 1916, in ibid., Karton 3737, Zl. 2854 ad.; and Spanish Embassy in Vienna to Spanish Legation in Bern, 30 May 1917, in TNA, FO 383/245. 43 Hans Swoboda, ‘Zivilinternierte in Österreich’, in Hans Weiland and Leopold Kern (eds.), In Feindeshand: Die Gefangenschaft im Weltkriege in Einzeldarstellungen, Vol. 2 (Vienna, 1931), pp. 229–30. 44 For an explanation of the difference between ‘internees’ and the two types of ‘confinees’, see American Ambassador in Vienna (Frederic C. Penfield) to American Ambassador in London (Walter Hines Page), 7 May 1915, in TNA, FO 383/5. 45 See Erlass des KÜA, 15 November 1914, in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 9736. 46 Office of the Statthalter of Lower Austria, Instruktion für die Behandlung fremder Staatsangehöriger in Niederösterreich während des Kriegszustandes, n.d. [August– November 1914], in Niederösterreichisches Landesarchiv St. Pölten (henceforth NÖLA), Präs. P. Zl. 384 SA ex 1914 (Karton 691). This document suggested that ‘many Russian Poles, many Ukrainians [and] many Russian Jews’ fell into the category of sworn opponents of the Tsarist regime. 47 Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000), pp. 223–5.

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48 Erlass des KÜA, 27 August 1914, in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 2336. See also Office of the Statthalter for Vienna to Department 10 of the War Ministry, 29 September 1914, in ÖStA-KA, Kriegsministerium 1914, Karton 565, Zl. 9477; and KÜA to the office of the Statthalter for Lower Austria, 2 October 1914, in NÖLA, Präs. P. Zl. 384 SA ex 1914 (Karton 691). 49 See ‘Die derzeit bestehenden Interierungs- und Konfinierungsstationen in Niederösterreich. Stand vom 4.VIII.1915’, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3731, Zl. 1769. For a more detailed discussion see also Reinhard Mundschütz, Internierung im Waldviertel: Die Internierungslager und – stationen der BH Waidhofen an der Thaya, 1914–1918, D. Phil, University of Vienna, 2002. 50 See also Mundschütz, ‘Markl Internment Camp’, in 1914–1918 online (as note 1), http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-markl_internment_camp-2016-04-26.pdf (last updated 8 January 2017). 51 See the figures in Claudio Ambrosi, Vite internate: Katzenau 1915–1917 (Trento, 2008), p. 71. 52 Mundschütz, ‘Internierung im Waldviertel’, p. 65; and Cagliotti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau’, p. 258. 53 See the orders issued by the KÜA in relation to Romanian subjects on 13 September 1916, 8 February 1917 and 3 June 1917, in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 82231, 96476 and 107356. 54 KÜA to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 July 1917, in Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (henceforth ÖStA-HHStA), Karton 568, 27/2a, Zl. 45. See also Mundschütz, ‘Internierung im Waldviertel’, pp. 64–5; and Cagliotti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau’, p. 258. 55 The figure of 109 British civilians sent to Katzenau and 83 left in the confinement stations of Waidhofen an der Thaya is cited in KÜA to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4 July 1917, in ÖStA-HHStA, Karton 556, 26/2a, Zl. 65. 56 Mundschütz, ‘Internierung im Waldviertel’, pp. 63–4. 57 Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, p. 369, n. 113. 58 Dorothy Cocking, 11-page report on her time at Raabs, n.d. [1918], in TNA, FO 383/ 364. 59 This letter was intercepted, and translated into German, by the Austrian censor. See Bericht der Serbischen Zensurgruppe, 13 December 1915, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/ GZNB, Karton 3737, Zl. 2978. 60 See, for example, Italienische Zensurgruppe B, Spezialbericht, 11 September 1915, and Bericht der Italienische Zensurgruppe B, 5 January 1918, both in ibid., Karton 3732, Zl. 1917 and Karton 3756, Zl. 4936. 61 District Commissioner in Waidhofen an der Thaya to the Office of the Statthalter in Vienna, 28 September 1914. Copy in ÖStA-KA, KÜA, Zl. 9634. 62 District Commissioner in Waidhofen an der Thaya to KÜA, 10 November 1914, in ibid. 63 Cocking, 11-page report (as note 58 above). On food shortages in the Austrian interior more generally, and the social conflicts they gave rise to, see Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire. 64 Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War. 65 Scheer, ‘Denunciation and the Decline of the Habsburg Home Front’, p. 217. For the slightly different, but by no means less authoritarian, manner in which the wartime emergency provisions operated in the Hungarian Interior, as opposed to the Austrian Interior and Bosnia-Herzegovina, see also Judson, The Habsburg Empire, pp. 392–3; and József Galántai, Hungary in the First World War (Budapest, 1989), esp. pp. 72–77 and 95–8. 66 ‘Report on Civilians in Aszód, Confined Class “A”’, by T.D.M. Cardeza (American Embassy Vienna), 16 October 1915, in National Archive and Record Administration,

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75 76 77

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Matthew Stibbe College Park, Maryland (henceforth NARA), Record Group (RG) 84: U.S. Embassies, Legations, Consulates General, Consulates, and Missions, American ConsulateGeneral Budapest, British Section. I would like to thank Neville Wylie for drawing my attention to this source and to the sources in notes 71 and 74, below. Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 101. Caglioti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau’, p. 257. Livio, ‘The Wartime Treatment’, p. 196. Baron Slatin (Austrian Red Cross – welfare committee for POWs) to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 May 1918, in ÖStA-HHStA, F36, Karton 556, 26/2a, Zl. 75. See ‘Report on Civilians at Vacz, Hungary’, by Louis G. Dreyfus (American ViceConsul, Budapest), 24 January 1916, in NARA, RG 84, American ConsulateGeneral Budapest, British Section. See War Ministry to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 21 April 1915, in ÖStA-HHStA, F36, Karton 573, 28 2/a, Zl. 37a. See the details contained in two notes sent by the Royal Serb Legation, Bucharest, to the American Legation, Bucharest, on 13 and 19 February 1915, in ibid., Zl. 19. Copies of both notes were passed by the Austro-Hungarian Legation in Bucharest to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna on 12 March 1915. For further evidence of terrible conditions at Arad in winter 1914/15, see Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, p. 76. Grant-Smith to Benjamin F. Chase (American Consul, Fiume), also copied to William Coffin (American Consul-General, Budapest) and other US consular representatives in Austria-Hungary, 1 June 1915, in NARA, RG 84, American ConsulateGeneral Budapest, British Section. As the ICRC complained in its post-war report – see Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport général du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge sur son activité de 1912 à 1920 (Geneva, 1921), p. 137. Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, p. 369, n. 113. See the German translation of a note from the Spanish embassy to the AustroHungarian Foreign Minister, Count Ottokar Czernin, 10 April 1917, in ÖStAHHStA, F36, Karton 573, 28 2/a, Zl. 156. On the intervention of the papal nuncio in Vienna, also in mid-April 1917, see Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, p. 229; and on complaints in the pro-Entente Serb press in Switzerland, see Annette Becker, ‘Captive Civilians’, in Jay Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War. Volume 3: Civil Society (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 257–81 (here p. 272). See Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse, pp. 215–30; Gumz, ‘Norms of War and the Austro-Hungarian Encounter with Serbia, 1914–1918’, First World War Studies, 4.1 (2013), pp. 97–110; and Ziemann, Gewalt im Ersten Weltkrieg, pp. 32–3, who also talks explicitly of a ‘de-escalation’ of violence on all sides in Habsburg-occupied Serbia in 1917–18. Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse, p. 97. See also War Ministry to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 17 July 1917, in ÖStA-HHStA, F36, Karton 573, 28 2/a, Zl. 171. War Ministry to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, n.d. [February 1918], in ÖStA-KA, Kriegsminsterium 1918, 10/18/1/37. Ibid. See also the copy of the note sent by the Spanish embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 27 December 1917, in the same file. See Ziemann, Gewalt im Ersten Weltkrieg, p. 33. See k.u.k. Ministerium des Äussern, Sammlung von Nachweisen für die Verletzungen des Völkerrechts durch die mit Österreich-Ungarn kriegführenden Staaten, 4 Vols. (Vienna, 1915–1916), esp. Vol. 1, pp. 55–115 and Vol. 2, pp. 33–51. See, for example, the 37-page ‘Bericht der Deutschen Zensur-Gruppe C’, compiled for the month of October 1915, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3734 Zl. 2471, and similar reports in the same collection of files, including ‘Unsere Kriegsgefangenen

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92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

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102 103

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und Internierten in Frankreich, England und den neutralen Staaten, Dezember-Bericht [1917]’, in ibid., Karton 3756, Zl. 4925. Vermeiren, The First World War, p. 218. Stürgkh to Finance Ministry, 5 July 1916, in Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv, MdI., Allg., Sign. 19., Zl. 33334/1916. Austro-Hungarian Consul in Dresden to Berchtold, 17 November 1914, in ÖStAHHStA, Karton 556, 26/2a, Zl. 15. Erlass des KÜA, 15 November 1914, in ibid., Zl. 14. This edict was accompanied by a wave of anti-English feeling in the Austrian, and in particular the Viennese, press, lasting well into 1915. See Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 243–4. See the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the KÜA, 6 April 1916, and the KÜA to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4 May 1916, in ÖStA-HHStA, Karton 556, 26/2a, Zl. 48. On the January 1916 agreement see Richard B. Speed III, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (New York, NY, 1990), pp. 34– 7. Also Anja Huber’s chapter in this volume. Matthew Stibbe, British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914– 18 (Manchester, 2008), p. 143. The figures of 36,000 and 11,000 were read out by British ministers in the House of Lords and the House of Commons on 20 and 26 March 1917, respectively. On the Bern accord of 26 April 1918, see Jean-Claude Farcy, Les camps de concentration français de la première guerre mondiale (1914–1920) (Paris, 1995), pp. 120–2. See Ministry of Interior to the Zentralstelle der Fürsorge für Kriegsflüchtlinge, 22 April 1918, in Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Archiv der Republik, Kriegsflüchtlingsfürsorge, KFL I/49, Zl. 15178. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 60–1; and Cagliotti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau’, p. 260. See also Caglioti’s contribution to this volume. See the somewhat different interpretations offered by Procacci, Soldati e prigionieri italiani; and Kramer, ‘Italienische Kriegsgefangene’. ‘Angelegenheiten der Internierten und Konfinierten in der Monarchie’, April–May 1918, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3759, Zl. 5107. See, for example, the complaints in ÖStA-KA, MK/KM, Zl. 40128/1918. ‘Angelegenheiten der Internierten und Konfinierten in der Monarchie’, June–July 1918, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3759, Zl. 5163. Schweizerisches Gesundheitsamt, Rapport über die sanitarische Inspektion eines Repatriiertenzuges in Buchs am 7. September 1918, in Swiss Federal Archives, Bern, E27#1000/721#13969. See, for example, the report delivered by the Spanish embassy in Vienna to its counterpart in London after visiting the 116 British prisoners at Katzenau on 17 June 1918, in TNA, FO 383/364. The figure of 235 represents the number of British (112) and French (123) prisoners present in Katzenau on 16 March 1918 – see Cagliotti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau’, p. 258. See, for example, Dorothy Cocking’s complaints, and the complaints about Raabs passed on by the released confinee Joseph Blocisjewski to the Office International d’expédition de vivres et vêtements aux prisonniers de guerre in Fribourg, Switzerland, on 15 April 1918, in Archives du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva, C G1/431/VI. Paisley, The Lone Protestor, p. 51. See, for example, Tamás Révész, ‘For the “Freedom and Unity” of Carinthia? New Perspectives on the Military Remobilization in the Carinthian Borderland War (1918–1919)’, First World War Studies, 7.3 (2016), pp. 265–86; and Rudolf Kučera, ‘Exploiting Victory, Sinking Into Defeat: Uniformed Violence and the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria, 1918–1922’, Journal of Modern History, 88.4 (2016), pp. 827–55. More generally on post-war conflicts in

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Matthew Stibbe Central and Eastern Europe, see Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London, 2016); and Haslinger, ‘AustriaHungary’, pp. 86–9. On post-Habsburg Austria in particular, see also Peter Berger, Günter Bischof and Fritz Plasser (eds.), From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria (New Orleans, LA, 2010). See also Robert Gerwarth, ‘“War in Peace”: Remobilization and “National Rebirth” in Austria and Hungary’, in Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War (New York, NY and Oxford, 2016), pp. 35–52. On the broader question of continuities in political mentality and the underlying tendency to ‘operate according to the old rules and customs’ after 1918 in spite of the superficially very different legal-constitutional framework in which responsible state officials had to work, see Moos, Habsburg Post Mortem, here pp. 95–6. Mark Cornwall has also referred recently to a ‘“Habsburg mental space” that many contemporaries retained even when their old territorial empire had disappeared from the European map’ – see Cornwall, ‘Introduction: A Conflicted and Divided Habsburg Memory’, in Cornwall and Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth, pp. 1–12 (here p. 10). Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 388; and Gerwarth, The Vanquished, pp. 14 and 214. On population displacement between 1912 and 1923, and associated with this, real and imagined/envisaged forms of territorially based ethnic ‘cleansing’, see the many excellent contributions to Jochen Böhler, Włodzimierz Borodziej and Joachim von Puttkamer (eds.), Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War (Munich, 2014). Also Matthew Frank, Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in TwentiethCentury Europe (Oxford, 2017). On camps as a feature of the post-First World War order in Central and Eastern Europe see, for example, Todd Huebner, ‘The Internment Camp at Terezín, 1919’, Austrian History Year Book, 27 (1996), pp. 199–211.

5

The internment of enemy aliens in France during the First World War The ‘depot’ at Corbara in Corsica Simon Giuseppi

When war broke out in August 1914, France was the first of the major belligerent states to instigate internment measures against enemy aliens.1 Beginning with an order issued by the Interior Ministry on 2 August, a total of 75,000 men, women and children found themselves imprisoned, some of them temporarily, some of them for the full duration of the war and beyond. Corsica, as one of the many départements (administrative centres) of metropolitan France, was host to around 2,000 of these internees. Five ‘depots’ were established on the island at disused convents in Corbara, Cervione, Oletta, Morsiglia and Luri. This case study examines the conditions of detention and the cultural activities of the detainees at Corbara in the north-western part of the island. This was the largest of the five depots and the one that remained in use for the longest period of time, from October 1914 to October 1919.2 To date, only one serious study of the overall phenomenon of civilian internment in France has been attempted. Its author, Jean-Claude Farcy, concentrates his focus primarily on the depots established on or close to the Atlantic coast, ignoring largely those situated in the south. He also distinguishes between various kinds of camp or dépôt existing in mainland France. Several types were reserved for German and Austrian civilians, including camps for single males, for families, for VIPs, camps for the privileged and those where high security and strict discipline were deemed necessary. In other camps different categories of civilians from Alsace-Lorraine were held. Yet others were designated as sorting houses or for particular groups such as domestic suspects, ecclesiastics or prostitutes. Specific and appropriate ministerial instructions applied to each type3 More recently, the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War has aroused the interest of a number of local historians in the subject of internment and the role played, in the bigger picture, by individual depots situated in their parishes.4 These accounts, often relayed and dramatised by eager journalists, echo the message conveyed by Farcy’s ‘national’ study, and by internee memoirists of the inter-war period, such as the Hungarian Aladár Kuncz and others, including a number interned in Corsica discussed below, namely that conditions of detention in France were severe and inhumane.5 The experience of Corsica appears different in many respects. Of course, instructions emanating from Paris applied without distinction to all depots, but factors peculiar to Corsica such as geography and climate, the spectacular

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position of the depots and the low level of surveillance, the ample opportunity to leave the depot and to pursue gainful employment, all contributed to a higher level of acceptance by the internees of their plight. The more relaxed attitude adopted by the depot commanders and their benign interpretation of their instructions, coupled with the absence of hostility within the Corsican population, led to a different experience here compared to mainland France. In 1914, the era of mass tourism was still to come and relatively few of the internees arriving in Corsica following their arrest in mainland France in August were casual visitors or holiday-makers. Most had other more serious reasons to be on French soil; husbands or sons of mixed marriages, Germans and Austro-Hungarians with businesses in France, refugees from the repressed subject nationalities of the Habsburg Empire, employees in the hospitality trade and other segments of the French economy. Also included were teachers and students, performing artists, musicians on long or short contracts in France, as well as exhibitors, visitors and service providers at the international festival of urban life (L’Exposition internationale urbaine) in Lyon which had opened its doors in May 1914.6 The cross-section of human activity represented by the internees offered the potential for personal cultural enrichment for all. Visual sources tell their own story about conditions for enemy alien internees in Corsica, and will be discussed in detail in this chapter. Alongside the work of a number of painters, photographers, sculptors and engravers, the talented Austrian amateur artist Julius Hammer left a lasting graphic record of his detention on the island. He decorated the ceiling of two monastic cells in Corbara and returned to Vienna in 1918 with a collection of 100 drawings and caricatures. The quality of these illustrations and the greater volume of official archival material concerning this compared to other depots made Corbara a natural choice for a case study.

Internment in France In his landmark book on the subject of internment in France, Farcy develops the thesis that the French political and military authorities started work immediately after the disastrous humiliation by Prussia of 1870–71 on the preparation of strategies for a future war, which would have as its first priority the recovery of the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. However, these strategies were rendered obsolete by the advances in technology; they were based on the idea of a static conflict in which walled cities would be surrounded and held under siege. In this outdated scenario, all ‘bouches inutiles’ (French and non-French persons not contributing to the war effort but requiring nourishment) should be evacuated from cities and should be relocated far from potential hostilities.7 The category of ‘useless mouths’ included the elderly, women and children. In practice, in the period between the Franco–Prussian war and 1914, warfare had become more mobile with the development of new forms of motorised transport while heavy mortars and canons had made defensive walls hardly effective. On the outbreak of war in August 1914, then, a plan existed for evacuating a part of the population, but its appropriateness was doubtful. In the end, the French

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civilian and military authorities applied it but in relation not to a section of their own subjects but to neutralise the citizens of all enemy powers who happened to be on French soil. The plan existed in theory, but details were missing. Furthermore, the plan was known only to the highest echelons, and it would take time to translate the theory into measures that were understood, accepted and uniformly implemented down the line.8 In the absence of any international legal framework to justify and define the conditions for civilian internment,9 the French advanced a number of arguments: firstly, the objective was to stop men of conscription age from returning to their homeland and taking up arms against France; secondly these men could not be allowed to go free because they were potential spies and saboteurs. Indeed, many of those detained were immediately qualified as spies, with no grounds for this categorisation, simply to salve consciences. Another objective, not explicitly avowed but implicit in the qualification of certain detainees as ‘hostages’, was to use these internees, especially those of importance to the enemy such as diplomatic personnel and other prominent figures, including inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine, as bargaining chips. They could either be exchanged for French prisoners of similar standing or simply held and threatened with reprisals in the event of maltreatment by the enemy of their French counterparts.10 On the very same day that the French Ministry of War ordered a general mobilisation, the Interior Ministry issued instructions concerning all foreigners, irrespective of nationality. All were to report their presence to the nearest Préfecture de Police or town hall: citizens of friendly and neutral powers were to be invited to return home, unless they were able to provide sufficient justification to be granted special permits allowing them to remain and move freely. Citizens of enemy powers were to be detained. In principle, all foreigners were given twenty-four hours to leave France, using rail travel only. This concession was without substance, since virtually all railway trains were reserved for the movement of troops. Furthermore, no one was certain what the future held and whether the declarations of war were for real. The enemy civilians, mainly German and Austro-Hungarian, were detained at the place of their arrest, then convoyed to staging points from where they were moved by train to a few large internment camps. A typical case is the La Chartreuse seminary at Puy-en-Velay in the Haute-Loire département in south-central France, which in the early weeks of the war held 1,200 internees, including men, women and children.11 There they were sorted before being moved on to a final destination. The Alsatians, for example, were kept in detention as a matter of precaution due to doubts over their potentially split allegiance between Germany and France. In recognition of this dilemma, they were entitled to more benevolent treatment in specially designated camps. As a result of bilateral conventions agreed in October 1914, German and Austro-Hungarian persons over the age for mobilisation, as well as women and children could return to their countries of origin, unless they opted to remain near to their husbands or fathers.12 Later arrivals in camps in metropolitan France included a limited number of Germans and Austro-Hungarians arrested in the French North African possessions and protectorates of Algeria,

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Tunisia and Morocco or transferred there from other parts of Africa; and also a few German ‘Polynesians’. The former were held in a variety of places, including the military fort at Lambèse (Algeria), until German reprisals forced France to agree to their transfer to Europe in 1915. The German ‘Polynesians’ faced a long and arduous forced journey into French captivity which involved them travelling to Europe via New Zealand.13 Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry had instructed its regional prefects to identify buildings suitable for receiving large numbers of internees. The criteria included that they should be far from the battle front and the frontiers with the enemy, preferably on or near the coast with a marked preference for islands and peninsulas where surveillance would be easier and escape more difficult. These instructions resulted in the selection of about fifty-five sites, spread geographically but concentrated mainly along the Atlantic coast to the west and south-west and along the Mediterranean coast to the south.14 The buildings were almost exclusively, and in about equal numbers, abandoned seminaries, monasteries and convents on the one hand, and military camps on the other. A law of 1905/6 concerning the separation of Church and State had conveniently dispersed the religious communities, thus leaving empty and available a considerable number of isolated and well-constructed establishments ideal for these new purposes. As regards Corsica, five sites, all convents, were retained and were occupied one after the other. The convent at Cervione, south of Bastia, was claimed by the Ministry of War in mid-1915 for use by prisoners of war, first Germans and then Bosnians, but the convents of Corbara, Oletta, Morsiglia and Luri opened between October 1914 and June 1915 and remained operational for differing lengths of time, for Corbara beyond the armistice and well into 1919. In all, more than 2,000 internees were held in these sites.15

Corse: terre d’accueil, terre d’exil! For more than two millennia, Corsica had suffered repeated invasions and dominations; Rome, the Republics of Pisa and Genoa, Aragon, France and others had competed for primacy, attracted by the strategic position of the island in the western Mediterranean and by its human and agricultural resources. Invaders made it a political and economic pawn. The Corsicans were thus well used to outsiders and, as a mainly pastoral community, were quick to offer hospitality and protection. Even the British held the island briefly between 1793 and 1796. King George III was represented there by his Viceroy, Sir Gilbert Elliott, future Lord Minto, who later became Governor-General of India.16 Not only did occupying nations come and go but, while present, found it convenient to use Corsica as a ‘natural prison’ for undesirables. Genoa offered a refuge to Greek Orthodox Christian islanders persecuted by the Muslim Ottomans, not in their rich mainland city but on their poor offshore possession. In 1802, the French ‘parked’ several hundred rebel Haitians not in mainland France but in Corsica and set them to building roads through the mountains. The winter climate and the dire working conditions almost wiped out the entire

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cohort. Even the British considered using Corsica as a closer and therefore less costly alternative to Australia for the deportation of its convicts. The idea was scuppered on the grounds that escape would be too simple and life in the island would constitute no punishment.17 During the First World War Corsica was host not only to the 2,000 civilian internees discussed below, but also to a number of other categories of foreigners.18 Several thousand prisoners of war, mainly Germans, Turks and Bosnians were accommodated in abandoned penitentiaries around the island or in buildings close to their places of work; able-bodied prisoners of war could be obliged to do heavy work (agriculture, infrastructure etc.) and were hotly contested by other regions with comparable labour requirements. Nearly 5,000 Serbian refugees, mostly women, children, elderly persons and the war-wounded arrived in Corsica at the beginning of 1916, accompanied by the London-based Serbian Relief Fund and a Scottish Women’s military hospital. At about the same time, 750 Syrian Israelite refugees were evacuated via Greece, fleeing persecution in the Ottoman Empire.19 Other ‘visitors’ included part of the Greek government in exile, and French colonial troops unable to withstand the winter conditions of northern Europe and released temporarily from duty at the front. In this chapter, however, the enemy alien internees will be the centre of attention.

Internment in the convent of Corbara The first convoy of 400 internees arrived in Corbara in October 1914, consisting of males aged between 17 and 60. The group left the islands of Frioul and the Chateau d’If, off Marseille, where possibly 1,500 ‘foreigners’ of both sexes and of all ages were held in great discomfort. They sailed to Bastia, and after a difficult sea crossing a train transported them to Ile-Rousse on the west coast whence they walked the final eight kilometres of steep roads up to Corbara and on to the convent. Only when their list was examined on arrival was it realised that the Prefect of the region Bouches-du-Rhone in Marseille had blundered and that they were all Alsatian, not Austro-Hungarians. Two days later, the convoy was sent back, the Corsican public giving them a warm send-off, in sharp contrast to the initial hostile ‘welcome’ reserved for representatives of the enemy.20 The first permanent internees arrived a few weeks later, their group being made up of 400 German and Austro-Hungarian males coming from various assembly and sorting points, in particular the monastery Saint-Michel at Frigolet, Tarascon and the Chartreuse seminary at Puy-en-Velay. Other convoys followed, and the population in Corbara rapidly rose to 800, excluding the French director and a guard of over sixty soldiers and gendarmes. The convent boasted only forty cells for forty monks. Eight or ten internees were assigned a cell, and the church, sacristy and corridors were crammed with more than 150 internees. No chairs, tables, beds or other furniture were supplied. The internees arrived already equipped with a blanket, a mess plate, tin mug and a spoon and fork. In Corbara they received a sack and some straw for filling. This improvised mattress was supposed to insulate them from the cold of the paving stones.

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Figure 5.1 The convent of Saint Dominic, Corbara, seen from the north. Julius Hammer

Over time, the Spartan conditions would improve through the efforts of the internees themselves. Once they understood that they would be there for a prolonged period, they set about constructing beds, bed boards, chairs, shelving and so on, using wooden planks purchased locally and wood and branches collected from the maki.21 Among their number were professional and do-it-yourself carpenters to show the less qualified how to assemble basic furniture using tools and nails acquired for cash. Overcrowding diminished progressively as a result of three factors: firstly, the other convents opened and absorbed some of Corbara’s excess occupants; secondly, from the spring of 1915, more and more internees accepted work outside the convent and were generally housed and fed by their employers; thirdly, from 1916 onwards, under a new Franco-German convention, men with real or feigned illnesses obtained the privilege of being moved to Switzerland where appropriate medical treatment was available in specially designed internment camps, or in severe cases, of being repatriated.22 For much of the war, the population of Corbara was reduced to about 250 internees and a handful of guards. The inmates quickly realised that escape was nigh impossible; the guard was light and made up of retired soldiers and those unfit for active service, there were no walls or barbed wire and one could simply walk away, but what then? So, they settled down to make the best of a bad situation.

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Figure 5.2 The entrance to the convent: an armed sentry and his box. Julius Hammer

Management and resources The civilian director of the camp was alone. He had no assistance and no real authority over the guard which was provided by the military. Corbara saw three directors: the first established the basic camp structures but remained in office for only three months, the second stayed a year before being reassigned

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Figure 5.3 The convent seen from the east. Julius Hammer

to the 750 Syrian Israelite refugees persecuted and exiled from their homeland by the Ottoman Empire and protected and taken in by France. The third director served from January 1916 to the closure of the depot.23 Each in turn was able to establish a rapport with the internees listening to their complaints and requests and channelling reasonable ones to the Prefect via his immediate superior, the sub-prefect in the nearby town of Calvi. The internees received basic military food rations from the French administration. This consisted mainly of bread, potatoes, rice, dried beans, improved with a little mutton or goat’s meat twice a week; the Germans constantly but to no avail requested beef or pork instead. There are few cows in Corsica and the pigs end up as salted charcuterie. To improve and vary their diet, the internees had various options: they could purchase local produce including wine and tobacco from the convent ‘shop’, they could grow fresh vegetables and raise rabbits and pigs, and they could receive parcels of non-perishable foodstuffs, particularly sausages and chocolate, from home via the Red Cross. The supplier in the Corsican capital Ajaccio sent the basic rations by small boat daily to Ile-Rousse. Very quickly the internees chose to receive flour in place of bread, built their own

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Figure 5.4 Dormitory in the open air; as soon as the weather permitted, the internees were eager to escape the overcrowding inside the convent. Julius Hammer

simple ovens and baked their own bread which proved of much better quality, to the annoyance of the guards who received their supplies daily from the military bakery in Calvi. The internees cooked their food themselves, either in the communal kitchen or individually on improvised stoves.

Employment (or not) Thus, the internees were held in relatively good conditions, although their hopes for a rapid victory of the Central Powers over France and its allies were soon dashed. Although France (and Britain) had signed an accord with Germany and Austria-Hungary agreeing not to impose forced labour on civilian internees,24 those who wished to leave the convent to work could volunteer, and there was no lack of eager employers. All the young Corsicans were at the front, many never to return, and the elderly, womenfolk, the industrial enterprises and even the administrations competed for this limited replacement of labour resource. Well over half of the internees joined this workforce and some spent all the war far from Corbara. A few, at the end of the war, preferred to stay in employment in

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Figure 5.5 Guards were often retired soldiers or gendarmes, recalled to duty, or men mobilised but inept for service at the front. The force was always short on quality and quantity; the best men were fighting the war. Julius Hammer

Corsica, and a handful settled for good, putting down roots and founding families. The work, which was on offer initially was in relation to the needs of agriculture, typically bringing in the harvest and picking the grapes. Later other types of activity were possible, limited only by the skills represented or assimilated by the internees: dentists, hairdressers, cobblers, masons, carpenters, photographers, miners, chauffeurs, electricians, gardeners, to name but a few. Some internees were even employed on a voluntary basis by the few Corsican companies considered vital to the French war effort. It can be fairly claimed that the foreigners kept the island’s economy running and saved many a company the very existence of which would otherwise have ceased for lack of employees. Some 44,000 Corsicans, more than 20 per cent of the total population, fought in the war or served behind the front; more than 11,000 lost their lives.25 Many German and Austrian artists had been ‘netted’ by the internment measures in mainland France and found themselves together in Corbara. Some chose to remain there and practise their art, exchanging techniques, philosophy and artists’ materials and selling their works. Others preferred to accept employment in Ajaccio, particularly in the fashionable Hotel Solferino, where they could

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Figure 5.6 Internees could not be obliged to work, other than to ensure their own comfort. In turn, they cleaned their living quarters and the convent grounds, prepared their own meals, collected wood and water. Here they are peeling potatoes. Julius Hammer

meet and fraternise with the local artists whose reputation had spread beyond the island’s shores, including François Corbellini and Jean-Baptiste Bassoul26 Corbara was full of talent of all kinds. Among the many professional and amateur artists there were two who decorated the interiors of Corsican churches27 and another who left four monumental paintings to adorn the walls of the main reception room of the Solferino.28 But, in addition, there were sculptors, engravers, musicians, a number of photographers of renown including one Rudolf Lehnert whose erotic ‘orientalist’ clichés still sell for high prices, more than one proponent of the emerging new cinematic industry, and a circus artist and lion tamer who ended his life in the United Kingdom after writing Jungle, Be Gentle, an authoritative work on capturing and training circus animals.29 A German protestant pastor, Georg Kükenthal, was one of the very few internees to have been arrested in Corsica itself. He was also a distinguished botanist who, in collaboration with the botanic museum in Geneva, was working on the creation of a comprehensive classification (prodrome) of all plants and trees present in Corsica. He was allowed to pursue his research during his detention provided that he remained in the vicinity of the convent. Paul Spatz, a well-known ornithologist specialising in the birds of North Africa (where he had been arrested and initially interned) can be added to the

Figure 5.7 Georg Kükenthal is seen here returning from a hike in the mountains in search of botanical specimens. Julius Hammer

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Figure 5.8 Bread was baked by the internees; the bakery was an out-house of the convent. Julius Hammer

long list of fascinating persons who were detained in Corbara and whose company must have made conversation and friendships most enriching culturally. The internees entertained each other with occasional concerts, art exhibitions and other events such as carnival variety shows. There was a puppet theatre, a conjuror, poets ready to declaim their verses and a wide range of singers and musicians, both classical and popular. Inactivity spelled boredom. A captivity that lasted four years could drive a man insane if he was without a routine and things to keep his body and his mind alert. The community addressed this problem, and individuals could choose among many intellectual and sporting pastimes. A lending library was put in place, language lessons were on offer, internees could share their particular experiences and knowledge by delivering lectures for the benefit of others. Internees played card and other games; a bowling alley was constructed and run as a business. It was a popular place to gather, close to a bar and clubhouse, and players dressed for the occasion. Some inmates played football.

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Figure 5.9 Rabbits were reared by an internee to complement or replace the unpopular mutton and goat meat. Julius Hammer

Health and hygiene Prisoners’ health was a constant preoccupation for the French authorities, not least out of concern for the well-being of French prisoners in German hands. The

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Figure 5.10 The vegetable garden provided a welcome distraction, much satisfaction and healthy additions to the internees’ diet. Julius Hammer

internees were systematically vaccinated and, as a precaution against malaria, received small doses of quinine. In Corbara, the responsibility for health and hygiene was awarded to a local practitioner who visited daily, but this arrangement proved unsatisfactory. Soon a military doctor arrived from mainland France who had been mobilised and sent to Corsica to oversee the examination of young men seeking to avoid conscription on the grounds of ill-health. He now also looked after the internees. When he died suddenly in July 1916, the internees demonstrated their attachment to him by singing at the funeral service, lining the route of the coffin and contributing to the cost of a wreath. Corbara did not experience any epidemics during the war despite constant warnings of the risk of malaria. Only three deaths were recorded in Corbara in the four years, an astonishingly low rate at a time when food was in short supply, overcrowding was rife and general living conditions were poor.30 There was, of course, no electricity yet, no running water in the convent (it was collected from a nearby source), and the plumbing arrangements were designed for a community of maybe twenty monks in permanent residence. The outside latrines were inadequate for the numbers so the internees constructed larger ones. They dug trenches and constructed wooden cabins which were positioned astride them. When the trench filled up under the cabins these were moved to new positions. At night, the internees used communal toilet pots placed, preferably but not always, outside the

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Figure 5.11 The inauguration ceremony for an art exhibition; a brass band welcomes visitors from within the convent and without. Julius Hammer

dormitories; these foul containers were emptied into the latrine trenches at reveille, signalled by bugle. The military doctor was assisted by volunteer male nurses from among the internees, and an internee ran a pharmacy under the doctor’s observant eye. An internee dentist brought relief to his compatriots with dental complaints and an internee hairdresser kept hair and beards in shape. Tailors produced shirts, jackets, and trousers and repaired and adjusted outworn clothing. Cobblers resoled damaged boots and shoes. Parcels of new and second-hand items arrived regularly from home or as relief sometimes via neutral countries such as the United States, until 1917, or Spain, sometimes from Germany and Austria via the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In the absence of electricity or any means of heating, the convent was feebly lit in the evenings by oil lamps and candles, but to preserve these costly items a ‘lights out’ was ordered at 8.30 pm. The internees themselves improvised braseros and stoves to combat the cold in the dormitories in the heart of winter, and for this, they had to organise a rota for the collection of wood for burning.

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Figure 5.12 An internee gives a piano recital. Julius Hammer

Inspection commissions Delegations from the ICRC and other commissions from America and Switzerland visited Corbara and the other depots regularly, duplicating inspections made by the French authorities.31 On such occasions, the delegates had unlimited access to the buildings and to the internees; they examined the dormitories, the kitchen and the quality of the food, the infirmary and the pharmacy, the shop and the cell used for punishments. They met and questioned the representatives of the internees, listened to their complaints and requests, and individual internees with particular grievances could be heard in private, without the presence of the director. A detailed report was sent to the Prefect or presented to him personally before the delegation left the island. In this way, wrongs were righted, reasonable demands could be satisfied, and the internees did not feel abandoned. The complaints aired by the internees were numerous and varied, but some were persistently repeated. For instance, the diet provided by the French administration was considered monotonous and of insufficient quantity. Another problem was the mail service: internees were limited in the number of letters

Figure 5.13 A poster announces a forthcoming art exhibition. The designer of the poster, Julius Hammer, gives pride of place to himself, the ‘caricaturist’.

Figure 5.14 A poster announces a carnival evening entertainment including virtuoso music, a conjuror, puppets, poetry recital and other acts. Julius Hammer

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Figure 5.15 Detail from a drawing showing a skittle alley constructed by the internees and, in the background, their bar and clubhouse. Julius Hammer

and cards which they could send, and only French and German could be used, causing problems for Austro-Hungarian prisoners who spoke other languages. All incoming and outgoing mail was censored by a German-speaking civilian employed at the Prefecture in Ajaccio and mail could be confiscated, withheld or defaced if any subject was raised other than banalities such as the health of the internee and of the members of his family or the weather. The process of censorship increased the transit time of mail, already unacceptably long but inevitable in time of war. Internees received parcels of food and clothing, which arrived pillaged and empty. Postal money transfers often arrived after their validity had expired. Initially the internees, eager for news of the progress of the war and the situation in their home countries, were denied all newspapers and magazines, both French and international, and this was a constant grievance. Later the restriction was lifted partially, and they could receive French and local Corsican, but no German press. Attempts were made to circumvent the ban on news from home; for example, letters were concealed in the linings of books, newspapers were shredded and used as packing material, then painstakingly reassembled

Figure 5.16 The protestant pastor and botanist Kükenthal making a presentation to his compatriots from the church pulpit Julius Hammer

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Figure 5.17 Activities in the cloister. Julius Hammer

on arrival. Some forbidden communications were intercepted, but no doubt others succeeded.

The balance sheet A rather precise picture of conditions in Corbara and the other Corsican internment depots emerges from an examination of the correspondence between the

Figure 5.18 An animated game of cards helps to pass the time. Julius Hammer

Figure 5.19 Without water, life cannot be sustained. Necessary for cooking, washing and cleaning, everyone was expected to play their part in collecting water from the fountain. Julius Hammer

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Figure 5.20 The internees opened new trenches to serve as latrines. Julius Hammer

Prefect in Ajaccio, his superiors in the Interior Ministry, his sub-prefects in Calvi and Bastia, and the directors of the depots. The inspection reports that followed the periodical visits by French and neutral commissions fill the gaps and expand our understanding. The inevitable conclusion from a reading of these sources is that the life of detention of an enemy internee in Corsica followed humane principles. On the negative side, of course, the inmates suffered psychologically from being deprived of certain liberties, in particular from being separated from their normal environment, their families and friends. Many, no doubt, did not appreciate being thrown together with persons of different nationality, social class and age, with whom they had not chosen to share their lives. Civilian prisoners in France were of course protected to a degree by the principle of reciprocity, in other words by the fact that Germany and Austria-Hungary also held large numbers of French civilians.32 However, some of the internees held in Corsica were aware that there existed no legal framework, no international convention, to justify their detention and to define its conditions and their rights and

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Figure 5.21 The water chore was also a social occasion, an opportunity to chat with others while awaiting one’s turn. Julius Hammer

obligations. They concluded that civilian internees were worse off than prisoners of war who were at least in no doubt why they were held. On the positive side, which was not always perceived as such, spending the four years of war as an internee of conscription age was by far the safer option. One was housed, fed, clothed and cared for medically at the expense of the enemy; one could receive money, food and clothing from home or as humanitarian aid, one could take employment, earn money and live in the community if one wished, or alternatively, remain in the internment camp and pursue whatever activity one chose. As an internee, survival was more or less guaranteed; as a conscript, evacuation from the battlefield wounded or dead was a distinct possibility. The living conditions in Corbara, for those who might have avoided conscription and active service, were certainly more favourable, especially later in the war, than in blockaded Berlin or Vienna.33 Internees with limited resources and no one to send them money or clothes from home received aid; an elected committee managed a stock of new and used clothing and footwear and distributed it to the neediest. Some would maintain that the benign picture of life as an internee in Corbara is distorted and subjective, playing into the hands of contemporaneous French

Figure 5.22 Cabins were constructed to provide privacy; the cabins were moved along when the trench below them was full. Julius Hammer

Figure 5.23 A German dentist extracts a painful rotten tooth; interned dentists also practised outside the convent, in particular in Ajaccio. Julius Hammer

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Figure 5.24 The same dentist uses the drill to remove decay. The patient operates the mechanical drill with a foot pedal. If the patient is in pain, he stops pedalling. Julius Hammer

propaganda. Indeed Farcy, in his preface to my Corbara book, casts doubt on this account of harmonious relations between the internees, the directors and guards of the depots, and the local population. To be more accurate, he points out that in the depots in mainland France which he studied for the purpose of his book, there were frequent cases of violence, abuse and revolt.34 It is quite possible that the Corsican experience is simply not representative of what happened on a national level. It also depends, maybe, on what sources are consulted and what credence one gives to each.

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Figure 5.25 Sometimes, but not always, the dates for inspection visits were known in advance; the director was thus able to oblige internees and guards to present a clean depot, an empty prison cell and an improved menu. Julius Hammer

The credibility of the presentation offered for Corsica is enhanced in the first place by the reports of the independent and international commissions. They are balanced, they criticise where appropriate, extol in other respects. The commissions visited camps on both sides of the battle front and were able to make comparisons. Their reports do not claim that conditions were either any better or any worse than elsewhere. Nowhere is there mention of actual violence or abuse of internees by the French; there is no report of a revolt or other form of hostility. The nearest that one comes to acts of violence are two isolated cases, neither concerning Corbara and neither in respect of actual violence. In the convent of Cervione a guard was reprimanded and removed for having threatened an internee with a pistol, while in Morsiglia the director threatened to execute internees who refused to participate in repairing the approach road to the convent. Punishments meted out by directors were systematically approved in writing by the Prefect in Ajaccio, either in advance or post facto, and consisted of short periods in confinement. No commission ever found the prison cell in use at the time of a visit. In early 1916, Isidore Aubert, an operator of the Photographic Service of the French army (Service Photographique de l’Armée, SPA) visited Corsica. Aubert was one of the first five ‘opérateurs-photographes’ recruited by the SPA when it was created by General Joffre on 9 May 1915.35 His work included

Figure 5.26 Parcels did not always arrive intact. It was very difficult to ascertain at what point in the delivery chain a pillaged and empty parcel had been opened. Julius Hammer

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Figure 5.27 Letter writing was always a problem due to censorship. Letters were important if only to let one’s family know that one is still alive. Julius Hammer

graphic accounts of military and civilian installations on mainland France, notably in Lyon and along the Mediterranean coast. Corsica was privileged to have him on the island for several weeks in the early part of 1916 during which time he visited and photographed nearly all the civilian internee and POW camps and also witnessed the arrival and installation of large numbers of Serbian and Syrian refugees. Aubert’s splendid photographs depict life in the depots at Corbara, Oletta and Morsiglia in a way totally consistent with the picture emerging from the prefectural correspondence. The internees are shown in their daily activities; cobblers at work, an artist painting the portrait of another inmate with a dozen of his landscapes hanging on the wall of his studio, the cooks at work, an assembly in the church, groups reading, playing cards and so on. They are all well dressed in smart civilian clothes, and they look well and happy. There is nowhere any sign of a military presence nor any suggestion of constraint on their movements.36 And finally, there are the dozens of paintings and drawings made by the many artists present in Corbara; not a single work of art features a scene of violence, despair or unhappiness. The wonderful portraits of internees by the Austrian professional artist Rudolf Popper show men manifestly in good health, while his landscapes are a reflection of the beautiful surroundings in which he lived, the blue waters of the Mediterranean stretching at 180° to the west and the mountains encircling the convent on the other three sides. The same is true for the works of other artist internees, notably Gustave Lino, Carl Theodor Protzen and Max

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Figure 5.28 The arrival of the mail was an important event in the day but also provoked jealousy. Some internees received plentiful mail (reichlich bedacht), others received nothing (wieder nix). Yet others discovered their mail in tatters or defaced by the censor in Ajaccio (zensuriert). Julius Hammer

Schulze-Sölde. Finally, the extraordinary drawings, watercolours and cartoons left by the Austrian amateur artist Julius Hammer and which constitute a graphic account of life in Corbara are full of energy and humour and without a trace of animosity. Hammer decorated the ceilings of two cells but in addition carried away in his baggage at the end of the war a portfolio of a part of his production that he had not sold or given to friends. A few of his works which had been dispersed have also come to light. Perhaps Corsica was a special case simply because of its geography and climate, again underlying the importance of local factors. As the only island sufficiently distant from the mainland to discourage attempts at escape (Frioul is within swimming distance of Marseille, Sainte Marguerite is very close to Cannes), it merits its title of Ile de Beauté and its unusual description as a mountain in the sea. A little hardship, some wartime deprivations which were the more acceptable for being shared by everyone including the islanders, were the price to

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Figure 5.29 Internees have a heated discussion about the progress of the war. Should they believe the newspaper reports, or should they reject them as disinformation and propaganda? Julius Hammer

pay for beautiful surroundings, blue skies and a hot sun for most of the year and very little discomfort from the cold and wet which were the lot of those interned in the camps along the Atlantic coast during the long winter months. Could it not be also that the legendary welcome and solidarity that the Corsicans are reputed to reserve for passers-by and those in trouble played a role in making internment there a moderately tolerable form of incarceration? It goes without saying that the Prefect in Ajaccio received exactly the same instructions from the Interior Ministry in Paris as did all other Prefects in whose territory internment depots were established. There was no special regime applying only to Corsica. But the interpretation and implementation of those instructions depended inevitably on the personal disposition of each regional representative of the State. It is possible that Albert Henry in Ajaccio was more humane and international in his outlook than some others. The same applies equally to the directors of the depots; their interpretation and implementation of the rules depended on their individual attitude and their preparedness to work with and for their camps.

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Figure 5.30 A self-portrait of Julius Hammer. He depicts himself tending a vegetable marrow in the top left corner of the drawing of the vegetable garden.

The other side of the coin – internee testimony Against this well-supported positive depiction, another less flattering version exists. It was not known at the time of the publication of ‘Corbara’, but a number of journals and books written by internees in Corsica have come to light precisely as a consequence of it. J’accuse by Max Brausewetter,37 a young but retired German doctor, is not strictly relevant because the author was held in the former penitentiary of Casabianda, near Aléria in east-central Corsica, which was reserved for prisoners of war. Brausewetter was a passenger on a merchant ship taking him from Spain to neutral Italy en route for Germany where he intended to volunteer and serve

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as a doctor in the army. The crews and passengers of merchant ships taken prisoner on the high seas fall clearly within the definition of prisoner of war and consequently, when his ship put in at Marseille, he and others were arrested and sent to Casabianda. The group included a number of passengers who contested their status and claimed the right to be freed or at worst to be considered civilian internees. Brausewetter, taking full advantage of his professional standing and his education, set out to exploit the apparent confusion and the presence in the same depot of two categories, one obliged to accept heavy unpaid work and the other entitled to decide whether or not to take paid employment. Brausewetter persuaded an ICRC commission firstly that the inmates of Casabianda were mistreated and secondly that they risked infection from malaria. These doubtful or false claims, in an unsuccessful attempt to procure the closure of Casabianda and the repatriation of the prisoners, were picked up and exploited by the German press and diplomats. Brausewetter was branded a danger and was transferred to Puy-en-Velay on the mainland and then to Uzès where he died. His widow published his book, written in Puy and sent to her before his death. His account of the conditions in Casabianda is vitriolic and does not match anything from other sources. Casabianda remained open and no one contracted malaria. This publication is mentioned by way of introduction to another book written by a Catholic priest and theologian, Joseph Rink,38 who was also a passenger arrested in Marseille and placed in Casabianda. In passing, mention can be made of Anton Wolf, also an inmate of Casabianda, who wrote and published an account of his unique achievement of escaping from Corsica.39 With a handful of friends, he stole a small boat and rowed it the 120 kilometres from Aléria to Sardinia; there, in still neutral Italy, he was arrested as a suspected spy, but having proved his good faith, the authorities facilitated his repatriation to Germany via Rome. Joseph Rink, with several other priests, had attended a congress in Lourdes, and with the prospect of war looming he attempted to return to Germany via Spain; like Brausewetter he was arrested in Marseille. His book is fascinating because in the four years of his detention, he spent time on the island of Frioul, then at Casabianda and the convents of Cervione, Morsiglia, Oletta and Corbara. Rink’s detention divides into two distinct periods. From Frioul to Morsiglia his attitude was rebellious, vindictive, isolationist and selfish. Critical of everything, he chose to remain in the little group of men of the Church for whom he never ceased to demand, sometimes with success, ever more advantages and privileges. In this way, he antagonised not only the directors and guards, but also his less fortunate compatriots. The weekly reports addressed by the directors of the depots through which he passed are full of references to these excessive demands and the nuisance caused by the little clique. Then, during his time in Morsiglia the leader of a delegation representing the Vatican visited the convent and requested a private meeting with the priests. He reproached them for their negativity, encouraged them to separate, to make themselves useful in pastoral and other work and to share the deprivations of the majority instead of considering themselves superior. As a consequence, Rink was moved to Oletta

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where he put into practice the recommendations he had taken on board. His life changed. He made himself available for the spiritual needs of the internees, regardless of whether they were Catholic or of other or no faith. He created a lending library, discussion groups and a choir. He established contacts with the curate of Oletta and with other members of the local population. He developed a respect and even an affection for the director of the depot. He became positively lyrical about the beauty of the place, the landscapes, the flowers, the wildlife and the star-studded night skies. When Rink returned to Germany shortly before the end of the war, the welcome he received from friends and family was at best lukewarm; his tanned and healthy appearance was in sharp contrast to their paleness, thinness and general depression, and they must have felt that Rink had failed in his patriotic duties to have prospered thus. By his own admission, Rink took ten years to recover from the psychological blow entailed in the idea that he had enjoyed a comfortable life and made no contribution to the war effort. Rink’s account of his detention is a remarkable illustration of the choice faced by all prisoners. Both options are, of course, legitimate, but the question must be asked and answered: is it better to accept one’s misfortune and make the best of it, or alternatively to resist, to refuse and, as a last resort, to seek to escape? Rink followed Brausewetter in his revolt against his jailers and thus contributed to making life in Casabianda a misery for everyone. Certainly, not everything ran perfectly in the early weeks of the war and lack of preparation was necessarily followed by improvisation. But it did not help to have inmates like these two harassing, criticising and inciting others to rebellion. Rink pursued this provocative attitude in Cervione and Morsiglia and poisoned relations in these depots to his own detriment and to that of his compatriots. It should be added that Rink wrote his account years after the war and must have had his copy of Brausewetter’s J’accuse at his elbow. As proof of this, he repeats slavishly several of the inaccuracies contained in it and, his memory failing, he certainly relied on Brausewetter for many of the alleged incidents that he recounts and criticises. Two other priests, members of the clique, also wrote conjointly their memoirs,40 much more briefly and no doubt, like Rink, drawing on Brausewetter’s testimony. Victor Auburtin, a German journalist, who was the Paris correspondent of the leftliberal Berliner Tageblatt until 1914, spent part of the war in Morsiglia. He too published his war memoirs.41 He is critical of his treatment following his arrest close to the Swiss border as he attempted to flee France; suspected of espionage he was imprisoned. His circumstances having been investigated, he was tried and acquitted. But regarding his subsequent internment in Corsica, he has no serious complaint; philosophically, he adopted a positive attitude and made the most of his time in ‘incarceration’. He learnt about Corsica, its history and its culture, he experimented with strange seafood such as sea-urchins and sea-anemones, he studied new languages and thanked his lucky stars that he was held in such agreeable surroundings, while others were suffering in Siberia. He even asked himself whether he was not better off in Morsiglia, watching the swallows and drinking with his friends than in Berlin sitting behind a desk and frustrated by

120 Simon Giuseppi an inefficient telephone service. The comparison between his appreciative assessment of conditions in Morsiglia and the extremely bitter judgement emitted by Rink is striking. Last but not least is a book that appeared in the United States in 1932. Its German author, Fred Ruff, had failed to find employment in the years of galloping inflation in the early 1920s and had chosen to seek a better life on the other side of the Atlantic. One is tempted to dismiss out of hand his account of life in Corbara because his book reads rather like one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.42 He writes about the years leading up to his arrest in August 1914 in Lyon where he was working as a security agent at the Exposition internationale urbaine. Before that he had travelled in central Africa with a German exploration expedition comprising a number of Germans and ‘hundreds’ of African bearers. After some scarcely believable escapes from xenophobic crowds in Lyon, he took refuge with the soldiers guarding the railway station. Instead of taking account of the safe passage document that he presented to them the soldiers put him on a train to Puy-en-Velay where his adventures as a civilian internee began. There he met and befriended the Austrian cartoonist Julius Hammer, whose humorous drawings illustrate Ruff’s book. The two were in the same convoy headed for Corbara. Ruff describes life in Corbara and expands many details that were known from other sources. However, he also describes ill-treatment and occurrences that are not confirmed anywhere else and that simply defy belief. For example, he claims to have led a successful demonstration of 1,000 internees who faced off the director and the armed guard; there were never more than 800 internees in Corbara and at the period described by Ruff, there were, at most, 250. He describes being placed in solitary confinement for periods of three or four weeks; such punishment was unheard of and confinements of lesser length were systematically reported and recorded and had to be authorised or confirmed by higher authority. He describes how he was persuaded by Austrian lumberjacks to cut wood in the mountains during the winter months; the team became snow-bound, and he could not work following an accident. The archives confirm that he was indeed employed, but the duration of his absence is contradicted, and there is, of course, no record of other far-fetched claims that he makes about his alleged encounters and adventures.43 Ruff writes that he escaped from confinement and spent five weeks on the run; when he was retaken by the police, he was thrown into a well in Corbara, where he remained for weeks and was constantly attacked by rats. Again, there is no record either of an escape, of a recapture, of this monstrous punishment – and in truth, there is no well in Corbara, all water being drawn from a source fifty metres from the convent. The temptation to dismiss Ruff’s book as anything but fiction is great. His presence in Corbara is confirmed in the official records, but his name is never mentioned in other inmates’ accounts, unlike those of the priests and Brausewetter. With such exploits to his credit, if the French authorities might have chosen to ignore him and to excise his name from the archives, his compatriots would certainly not have. He admits that he made few friends. Written fifteen years after the events the book, in order to sell itself, sets out to be ‘sensational’ rather than

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factual and ends up as unconvincing propaganda. This might explain why the other books mentioned previously can be readily identified on the internet, whereas it is impossible to find a trace of Ruff.

Conclusion Only 2,000 of the 75,000 enemy civilians arrested in 1914 on French soil and interned had the relative good fortune to be transported to Corsica. Their presence on the island was peaceful and productive, but it has largely been forgotten by Corsicans. The islanders are more concerned with the drama of the hostilities and the human sacrifice that Corsica suffered, kept fresh in their memories by the memorials to the dead of the Great War in front of churches and town halls. As a result of the Franco-German Bern Accords signed in April 1918,44 virtually all German internees left the island in July and August 1918, a few months before the signing of the Armistice. The Austro-Hungarians, however, were obliged to wait until mid-1919 for their repatriation. The few Germans and Austrians who had requested authorisation to remain in Corsica or mainland France were the last to leave, mainly in 1920, having awaited the individual treatment of their case files by the French Interior Ministry.45 In the course of their detention, the foreigners had experienced little xenophobic hostility. A few demonstrations occurred in the very early days and weeks of the war, in protest at the presence of foreign travellers and tourists in their midst, for example, or at the time of disembarcation of large numbers in the port of Bastia or along the roads followed by the convoys en route to the several convents.46 Such outbursts may be regarded as inevitable, for ignorance engenders suspicion and hate, and such feelings were exacerbated by partisan propaganda circulated by the French state and carried in the press. Some Corsicans whose father, brother or son was fighting at the front or was an early victim, perceived these innocent civilians as convenient representatives of the enemy on whom they could vent their bitterness and anger. But for most Corsicans, the visitors bore no responsibility for what was occurring, and many were delighted to have them in their service in one way or another. Today, the episode of civilian internment in Corsica is largely forgotten.

Notes 1 Richard B. Speed III, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (New York, NY, 1990), pp. 141–53. 2 See the author’s study, L’internement à Corbara en Corse de civils austro-allemands 1914–1920 (Ajaccio, 2014). 3 See Jean-Claude Farcy, Les camps de concentration français de la première guerre mondiale (1914–1920) (Paris, 1995), here esp. pp. 164–94. It should be noted that camps reserved for single German and Austrian males were the only type of camp found in Corsica. 4 For the internment camp of Ile-Longue at Crozon (Brest, Brittany), a website has been created with the support of the French national centenary celebration coordination

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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

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committee – see www.ilelongue14-18.eu/. This site brings together official records, internee memoirs and works of art, photographic records and other memorabilia. For the camp at Garaison (Hautes-Pyrénées), a similar venture has also secured official support. Aladár Kuncz, Black Monastery (London, 1934). This Hungarian writer describes the nightmare of his detention first in Perigueux, then the citadel of Noirmoutiers and finally the fortress of Ile d’Yeu. See Lyon, centre du monde! L’Exposition internationale urbaine de 1914, edited by the Musée de l’histoire de Lyon (Lyon, 2013–14), http://fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe. com/sites/default/files/dpresse%20Expo%20Lyon%20centre%20du%20monde_musees% 20Gadagne_Lyon.pdf. According to this source, the German and Austro-Hungarian pavilions were closed on 3 August 1914, following the outbreak of war, but otherwise the exhibition remained open until 11 November 1914. Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 5–7. For similar strategic priorities in Prussian military planning before 1871, see Bernhard Sicken, ‘Militärische Notwendigkeit und soziale Diskriminierung: Zur Ausweisung von Einwohnern aus preußischen Festungsstädten bei drohender Invasion (1830/31–1870/71)’, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, 74.1–2 (2015), pp. 97–126. For further details, see Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 10–19. Unlike military POWs, civilian internees were not formally protected under the 1906 Geneva Convention or the 1907 Hague Convention on the Rules of Land Warfare (Hague IV). See Matthew Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians by Belligerent States During the First World War and the Response of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41.1 (2006), pp. 5–19 (here p. 7). On hostages, see Camille Marie (ed.), 1914–1918: Des Alsaciens-Lorrains otages en France: Souvenirs d’un Lorrain interné en France et en Suisse pendant la guerre, par François Laurent (Strasbourg, 1998). According to Fred Ruff, Der Gefangene auf der Insel Korsika (no place of publication, 1933), this was the number of prisoners present in the camp upon his arrival in August 1914. Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 151; and Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 27. On French camps in North Africa, see Odon Abbal, ‘Le Maghreb et la Grande Guerre: les camps d’internement en Afrique du Nord’, in Jean-Charles Jauffret (ed.), Les armes et la toge: mélanges offerts à André Martel (Montpellier, 1997), pp. 623–35. Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 134 and maps on pp. 137 and 139. Giuseppi, L’internement à Corbara, p. 9. For two good overviews of the history of Corisca, see Pierre Antonetti, Histoire de la Corse (Paris, 1973); and Michel Verge-Franceschi, Histoire de Corse, pays de la grandeur (Paris, 2007). On the Christian Greek episode, see Marie-Anne Comnene, Cargèse: Une colonie grecque en Corse (Paris, 1959); and on the Haîtian incident, see Francis Arzalier, ‘Les déportés guadaloupéens et haïtiens en Corse 1802–1814’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 293–4 (1993), pp. 469–90. This will be the subject of a second case study by the author to be published by Editions Alain Piazzola, Ajaccio, in 2017/18 under the title Corse, terre d’accueil, terre d’exil – 1914–1918. The figures quoted are taken from numerous citations in the prefectoral correspondence held in the Archives départementales de Corse du Sud. Of the 750 Syrian Israelites, about 250 remained in Corsica after 1918–19 and were protected by the Corsican people during the Second World War: a campaign to declare Corsica an ‘island of the just’ is based on the historical fact that not a single Jew faced deportation. For further details, see Giuseppi, L’internement à Corbora, pp. 65–70.

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21 The maki (or maquis in French) is the dense and wonderfully odorous scrub that covers much of Corsica. 22 On internment in Switzerland see the chapter by Anja Huber in this volume. 23 In French administrative practice, the term dépôt was used in relation to civilian internment, while prisoners of war were held in camps. 24 Isabel V. Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War (Itacha, NY and London, 2014), p. 132. 25 Figures from Les Corses et la Grande Guerre, edited by the Musée de la Corse, introduced by Sylvain Gregori and Jean-Paul Pellegrinetti (Ajaccio, 2014). 26 Several of the works of this little school of artists feature in the author’s book about Corbara, L’internement à Corbara en Corse de civils austro-allemands, and more still will appear in his second volume. 27 The Austrian artist Kaspar Florentin Essenwein decorated the Church of Saint-André at Crocicchia; and Gustave Lino, an Italian born in Mulhouse embellished the interior of a fine funeral chapel in the village of Belgodère. 28 Carl Theodor Protzen. Of his four paintings depicting respectively Christopher Columbus, Sampiero Corso, Pascal Paoli and Napoleon I, only the middle two have survived, the first of them in poor condition. Other exceptional artists include Rudolf Popper and Mas Schulze-Sölde. 29 Peter Davies, Jungle, Be Gentle (London, 1960). An American version was published in 1962 under the title The Nature of the Beast. 30 See the registers listing the internees held in Corbara in the Archives départementales de Corse du Sud. 31 Examples of such reports can be found in the Archives départementales de Corse du Sud and in the Archives du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva. 32 On French civilians in German captivity see Annette Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre. Humanitaire et culture de guerre: Populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris, 1998); and Matthew Stibbe, ‘(Dis)entangling the Local, the National and the Global: Civilian Internment in Germany and German-Occupied France During the First World War’, forthcoming. On the admittedly much smaller number of French civilians in Habsburg captivity, see Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918’, Journal of Modern European History, 12.4 (November 2014), pp. 479–99 and Stibbe’s chapter in this volume. 33 On wartime food shortages in Berlin and Vienna see Belinda J. Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000); and Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, 2004). 34 Jean-Claude Farcy, ‘Préface’, in Giuseppi, L’internement à Corbara, pp. 7–8. See also Farcy, Les camps de concentration, esp. pp. 323–41. 35 On the genesis of the SPA see Hélène Guillot, ‘La section photographique de l’armée et la grande guerre’, Revue historiques des armées, 258 (2010), pp. 110–17. 36 Examples of Aubert’s photographs from his 1916 visit to Corsica can be found in my works L’internement à Corbara; and Corse, terre d’accueil, terre d’exil. Unfortunately, it was not possible to reproduce any of them here. 37 Max Brausewetter, J’accuse – Zwei Jahre französischer Gefangenschaft (Berlin, 1918). 38 Joseph Rink, Korsika – das Buch einer Gefangenschaft (Nuremberg, 1932). 39 Anton Wolf, Abenteuerliche Flucht aus französischer Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Insel Korsika nach Sardinien 120 km gerudert, dort wieder als Spion verhaftet, published by Baur, Augsburg in 1916, then by Koch (Nuremberg) in 1917 and finally reprinted by Baur in 1920. 40 In französischer Gefangenschaft – Bericht über die Gefangenschaft der beiden bayerischen Franziscaner-Patres Generos Teifl und Caspar Wörtmann während des Krieges

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1914; the original manuscript is held in the Franciscan archives in Germany; a modified version was serialised in 1918 in a Franciscan revue in Bavaria. Victor Auburtin – Was ich in Frankreich erlebte (What I endured in France) was published in Berlin in 1917. A French translation under the title Carnet d’un Boche en France 1914–1917 (Diary of a Boche in France) was published by the Librairie Nouvelle, Lausanne in 1918. Ruff, Der Gefangene auf der Insel Korsika. The relevant prefectural files in the Archives départementales de Corse du Sud list the persons or enterprises authorised to employ civilian internees, the names of the internees actually employed, the relevant start and end dates and the type of employment. On the Bern accords of 26 April 1918, see Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 120–2; and Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre, pp. 255–66. Giuseppi, L’internement à Corbara, pp. 165–77. Brausewetter, J’Accuse, and the priests Joseph Rink, Korsika, and Caspar Wörtmann, In französischer Gefangenschaft, all describe the hostile welcome to which they were subjected on disembarcation in Bastia and during their subsequent journey from Bastia to Casabianda (Aléria). The prefectoral correspondence in the Archives départementales de Corse du Sud contains reports of a few public demonstrations directed at small groups of foreign tourists or the crews of foreign ships put in at Corsican ports.

6

Enemy aliens and colonial subjects Confinement and internment in Italy, 1911–19 Daniela L. Caglioti

In his novel Il giorno del giudizio [The Day of Judgement], Salvatore Satta described the encounter between Sardinians and Austro-Hungarian internees as follows: Many people didn’t even know who the war was being fought against. . . . Right at the start the government had sent over about twenty internees [to Nuoro, Sardinia], who were dotted around town. No one could imagine who they were, but later it was learned that they were Austrian and German Jews resident in Milan, who had not wanted to leave Italy. Until then no one had heard of the Jews, except in the Bible. They were men like any others, but they were gentry, and had money, and if some of those draftevading socialists said that when it came down to it they were traitors to their countries, the aristocrats, who had a good nose for such things, opened their houses to them as guests of honour. The only penniless exiles were a family of semi-gypsies, two sisters and a brother twelve years old. . . . They must have been Slavs, and no one could imagine why anyone had bothered to send them all that way, since they didn’t even know where they had come from.1 Satta’s words reveal a mixture of amazement, diffidence and pity, but above all, a sense of the absurdity of a distant war, far-off and incomprehensible to the majority, especially if seen from the vantage point of Sardinian isolation. Sardinia was the first destination for enemy aliens residing in Italy after 24 May 1915. A large island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Sardinia is today known for its upmarket seaside resorts, pristine beaches and perfectly blue water, but at the time it was one of the poorest, least populated regions of the Kingdom of Italy. Its population of about 800,000 was scattered throughout 371 small villages and towns. Malaria, tuberculosis and trachoma plagued this island in addition to water scarcity and high levels of crime.2 In a nutshell, Sardinia seemed to be the ideal place to exile enemy aliens, especially since the traditional locations for forced domicile [domicilio coatto] – smaller Italian islands like Ustica, Favignana, Ponza and so on – were packed with Arabs deported from Libya in different waves from 1911–12 to 1919.3

126 Daniela L. Caglioti The internees who landed on the island in the early months of the war included Amelie Posse, a Swedish citizen married to an Austro-Hungarian, who wrote: Our internment provided us with all sorts of strange experiences and gave us a taste of both people and conditions that were utterly unlike any we had encountered on our previous wanderings. They were not by any means altogether pleasurable; but we resolved to suffer the various inconveniences as patiently as possible, and not to lose courage whatever happened. This was easy enough in the beginning, when the worst that happened to us was that street boys sometimes threw rotten figs and tomatoes at my white dresses, or an occasional dead rat might come bouncing down on our heads as we walked through narrow streets. But after one or two of the offenders had been caught red-handed and heavily fined, it began to be borne in on them that the authorities did not approve of that particular form of patriotism. At any rate the townspeople soon got used to the sight of us, and apparently came to the conclusion that we were only harmless fellow-creatures after all, for they left off trying to annoy us. But there were other troubles, not caused by human beings, which were far more serious. The first was malaria. . . . Even that risk, however, was a minor annoyance. . . . There were other dangers that were far worse . . . we heard whispers of typhus, and, here and there over the town, we were met by a penetrating odour of carbolic. . . . A dreadful sense of insecurity brooded over every-thing, and alarming rumours were spreading, both among the townsfolk and the interned.4 When the First World War broke out, Amelie had been living in Rome for around four years. During her stay there, she followed a Bohemian lifestyle in the cosmopolitan milieu of foreign artists and intellectuals who had made Rome their home and Italy their nation of choice. Amelie married Oskar (known as Oki) Brázda, a Czech painter and Austro-Hungarian subject. As was the norm at the time virtually the world over, women took on the citizenship of their fathers or their husbands, and dual nationality was viewed with suspicion.5 Hence Amelie not only took her husband’s surname on marriage, but his citizenship too, and thus lost her own. In losing her own citizenship and becoming an Austro-Hungarian citizen by marriage, Amelie became an enemy national once Italy had declared war on the Habsburg Empire in May 1915. Her Swedish origin and her husband’s overt anti-Austrian sentiments – he was soon to become one of the main contact persons in Italy for the leaders of the Czech national movement Edvard Beneš and Tomáš Masaryk6 – had probably lulled her into a false sense of security about her chances of continuing to live undisturbed in the capital. She had certainly hidden her new marital status and citizenship from her neighbours, but more out of concerns that her property might be confiscated than fear of being expelled, deported or interned.7 In contrast to many Austro-Hungarians and Germans who had hastily left Italy during the months of neutrality, Amelie Posse and Oki Brázda had remained at Villa Strohl-Fern in the heart of Villa Borghese. The illusion that she would be able to continue to live in Rome as

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an enemy alien without anyone noticing was short-lived, however. And just over a month after war was declared Oki, his friend and fellow Austrian Bohumír Chytil and, three weeks later, Amelie herself, were interned in Alghero and faced with the unfamiliar world of Sardinia. In Alghero, where she remained for a year, Amelie experienced internment in a hostile, poor and wind-swept environment (‘Oh that wind! It was almost the hardest of all our trials’)8 with endemic malaria. This was not the kind of living standard she had been accustomed to in pre-war Rome. Amelie, her husband, Chytil and the other enemy nationals interned in Alghero, all Slavs (five Polish priests, one Czech and a few Croatian seamen)9 enjoyed reasonable freedom of movement. The couple’s wealth allowed them to supplement the scarce daily allowance allocated by the Italian authorities.10 Their economic and cultural circumstances enabled the couple to live a life in Sardinia which was certainly above average, but the story told in Sardinian Slideshow is a story of captivity which Amelie and Oki shared with almost two million civilians, according to the calculations made by the International Red Cross’s International Prisoner of War Agency.11 These were men and women from all around the world, including Italy, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, the British Empire, the Russian Empire, German colonies occupied by the countries of the Entente, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria and even the United States. Their sole fault was to have enemy nationality or origins. Like Amelie and Oki, the majority of civilian captives were either enemy nationals of both sexes, people whose nationality, origins, place of birth or often simply their surname linked them to the enemy; national minorities considered unreliable especially in the multi-ethnic empires; civilians who lived in border regions near the frontline and were often suspected of enemy sympathies partly because of their bilingualism, trans-nationalism or national indifference; civilians in occupied areas suspected of collaborating or previously interned to fend off hostility and resistance; citizens accused of espionage or defeatism; and persons who were suspicious because they were anarchists, pacifists or socialists. In the pages which follow, I will address the way in which enemy national civilians, displaced persons and refugees, political suspects and colonial subjects who happened to be under the sovereignty of Italy were dealt with by its governments from May 1915 to the end of the First World War. Since I reconstructed elsewhere the general context within which it must be situated,12 the aim of the chapter is to examine and underline some of the distinctive features of the Italian case. As Matthew Stibbe has argued with regard to the Habsburg Empire, ‘there was no single model of internment but several different systems that interacted and overlapped with each other’.13 Italy made its own contribution to the differentiation and interaction of these models.14 From the very beginning of the war in June 1915, the Italian government concentrated its effort on the economic war against enemy aliens and, in contrast to other belligerent countries, it did not concentrate the enemy aliens found on its territory behind barbed wire. On the contrary, it adopted a milder policy of confinement, isolating and controlling from afar the few enemy aliens under its jurisdiction.15 Therefore, Italian authorities

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did not set up an ad hoc internment machine but resorted to the ordinary civil service to implement administrative measures that had repeatedly been used in the fifty previous years of existence of the Italian Kingdom to curb brigandage, political dissent and more recently resistance in the colonial territory of Libya which had not been completely conquered. In particular, the Italian case is to be understood in the context of a range of factors, including (1) the way in which Italy entered the war; (2) the war’s timeline and evolution; (3) the small number of enemy aliens on its territory; (4) the international dynamics triggered by Italian participation; (5) the attitude adopted by the Austro-Hungarian government and army toward Italian subjects resident in, and Italian-speaking subjects of, the Habsburg Empire; (6) the conflicts and clashes between the civilian and military authorities in Italy; (7) the divisions and tensions between political parties and the pressure exercised by nationalist public opinion on the home front; (8) the attitude of the liberal Italian state towards the ‘dangerous classes’ and the legal tools traditionally used to deal with emergencies and civil unrest. Last but not least, the Italian case must also be explored in the context of the other, somehow parallel, war that Italy was fighting in Northern Africa since 1911. To understand the Italian approach to captivity during the First World War, this chapter will first analyse the way in which the Italian government dealt with enemy aliens (above all Austro-Hungarian subjects, fewer Ottomans and, after August 1916, also some Germans), both those on Italian territory and those deported from the areas of Friuli that the Italian army occupied in the early months of the war. Secondly, it will consider the enemy aliens case also in the light of the deportation and internment of colonial subjects, namely Libyans who continued to resist Italian rule after the end of the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12. Italy’s war cycle had started already in 1911 with the war against the Ottoman Empire over the sovereignty of Libya. The conquest of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania had encountered the fierce resistance of the indigenous population. However, instead of following other examples, such as the British one in South Africa, or the German one in Namibia, and probably because of the weak control exercised on the Libyan territory, the Italian army did not set up concentration camps in Northern Africa, but preferred deportation and internment on Italian territory. Thus, when Italy entered the First World War, it could have relied upon the expertise on internment it had just developed dealing with colonial subjects. In fact, however, the internment of enemy aliens and colonial subjects shared neither the same features nor the same confinement stations. The Italian government and the army scattered the former throughout different locations to disperse and isolate them, while they concentrated the latter in small isolated islands. Surveillance of colonial subjects was therefore in general more stringent than the one on enemy aliens who, albeit restricted in their freedom, were mostly left to their own devices. The two stories ran in parallel and never really intertwined, but they can be read as two examples of the diverse capacities of internment/confinement to manage aliens or ‘others’ under the pressure of war in different contexts. Using the same tool, the Italian government tried not only to incapacitate potentially threatening individuals – the enemies within and the opponents to the colonial

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rule – but also and above all to affirm the capacity of the state to impose its control both on metropolitan and colonial territories and enforce sovereignty. However, whereas in the case of enemy aliens, confinement was the inevitable consequence of the policies adopted by other belligerent countries and in particular AustriaHungary, the internment of colonial subject assumed a strict punitive character.

Displacement and confinement at the beginning of the war The decision to enter the war on 24 May 1915 alongside Britain, France and the Russian Empire not only changed Rome’s strategies for managing population movements in and out of Italy, but immediately and profoundly affected the lives of various groups of people living on Italian soil and in the Habsburg Empire. Italian policies toward enemy aliens were broadly in line with those adopted by the Central Powers and those implemented by the allies. In the ten months of Italian neutrality, specific policies had already been drawn up for dealing with enemy nationals as well as minorities suspected of colluding with belligerent states, whether this was with Germany and Austria-Hungary or with Britain, France and the Russian Empire.16 As in most other combatant countries, although on different time frames and with varying intensities, in Italy too enemy nationals on Italian soil – meaning Austro-Hungarians (from 24 May 1915 onward), Ottomans (starting on 21 August 1915) and Germans (from 28 August 1916) – were subjected to restrictions on their freedom and various other forms of discrimination.17 Reciprocally, and more or less with the same time frame albeit with some exceptions,18 Italians and Italian-speakers (as in the case of the Habsburg Empire), experienced different forms of discrimination in Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany and its extra-European colonies. The logic at the heart of the Italian provisions included strategic considerations of security, prevention and revenge. They were designed to reassure public opinion which was concerned about espionage, sabotage and foreign economic dominance. Internment was part of a complex system of measures against enemy nationals. These measures ranged from the obligation to register for repatriation or deportation to internment and property sequestration. They also included a ban on court appeals and on speaking one’s own language.19 Italy’s late entry into the war, however, put the country in an unusual position compared to those combatant countries that had been fighting since the first day of the war. During the neutrality period, the borders had stayed open. Significant numbers of people had entered and left the country, with the result that numbers of enemy nationals had been reduced to just a few thousand, mainly women, children and elderly people. The movement had been bi-directional. On the one hand, German and Austro-Hungarian citizens of conscription age had returned to their homelands to join their respective armies. On the other hand, hundreds of Reichsitaliener had fled from the Habsburg Monarchy during the period of Italian neutrality, and around 3,000 had volunteered to serve as soldiers in the Italian Army.20 Also, a significant number of Italian seasonal workers – more than 500,000 people – had left Germany, Switzerland and France for fear of

130 Daniela L. Caglioti being swept up in the war.21 These movements were uncontrolled and triggered unemployment back at home, although not yet a refugee crisis as almost all the returning migrants had homes and families to come back to.22 Not only did the decision to enter the war in May 1915 change border and migration policies overnight; it also had immediate repercussions on the lives of different groups of people, including the few Austro-Hungarian subjects (and from 1916, German citizens) who had remained in Italy, the Italians and the Habsburg Italian-speaking subjects living in the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, and, later, the Italians who had remained in Germany. The Italian government was fully aware of the potentially negative repercussions of the war on its subjects abroad. Three days before waging war on Austria-Hungary, it tried to separate the fate of the Italians living in Germany from those living in the territory of the Habsburg Empire by signing an agreement that committed the two countries to respect the personal freedoms and the assets of the subjects of the two nations on the territory of the other, thus protecting them from discrimination. Although the Bollati-Jagow agreement, signed on 21 May 1915,23 soon became just a scrap of paper, it provided a legal framework that protected some Italian and German citizens, and acted as a deterrent in the war of reprisals and retaliations, at least until the two countries officially clashed in August 1916. No similar treaty was signed with Austria-Hungary, and when the war started, Italy adopted stringent measures against citizens of the Habsburg Empire. On 24 May 1915, as military operations began, the government forbade trade between the two countries, while another decree prevented Austro-Hungarian citizens from selling real estate owned in Italy. A few months later, the same provisions affected subjects of the Ottoman Empire of Turkish nationality.24 In the meantime, more stringent measures hit Italians and Italian-speaking Habsburg subjects in Austria-Hungary. These included measures such as expulsion, internment in concentration camps and confinement, which were more similar to the harsh policies adopted for Ruthenians and Serbs in the early months of the war than to the more lenient policies applied to the French and the British.25 With the beginning of the war, the Italian borders were closed, and it became obligatory to report foreign nationals living in Italy to the police or the army. A ‘purge’ of the borders began with the twofold objective of ensuring the safety of Italian citizens living near the front and blocking espionage or sabotage action. The threat of the purge and the purge itself prompted a refugee crisis setting in motion the movement of thousands of people – more than 86,000 citizens of the Kingdom of Italy flowed into Italy from the Austrian front area and a further 55,000 from the Italian front – in the weeks after the declaration of war.26 As the war went on, this mass of refugees mingled with enemy aliens and political suspects.27 The enemy aliens were scattered across Italy and were concentrated above all into its major cities. To these were added Austro-Hungarian subjects who had been resident in occupied areas in the first weeks of the war. In areas of Friuli and Trentino overrun by Italian troops, the Italian army began rounding up men and women accused of supporting the Habsburg dynasty or suspected of being spies or of carrying out propaganda for the Austro-Hungarian army. Tita

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Birchebner, an estates administrator in Udine, was one of these. He was first held in the local prison in Palmanova on 27 June 1915, then moved to the Alessandria citadel, a fortified building turned into a temporary war prisoner camp, and was finally interned in Felizzano in Alessandra province, together with a further thirty-one people from the region.28 Italy had started to prepare for war months in advance. In March 1915, the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill against espionage. This bill was followed by a decree issued on 2 May 1915, which prevented foreigners from entering the country without a valid passport and a visa; required all aliens, both those in transit and those residing on Italian territory, to register; compelled employers to notify the authorities when hiring foreigners; ordered landowners to notify the authorities of the sale of urban or rural real estate to foreigners; and instructed hotels to report the presence of aliens. The emergency legislation was completed on 20 May 1915 when the Chamber of Deputies passed a single-article bill transferring both legislative and executive powers to the government. Despite this legal framework, the Italian government entered the war without detailed plans for dealing with civilians of enemy origins, refugees, displaced persons and political suspects. The small numbers of enemy aliens on Italian soil, however, did not make the issue any less urgent. On the one hand the government behaved as if the enemy alien issue in Italy was significant and in need of swift and decisive resolution.29 On the other hand, aware of the fact that any measures taken against enemy aliens would immediately expose Italians abroad to retaliation, the Italian government adopted a very cautious approach. It tried to placate strident nationalists who demanded draconian measures without giving in to the temptation to wage all-out war against enemy civilians.30 However, policy towards aliens was not the exclusive prerogative of the government. The military authorities also played a crucial role in managing refugees, internees and enemy nationals, with resulting conflicts between the two, as in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire, in Germany and in the Russian Empire.31 In contrast to other belligerent states, however, the Italian government did not resort to concentration camps to deal with enemy aliens – and this was the primary and most important difference. Rather than concentrating enemy nationals into camps, it was decided to spread them throughout the country and isolate them. There obviously were camps in Italy, but these were used for military prisoners of war and not civilians.32 Civilians were removed from their homes and sometimes left free to choose their destinations, as happened with Amelie Posse and Tita Birchebener. Alternatively, they were obliged to live in a designated place, present themselves regularly to local police stations and request permission if they wished to travel outside the area allotted to them.

Forced domicile: managing emergencies normally There were no concentration camps, then, but a great many decisions were taken on the basis of exceptional laws designed to scatter enemy aliens, refugees and also Italian subjects accused of pacifism, ‘defeatism’ or ‘Austrophilism’, and

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anarchists and socialists, across the country and on the islands.33 Another distinctive feature of Italian policy was the absence of a full-blown emergency law on the subject, at least until January 1918.34 In other words, there was nothing equivalent to the 1914 Aliens Restriction Act in Britain, or the 1798 Alien Enemy Statute in the United States. On the other hand, the principle of forced domicile had existed for some time in Italian legislation and was easily adapted to the demands of the war, meaning that a new, overarching piece of legislation was not required. Forced domicile could be immediately triggered to contain those aliens and suspect persons living near the front and in the occupied areas in the first months of the war, as well as enemy nationals scattered across Italy and above all in its main cities.35 As a tool of internal repression, forced domicile had a long history. It was present in the legal codes of some of the pre-unification states such as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and had entered the laws of the Kingdom of Italy after 1861. From banditry to the Crispi anti-socialist legislation, from the crisis at the end of the century to colonial exploits, forced domicile had shown itself to be a flexible devise in the hands of the authorities to manage emergency situations and crush political opponents. It was a legal monstrosity, a ‘malign tumour’ in the words of criminal lawyer and socialist Enrico Ferri.36 From the end of the nineteenth century its scope was expanded, so that rather than being used in exceptional situations only, it became a part of normal administration, including in the colonial sphere. This metamorphosis was perhaps the most exemplary case of what Mario Sbriccioli has called the paradox of the failure of emergency legislation on the strength of which the exceptional laws, generally introduced temporarily, are regularly extended and renewed for the surprising reason that the problem they were designed to address had not been solved. Their failure was used to justify their continuation.37 In the first decade of the twentieth century, on average 6,000 people were forcibly confined in remote places by the Italian state.38 The Italo-Turkish war of 1911–12, however, had prompted a change of direction and introduced a new element into the system which was then reinforced by Italy’s entry into the First World War: the practice of restricting freedom was expanded from individual case to a collective measure. The responses of the government and the Italian army to Libyan resistance, in addition to local violence and repression, also involved deporting and interning thousands of Arab men, women and children. In actual fact, deportation and confinement of colonial subjects had started decades before the Italo-Turkish and Libyan wars. At least one hundred individuals from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia experienced deportation and confinement in Italy from 1886 to 1892, during the initial wave of Italian colonial expansion.39 During and after the Libyan War, the Italian army resorted more frequently to deportation and internment as a punitive measure with the aim of curbing the resistance of the local population and in particular its elite.40 Deportation and

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confinement of Libyan colonial subjects peaked in three different periods: 1911–12, 1913–18 and 1918–36. The most relevant episode of deportation and internment occurred after the Italian defeat at the Shari ‘al-Shatt oasis on 23 October 1911. The Italian army under General Caneva reacted brutally to the violence perpetrated by the Libyans with the killing of an estimated 1,800 individuals out of a population of 30,000,41 and ordered ‘the deportation of those rebels who had not been immediately executed’.42 An estimated 1,500 to 5,000 Libyans were interned on the Tremiti islands in the Adriatic Sea and on the Sicilian islands of Ustica, Ponza and Favignana between the end of October 1911 and January 1912 and freed during 1912 as a consequence of the Italian-Turkish Peace Treaty.43 Italian subjects living under forced domicile were removed from the islands to make space for the incoming Libyans.44 The end of the Italo-Turkish war had generated a new special status for Libya: it was no longer part of the Ottoman Empire, but nor was it completely under Italian control. Therefore, after the Treaty of Ouchy, the Italian army began a long and bloody war to bring Libya under full Italian sovereignty. The strenuous resistance of the Libyan population continued, however, at least until 1932. Therefore, deportations and internment resumed in March 1913, when a group of Libyans was sent to the island of Ponza,45 and ended only in 1918. In May 1915, there were at least 1,512 Arabs imprisoned in Italy.46 Notwithstanding the fact that some Italian officials were aware of the illegality of deportation, the opposition to the construction of an internment system in Libya continued to make deportation the most flexible and feasible tool to control the local elite during the guerrilla war. The aim was to curtail Arab resistance and tame it by imposing exemplary punishments. In particular, a new wave of deportations of colonial subjects from Libya to Italian islands scattered around the Mediterranean Sea started in May 1915 and continued until January 1916, involving 1,560 individuals.47 Further and less consistent waves occurred over subsequent months and years,48 alongside the decision to deploy colonial subjects on the North-Eastern battle front in August 1915 and to use colonial workforce in firms mobilised for the war effort.49 Deportation and internment of colonial subjects thus co-existed alongside that of enemy aliens, political dissidents and refugees from the war zones. The two types of internment never interlink in the sources, but it is not improbable that the choice of destination for the Great War internees may have been closely tied to the fact that Ponza and the islands of Sicily, Ustica and Favignana in particular, were already at full capacity when Italy joined the war against Austria-Hungary in 1915. At least in the first months of the war the attitude of the government was cautious and moderate in comparison with that of the military and public opinion. In June 1915, the armed forces were demanding that ‘all subjects of the AustroHungarian monarchy and the German Empire’ as well as ‘Austrian and German subjects who have obtained Italian citizenship’ be moved away from the war zone.50 Prime Minister Antonio Salandra responded that he had nothing against the military command’s belief in the necessity to ban all Austro-Hungarian subjects from residing in the provinces declared war

134 Daniela L. Caglioti zones or against the internment of all males from 18 to 50 years of age in specific locations (with a few individual exceptions) as reprisals given that ‘measures of this sort have in fact been adopted by the Austro-Hungarian government against our own fellow countrymen’. He was, however, opposed to extending such measures to naturalised citizens of enemy origin – because ‘in accordance with the principles of our public law these are to all intents and purposes equivalent to Italian-born citizens’ and because measures of this sort would have ended up by damaging many Italian patriots – and also to extending it to Germans against whom Italy was not yet at war.51 Despite this, it was in the first months of the war that the greatest number of internments were registered. Police and prefects were responsible for organising confinement and internment.52 Differences of opinion within the government between the army and civil administration generated an internment policy which, judging by the available documentation, was a day to day matter and overlapped with the policy toward refugees and exiles. Appeals to moderation in internment policy also came from the army itself. A circular from the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, Carlo Porro, specified: 1. Especially in the kingdom’s territories, internment must be determined exclusively on military grounds. Public security or contraventions of police norms and orders cannot lead to internment when these are not accompanied by well-founded grounds. . . . 2. When, following on from accusations of espionage, preliminary investigations close with declarations of insufficient grounds to proceed as a result of the non-existence of the crime or on insufficient proof against the accused, internment cannot take place. 3. When the grounds for internment no longer exist or when, taking account of the age, gender, health or family situation of the internee, it is held that the purpose of the measure no longer applies, internment must be revoked. 4. If, for military necessities or an inability to discover those guilty of criminal acts, groups of people have to be interned, meticulous enquiries must take place to identify which of the internees are devoid of responsibility. For these, internment must be promptly revoked. 5. Accusations of allegiance to the former regime cannot be grounds for internment.53 The implementation of internment was subject to variation, and often depended on the zeal of local functionaries and informers. By autumn 1915, enemy nationals from the occupied and border areas were already generally treated as refugees and lumped together with the mass of exiles who had flooded towards central and southern Italy in the first months of that year. This increased after the Caporetto disaster in late 1917 and the Habsburg invasion of Friuli and Venezia Giulia: ‘the civilian prisoner . . . has not existed for some time, even in name, and individuals improperly described as such by the military authorities are now treated on a par with all the others and moved away from the war zone’.54 After a first rush of measures, judged chaotic even by the bureaucracy which had to implement

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55

them, the revisions began. Both the Secretary for Civil Affairs and the local authorities were inundated with appeals for release from internment. On 31 March 1916, out of 3,270 applications sent to the Secretary, 1,428 had been accepted, 973 refused and a further 869 were awaiting examination.56 It was decided that Austro-Hungarian men between eighteen and forty-five years of age were to be interned in Sardinia. This decision was repeatedly justified as a legitimate form of reprisal. Salandra thus wrote on 20 June 1916 that internment in Sardinia ‘is . . . essentially political, based on reciprocity’ and the ‘exceptions granted on the basis of personal contacts, however official, reduce the measure to a small number of poor people’.57 Although the practice in Sardinia was technically more one of confinement than internment, Italian sources always used the term ‘internamento’ to describe the condition of this particular kind of captivity. It is hard to establish why the civil and military authorities used the term, but it is likely that it was an ‘umbrella’ word that made the Italian measures comparable with those taken in other countries, both allies and enemies. In Sardinia, internees were left to their own devices. They had to find suitable accommodation and, unless they had financial and network resources, as in the case of Amelie Posse and Oki Brázda, they had to find a job to supplement the meagre daily subsidy they received. They could move about freely only in a designated area, were compelled to ask for permission whenever they wanted to go to a neighbouring village or town, and had to report daily to the local police office.58 The Italian internment policy effectively remained unchanged for the duration of the war and was aimed at dispersion and isolation rather than concentration in one place. One example amongst many is Remigio Blason. A young socialist from Gradisca arrested for Austrophile sentiments on 3 September 1917 after being denounced by a neighbour, Blason was initially interned in Florence. With his refugee papers, he travelled fairly freely around the city and shared his meals with a diverse group of suspected spies, a man from Alsace, various people from Friuli and Trentino, and Italians who had been interned simply for a few ‘illegal remarks’.59 In mid-October, he was transferred to Sardinia, to Lodè in Nuoro province, a tiny village where there was only one other internee and where, thanks to his education, he joined the municipal civil service until his death from malaria just a few days before the armistice.60 Sardinia and other islands such as Lipari, Favignana and Ustica were perfect locations to isolate enemy aliens. As the Italian Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino wrote to the Spanish Ambassador on 14 August 1918: Because in Italy there are no internment camps for enemy subjects similar to those in Austria-Hungary, the choice of Lipari Island and other small islands in the Mediterranean has been made out of necessity and to impose a stricter surveillance. However, the Austro-Hungarian subjects live in full liberty under a regime which is certainly much less severe than that of the internment camps, and many find employment there if they wish to. They are subject to the same treatment as the Italian refugees who are quite numerous there.61

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The preference for confinement over concentration camps had further advantages. First, it was not subject to supervision from the International Committee of the Red Cross. This body inspected camps in countries which had agreed to apply to civilian internment the rules on prisoners of war set out under the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare. Second, it reduced management costs to a minimum. As in Austria-Hungary, confinement was designed principally for men of conscription age, but also affected women, albeit to a much lesser extent.62 People were interned, or rather confined, on very thin grounds. Leopoldine Pellican, from Gradisca, was twenty-one years of age when she applied to the Spanish Embassy in Rome on 30 August 1915 for a document allowing her to return home. She had been arrested by the Italian police at Macerata station in late May and accused of being a spy together with her companion, Filiberto Mosone, a Milanese industrialist.63 She had been tried by a military tribunal in Ancona which had acquitted her on the grounds of ‘non-existence of a crime’ but presented her with ‘mandatory exit papers’ for Lucca in any case. In Lucca, Leopoldine lived like many fellow countrymen, found employment with an Italian family and then had her freedom reinstated. The Spanish diplomat she appealed to took the opportunity to gather detailed news on the everyday lives of internees in Lucca. According to Leopoldine, around 500 Austro-Hungarian subjects had been interned in two monasteries, Convento dei Servi and Santa Maria Bianca, where they were all packed in together with no distinctions being made for gender and age. In the early months of their confinement, they had only a hay sack to sleep on with no sheet, blankets or pillows. Cleaning was entrusted to the internees themselves, while just two military police by day and an unspecified number of soldiers by night were responsible for keeping guard. Internees were free to travel about the town but not to leave it. The food was described as adequate but repetitive and tasteless: milk and bread in the morning, vegetable soup, cheese and bread at lunch, broth, potatoes and cheese in the evening; meat and a glass of wine twice a week.64 For every Leopoldine returning home, several hundred remained interned in Lucca, Benevento and Caserta in improvised facilities rented or seized by local authorities such as monasteries, hotels, schools or private buildings. In Sardinia, this included mostly individual accommodation in private rooms or apartments. This type of internment (or rather confinement) did not facilitate the creation of a prison camp society and nor did it give rise to organised leisure activities such as theatre, gardening, learning a foreign language or publishing a camp newspaper as in the case of British civilian prisoners in Ruhleben or German internees on the Isle of Man.65 It was in Sardinia that internees experienced isolation in its most acute form, together with distance from their homes, families and jobs, the hostility of local people but also kindness. All this becomes clear from sources such as Amelie Posse’s and Remigio Blason’s accounts or letters from Austro-Hungarian subjects imploring the Spanish embassy to help them. In March 1916, when Spanish ambassador Rámon Piña y Millet went to the island to report on the situation, he found 1,019 people scattered in tiny groups in ninety-four towns, fifty-nine in Cagliari province and thirty-five in Sassari province. Piña y Millet

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meticulously noted down individual and collective complaints. Among these were the limited daily allowances, difficulties in corresponding with family and friends, scarcity of clothing, the climate and a lack of quinine to combat malaria. He also received requests for repatriation or at least transfer to the mainland or larger towns where the internees might be more likely to find a job.66 Assessment of their situation differed, though. Richard Benesch for example, an AustroHungarian citizen, wrote a heartfelt letter from Senis to the Italian Minister of the Interior ‘to bring to attention . . . the painful and precarious situation in which the few Austrian subjects interned in this village are living’, to the presence of malaria, and to the ‘very bad’ state of the air and the water.67 By contrast, Adolfo Grosskoff told of the kindness of the local authorities and the friendliness of the people.68

From Caporetto to the end of the war The Italian internment policy was dictated by both internal and external factors and corresponded to the various phases of the war. It peaked in the early months of the fighting, but already by September 1915, it was difficult to distinguish clearly between internees, refugees and political suspects. The policy was reviewed when Italy declared war on Germany, but internment provisions for German subjects only began to take effect in 1918. The numerical imbalance – there were far more Italians in Germany than Germans in Italy – was probably a decisive factor in the decision not to proceed with mass internment or confinement in August 1916 and to delay it as long as possible.69 The policy towards the few Germans left on Italian soil concentrated more on their economic activities and property than on their freedom of movement, especially after the failure of the Italian–German agreement of 21 May 1915 triggered by the refusal of Germany to pay pensions to Italian workers.70 However, the ‘better’ conditions enjoyed by Germans, notwithstanding the increasing Germanophobia that swept the country and its public opinion, was reciprocated. In contrast to British, French, Russian Portuguese, Romanian and Siamese civilians, Italians found on German soil were not systematically interned.71 Italians in Germany constituted a precious workforce, and both local and national authorities were keen to keep them in the workplace as opposed to behind barbed wire.72 The defeat at Caporetto in late 1917 marked a major shift in the Italian government’s approach to the war and its internment policy. The internment policy peaked once again from January 1918 onward. The decree issued on 18 January 1918 made it clear that enemy aliens could reside solely in areas designated by the police.73 However, the government continued to stick to its relatively liberal stance, avoiding the establishment of concentration camps and other forms of harsh surveillance, de facto dismissing nationalist public opinion which requested the wholesale internment of enemy aliens. Security concerns were one of the internal factors that led to the decree of 6 March 1918, which set out a list of places that ‘directly affect the military defence of the state’ and gave the prefects powers to ‘bar, in agreement with the

138 Daniela L. Caglioti military authorities, residence in the aforementioned list to specific individuals when serious motives of public interest dictate it’.74 Other factors included pressure exerted by the nationalist press, progress in the war, local dynamics, and conflicts and competition between the various authorities, both military and civilian, which governed the area. External factors included the primary issue of reciprocity, but also the need to align the country with the policies of the Allies and, last but not least, progress in the war on the colonial front. However, the numbers remained small, especially if compared with those of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but also Germany, France and Britain, and the perception the local people had of these was very different. Nationalist public opinion considered the 1918 measures to be too little too late and started a vociferous campaign to denounce their leniency. Nationalists pressed for the imprisonment, wholesale internment and, eventually, expulsion of enemy aliens.75 They condemned the system of forced residence as one of privilege rather than punishment76 and called for the purging of voluntary societies, academies and learnt societies, the ‘Italianisation’ of everything foreign, and the revocation of naturalisation.77 The nationalist associations in Milan and the Corriere della Sera, a leading pro-war Milanese newspaper, were among the main protagonists of this movement.78 But these attitudes co-existed alongside explicitly tolerant ones. The reaction of the Sardinian population was indicative. On the one hand, there was the initial hostility remembered by Amelie Posse, fostered by newspapers such as La Nuova Sardegna, and episodes of violence culminating in the killing of an internee.79 On the other hand, there were the expressions of solidarity, above all from the urban bourgeoisie, referred to by Posse and Salvatore Satta, and the generosity and lack of suspicion recalled by Remigio Blason.80 On the mainland, on the other hand, hostility to enemy aliens was fostered by nationalist associations which tended to overstate the scale of the threat, probably more to show their patriotism than for other reasons. In Florence, in July 1917, the Comitato delle Associazioni Politiche e Patriottiche spoke of a ‘mass invasion by the citizens of enemy nations transferred to Florence and Tuscany from Northern Italy’, of an ‘insult . . . to the city’s and region’s patriotic sentiments’ and of grave risks which, as the experience of three years of war shows, brings with it the grouping together of citizens from enemy nations in the midst of our people, where it is difficult to guard over them [and prevent them] serving their countries as best they can, sowing alarm and false news, carrying out espionage and propagating disunity.81 And the University of Siena called for the town to be spared the ‘dishonour of being designated a tourist resort for enemy internees’ while objecting in particular to the proposed presence of the German demographer and classical historian Julius Beloch, who was teaching since 1879 at the University of Rome.82 In actual fact, towns and cities far from the front were filling up with Italian refugees in waves, corresponding to the most dramatic moments of the war: the first

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months of the conflict in 1915, the flight from the Austrian Strafexpedition in May 1916, and the chaotic aftermath of Caporetto which triggered the forced displacement of over 600,000 people.83 Faced with these numbers, internee figures calculated at around 5,000 by Giorgio and Sara Milocco, half of whom were in Sardinia,84 were actually extremely small. In the meantime, from spring 1917 onwards, Italy and Austria had, with French encouragement, set in motion the first civilian prisoner exchange negotiations. They were slow in progressing, complicated by the discrepancy in numbers – 2,000 Austro-Hungarians interned in Italy and 20,000 Italians in AustriaHungary85 – and various other concerns. These included worries that ‘disloyal elements or even enemy infiltrators’ could slip into the mass of repatriated individuals.86 They also related to efforts to ensure that occupied territories claimed by Italy under the 1915 London Agreement were not emptied of their pro-Italian population, lest this call Italian claims into question. Disentangling Italian citizens from Italian-speaking Habsburg subjects further complicated the issue, as was also evident in the case of the Italian-speaking Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in the Russian Empire.87

Conclusion Confinement remained the main instrument of Italian internment policy until the end of the war, and flexibility was its principal characteristic. A combination of factors contributed to shape the policy on enemy aliens, a policy in which internment constituted only one aspect and not always the most important. Among these factors, the need to align to the policies of France and Britain, the preoccupation for the treatment of Italians abroad, the desire to appease a vociferous nationalistic opinion without making too many concessions to their requests, and the possibility to control enemy aliens without investing too many financial and human resources in the activity all played a role. The lack of wholesale internment and concentration camps – which was the most distinctive feature in other belligerent countries – also allowed the Italian government and army to differentiate the policy according to the nationality of the enemy aliens. While in response to the Habsburg policy, the Austro-Hungarians and ‘Austriacanti’ experienced confinement more frequently and for a longer period than Germans, the latter suffered more consistently through deprivation of their assets. Such incoherent policy of internment also gave officials leeway as gender and age were concerned. Internment affected women not only as wives of enemy aliens, but also as potentially dangerous individuals,88 and it did not spare children and people who had long-passed recruitment age. In the hands of often unpredictable local officials, confinement proved to be an extremely adaptable and flexible tool to deal with suspects, enemy aliens, internal enemies and colonial subjects. Flexibility and adaptability to the circumstances and contingencies of war also characterised the policy toward colonial subjects, whose main distinctive character was first deportation and only secondly internment. However, in the same way Italian involvement in the First World War increased,

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its involvement in Libya decreased. Although the colonial front remained active during the First World War, the end of Italian neutrality entailed a reduced engagement of soldiers and resources in Libya.89 This reduced engagement, on the one hand, boosted Ottoman and German hopes to regain control of the Mediterranean Southern rim, and on the other, it produced a change in the Italian attitude toward its colonial subjects who could now be seen not only as opponents of the Italian regime to be interned, but also as useful resources in terms of recruits or cheap workforce for mobilised industries. After being used to deal with brigandage and political opponents during the so-called liberal period, confinement thus passed the test of the colonial war and of the First World War. It was now ready to start a new life as one of the main tools in the hands of the Fascist regime.90

Notes 1 Salvatore Satta, The Day of Judgment (London, 1987), pp. 221–2. 2 On Sardinia demography and health conditions, see A. M. Gatti and G. Puggioni, ‘Storia della popolazione dal 1847 a oggi’, in Luigi Berlinguer and Antonello Mattone (eds.), La Sardegna, Storia d’Italia: Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi (Turin, 1998), pp. 1039–79. 3 Simone Bernini, ‘Documenti sulla repressione italiana in Libia agli inizi della colonizzazione (1911–1918)’, in Nicola Labanca (ed.), Un nodo: immagini e documenti sulle repressione coloniale italiana in Libia (Bari, 2002), pp. 117–202. 4 Amelie Posse-Brázdová, Sardinian Sideshow (New York, NY, 1933), pp. 72–4. The book appeared first in Swedish as Den oförlikneliga fångenskapen (Stockholm, 1931). The biographical references come from Eva Strömberg Kranz and Manlio Brigaglia’s prefaces to the first Italian edition: Amelie Posse-Brázdova, Interludio di Sardegna (Cagliari, 1998). 5 Helen Irving, Citizenship, Alienage, and the Modern Constitutional State: A Gendered History (Cambridge, 2016). 6 Amelie made frequent references throughout the book to her husband’s anti-Austrian sentiment. See Posse-Brázdová, Sardinian Sideshow, pp. 25, 33, and 86–9. On the role played by O. Brázda in the Bohemian independence movement, see Mark Cornwall, The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (New York, NY, 2000), p. 116. 7 Posse-Brázdová, Sardinian Sideshow, p. 25. 8 Ibid., p. 74. 9 Ibid., p. 40. 10 In the province of Sassari, the daily subsidy amounted to 2 lira for men and 1.20 for women. See ibid., p. 78. 11 The Archives of the International Prisoners of War Agency, 1914–1919, http://grand eguerre.icrc.org/Content/help/Introduction_en.pdf (accessed 05/05/2017). 12 Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Subjects, Citizens, and Aliens in a Time of Upheaval: Naturalizing and Denaturalizing in Europe During the First World War’, The Journal of Modern History 89.3 (2017), pp. 495–530. 13 Matthew Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918’, Journal of Modern European History, 12.4 (2014), pp. 479–99 (here p. 496). 14 Giovanna Procacci, ‘L’internamento di civili in Italia durante la prima guerra mondiale: Normativa e conflitti di competenza’, Dep Deportate, esuli, profughe: Rivista telematica di studi sulla memoria femminile, 5.6 (2006), pp. 33–66; Giovanna Procacci, ‘La

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limitazione dei diritti di libertà durante la prima guerra mondiale: Il piano di difesa (1904–1935), l’internamento dei cittadini nemici e la lotta ai “nemici interni” (1915– 1918)’, Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, 38 (2009), pp. 601–52; Matteo Ermacora, ‘Le donne internate in Italia durante la grande guerra’, Dep Deportate, esuli, profughe: Rivista telematica di studi sulla memoria femminile, 7.7 (2007), pp. 1–32; Matteo Ermacora, ‘Assistance and Surveillance: War Refugees in Italy, 1914–1918’, Contemporary European History, 16.4 (2007), pp. 445–59; and Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau: Donne e uomini al confino e nei campi di concentramento’, in Stefania Bartoloni (ed.), La Grande Guerra delle italiane: Mobilitazioni, diritti, trasformazioni (Rome, 2016), pp. 249–70. On measures against enemy aliens in Italy other than internment, see Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Why and How Italy Invented an Enemy Aliens Problem in the First World War’, War in History, 21.2 (2014), pp. 142–69; and Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Germanophobia and Economic Nationalism: Government Policies Against Enemy Aliens in Italy During the First World War’, in Panikos Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities During the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham, 2014), pp. 147–70. For a general overview of civilian captivity, see Matthew Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe, 1914–20’, Immigrants & Minorities, 26.1–2 (2008), pp. 49–81; and Tammy Proctor, Civilians in a World at War (New York, NY, 2010), pp. 203–38. Although Italy entered the war against Bulgaria on 19 October 1915, the policies towards enemy aliens did not affect the Bulgarians living in Italy, given their extremely small number. On 26 May 1915, the German colonial authorities, notwithstanding the absence of a state of war with Italy, interned around fifty Italians resident in German East Africa, inaugurating a low-intensity conflict that continued until the official declaration of war in August 1916. On this episode and its implications see Simona Behre, ‘“Forse che il nero aveva prima di oggi comandato a bianchi?” Gli internati italiani nell’Africa Orientale Tedesca (1915–1916)’, Contemporanea: Rivista di storia dell’800 e del ’900 XX, 1 (2017), pp. 87–108. For a general overview, see Daniela Luigia Caglioti, ‘Dealing With Enemy Aliens in WWI: Security Versus Civil Liberties and Property Rights’, Italian Journal of Public Law, 2.2 (2011), pp. 180–94. Manfried Rauchensteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy (Vienna, 2014), p. 388. Roberto Michels, ‘Cenni sulle migrazioni e sul movimento di popolazione durante la guerra europea’, La Riforma Sociale, 24.28 (1917), pp. 1–60 (here p. 20). See Ermacora, ‘Assistance’. On the Bollati-Jagow agreement, see Josef Muhr, Die deutsch-italienischen Beziehungen in der Ära des Ersten Weltkrieges (1914–1922) (Göttingen and Zurich, 1977). Decreto Luogotenenziale (DL) 697, 24 May 1915, in Gazzetta Ufficiale (GU) no. 130, 25 May 1915; DL 902, 24 June 1915, in GU, no. 158, 24 June 1915; DL 1755, 25 November 1915; and 103, 30 January 1916, in GU no. 36, 14 February 1916; DL 320, 12 March 1916, in GU no. 69, 23 March 1916. See Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford, 2007), pp. 59–60. Also Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens’, and Stibbe’s contribution to this volume. Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–47 (New York, NY, 1948), p. 208. On the difficulty in distinguishing between refugees, returnees, exiles and internees, see Daniele Ceschin, Gli esuli di Caporetto: I profughi in Italia durante la grande guerra (Rome, 2006), pp. 209–19.

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28 Tita Birchebener and Remigio Blason, Due friulani internati (1915–1918) (Udine, 1974), pp. 39–51. 29 There were probably no more than 15,000 enemy aliens on Italian soil – see Caglioti, ‘Why and How’, p. 150. 30 Angelo Ventrone, La seduzione totalitaria: Guerra, modernità, violenza politica (1914–1918) (Rome, 2003). 31 See Matthew Stibbe’s contribution to this volume. Also Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War One (Bloomington, IN, 1999), p. 16; and Joshua A. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford, 2014), pp. 39–41. 32 On camps for prisoners of war see Alessandro Tortato, La prigionia di guerra in Italia 1915–1919 (Milan, 2004). 33 On the internment of Italian citizens, see Procacci, ‘La limitazione dei diritti’, pp. 640–3. 34 Caglioti, ‘Why and How’, p. 162. 35 Procacci, ‘L’internamento di civili’. See also Daniela Fozzi, Tra prevenzione e repressione: Il domicilio coatto nell’Italia liberale (Rome, 2010). 36 Cited in Carlotta Latini, Cittadini e nemici: giustizia militare e giustizia penale in Italia tra Otto e Novecento (Florence, 2010), pp. 267–8. 37 Mario Sbriccoli, ‘Caratteri originari e tratti permanenti del sistema penale italiano (1860–1990)’, in Luciano Violante (ed.), Storia d’Italia: Annali 14. Legge, Diritto, Giustizia (Turin, 1998), pp. 487–551 (here p. 489). My translation. 38 Fozzi, Tra prevenzione e repressione, Table 1, p. 305. 39 Marco Lenci, ‘Prove di repressione, deportati eritrei in Italia (1886–1893)’, Africa LVIII.1 (2003), pp. 1–34 (here pp. 4–5). 40 Ibid., p. 10. 41 Nicola Labanca, Oltremare: storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna, 2002), p. 115. 42 Anna Baldinetti, The Origins of the Libyan Nation: Colonial Legacy, Exile and the Emergence of a New Nation-State (London, 2010), p. 36. 43 Bernini, ‘Documenti’, pp. 127–8. 44 Fozzi, Tra prevenzione e repressione, p. 243. 45 Luigi Nisticò, ‘Libici esiliati in Italia’, in Francesco Sulpizi and Salaheddin Hasan Sury (eds.), Primo convegno su gli esiliati libici nel periodo coloniale: 28–29 ottobre 2000, Isole Tremiti (Rome and Tripoli, 2002), pp. 95–118. 46 Bernini, ‘Documenti’, p. 141. 47 Ibid., pp. 151–2. 48 Francesca Di Pasquale, ‘I deportati libici in Sicilia (1911–1933)’, in Salaheddin Hasan Sury and Carla Ghezzi (eds.),Terzo convegno su gli esiliati libici nel periodo coloniale: 30–31 ottobre 2002 (Rome, 2004), pp. 137–47 (here p. 144). 49 In August 1915, 2,554 individuals from Eritrea accompanied by 1,800 relatives landed in Sicily to be trained for the battlefield. The army never deployed them on the front and left them stranded in Sicily for almost a year before being repatriated. Nicola Labanca, ‘L’internamento coloniale italiano’, in C. Di Sante (ed.), I campi di concentramento in Italia. Dall’internamento alla deportazione (1940–1945) (Milano, 2001), pp. 40–67 (here 53–4). As for the Libyans as workforce, see Piero Di Girolamo, ‘Dalla colonia alla fabbrica. La manodopera libica a Milano durante la Prima guerra mondiale’, Studi piacentini, 15 (1995), pp. 115–56. 50 Telegram, 17 June 1915, in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome (henceforth ACS), Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (PCM), Guerra Europea (GE), b. 123, fasc. 19.8.3/1. 51 Telegram, 20 June 1915, in ibid. 52 Procacci, ‘La limitazione dei diritti’, p. 640. 53 Circolare riservata del Comando Supremo del R. Esercito Italiano’, 5 August 1916, in ACS, PCM, GE, b. 123, fasc. 19.8.3/1.

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54 Ministero degli Interni a Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 9 September 1915, in ACS, A5G, Prima Guerra Mondiale (PGM), b. 69, f. 139/3. 55 Nota del Commissariato Civile pel Distretto Politico di Monfalcone, 13 December 1915, in ACS, Comando Supremo Regio Esercito Italiano – Segretariato Generale per gli Affari Civili, b. 233. 56 Ibid. 57 Classified Telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 June 1916 and Telegram, 21 June 1916, in ACS, PCM, GE, b. 123, fasc. 19.8.3/2. 58 See Posse-Brázdová, Sardinian Sideshow. 59 Birchebener and Blason, Due friulani internati, p. 77. 60 Ibid., pp. 108–9. 61 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Administrative Registratur (henceforth ÖStA-HHStA, AR), F36–591–2. 62 Ermacora, ‘Le donne’. 63 La scarcerazione di supposte spie, in “L’Ordine”, Ancona, 10/11 August 1915. Copy in ÖStA-HHStA, AR, F36–591–2. 64 Embajada de España en Italia an das k. k. Ministerium des k. und. K. Hauses und des Äussern, Verbalnote, Rome, 31 August 1915, in ibid. 65 On camp life see, among others, Matthew Stibbe, British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914–18 (Manchester, 2008); Panikos Panayi, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees During the First World War (Manchester, 2012); and Iris Rachamimov, ‘Camp Domesticity: Shifting Gender Boundaries in WWI Internment Camps’, in Gillian C. Carr and H. Mytum (eds.), Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire (London, 2012), pp. 291–305. See also the various contributions in this volume. 66 Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, report dated 18 March 1916, in ÖStAHHStA, AR, F36–591–2. 67 A copy of this letter dated 2 September 1915 is attached to a communiqué from the Spanish Embassy in Rome to the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, 14 November 1915, in ibid. 68 ‘Le coorti degli esiliati austriaci in Sardegna’, Piccolo giornale d’Italia, 18 September 1915. 69 See, for example, Archives du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva, CG1– 18–01, 8 November 1916. 70 Caglioti, Why and How’, p. 160. The Milanese Bar was particularly active in denouncing the agreement. 71 Christoph Jahr, ‘Keine Feriengäste: “Feindstaatenausländer” im südlichen Bayern während des Ersten Weltkriegs’, in Hermann J. W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung/La Grande Guerra nell’arco alpino: esperienze e memoria (Innsbruck and Bozen, 2006), pp. 231–45. 72 See the documentation on the issue of Italians in Germany in Bundesarchiv, BerlinLichterfelde, R901/83518 and R901/85439. 73 Decreto Luogotenenziale (DL) no. 36, 18 January 1918, in Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia (GU) no. 20, 24 January 1918. 74 DL no. 305, 6 March 1918, in GU no. 62, 14 March 1918. 75 See, for example, ‘Per l’internamento dei nemici’, Il Fronte Interno, 20–21 September 1917; ‘Sudditi nemici’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 2 December 1917 or ‘L’organizzazione nemica ai danni dell’Italia’, L’idea nazionale, 3 January 1918, or ‘Non internare: isolare’, L’idea nazionale, 4 January 1918. 76 See, for example, the articles ‘Contro i sudditi nemici. 1500 internati e 300 espulsi’, Il Messaggero, 5 January 1918 and ‘Beni e sudditi nemici. Si fa sul serio? Oltre 1800 internati in Italia’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 6 January 1918.

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77 ‘Epurazione necessaria’, L’idea nazionale, 1 October 1916; ‘Accademia di San Luca’, Il Fronte Interno, 6 May 1917; ‘Per l’italianità degli alberghi. Occorre intervenire’, L’idea nazionale, 3 November 916; ‘Sudditi nemici’, Il Popolo d’Italia, 2 December 1917. 78 ‘Per l’internamento dei nemici dimoranti in Italia’, Corriere della Sera, 3 January 1918. 79 A report of the episode is to be found in a letter signed by Rudolf Wickenburg, from Bono, 23 April 1917 and in the transcription of an article which appeared in La Nuova Sardegna entitled ‘Un delitto di sangue’; Copy in ÖStA-HHStA, AR, F36–591–2. 80 Posse-Brázdová, Sardinian Sideshow; and Birchebener and Blason, Due friulani internati, pp. 93–4. 81 ACS, PCM, GE, b. 124, fasc. 19–8–5/50. 82 ‘Voto dell’assemblea generale dell’Università degli Studi di Siena’, 12 January 1918, in ACS, PCM, GE, b. 132, fasc. 19.11.5/275. See Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘Beloch, Karl Julius o più comunemente Julius’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Roma, 1966), Vol. 8 now also online at the following URL: www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ beloch-karl-julius-o-piu-comunemente-julius_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ (accessed 14/ 10/2017). 83 Kulischer, Europe on the Move, p. 208; and Ceschin, Gli esuli. 84 Sara Milocco and Giorgio Milocco, Fratelli d’Italia: Gli internamenti degli italiani nelle ‘terre liberate’ durante la Grande guerra (Udine, 2002), p. 70; and Petra Svoljšak, ‘L’occupazione italiana dell’Isontino dal maggio 1915 all’ottobre 1917 e gli sloveni’, Qualestoria, 1.2 (1998), pp. 33–63 (and p. 59). 85 On the exchange of prisoners, see ACS, PCM, GE, b. 129, fasc. 19.11.5/240. Also Matthew Stibbe’s contribution to this volume. 86 Telegram signed by Orlando, 26 September 1918, in ACS, PCM, GE, b. 129, fasc. 19.11.5/288, 87 On this issue, see Simone Attilio Bellezza, Tornare in Italia: Come i prigionieri trentini in Russia divennero italiani (1914–1920) (Bologna, 2016). 88 Ermacora, ‘Le donne’. 89 Simona Behre, ‘Neutralità in Italia e guerra in colonia: il primo conflitto mondiale in Libia (1914–1915)’, in Giovanni Orsina and Andrea Ungari (eds.), L’Italia neutrale (Roma, 2016), pp. 345–55. 90 Camilla Poesio, Il confino fascista. L’arma silenziosa del regime (Roma-Bari, 2011).

7

Internment and destruction Concentration camps during the Armenian genocide, 1915–16 Khatchig Mouradian*

They arrived [in the Meskeneh concentration camp] by the thousands, but the majority left their bones there. Auguste Bernau, German employee of the American Vacuum Oil Company, 1916.1 [The Euphrates] had become the mute witness of Armenian suffering. Patriarch Zaven Der Yeghiayan.2

Father Arslanian was one of hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Armenians interned in concentration camps set up by the Young Turk leadership during the First World War. After the war, this is how he described his arrival in the Bab concentration camp, northeast of Aleppo (modern-day Syria) in November 1915: In a field that rain has turned into a pond, thousands of tents are set on the mud and waterholes. By the tents lie dead and dying people, so many that undertakers the authorities appointed from the camp population can hardly keep up.3 Although he survived, most who went through the camp system died of starvation, disease, exposure and violence. And while the Armenian genocide has received rigorous scholarly examination over the past two decades, it has only recently been linked to the wartime internment of civilians. In what follows, I address this lacuna in the historiography, situating the deportation and destruction of Armenians in Ottoman Syria within the global history of concentration camps. Providing an overview of the structure, administration and life in concentration camps based on Armenian accounts, Ottoman archives, and western diplomatic records,4 I argue that this glaring manifestation of total war – one directed towards the empire’s very own Armenian subjects – constitutes an important moment of transition in the use internment as a weapon of annihilation.

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Genesis The forcible concentration of civilians in camps or fortified zones was first ‘invented’ as a military practice in the late nineteenth century, becoming a feature of highly destructive and asymmetric colonial wars fought by the Spanish in Cuba, the British in South Africa and the Americans in the Philippines.5 These early cases exhibited a two-pronged counter-insurgency strategy: the removal of civilians from areas of conflict and their internment in camps and fortified zones; and the use of scorched-earth tactics, depriving fighters of their support base, shelter and means of subsistence, and clearing the way for the brutal suppression of insurgencies. Scholars also emphasise that imitation was central to the global proliferation of concentration camps in this period and beyond.6 As sociologist Jonathan Hyslop has argued: The concentration camp arose as the response of new, professionalized military cultures to the challenge of guerilla warfare. The instrumental logic of violence led to the coercive and callous reorganization of civilians on a mass scale, as a means of containing and controlling subject populations.7 Yet despite the heavy toll on civilians, the intention was not to destroy the interned population, but to suppress uprisings.8 A further motive was collective punishment of the ethnic group or tribe to which the insurgents belonged.9 Not to be outdone, the German army established concentration camps in German South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) during its genocidal campaigns against the Herero and Nama in 1904–07. The purpose was not to defeat tribal insurgencies, which had already been quelled when these camps were established. Instead, the aim was control of ‘suspect’ groups, exploitation of labour and destruction of lives.10 Thousands died of deprivation, disease and deliberate acts of violence, or were worked to death in these camps. Benjamin Madley sees the Herero and Nama genocides as a ‘crucial precursor’ to the Holocaust, and the concentration camps as a ‘rough template for the Nazi camps’. Nikolaus Wachsmann disagrees: ‘Any attempts to draw a direct line to Dachau or Auschwitz are unconvincing’.11 Notwithstanding the debate on whether, and to what extent, this policy of internment and extermination served as precursors to the Holocaust, a fatal threshold was crossed, and a precedent was indeed set for the Konzentrationslager as a weapon of total war and genocide.12

Ottoman trajectories of civilian internment The chickens came home to roost during the First World War as internment camps incarcerating millions of POWs and hundreds of thousands of ‘enemy aliens’ mushroomed in Europe and beyond. The growing literature on camps established in Britain, France, Russia and Germany, and outside Europe, in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan, stands testament to the globalisation of the internment phenomenon. ‘[T]he implementation of those

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practices facilitated the shift to total war and also helped shape a new brutality displayed by European armies toward non-combatants during and after World War I’, Klaus Mühlhahn argues.13 And yet by far the most nefarious manifestation of this ‘new brutality’ during the Great War, and hence the one that forcefully supports theories of war totalisation, occurred in the Ottoman Empire, and remains in the shadows. True, the destruction of Ottoman Armenians now features in many studies of the Great War,14 yet concentration camps set up during this genocide are hardly ever explored in the literature, with the rare exception of Joël Kotek and Pierre Rigoulot’s study Le siècle des camps (2000).15 Scholars of the Great War and civilian internment are hardly to blame for this glaring oversight. Armenian genocide scholarship itself has only recently started exploring the network of concentration camps where Armenian civilian were interned. Indeed, apart from a survey of these camps by historian Raymond Kévorkian in his monumental history of the Armenian Genocide, and a number of articles and encyclopaedia entries by the present author, one is hard-pressed to find any scholarly work on the topic.16 While the concentration camps established during the Armenian Genocide can be placed along a continuum of imperial military extremism and wartime totalisation, they also drew much from a centuries-old Ottoman experience of demographic engineering. John Keegan, for example, argues that the Armenian Genocide was a byproduct of Ottoman imperial policy more than a policy born out of the Great War. As he writes, Above all, the war imposed on the civilian populations almost none of the deliberate disruption and atrocity that was to be a feature of the Second [World War]. Except in Serbia and, at the outset, in Belgium, communities were not forced to leave their homes, land and peaceful occupations; except in Turkish Armenia, no population was subjected to genocide; and, awful though the Ottoman government’s treatment of its Armenian subjects was, the forced marches organised to do them to death belong more properly to the history of Ottoman imperial policy than to that of the war itself.17 It is indeed important to underline the centuries-old Ottoman policies of demographic engineering, but divorcing the internment and destruction of Armenians from the context of the First World War and the influence of European military culture on the Ottoman Turkish leadership undermines any serious attempt to understand the genocide. As the Ottoman Empire expanded and the central authorities tried to consolidate gains, control the newly acquired territories, and develop trade and agriculture, deportation and settlement became an important component of its policies.18 Historian Nesim Şeker discerns three phases of demographic engineering by the Ottomans: the consolidation effort (from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries), the settlement policies that followed as Muslim refugees from the Balkans and the Caucasus poured into the empire in the late nineteenth century, and

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the deportation and settlement policies enacted during the First World War.19 The latter two are intimately connected. As Erik-Jan Zürcher has observed, the Muslim refugees pushed out of the border regions where South-Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia met western Asia ‘strongly identified with the Islamic empire and this was to prove significant as their arrival in the empire also more or less coincided with the emergence of separatist nationalism among the Christian communities of the [Ottoman] empire’. Here, Zürcher had in mind ‘[t]he collision between the two types of community – Muslim refugees and Christian nationalists’, for example in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria.20 Confronted with a great wave of refugees, the Ottoman authorities accumulated experiences of handling deportations, camps, epidemics and the challenges of settling refugees in new environments. Soon, the First World War provided the cover that the leadership of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) needed to expel or deport the empire’s Christian population, freeing up space to settle Muslim refugees in their villages and neighbourhoods.21 The systematic nature of the Ottoman Armenian deportations, often executed with ‘mathematical accuracy’,22 points to the fulfilment of a broader CUP plan of social and economic Turkification, beyond purported measures to ensure military security in border regions.23 In this context, camps that produced death, sexual slavery, transfer of women and children to the dominant group, and sometimes forced labour, were an essential tool in the sudden infusion of an overdose of modernity into the Ottoman tradition of demographic engineering. In the decades prior to the First World War, Armenian appeals to the sultan and to European powers for recognition of their rights, agrarian reform, protection from local chieftains and double taxation had ended in violent reprisals in 1894–96 and 1909, including large scale massacres, looting and destruction of property. The reprisals of 1894–96, known as the Hamidian massacres after the Sultan, led to the murder of up to 200,000 Armenians across the empire, while the violence of 1909, which was concentrated in and around the Adana province, cost 20,000–30,000 Armenian lives.24 Thus, the internment and destruction of the Ottoman Armenians under the cover of the First World War had its roots deep within Ottoman tradition and recent practice and reflected a global trend towards military extremism leading up to history’s first total war.

The Armenian genocide: an overview The CUP enacted the deportation of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population in the spring of 1915, in tandem with empire-wide arrests of Armenian intellectuals and leaders. Hundreds of communities were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and marched in the direction of ‘the regions of southeastern Aleppo, Der Zor, and Urfa’.25 The CUP’s decision to uproot, dispossess and destroy Armenian communities on the pretext of wartime security measures and military necessity was spurred by an exclusionist ideology and a drive to homogenise a crumbling empire. What was known as the Armenian Question would be resolved through a policy of expulsion, expropriation and extermination.26

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The Armenian deportees who survived the terrible journey and massacres along the route arrived in Ottoman Syria from the north or north-east, passing through a series of hastily erected rest areas and transit camps, before being interned in concentration camps near Aleppo, in Ras ul-Ain, and along the lower Euphrates, from Meskeneh to Der Zor. Although exact figures are impossible to ascertain without access to official Ottoman documents,27 around 400,000 Armenians were interned for months in one or more of these camps. Most perished from starvation and disease,28 or were massacred in the desert of Der Zor in the summer of 1916.29 The groundbreaking work of historians Raymond Kévorkian and Taner Akçam, and recent publications by historians Hilmar Kaiser, Fuat Dündar, Hans-Lukas Kieser and Vahram L. Shemmassian, have challenged our understanding of the destruction of Armenians in Ottoman Syria, often referred to as the ‘second phase’ of the Armenian Genocide.30 Kévorkian tackled the notion of a ‘second phase’ head on, and laid the foundations for the study of Ottoman concentration camps.31 Akçam established that assimilation constituted an integral part of the Genocide, and expanded our understanding of demographic policy in the region, first explored by Dündar.32 Kaiser, in turn, examined the policies of the local and regional authorities in Ottoman Syria in two recent works, while in an earlier publication he addressed Armenian humanitarian resistance in the region.33 Kieser and Shemmassian wrote about humanitarian intervention by Armenians and missionaries working closely with them, thus filling a gap in the scholarship.34 Drawing upon previously untapped primary sources as well as the abovementioned insights from scholars, I build upon, and sometimes challenge, the existing literature on the ‘second phase’, arguing that despite the violent mechanisms of control and destruction, the genocide of the Armenians in the triangle formed by Aleppo, Ras ul-Ain, and Der Zor did not progress unhindered. Rather, Armenian agency proved an important factor in limiting the scope of the genocide.35 Deportees organised and engaged in unarmed resistance, primarily through actions carried out illegally, or against the will of the authorities, to save fellow Armenians from annihilation. This is true both in a metropolis like Aleppo where thousands of Armenians disappeared into the urban fabric, often with the support of an underground network of resisters; and in the concentration camps, where the network’s clandestine efforts to provide funds, food and medicine to prisoners, and even attempt to smuggle some deportees out, saved the lives of many.36

On paper and in practice Ottoman officials charted the deportation to and ‘settlement’ in the regions of Urfa, Zor and Aleppo37 in a guideline (talimatname),38 which scrupulously laid out the administrative structure and command chain for the transit and settlement network. It also provided the rest and settlement sites with functionaries who were responsible for deportation, storage and distribution of supplies;

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detailed salary ranges for officials; outlined the necessity and the modes of ensuring deportees’ comfort and security, with particular attention to women, children and the sick; and called for temporary shelter (tents), housing, cultivable land, livestock and assistance for the poor. In painstaking detail, the ordinance outlined procurement and distribution processes (from securing flour in each locale, for example, to ‘immediately’ establishing bakeries and producing bread) in all the transit and settlement areas. The ordinance was a far cry from what unfolded on the ground, where deprivation, exposure, abuse and danger to life and limb were staples of the deportation process, and where settlement was a euphemism for incarcerating hundreds of thousands of Armenians in guarded concentration camps in the desert with paltry – if any – food rations and no means of self-sustenance. In April 1916, an intermediary agent of Swiss missionary Beatrice Rohner witnessed the arrival of a convoy from Bab: As I was in Meskeneh, there came a caravan of sick women and children from Bab. They are in indescribable condition. They were thrown down from the wagons like dogs. They cried for water, they were each given a piece of dry bread, and were left there. No one gave them any water though they remained a whole day under the sun.39 The conditions did not improve upon arrival. In a letter of 28 June 1916 from the Hamam camp to Rohner, Armenian preacher Vartan Geranian reported: There are many hundreds of poor deserted children, women and men here, weakened by hunger and sick, absolutely wretched figures, wandering aimlessly amongst the tents. At every meal at least 20–30 come to beg for a bit of bread. Many families have not eaten for days and do not have the courage to go begging.40 Describing the camps he witnessed between Meskeneh and Der Zor, Auguste Bernau, a German employee of the American Vacuum Oil Company, wrote: ‘“Camp” is saying a lot, because the majority of this wretched people . . . are left in the open air like cattle, without shelter, almost without clothing, are barely supported by a completely insufficient diet’.41 Even when the authorities did distribute bread to deportees (mostly in cities like Aleppo and Raqqa), a starvation ration was set, distribution was irregular and often discontinued for weeks or stopped outright, and the distribution process was marred by corruption and abuse. As Bernau observed: The Administration which took on itself to lead them through the desert does not care about feeding them. It even seems that it may be a principle of [the] government to let them die of hunger. A massacre . . . would have been more humane.42

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Desperation drove thousands to eat whatever they could, including dead animals. According to Andonian, inmates scratched meat from the animal bones with rusted metal. ‘Many times they fought over the meat, and ate without cooking. Those who found they could make fire to heat or burn the rotten piece of meat were considered lucky’.43

Control of movement Concentration and transit camps were close enough to towns or outposts with telegraphs to ensure Ottoman administrative control. The Bab camp in Aleppo province, for instance, was twenty minutes from the town of the same name, while the Meskeneh camp, situated at the great bend of the southern Euphrates, had a telegram centre nearby.44 Although most camps in Ottoman Syria were not surrounded by barbed wire or any other means of physical confinement, a series of measures prevented escape. Roads and bridges nearby were guarded, and gendarmes and camp guards made sure deportees did not leave the parameters. Guards inside the camps were mostly civilians, often Armenians drawn from among the camp population.45 Moreover, camps were often in desert areas, bandits roamed freely, and villagers were instructed to kill or capture stray Armenians.46 For a brief period in Bab, a permit and, inevitably, bribes were necessary to go to town to purchase food, visit the post office or attend to bureaucratic matters. With the spread of typhus in the camp, the authorities blocked the deportees’ access to the city in the autumn of 1915. Typhus had to be contained. The Armenians alone had to die. As an added measure, locals were emphatically instructed to turn in escaped deportees wandering into their towns and villages. Still, some managed to exit camps secretly and return with supplies, or escape to Aleppo and disappear into the fabric of the metropolis. Gurji Ananian from Marash, for example, arrived in Meskeneh in the summer of 1915, and escaped from the camp twice, trying to return to Aleppo. His first attempt, with thirty-four other inmates, turned into a weeklong ordeal during which they were robbed twice by Arabs in the desert, captured by gendarmes, and dragged back to Meskeneh. He succeeded in his second attempt and made it to Aleppo after being beaten, harassed and nearly buried alive by villagers along the way.47 The camps were semi-porous, with locals generally allowed to enter to sell products, purchase children, or steal and abduct prisoners during night raids, with gendarmes often passively observing or, worse, aiding and abetting the perpetrators in return for a share of the booty. Accounts describe, for instance, how butchers came to the Bab camp to sell meat, and sometimes distributed usually discarded offal to needy deportees, but after some time, they started selling that too.48 When deportee Hagop Arsenian arrived in the camp on 8 December 1915, ‘entrance to the actual city of Bab was totally forbidden to us, although he managed to “sneak into town” twice’.49 Those, like Arsenian, who managed to make forays into the city contributed to a camp economy that was otherwise tightly controlled by the guards and the city’s merchants who had full control over prices of goods.

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Sexualised violence Sexualised violence and slavery was rampant. In the Ras ul-Ain concentration camp, for example, ‘The Circassians and Arabs from Ras ul-Ain took the prettiest girls home with them. . . . The policemen carried on a flourishing trade with the girls against payment of a few Medjidies, anyone could take a girl of his choice either for a short while or forever’, according to a German eyewitness account.50 Not all perpetrators remained anonymous. For instance, a camp official, Kör Hüseyin, raped many women at the Karlık transit camp near Aleppo.51 Survivor Setrag G. Matossian, who was in Karlık in late June/early July 1916, wrote a few weeks after the 1918 Armistice about the horrors committed by Kör Hüseyin: ‘As 10 p.m. approached, deportation director [sevkiyat muduru] Hüseyin bey’s and his assistant Zeynel Chavush’s men, lamps in hand, would walk towards the beautiful girls they had selected during the day as appropriate to satisfy the cruelties of the bey and his assistant, and wake them up one by one. They were forcibly dragged to the bey’s tent, and were released after a few hours’.52 More than thirty Armenian girls from Sivas were forcibly married to locals, according to survivor Yeranouhie Simonian.53 Forced marriage was not the worst that could happen. In the cover of darkness, Bedouins attacked and raped with the tacit agreement of guards. ‘Every night there was yelling and screaming at the camp. . . . I saw with my own eyes the rape of little girls’, she noted in her memoir.54 According to the German Consul in Aleppo, Walter Rössler, a woman was raped by a group of eight men. She tried to commit suicide by throwing herself on a railway line as a train approached. A German engineer saved her and brought her to Aleppo.55 ‘The girls, often even the young girls . . . have been kidnapped all along the route of the deportations, sometimes violated and sold, if not killed by the gendarmes who drove the sad caravans’, observed Auguste Bernau.56 Many children forcibly taken by locals or sold by destitute deportees trying to save their youngsters from death resisted their new ‘owners’ in any way they could.57 Stepan G. Aghazarian was in his teens when he was deported from his home town Marash and abducted in Ras ul-Ain, ‘a hell-hole in the middle of the Syrian desert’, and taken to a nearby village: I soon found that in that same Bedouin village there were about a dozen Armenian girls, ten to twelve years of age, who had been abducted by Arabs. The Arabs complained that these girls had refused to eat and would not talk to their ‘masters’. My new ‘father’ . . . asked me to talk to [the girls] and convince them to cooperate with the Arabs and give nobody any trouble. He said somberly that if they were obedient, they would more than likely not be killed. So I went to the sullen girls and, as I had been asked to do, sat down and talked to them. They finally gave me their word that they would cooperate.58

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Sexualised violence during the Armenian Genocide has been the subject of increased scholarly attention in recent years,59 commensurate with growing historiography examining rape as a tool of genocide and a ‘life force atrocity’.60 Yet in concentration camps and along deportation routes, the violation of women also served as a perverted manifestation of male bonding through control over the bodies of victims. It also took place within a broader context that encouraged sexualised violence (and looting) to incentivise popular participation in the genocide.61 Rapists like Kör Hüseyin and ‘suppliers’ of women like Zeynel Chavush’s thugs were part of an elaborate economy of sexual exploitation across the Ottoman Empire that was created in an environment of impunity, and fueled by individual initiative, peer dynamics and local power brokers.

Death and burial More than 250,000 Armenians died of disease, deprivation, exposure and violence in Ottoman concentration camps during the First World War. In Meskeneh alone, the toll was somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000.62 In Bab, the figure was almost as high, despite the shorter lifespan of the camp. Rössler writes: An Armenian who has the courage to go to Bab from time to time in disguise in order to bring the poverty stricken a support allowance (German Sisters have not been allowed any activity outside of Aleppo), reports that at the end of January [1916] during the 2 and a half days of his stay in Bab, 1,029 Armenians died.63 When Father Dajad Arslanian learnt that all the priests in the Bab camp were either sick or had died, he took matters into his own hands, immediately appealing to the district governor for help in burying the 350 to 400 people dying every day of typhus, which had ‘encircled the camp like a fire’. The official provided the camp with fifty mezarcis (buriers) and a head burier to oversee the process, which Father Dadjad described in detail. The buriers were divided into two groups. Every morning, one group toured the 5,000 tents with the priest, gathering the corpses placed outside,64 while the other group dug graves in the cemetery outside the camp. In the afternoon, the corpses were brought to the cemetery and buried in the pits. ‘Between December 1915 and January-February 1916, some 36,000–40,000 people were buried [like this]’, observed Father Dadjad.65 In Meskeneh, the burial ground was a large area near the camp. ‘Every morning the number of dead reached hundreds due to the cold, filth, lack of hygiene, malnutrition and lack of medical care to treat the many diseases we were exposed to’, Arsenian recalled. He lost his mother on 22 December 1915. Father Arsen, a priest at the camp, conducted the funeral ‘and we buried her among all the other refugees there’. Interment was typically far less dignified. Many deportees waited for days for buriers to take the bodies from their tent. Buriers dug a huge pit, filled it with corpses, and then covered it with a mound of sand. ‘One counts by the hundreds

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the anonymous burial mounds . . . [for] these victims of a barbarism without name’, wrote Bernau after his journey through Meskeneh and Der Zor. Not all were buried, and those who were sometimes did not remain interred. ‘Oftentimes, the corpses would be dragged out and eaten by dogs’, with the stench from scattered limbs and skulls filling the air. The deportees, who walked to the Euphrates to get water, had to pass these horrors every day, and at some point, ‘our nose no longer picked up the smell’.66

Resistance A loose, unarmed resistance network fought back. It was comprised of a few dozen dedicated religious and secular Armenian community leaders based in Aleppo and several Western missionaries and diplomats. They served as the glue connecting a much larger constituency of Armenians (and, sometimes, Muslims and other local Christians) who pulled strings, bribed officials, volunteered medical services, raised funds, cooked meals, smuggled deportees out of danger, secretly distributed funds, medication and food to deportees in camps, and helped in any other way they could. The humanitarian resistance network, operating out of Aleppo, sent money, food and medicines to the concentration camps whenever possible. The emissaries were a few Armenians who often made the stopover under the cloak of darkness, or disguised as Muslim merchants during the day.67 The network also helped many deportees escape internment, forced labour and sexual slavery, and provided safe houses in Aleppo for the escapees. Women played a key role in the humanitarian effort. Beatrice Rohner, a Swiss missionary who was part of the resistance network, was crucial in providing material and moral support to deportees in camps.68 In the Meskeneh concentration camp, a few of the women who had witnessed the destitute condition of children set up an orphanage on 11 March 1916. Three women from Nigde took on the responsibility of caring for the orphans, with support from priest Yetvart Tarpinian, who had arrived in Meskeneh only a week earlier. As word spread, more and more orphans came to the tent. What started as a shelter for a few children soon provided refuge to hundreds. The women frantically tried to secure supplies for the orphans: they pleaded with camp officials, asked deportees for donations, and tried to solicit outside help. They were not always successful. One of the women, Rakel Kirazian, was beaten up on several occasions by anbâr memuru (warehouse official) Ali Riza for repeatedly requesting food for the starving children. Some deportees at the camp gave from the little they had. Those who got married at the camp – and there were indeed dozens who did so in spite, or because of, the destitute conditions and the uncertain future ahead – made donations to the orphanage to mark the occasion. The most significant assistance came from two Evangelical Armenian women who were referred to as ‘members of the ruhci sect’. They offered to provide bread to the orphans regularly, and did so, with funds from a German woman missionary based in Aleppo. After a confrontation with camp director Hüseyin, the two women and many of the orphans in the tent were deported to Der Zor.69

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In lieu of a conclusion The liquidation of camps occurred in two distinct phases. The camps around Aleppo were shut down beginning in the winter of 1915, and the deportees were driven either towards Ras-ul Ain or the lower Euphrates, while the camps in Ras ul-Ain and along the river were emptied, often brutally, from the spring of 1916, with the survivors being marched to Der Zor. The emptying of the Dipsi camp is a case in point. In late April 1916, some twenty gendarmes were dispatched from Meskeneh to liquidate Dipsi. Considering the condition of most prisoners, emptying the camp and sending everyone downstream was not easy. The gendarmes set fire to tents and assaulted deportees to force them to move. The wealthy and the poor had to be re-deported. . . . Within half an hour, the convoy was on its way to Abuharar. Horrible crimes were committed that day . . . many died of beatings and other were burned alive, recounted Armenian survivor Krikor Ankut.70 A ‘cemeterial silence’ reigned in Dipsi on 7 June 1916 when Ankut passed through on his way from Abuharar back to Meskeneh. Only the gendarme station stood there, amid a sea of scattered objects.71 Shortly thereafter, survivor Yeghisheh Hazarabedian journeyed through Dipsi and observed a ‘place that had once been a staging area for deportees but now stood abandoned’, with only a few orphans left behind, begging for food from travellers and deportees.72 The situation of children, many of whom were orphaned, was no less abhorrent in this camp than it was elsewhere along the Euphrates line. When pitching their tents, the Seropians were surrounded by children begging for food. Seropian also witnessed a group of emaciated children gathered around the corpse of a dead mule, tearing apart and eating its meat.73 While in German South West Africa the shutting down of camps signalled an end of the genocidal violence against the Herrero and Nama, the liquidation of the Ottoman camps was followed by further massacres. Most of the deportees who survived the camp system perished in two waves of violence in Ras ul-Ain (March 1916) and Der Zor (August 1916). Estimates vary, but conservative figures indicate some 30,000 killed in the former, and up to 200,000 in the latter.74 Thousands of others survived primarily through the efforts of an Armenian-led humanitarian resistance network that operated in the triangle formed by Aleppo, Ras ul-Ain, and Der Zor,75 while thousands more, mostly women and children, were saved from the carnage by tribesmen in the region who forced them to become their wives, workers and sex slaves. Many survivors wrote about their camp experience in newspaper articles and memoirs published in the years following the genocide, yet it took almost a century for the first scholarly examinations of their internment to appear. The massacres – and sporadic instances of armed resistance – overwhelmed the discourse, while scholarship focused on dispossession, deportation, death and denial. As a result, the gruelling, brutal ‘respite’ for Armenian deportees in

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concentration camps between massacres was relegated to footnotes, often literally. In his The History of the Armenian Genocide (1995), Vahakn Dadrian, the pioneer of Armenian genocide studies, wrote that for survivors arriving in Syria the ‘authorities had created a string of waystations in the desert from which they were regularly dispatched to their ultimate death by a variety of methods’.76 A footnote then directed the reader to an article which, compelling as it is in other respects, says little about the camp system and what we refer to today as the second phase of the Armenian Genocide. Yet, as I have argued above, the camp system served an integral part of the genocidal process. While it is true that neither mass murder nor heroic acts of armed resistance occurred in these camps, deprivation and exposure that destroyed life constituted an extermination policy, and the humanitarian resistance of the Armenians was waged in reaction to it. The concentration camps in Ottoman Syria during the First World War bridged the colonial and modern histories of internment, and comprised the deadliest pre-Holocaust loci for civilians imprisoned in wartime simply for who they were. As such, the importance of addressing the Ottoman camp system, and the need for comparative research on the function and trajectory of internment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries cannot be overstated. ‘One counts by the hundreds the anonymous burial mounds . . . [for] these victims of a barbarism without name’, wrote Bernau on his journey through Meskeneh and Der Zor in 1916.77 The annihilation of the European Jewry was ongoing when Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1943–44, giving the barbarism Bernau refers to a name. But the Holocaust was not the first such crime, the KL system was not its first locus, and the line from German South West Africa to Auschwitz was not direct after all. It passed through Ottoman Turkey.

Notes * I would like to thank Marc Mamigonian, Henry Theriault and Taleen Mardirossian for their helpful comments and suggestions. 1 Enclosure in a report from the German consul in Aleppo, Walter Rössler, to German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 27 September 1916. Reproduced in Wolfgang Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide: Evidence From the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915–1916 (New York, NY, 2014), p. 653. 2 Zaven Der Yeghiayan, My Patriarchal Memoirs (Barrington, RI, 2002), p. 133. Yeghiayan, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, passed through Meskeneh on the Euphrates on 9 September 1916 as he went into exile. 3 Aram Andonian Archives at the Bibliothèque Nubar, Paris (henceforth, BNu/Andonian), Folder 30: ‘The situation in Bab end of 1915’, in ‘Materials for the history of the deportations and massacres. Aleppo and its environs’, ‘The deportation of the Armenians of Aleppo’, p. 6. 4 Information on the administrative structure, arrival of deportees, internment, further deportation, collaboration, resistance and other aspects of life in the camps remains scattered in a wealth of survivor diaries, accounts, memoirs and sketches; some Ottoman records; and Western diplomatic and missionary documents. Chief among the sources I consult in this chapter are interviews and survivor testimonies gathered by chronicler

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Aram Andonian in the immediate aftermath of the genocide, and housed at the Nubar Library in Paris. Andonian’s folders on camps in Syria (Bab, Meskeneh, Raqqa, Hamam, Der Zor and others), sometimes accompanied with sketches and maps, stand as an invaluable source. For a French translation of the accounts compiled by Andonian, see Raymond Kévorkian, L’Extermination des déportés Arméniens ottomans dans les camps de concentration de Syrie-Mésopotamie, 1915–1916 (Special Issue of the Revue d’histoire arménienne contemporaine), Vol. 2 (Paris, 1998). Jonathan Hyslop, ‘The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907’, South African Historical Journal, 63.2 (2011), pp. 251–76. Scholars emphasise that imitation was central to the global proliferation of concentration camps in this period and beyond. See, for example, Klaus Mühlhahn, ‘The Concentration Camp in Global Historical Perspective’, History Compass, 8.6 (2010), pp. 543–61, who argues that ‘in the history of the concentration camp, overlays, transfers, and mimesis are discernable at many points’. Hyslop, ‘The Invention of the Concentration Camp’, p. 273. Iain R. Smith and Andreas Stucki stress the differences between these camps and those of the Nazis in their article ‘The Colonial Development of Concentration Camps (1868– 1902)’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39.3 (2011), pp. 417–37. Sibylle Scheipers argues that it would be ‘misleading’ and ‘short-sighted’ to ignore the collective punishment dimension and view these camps as a mere counter-insurgency measure. See Scheipers, ‘The Use of Camps in Colonial Warfare’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 43.4 (2015), pp. 678–98. As such, the camps in German South West Africa ‘diverged from other colonial camps, as they were propelled less by military strategy than a desire for punishment and forced labour’, as Nikolaus Wachsmann notes. See Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (London and New York, NY, 2015), pp. 7–8. For a critical narrative of the Herero Genocide see, Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2005). See Benjamin Madley, ‘From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe’, European History Quarterly, 35.3 (2005), pp. 429–64; and Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, p. 8. Isabel Hull argues that greater civilian oversight sets the earlier cases of civilian internment apart from the German military’s suppression of the Herero uprising. See Hull, Absolute Destruction, pp. 184–5. Surprisingly, Mühlhahn barely even addresses the Armenian genocide, noting, in passing, ‘between 1915 and 1923, more than 1 million Armenians left [emphasis mine] Turkish Asia Minor’ – see Mühlhahn, ‘The Concentration Camp in Global Historical Perspective’, p. 548. The ‘new brutality’ that he refers to was not new for African colonies, where collective punishment was commonplace and ‘entirely normal’. See Andrea Rosegarten, ‘“A Most Gruesome Sight”: Colonial Warfare, Racial Thought, and the Question of “Radicalization” During the First World War in German South-West Africa (Namibia)’, History, 101.346 (2016), pp. 425–47. See, for example, Hull, Absolute Destruction, Chapter 11; and Jay Winter, ‘Under Cover of War: The Armenian Genocide in the Context of Total War’, in Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan (eds.), The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 189–214. Joël Kotek and Pierre Rigoulot, Le siècle des camps (Paris, 2000). Despite a demonstrably genuine effort to incorporate the Armenian case into the narrative of the history of concentration camps, Le siècle des camps is testament to the dearth of literature the authors could consult for their oeuvre. See Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London and New York, NY, 2011), pp. 647–72; and Khatchig Mouradian, ‘The Meskeneh

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Concentration Camp, 1915–1917: A Case Study of Power, Collaboration, and Humanitarian Resistance During the Armenian Genocide’, Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies, 24 (2015), pp. 44–55. John Keegan, The First World War (London, 1998), p. 8. Ilhan Tekeli, ‘Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’ndan Günümüze Nüfusun Zorunlu Yer Değiştirmesi Ve İskan Sorunu’ [‘The Issue of Forced Deportation and Settlement of Population From the Ottoman Period to the Present Day’] Toplum ve Bilim, 50 (1990), pp. 49–71. Nesim Şeker, ‘Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Armenians’, Middle Eastern Studies, 43.3 (2007), pp. 461–74. Erik-Jan Zürcher, ‘The Late Ottoman Empire as Laboratory of Demographic Engineering’, paper delivered at the conference ‘Le Regioni Multilingui Come Faglia E Motore Della Storia Europea Nel XIX–XX Secolo’ in Naples, 6–8 September 2008, www. academia.edu/5726057/ The_late_Ottoman_Empire_as_laboratory_of_demographic_engineering Political scientist and demographer Myron Weiner refers to this process as ‘substitution’. See Myron Weiner and Michel S. Teitelbaum, Political Demography, Demographic Engineering (Oxford, 2001), p. 56. ‘Mathematical accuracy’ is the phrase used by Armenian intellectual Dikran Kelegian, himself a victim of the Armenian Genocide. It is often cited by historian Taner Akçam in the context of the Ottoman demographic policy during the genocide, and particularly the 5 and10 per cent rule employed by the CUP leadership: Armenians exempted from deportation could not surpass the 5 per cent threshold in the Eastern provinces of the Empire (in most of these regions, deportation was in fact near total), and Armenians in designated settlement areas could not constitute more than 10 per cent of the local population. See, for instance, Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ, 2012), pp. xviii and 243. For an in-depth treatment of this policy, see Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime; and Fuat Dündar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question, 1878– 1918 (New Brunswick, NJ, 2010). On the Hamidian massacres, see Ronald Grigor Suny, ‘They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ, 2015), pp. 105– 40; Owen Robert Miller, Sasun 1894: Mountains, Missionaries and Massacres at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Columbia University Academic Commons, 2015), https:// doi.org/10.7916/D8CF9PJS; Jelle Verheij, ‘Die armenischen Massaker von 1894– 1896: Anatomie und Hintergründe einer Krise’, in Hans-Lukas Kieser (ed.), Die armenische Frage und die Schweiz (1896–1923)/La question arménienne et la Suisse (1896–1923) (Zurich, 1999), pp. 69–132; Edip Golbasi, ‘The 1895–1896 Armenian Massacres in the Ottoman Eastern Provinces: A Prelude to Extermination or a Revolutionary Provocation?’, Papers of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 25 (2015). On the Adana massacres, see Bedross Der Matossian, ‘From Bloodless Revolution to a Bloody Counter-revolution: The Adana Massacres of 1909’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 6.2 (2011), pp. 152–73; and Suny, ‘They Can Live in the Desert’, pp. 165–73. Ottoman Prime Ministry Archives, Interior Minister Cipher Office (abbreviated BOA/ DH.ŞFR) 52/188 Coded telegram from Minister of Interior Talat to provinces, 2 May 1915. For recent scholarship on the Armenian Genocide, see the works by Suny, Akçam and Kévorkian cited above. For scholarship on the expropriation of Armenian property in particular, see Uğur Ümit Üngör and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (New York, NY, 2011); and Taner Akçam and Ümit Kurt, The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide (New York, NY, 2015).

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27 The inaccessibility of key Ottoman documents accounts, in part, for the absence of thorough studies on camp life. We know from available Ottoman documents and Armenian accounts that authorities kept detailed records of deportation convoys and camp populations, yet these documents are not available to researchers. See, for example, Article 12 of the 56-article deportation and settlement guideline prepared by the Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Emigrants (IAMM) head Muftizâde Şükrü Kaya Bey: BOA DH. EUM. 2. ŞB, 68/88 From Şükrü Kaya to Talat on 8 October 1915. Armenian deportee Mihran Aghazarian, in an account published immediately after the war, describes his experience accompanying a Turkish scribe and a policeman tasked with preparing lists and gathering statistical information on convoys arriving in Der Zor. See Mihran Aghazarian, Aksoragani Husher [Memoirs of an Exile] (Adana, 1919). For an overview of the fate of Ottoman documents pertaining to this period, and issues related to researcher access, see the first chapter of Akcam’s, The Young Turks’ Crime. 28 By 1916, the death toll in several of these camps was in the tens every day, and in certain cases reached three digits. See Mouradian, ‘The Meskeneh Concentration Camp’, pp. 48–51. 29 For an overview of the Armenian Genocide, including a brief examination of the Der Zor massacres, see Raymond H. Kévorkían, ‘Earth, fire, water: or how to make the Armenian corpses disappear’, in Elisabeth Anstett and Jean-Marc Dreyfus (eds.), Destruction and Human Remains: Disposal and Concealment in Genocide and Mass Violence (Manchester, 2014), pp. 89–116. 30 Raymond Kévorkian has referred to the destruction of the Armenians in Syria and Mesopotamia from the autumn of 1915 to the summer of 1916 as ‘the second phase’ in his publications since the late 1990s. See, for instance, Kévorkian, L’Extermination des déportés Arméniens ottomans. 31 See also Raymond Kévorkian, ‘Alep, Centre du dispositif genocidaire et des operations de secours aux deportés’, in Levon Nordiguian (ed.), Mémoire arménienne: Photographies du camp de réfugiés d’Alep, 1922–1936 (Beirut, 2010); idem., The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London and New York, 2011). 32 See Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime; and Dündar, Crime of Numbers. 33 See Hilmar Kaiser, At the Crossroad of Der Zor: Death, Survival, and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915–1917 (London, 2002); idem., ‘Regional Resistance to Central Government Policies: Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the Governors of Aleppo, and Armenian Deportees in the Spring and Summer of 1915’, Journal of Genocide Research, 12.3 (2010), 214; idem., The Extermination of Armenians in the Diyarbekir Region (Istanbul, 2014). 34 Hans-Lukas Kieser, ‘Beatrice Rohner’s Work in the Death Camps of Armenians in 1916’, in Jacques Sémelin, Claire Andrieu and Sarah Gensburger (eds.), Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue (New York, NY, 2011), pp. 367–82; and Vahram L. Shemmassian, ‘Humanitarian Intervention by the Armenian Prelacy of Aleppo during the First Months of the Genocide’, Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies, 22 (2013), pp. 127–52. 35 For a critique of the scant attention paid by Armenian genocide scholarship to resistance beyond armed struggle, see Khatchig Mouradian, ‘“The Very Limit of our Endurance”: Unarmed Resistance in Ottoman Syria during WWI’, in Hans-Lukas Kieser, Seyhan Bayraktar and Thomas Schmutz (eds.), End of the Ottomans: The Genocide of 1915 and the Politics of Turkish Nationalism (London, 2018), forthcoming. 36 See Khatchig Mouradian, ‘Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance in Ottoman Syria, 1915–1916’, Études arméniennes contemporaines, 7 (2016), pp. 87–103. 37 Ibid. The ordinance listed Aleppo, Katma, Müslimiye, Suruç and Ras ul-Ain as transit centres (merkez i tevakkuf), Raqqa, Hauran and Der Zor as settlement areas, and Deyrul Hafr, Meskeneh, Abuharar and Hamâm as overnight rest areas along the road. As we

160

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50

51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Khatchig Mouradian

shall see, several of these sites we overcrowded with deportees, and turned into de facto concentration camps. BOA DH. EUM. 2. ŞB, 68/88, copy of 56-article, guideline sent by IAMM director Şükrü Kaya to Talat, 8 October 1915. Report from the Ambassador on Extraordinary Mission in Constantinople to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg [enclosure], 22 July 1916. Reproduced in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 605. Report from Rössler to Bethmann Hollweg [enclosure 4], 29 July 1916. Reproduced in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 612. Geranian’s description of ‘absolutely wretched figures, wandering aimlessly amongst the tents’ evokes images of the ‘Muselmänner’ in Nazi concentration camps. See Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (Princeton, NJ, 1997), pp. 199–205. Report from Rössler to German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, enclosure, 20 September 1916. Reproduced in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 652. Ibid. BNu/Andonian, Folder 30: ‘The situation in Bab before the last sevkiyat in 1916’, in ‘Materials for the history of the deportations and massacres: Aleppo and its environs’, The deportation of Armenians of Aleppo, p. 3. Mouradian, ‘The Meskeneh Concentration Camp’, p. 47. See ibid., pp. 45–6. For examples of such instances, see BNu/Andonian, Folder 30: ‘Sefire’, in ‘Materials for the history of the deportations and massacres: Aleppo and its environs’, The Deportation of Armenians of Aleppo, p. 23; and BNu/Andonian, Folder 52b: ‘On the Road to Meskeneh’, pp. 61–4. BNu/Andonian, Folder 52b: ‘On the Road to Meskeneh’, pp. 61–4. BNu/Andonian, Folder 30: ‘The situation in Bab before the last sevkiyat in 1916’, in ‘Materials for the history of the deportations and massacres: Aleppo and its environs’, The Deportation of Armenians of Aleppo, p. 3. Arda Arsenian Ekmekji (trans.), Towards Golgotha: The Memoirs of Hagop Arsenian, A Genocide Survivor (Beirut, 2011), pp. 105–7. Report from Rössler to German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 3 January 1916, enclosure 2. Reproduced in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 526. One mejid was equivalent to 23.5 kurush. One lira was equivalent to 127 kurush or US $4.4 (with an approximate purchasing power of US$100 today). In Aleppo in 1915, a kilogramme of bread cost 3.5 kurush, yoghourt 4.5 kurush, and cheese 12 kurush. BNu/Andonian, Folder 52: ‘The camp directors of Meskeneh’, p. 74. IAMM would later assign Kör Hüseyin as camp director at Meskeneh in late 1916. There too he distinguished himself by his brutality, raping, torturing and killing deportees. See also, Kévorkian, L’Extermination des déportés Arméniens, p. 129. ‘Turkish brutalities in Karlık’, Hai Tsayn, 13 December 1918. Yeranouhie Simonian, Im Koghkotas [My Golgotha] (Antilias, Lebanon, 1960), p. 14. Ibid., p. 19. Report from Rössler to German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 3 September 1915. Reproduced in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 345. Report from Rössler to German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, enclosure, 20 September 1916. Reproduced in ibid., p. 652. BNu/Andonian, Folder 59: Deportation of Armenians of Ras ul-Ain, ‘The massacres of Ras ul-Ain’, pp. 3–4. See also, Kévorkian, L’Extermination des déportés Arméniens ottomans, p. 108. Paren Kazanjian (ed.), The Cilician Armenian Ordeal (Boston, MA, 1989), pp. 35–6. See, for example, Katharine Derderian, ‘Common Fate, Different Experience: GenderSpecific Aspects of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 19.1 (2005), pp. 1–25. For comparative research, see Kristin Bell, “Victims”

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60

61

62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69

70

71 72 73 74 75

76 77

161

Voices: Sexual Violence in the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides (PhD dissertation, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 2014). Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, ‘The Devil in the Details: “Life Force Atrocities” and the Assault on the Family in Times of Conflict’, Genocide Studies and Prevention, 5.1 (2010), pp. 1–19. For recent research on sexualised violence in Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War, see David Raub Snyder, Sex Crimes Under the Wehrmacht (Lincoln, NE, 2007); and various contributions to Dagmar Herzog (ed.), Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century (Basingstoke, 2009). As Henry Theriault argues, ‘[w]e must also recognize that genocide can be a tool of rape’ – see Theriault, ‘Against the Grain: Critical Reflections on the State and Future of Genocide Scholarship’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 7.1 (2012), pp. 123–44 (here p. 137). Matthias Bjørnlund, too, emphasises sadism as a factor in ‘a thoroughly brutalized environment that left room for local initiatives when it came to the methods of killing and humiliation, initiatives that satisfied individual needs, not only for self-gratification but also for variation’. See Bjørnlund, ‘“A Fate Worse than Dying”: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide’, in Herzog (ed.), Brutality and Desire, pp. 16–58 (here p. 29). Mouradian, ‘The Meskeneh Concentration Camp’, p. 48. Report from Rossler to German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 9 February 1916. Reproduced in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, pp. 542–3. Another eyewitness remembered these buriers yelling ‘ölüsü olan’ (whoever has dead people). Sometimes no sound came because everyone in the tent was dead. BNu/ Andonian, Folder 30: ‘The situation in Bab end of 1915’, in ‘Materials for the history of the deportations and massacres: Aleppo and its environs’, The Deportation of Armenians of Aleppo, p. 6. Ibid. Mouradian, ‘The Meskeneh Concentration Camp, 1915–1917’. See Mouradian, ‘Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance’. On Rohner’s life and work, see Kieser, ‘Beatrice Rohner’s Work’. Levon Mesrob (ed.), 1915: Aghed yev Veradzenount [1915: Disaster and Rebirth] (Paris, 1952), pp. 459–61. Tarpinian does not mention the name of the missionary in his account. He admitted that ‘I was against turning a nation that was being persecuted for their religion and ethnicity to be the plaything of sect members, but did not dare prohibit them, because they were providing bread’. BNu/Andonian, Folder 57: Dipsi, ‘The Deportations of the Armenians of Dipsi’, p. 3. Hagop Arsenian talks about a similar practice of setting fire to tents in the next camp, Abuharar. See Arsenian, Towards Golgotha: The Memoirs of Hagop Arsenian, a Genocide Survivor, trans. Arda Arsenian Ekmekji (Beirut, 2011), p. 119. Ibid. Kazanjian (ed.), The Cilician Armenian Ordeal, p. 294. See Hagop A. Seropian, Yegherni husheres [My Memoir of the Great Crime] (Beirut, 2005), p. 140. For a narrative of the massacres in Der Zor, see Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, pp. 662–70. For an exploration of humanitarian resistance during the Armenian genocide, see Mouradian, ‘Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance’. For the efforts of Reverend Hovhannes Eskijian, the pastor of the Emmanuel Armenian Evangelical Church in Aleppo who contributed to this effort, see Hilmar Kaiser, At the Crossroad of Der Zor: Death, Survival, and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915–1917 (London, 2002). Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict From the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York, NY, 1995), p. 242. Report from Rossler to German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 27 September 1916. Reproduced in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 652.

8

Internment in Canada during the Great War Rights, responsibilities and diplomacy Bohdan S. Kordan

In the strategic campaign to disparage their rivals, the Great War’s adversaries often marshalled evidence documenting prisoner of war (POW) abuse as proof of the enemy’s perfidy. Particularly noteworthy in this regard were the investigations by the US ambassador to Berlin, James Gerard – tasked as a neutral observer with inspecting conditions at POW camps in Germany. Published as part of the UK government’s wider propaganda effort, the reports garnered broad attention.1 This necessarily led to speculation about retribution. Not everyone, however, was so inclined. There was a sense that standards defining civilised behaviour had to be met. The just treatment of prisoners was a mark of civilisation, and although the barbarism of war had the potential of being at its worst in a POW camp, humanity was not to be disgraced or discredited by primitive brutishness. The argument made was that in contrast to developments in Germany the conduct of those responsible for the welfare of POWs in Britain (and the empire more generally) had to be governed by a Christian code of charity and mercy. Canadians could take some comfort that Britain and its allies were upholding standards and principles. Various accounts, in fact, indicated that enemy prisoners were being handled in the best traditions of British honour and fair play. This prompted Toronto’s Globe, essaying on the differences in treatment between British and German prisoners, to declare that ‘Canadians, even in the thick and sorrow of war, [can] thank God [that] they are not allied with brutish tyrants, but with men whose humane instincts are proof against the most debasing influence of war’.2 Such statements were to be expected. The need to counter allegations of wrongdoing forced officials everywhere to offer rebuttals, while a credulous press, quick to editorialise, automatically accepted many of the claims. No doubt, it was reassuring to some that satisfaction could be taken in the belief that British honour was being maintained. But this was beside the point. The real issue was whether the rights, rules and standards relating to prisoners of war were in fact being met. In Canada, it was an especially germane question since most POWs were civilians. Many of the 8,579 interned during the conflict were individuals whose German, Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman origins identified them as so-called enemy aliens – immigrants hailing from lands now at war with Canada. Under the 1907 Hague Convention, civilian non-combatants – reservists, for example, who had the potential of augmenting the fighting capacity of the enemy – could be

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interned as POWs. The War Measures Act, introduced in Canada at the war’s outset, was precisely the type of security legislation that aimed to prevent the return of such men to their respective homelands. Several hundred, in fact, were detained at the US–Canada border and interned in this manner during the first weeks of the conflict. But in the months to follow, thousands of others with no intention of joining the fight were arrested and placed in internment camps. What, then, was the rationale behind the internment of civilians of enemy origin as POWs in Canada, and was there a just cause? The internment of aliens in international law was based on the notion of perceived threat without which there could be no justification. Central to the issue of justice and rights, then, was motive. But as a measure of justice, motive also helps to frame and explain the expectations that guided the attitudes of officials in their treatment of civilian enemy aliens as POWs. How they were treated and to what end followed from the reasoning behind their initial internment, bringing attention to their rights as POWs. The question of the rights of enemy aliens as war prisoners was fundamentally and inextricably linked to their status as civilians. There were rules governing POW treatment. But interned enemy aliens were not conventional POWs, even in the most generous sense of the term. These were civilian non-combatants who as enemy aliens happened to be interned as POWs.3 There was an important distinction to be made here. What then did a civilian prisoner mean precisely in the context of early twentieth century warfare? The legal void around the issue of the internment of civilian enemy aliens as POWs led at the time to political uncertainty and interpretation. How their status was understood would have serious ramifications, allowing local conditions to trump any possible consideration owing them as civilian internees. The status of civilians as POWs was problematic and no more evident than in the oscillating diplomacy between two of the major protagonists in the conflict. Both Germany and Britain were at pains to defend the rights of their subjects as civilian internees – holding their adversaries to account, while dismissing allegations of prisoner abuse under their care. Germany’s concern and interest in their subjects overseas and the alleged mistreatment of interned civilians of German origin in Canada, a British dominion, ensured their predicament would not be ignored. Consequently, German inquiries and protests dogged Canadian officials throughout the war. But since their status was a matter of diplomatic dispute and negotiation, what represented just treatment was also revealed. The policy rationale behind the internment of civilian enemy aliens as POWs in Canada during the Great War highlights the implications and difficulties associated with the original decision, which, falling outside traditional security parameters, underscores its dubious character. In part, this was because of the ambiguous if uncertain nature of the status of civilian internees as prisoners of war. A matter of political interpretation, dispute and negotiation, the unclear status of civilian POWs reflects the complex character of modern war that would shape the fate of thousands of resident aliens in Canada who were confronted with being identified and treated as foe.

164 Bohdan S. Kordan

Internment and rights Shortly after the signing of the armistice in November 1918, a group of civilian enemy aliens, interned at a camp in the mountain interior of the Canadian province of British Columbia, laid out their grievances in a petition to the king’s representative, the governor general of Canada.4 The intent of the petition was twofold: to present a statement of claim and to place on record their objection against the government, believing their initial internment was both unjustified and unprincipled. Although the government had assured them at the start of the war they would be protected under the laws of the land and their rights respected, the petitioners argued they were subjected to a policy that deprived them not only of their rights but their liberty as well. They claimed that internment was not simply applied in those exceptional cases where security was at issue, but rather used more widely because of who they were. This was a powerful indictment especially since, as was asserted, there was a moral obligation in this instance. As homesteaders, Canada had invited them to leave their land of birth and settle within its borders. In failing to honour the obligation owed, by interning them as POWs, they argued, Canada had betrayed them. In laying out their arguments, the petitioners necessarily gave attention to a baffling question: Why did the government seek to intern civilians of enemy origin where security, conventionally understood, did not appear to be a consideration? The answer could be found in the language of Order-in-Council P.C. 2721, issued 28 October 1914 under the provisions of the War Measures Act. Clause 7 of the ordinance directed enemy aliens not only to affirm that they would abide by the laws of the land and report monthly to officials, but also declared that without sufficient means to support themselves, they could be interned as POWs. The order was important on many accounts, but it was the idea that aliens of enemy origin could be interned and designated a POW simply for being destitute, which was notable.5 According to international custom, civilian non-combatants of enemy origins could be interned as POWs because of the potential threat they posed. In the context of conscription and national mobilisation, where every male of arms-bearing age was a conceivable combatant, large numbers, in varying degrees, were routinely interned by almost every party to the conflict. The situation in Canada, however, was qualitatively different. Internment was no longer exclusively driven by security concerns. Now, in accordance with the ordinance, it was expanded to address other interceding matters – particularly the joblessness and homelessness of the enemy alien. The order spoke to the difficult employment situation in the country. It also highlighted the tenuous position of the alien of enemy origin within a recessionary economy. War engendered feelings of fear and hostility toward the enemy alien, resulting in widespread job dismissals and few employment opportunities. Amongst the rising tide of unemployed in the early months of the war, the enemy alien was conspicuous. Given the agitation of the public and the prospect of disturbances not far from the minds of municipal elected officials, calls were issued for the Canadian government to undertake a course of action that would address

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the problem of the enemy alien poor. Having prevented the departure of enemy aliens for the neutral US (where historically many sought work as seasonal labourers) the federal government was now disposed to look for alternatives. There was some urgency in the matter. Labour force projections forecast that the winter of 1914–15 would be a time of mass unemployment, with enemy aliens constituting more than 100,000 of those in need and want.7 Across the country, talk of civilian internment was soon entertained. Although there was some uncertainty about this approach in government circles, with public pressure mounting, what mattered most was a quick and expedient response.8 The provisions set out in the Hague Convention offered such a remedy. The convention held that POWs could work for their own maintenance while interned. This also meant, however, that if enemy aliens were to work for their own relief, it would require they be interned as POWs. In this regard, clause 10 of Order-in-Council P.C. 2721 – authorising the Canadian militia to oversee the maintenance of enemy aliens as POWs and requiring of them to perform work in keeping with their war prisoner status – was a logical consequence of the underlying rationale: to have these people removed from society and put to work. P.C. 2721 witnessed an exponential increase in the number of enemy aliens arrested and interned. In the first two months of the war, a few hundred who sought to return home were arrested at the international border and imprisoned. By the end of February 1915, five months after the ordinance was introduced, some 2,294 enemy aliens were behind Canadian barbed wire. By June 1915, the number of those interned quickly doubled, totalling 5,088. The augmented figures were the result of an extensive registration system organised in municipalities where both enemy aliens were concentrated and registrars or other authorised officials were given the discretionary power to assess the personal circumstances of those arrested. Required to report monthly (and subsequently bi-weekly), enemy aliens either considered homeless or those who could not provide evidence of gainful employment and failed to report were immediately interned. It was the order’s pre-emptive power to intern those who were without means that proved most useful. Some 350 desperate enemy aliens who left The Pas, Manitoba in search of work were intercepted, arrested and interned before they could reach the provincial capital of Winnipeg where they would have added to the misery of the thousands barely surviving there. Pressure by native-born miners in Fernie, BC, led to the dismissal of more than 150 enemy aliens from their place of work. This was followed by their mass arrest and transport to nearby Morrissey, where a facility was leased specifically for the purpose of their detention. In Ontario’s Port Arthur, at the behest of municipal authorities seeking to remove the enemy alien poor from the municipal rolls, 800 destitute were interned and subsequently put to work clearing bush in the vicinity. The director of internment operations, Major General William Otter, a professional solider, was dismayed by the situation in Port Arthur since in his opinion there was little military justification for their initial internment. From Otter’s perspective, the action was unwarranted.9 For the government, on the other hand, the rationale was clear and sufficient: the opportunity to use emergency measures

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to address both the labour difficulties and growing public anxiety was available and would be applied. Aspects of the international convention governing the internment of POWs, the Hague Convention, were important to the government at least on three levels. First, the covenant allowed for a distinction to be made between first- and second-class prisoners, or more ordinarily between officers and enlisted men. Second, the convention made explicit that second-class prisoners of war would work for their own maintenance at rates that followed a military general schedule in accordance with international agreements. And third, prisoners were to be protected from public indignities and humiliation. From the perspective of interning authorities, these considerations were significant since they addressed a fundamental difficulty confronted by authorities. Internment was being driven primarily by an apprehension that centred on enemy alien unemployment. But in what sense might privation and indigence – conditions associated with joblessness – be alleviated amongst this population? The provision under the covenant that made a distinction between social classes coincided with an understanding that as common labourers they would work. The further requirement that they would be paid a nominal military wage assured that once released, they would not be destitute. And finally, that prisoners would not be exposed to public humiliation, it was recommended they be interned in camps situated far from public sight, thereby removing them as a source of distraction and possible disturbance. The result of all of this was that destitute enemy aliens, now designated POWs, were transported to labour camps on the Canadian frontier – part of a system of twenty-four facilities located mainly in the mountain interior of British Columbia and Alberta, as well as the northern reaches of Quebec and Ontario. There the civilian internees, consisting mostly of common labourers of Slavic background – Ukrainians, Poles, Croats and others from among the national minorities of the Austro-Hungarian empire – would work nominally for their own maintenance. In fact, however, they were compelled to labour under armed guard on construction projects for public gain. First-class prisoners, on the other hand, individuals with social standing and deemed to be of an ‘officer class’, mostly of German origin, were segregated and sent to urban facilities – Fort Henry in Kingston, the Citadel in Halifax, as well as the Amherst and Vernon camps – where for the most part, they were spared the rigours of a forced labour regimen (see Table 8.1). As a military operation, internment in Canada generally remained out of public view. Access was limited, with many of the labour camps located on the Canadian frontier. But certain camps did offer a chance opportunity for a visit. The facility at Castle Mountain, not far from Calgary, was just such a place.10 Those who came – reporters, alpine enthusiasts, and day trekkers – could stay overnight, taking in both the full experience of being outdoors and the splendid views. Their interest, however, did not necessarily extend to the prisoners who paraded daily and were marched to work under armed guard. In fact, relaxing in the shadow of a POW camp did not even appear to register with some, choosing what they wished to see while ignoring the rest.11

21 October 1918 15 23 23 31 21 23

9 June 1915 14 July 1915 19 August 1915 6 September 1915 8 February 1916 13 October 1918 24 April 1915

Bunk Houses, Banff Tents, Castle Mtn. Bunk Houses Bunk Houses Bunk Houses Railway Cars Militia Camp/Tents

Leased Building

Immigration Hall Fort Henry Fort Osborne Barracks Citadel Provincial Govt. Building Provincial Govt. Building Exhibition Building Exhibition Building Militia Camp/ Tents Stanley Barracks Bunk Houses Armoury Armoury Bunk Houses Armoury Leased Building Tents & Bunk Houses

Description

Source: Report on Internment Operations Canada – Report by Major-General Sir William Otter, K.C.B., C.V.O. (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1921).

July 1917 September 1916 October 1916 August 1916 March 1919 October 1915

30 November 1918 3 November 1917 20 July 1916 3 October 1918 20 February 1920 17 September 1915 29 July 1916 7 November 1916 8 May 1916 2 October 1916 24 February 1920 31 August 1918 22 June 1916 28 January 1917 29 January 1918 27 September 1919 29 July 1917

13 August 1914 18 August 1914 1 September 1914 8 September 1914 18 September 1914 20 September 1914 22 September 1914 30 September 1914 10 December 1914 14 December 1914 14 December 1914 15 December 1915 28 December 1914 13 January 1915 13 January 1915 17 April 1915 2 June 1915

Montreal, Quebec Kingston, Ontario Winnipeg, Manitoba Halifax, Nova Scotia Vernon, British Columbia Nanaimo, British Columbia Brandon, Manitoba Lethbridge, Alberta Petawawa, Ontario Toronto, Ontario Kapuskasing, Ontario Niagara Falls, Ontario Beauport, Quebec Spirit Lake, Quebec Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Amherst, Nova Scotia Monashee-Mara Lake, British Columbia Morrissey, British Columbia Banff/Castle Mountain, Alberta Edgewood, British Columbia Revelstoke-Otter, British Columbia Jasper, Alberta Munson, Alberta-Eaton, Saskatchewan Valcartier, Quebec

Date of Closing

Date of Opening

Name of Camp/Location

Table 8.1 Internment camps in Canada, 1914–20

168 Bohdan S. Kordan That the life of the prisoners did not resonate with the visitors or for that matter the wider public highlighted a general acceptance of the idea that internment served a purpose. To be sure, security was of concern. But so too were unemployed enemy aliens facing want and hunger. From this perspective, internment offered relief from their predicament, giving little reason to dispute the need to send these people to such camps. What occurred there was of less concern than the fact that the so-called enemy alien problem was being addressed. It was an argument that belied the fact that these individuals were recruited to Canada under government auspices as homesteaders, leaving their birthplaces and communities to follow the promise of opportunity in a new land. An obligation towards them stemmed from this original invitation, including the responsibility to extend to them the protection of the rule of law. The ramifications of failing to recognise the basic rights of these settlers were enormous and far ranging. What message would be conveyed to other nationalities considering immigration? How would they react knowing that they could very well expect the same treatment? More fundamentally what were the implications for Canada’s reputation? And what did this say about Canada as a welcoming nation?12 There was also, however, a practical matter to consider. Among those advocates of an open, post-war immigration policy that maintained the country’s further economic development depended on immigrants, prospective immigration was contingent on the current disposition and attitude towards these recent arrivals. As Regina’s leading daily, the Morning Leader, rhetorically posed: What effect would rejection of so-called ‘undesirable’ immigrants have on the country’s economic needs and growth? Those whom we style foreigners have been doing the rough, disagreeable work in our slaughter houses, steel mills, and to some extent in our lumber camps. Women of foreign birth have become our charwomen. Are all of these kinds of work to be done in the future by men and women of Anglo-Saxon birth?13 These were issues at the centre of the public debate on internment, immigration and disfranchisement. Was Canada being served when aliens of enemy origin were said to have only limited rights, no rights, or, for those who were naturalised and poised to participate in the wartime election, their rights rescinded?14 These constituted important questions that the government would be hardpressed to answer in a coherent and consistent manner. Competing priorities made this so. Faced, for instance, with labour disturbances in British Columbia, when native-born miners, opposed to working with enemy aliens, clamoured for their dismissal and internment, Ottawa acquiesced to their demands. Invoking the 15 June 1915 Order-in-Council P.C. 1501, introduced under the War Measures Act, the government announced, rather remarkably, that any enemy alien competing for work with the native-born could be interned.15 It was a brutal action the cynicism of which was made transparent a year later when the same government reversed itself, releasing a large number of the civilian POWs in response to industrial demand and labour shortages. ‘Many of these men were interned

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simply because they were unable to maintain themselves and not because of any offence that they had been guilty of or might thereafter be guilty’, the minister of labour acknowledged. ‘If they now say to us that they are prepared to support themselves I think we might properly give them the opportunity of doing so’.16 A surprising admission, it underscored the problematic nature of the initial internment – a measure employed against those who did nothing wrong but imprisoned solely because of who they were. Nativism, all along, served as the undercurrent in the debate on enemy aliens and rights. Among returning veterans, many scarred by their war experience, the question of the release of civilian POWs in response to growing industrial need was not to be contemplated. They insisted, in fact, on the wholesale conscription of enemy alien labour in Canada as well as their eventual deportation after the war.17 The government, struggling to balance the country’s long-term interests against the burgeoning anti-enemy alien mania in the country, pleaded, as the minister of justice did in a wide-ranging debate in parliament, that an obligation was owed these people having invited them to Canada.18 But opinion was strong and the mood hostile. Consequently, only those who were known through their behaviour in the camps to be compliant and could be trusted to move on with their lives would be released. This, however, did little to dissuade the demagogues and others from continuing to incite public hatred and suspicion of the enemy alien, if only because the government’s initial decision to use internment was proof positive there were enemies in the land who needed to be treated as such.

Conditions and diplomacy The pervasive and latent anti-enemy alien sentiment, present from the very start of the war, provides a context that explains how and why those who were behind Canadian barbed wire could be treated anything other than prisoners of war. But there were other elements that helped shape this narrative. The proposition that interned enemy aliens would work arose from circumstances identified under Order-in-Council P.C. 2721 dictating their internment. The ordinance stated those who did not have sufficient means to maintain themselves could be interned and put to work as POWs. The POW designation enabled the government to address the essential difficulty as it related to this class of individual – their joblessness. And although the intention was to alleviate their distress, the outcome was anything other than that. Working for their own maintenance, the civilian internee as POW would be introduced to a labour regime, being compelled to work on a variety of public works projects that, as the record would show, followed a rigorous and unrelenting schedule.19 To be sure, they were POWs. But they were also non-combatants and, therefore, not military prisoners. Among the warring nations, civilian internees, as a general rule, were being treated with sensitivity and consideration.20 So how was it that this was occurring in Canada? With the promulgation of P.C. 2721, the large numbers of enemy aliens who were arrested and interned had to be accommodated. With few military prisons in the country, internment authorities were forced to search for alternative

170 Bohdan S. Kordan spaces. Military training camps, vacated after the departure of Canada’s expeditionary forces for Europe, were temporarily commandeered after a proposal was accepted to have the internees put to work upgrading and expanding the facilities there. The arrangement between the Directorate of Internment Operations and the Militia Department proved mutually advantageous in this case; the cost of the upkeep of the prisoners was shared, offset by the work performed in improving the training grounds. It was a formula that would be used elsewhere as the expenses incurred in the setting up of the camps soon exhausted the funding and pressure was applied to reduce any further outlays. Agreeing to cost-share, the new partners included the land development and public works branches of the provincial governments of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia and the federal government’s Interior Department, which oversaw Canada’s national parks. The arrangement called for the contracting parties to supply tools, transport and, most importantly, wages for work performed according to the international convention on POWs. The Internment Directorate would cover costs relating to accommodation, provisioning and security. The prisoners would be engaged in manual labour, developing a network of roads in difficult, mountainous terrain, as well as clearing densely forested land for future colonisation in northern Ontario and Quebec. In principle, the arrangement served the interest of all of the parties. But the new partners stood to gain tremendously. Project costs had the potential of being reduced significantly since POWs were viewed as a reliable and inexpensive source of labour. This was predicated, however, on the notion that they would work hard and that the work would not be interrupted, inferring that discipline would be enforced, and military protocol, a potential impediment to the progress in the work, would be curtailed or dispensed with altogether. Internment as a security operation was now subjected to economic criteria as the contracting parties insisted on value for money, threatening to withdraw from the agreements if there was any departure from the work schedules or quotas.21 Enormous pressure, consequently, was applied on field commanders to deliver results. At the urging of local foremen and project managers, who maintained that schedules had to be met, the use of disciplinary measures became routine. For non-compliance, the internees were deprived of rations. However, more stringent methods – punishment diets of bread and water, solitary confinement, bayonetting, pistol-whippings, strappado, as well as beatings – were used to break the will of individual and collective resistance. Prison riots were brutally supressed, and escapes, perilously undertaken, were common, occasionally ending in tragedy. But the prison experience was troubling in more ways than one. Addressing the more egregious abuses and violations, the director of internment, Major General Wm. Otter, sought as best as possible to ensure that only those measures following army regulations would be employed. Nevertheless, he avoided a central issue. These were non-combatants and consequently entitled to even greater consideration than if they were simply soldiers captured on the field of battle.22 Several government officials, witnesses to the compulsory nature of the work and questioning some of the practices, cited the civilian status of the prisoners as

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meriting sympathy and understanding. They were adamant that the internees needed to be properly treated. The dominion parks commissioner, J. B. Harkin, in particular, overseeing the extensive road network being constructed by the internees in Canada’s national parks, openly admitted they were not ‘criminals’ but civilians deserving of consideration. And yet, despite being conscious of the suspect nature of the work, since the projects needed to proceed as planned, these same individuals showed no aversion to using this type of labour, freely acknowledging it was a chance opportunity too good to pass up. Speaking to the internment director, the BC deputy minister for public works, J. Griffith, for one, while acknowledging there were considerable savings using internment labour, opined that more could have been done without the seemingly unnecessary delays and obstacles that resulted from the undue attention given to security and austerity. ‘We are not unmindful of the fact that we have had the opportunity of obtaining cheap labour’, wrote the deputy minster to General Otter, ‘but we would have liked to make the best use of it’.23 Working within this pernicious environment, the director of internment invariably looked to accommodate the interests of the contracting parties, knowing full well that the relationship was premised on the delivery of results. To be sure, the use of civilian internee labour was controversial, given the increasing number of investigations and diplomatic inquiries. But as long as the internees were designated POWs, Otter felt vindicated that the approach adopted, although strenuous, was both lawful and correct. The POW designation helped conceptually frame expectations and attitudes around the civilian internee. But was this rendering valid? Were they in fact POWs in the conventional sense of the term? Or if they were civilian internees, did the laws of war apply? For Otter, duty-bound as a soldier, this was no small matter. When an application was referred to the judge advocate general to convene a district court martial against two internees at Fort Henry caught attempting to break through the fortress’ stonewall, the application was refused because the men were said not to be POWs but merely interned enemy aliens.24 It came as a surprise to the director. The opinion of the judge advocate general compelled General Otter to seek clarification from the minister of justice, fearing as he did that the government’s actions regarding the internees were illegal.25 Defending the government’s position, the deputy minister of justice, E. Newcombe, cited the ruling in the British case of The King v. Superintendent of Vine Street Police Station, Ex parte Liebmann (1916) 1 K.B. 268: An alien enemy resident in the United Kingdom, who, in the opinion of the Executive Government, is a person hostile to the welfare of this country and is on that account interned, may properly be described as a prisoner of war although not a combatant or a spy.26 Newcombe would also cite the Manual of Military Law, 1914, wherein, referring to an enemy alien being taken as a prisoner, it was stated: ‘Such individuals are not civil prisoners; they are taken into captivity for military reasons, and they are

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therefore prisoners of war’. But how was it that enemy aliens who neither demonstrated hostility to political authority nor were taken into captivity for military reasons could be regarded as POWs? From the Canadian point of view, at least initially, their arrest under the provisions of the War Measures Act made them POWs, and as POWs, the laws of war would apply, simply put. Notwithstanding the Canadian position, Germany rejected the idea that interned civilians were POWs as the term implied. Interned enemy aliens were civilian prisoners, not military combatants, and they needed to be treated as such. Moreover, it was a principle that Germany was prepared to defend and from which it would not retreat. The distinction between civilian and military prisoners followed from the German concern respecting the treatment of its nationals in foreign lands and the German law on imperial citizenship, which allowed Germans abroad – including the naturalised – to remain subjects of the emperor.27 A political and moral obligation, therefore, fell on Germany to represent its subjects residing elsewhere and to defend their interests. But it was much more than that. A major impetus in the German calculation to act on behalf of its kindred living abroad was the political manoeuvring between Britain and Germany on the issue of the treatment of POWs. Allegations of German atrocities were widespread in the British and Canadian press. And although German objections were disingenuous, certainly after the deportation of Belgian and French civilians as forced labour in 1916, it was nevertheless imperative that Berlin counter the reports of German barbarity and inhumanity by pointing out irregularities in the British and Allied handling of German prisoners.28 The camps in Canada became a point of interest in the German effort to offset British and Allied reports regarding German brutality. The principal claim in German diplomatic protests related to the growing evidence of the compulsory use of civilian internees on public works projects. The claim was prompted by American diplomatic reports detailing the conditions at various camps. Kapuskasing and Spirit Lake, in northern Ontario and Quebec respectively, were initially singled out as facilities where, it was reported, German civilian prisoners of working class background were required to fell trees, cut wood and clear land. Germany demanded that the British government instruct Canadian officials to put a stop to the activity, iterating that only volunteer labour could be used and that they be paid the average local wage of free labourers as was done on the German side. It was further conveyed that if the situation remained unadjusted, the German government would justifiably adopt counter measures against British subjects detained in Germany.29 The threat could not be ignored. Ottawa responded by maintaining that its efforts were aimed at relieving the distress of those who could no longer provide for themselves.30 Moreover, Canadian authorities insisted the prisoners were not being compelled to work. Rather, they did so voluntarily and were clothed and fed at government expense, receiving twenty-five cents a day for their labour in accordance with the international regulations governing the treatment of POWs. Despite the claim, however, growing evidence pointed to the fact that the internees were being forced to work.31

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As information, damning in their import, circulated, subsequent official statements were palliated, declaring it was the employment situation in the country that compelled the government to intern enemy aliens who were without means and to put them to work. According to senior officials, since ‘the country of their allegiance’ made no provision for them, internment represented a humanitarian gesture inasmuch as it gave work to those who would otherwise be maintained at public expense, adding the POW designation was to their advantage and not to be seen as a hardship.32 But more to the point, the government emphatically asserted, individuals cast upon the charity of the state would work and that this measure applied to everyone, asserting ‘neither the state of war nor any rule sanctioned by international convention or practice requires that destitute people of any nationality when seeking relief from the State should be immune from a similar requirement’.33 The Canadian response was informed by the notion that since no provision had been made for the maintenance of the internees by their country of origin and to prevent them from becoming a public charge, the status of POW would apply.34 Citing Article 6 of the Annex to the Fourth Hague Convention, Canadian authorities claimed that Canada could employ the labour of POWs according to their rank and status. Furthermore, they could be authorised to work on public projects and be paid proportionally to the work of a similar kind executed by soldiers of the national army. German authorities dismissed the idea, threatening retaliation once again, especially after information became public regarding the alleged poor treatment of German prisoners at the Amherst and Nanaimo camps.35 Canada’s treatment of enemy alien prisoners was of concern to British officials because of the wider implications for Allied prisoners in Germany and AustriaHungary.36 In view of the escalating threats, Britain would press Canada into accepting in principle that Article 6 of the Hague Convention would not apply to civilian prisoners. In keeping with Britain’s imperial lead, Canada would oblige. Canada’s decision was subsequently conveyed to German authorities, but with the proviso that interned civilians in Canada, working voluntarily, would not receive the local pay associated with free labourers because they received food and lodging gratis.37 Moreover, given that the pay scale between Canada and Germany for the same class of work were far from equal (involving inequalities in remuneration), twenty-five cents a day for the labour of an interned civilian was considered sufficient.38 As for the main question, the principle was accepted that civilian prisoners would not be forced to work. However, if there were issues, it was for German authorities to identify these since it was impractical, if not impossible, to investigate charges of a general nature.39 In the months to follow, German officials vigorously clung to the proposition that all interned enemy aliens in Canada (including Austro-Hungarians) were non-combatants whose civilian status had to be respected; they could neither be coerced nor subjected to work without their consent. In short, there were standards that needed to be met, and officials in Germany would hold the Canadian government to account. They were not alone. When, in February 1916, the minister of interior responded to an opposition inquiry in Canada’s parliament that the

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nature of the work in the camps was involuntary since this was the only way anything could get done, Bonar Law, the colonial secretary, on learning of the statement, demanded to know how this could be reconciled ‘with the assurance that has been given to the German Government that no civilian prisoner is compelled to work’.40 It was difficult to reconcile because, in practice, the rationale behind Canadian internment – putting unemployed enemy aliens to work – led to the routine use of civilian prisoners on road-building and land-clearing projects. Several neutral American representatives, sent to investigate conditions at the various camps, alluded to the continuing use of compulsory internment labour. The internees were widely employed on a variety of projects, and given the scope of the operation, there was no ignoring it; the evidence was everywhere and in full view. And yet, there were those who were prepared to hide the fact. When the UK Foreign Office received a report on conditions at Banff, and it was observed the internees were forcibly engaged in work, one official furtively advised that nothing should be said about it because the prisoners did not appear to complain.41 The use of civilian internment labour was acknowledged as running counter to the arrangement between the belligerents – but would anyone notice if no one confessed, and would anyone care if no one complained? A callous attitude, it was due in part to the seminal belief that many of the interned enemy aliens were common labourers and therefore accustomed to the work. It was a widely shared view, US reports, for example, frequently being punctuated by the belief and sentiment that the prisoners were not being unnecessarily burdened because they were already habituated to the work.42 A problematic perspective, it gave credence to the idea that for these men, this was their lot in life and, as a result, had no cause for complaint. Internment officials in Canada would address specific allegations contained in diplomatic reports, foreign newspaper accounts as well as individual charges. These were all met head-on, often dismissed as fabrications or gross exaggerations. But not every accusation could be so easily explained or dismissed. Ongoing complaints of abuse and mistreatment, unwittingly corroborated by incriminating statements made by camp officers, peppered the reports of US consular officials. Some were trivialised. Other complaints, however, such as excessive discipline, punishment and unprovoked beatings, could not be entirely ignored. Where the evidence proved incontrovertible, Canadian officials would admit culpability and explain what adjustments had been made.43 In the main, internment officials felt they were doing all they could to ensure the operation was being run within the provisions set out in the military manual and various army acts. They could also take comfort in the reports of some American representatives who praised the work of the internment authorities in providing for the health, hygiene and general well-being of the prisoners.44 But others were less inclined to suspend judgement on what amounted to the imprisonment and forced labour of civilians, excoriating the operation in its treatment of interned enemy aliens. US Consul Gebhard Willrich, for example, tasked with reporting on conditions at Spirit Lake in November 1916 after protests were made known to him, was not

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45

impressed after visiting the camp. Willrich was surprised by what he observed and learnt. Huddled together in shacks that scarcely sheltered them from the cold and harsh weather, and without heat as well as deprived of rations for refusing to work, the internees complained of beatings, solitary confinement, insults and neglect. The contempt with which officers and soldiers held the enemy alien was also in evidence. Among the prisoners, a sense of hopelessness and despair prevailed. A number even claimed they no longer cared what happened to them, refusing to obey orders despite being punished. From Willrich’s perspective, it was inconceivable that people could be treated this way. The problem, he argued, was that these were civilians, not military combatants, who demonstrated neither disloyalty nor hostility toward the country. Moreover, by adopting Canada as their new home, they showed commitment to the country. Now, however, they were regarded as ‘quasi-criminals’. In his opinion, this was against the best interests of the country. How the government could believe that it was further ahead by its sordid treatment of these people was simply incomprehensible to him. But Willrich’s job as a diplomat was to report, not comment on Canadian government policy. He was soon removed from his post as US consul at the request of Canada’s undersecretary of state for external affairs. Among other things, Willrich objected to the coerced nature of the labour. But this was nothing new. A long-standing criticism of Canadian policy was that civilian prisoners were being compelled to work. Although Canadian officials continued to hold, in keeping with its political commitments, that this was not the case, Germany, ever watchful, persisted in its demand that under no circumstances would German civilian prisoners be forced to labour.46 In the end, however, neither German resolve nor threats mattered. Rather the refusal of the remaining internees to work – the internees conducting strikes despite the pressure brought to bear on them – and industry’s mounting appetite for labour in 1916–17 led to the release of those civilian prisoners considered to be docile and non-threatening. For the many thousands who were released, the entire experience was inexplicable and puzzling. How was it that this happened, that they were treated as enemies and POWs? Having nothing to do with the war nor connected to a place left long ago, they were entitled to both consideration and regard. Moreover, they had rights, which needed to be protected and preserved. Not everyone, however, agreed, making it a contested principle. But it was also something that could not be entirely ignored, if only because it was one of the few threads that allowed the belligerents some semblance of humanity in the darkness that was war.

Assessing internment Throughout 1917, the demands of war on the economy and corresponding labour shortages resulted in the parole of thousands of internees. By 1918, internment in Canada was scaled down significantly, but it did not mean an end to the operation. Some 1,964 remained interned well after the signing of the armistice.

176 Bohdan S. Kordan These included captured mariners and reservists who were to be repatriated, as well as those judged to be malcontents, individuals who demonstrated considerable resentment and animus towards authority during the period of their internment. Added to this number were radicals, labour activists and protestors arrested and interned during the period of post-war industrial unrest. They were to be deported along with the original group who were carefully screened in terms of their suitability. When Canadian internment finally ended after the signing of the Peace Treaty in February 1920, some 1,100 internees, deemed ‘undesirables’, were removed from the country by way of their deportation.47 Importantly, the internment of radicals and others in the post-armistice period pointed to its utilitarian role.48 Internment provided authorities with the means to address real or perceived problems expeditiously. The extra-judicial nature of internment, made possible by the war, allowed for this. After all, it was a war measure and, until the signing of the peace treaty, still in force. The difficulty, however, was that internment as a process had to follow and conform, at least nominally, to recognised norms, customs and procedures. Hence, the criticism levelled against those who would continue to use internment for political reasons, interning labour activists, for instance, during the 1919 labour troubles. But it was also a criticism that applied equally to those who would use the measure, in the first instance, against impoverished immigrants, interning civilian enemy aliens as POWs. Internment enabled officials to address the perceived danger posed by the pauperism of a segment of the population made vulnerable by their status as alien enemies. Indigence leading to internment, of course, was not an exclusively Canadian phenomenon. In Austria-Hungary, the poor were also interned and for much the same reason: fear of unrest and the existential threat they represented to the war effort.49 And although there was some concern over its use for this purpose, this was countered by the idea in Canada that internment offered a solution to their misery and suffering. The question, nevertheless, remains: Was this right or just? For those internees who penned their grievances in a letter to the governor general in 1918, they were adamant – they were entitled to their rights and liberty, as well as protection under the law. Addressing several challenges, the political nature of internment was more than evident. In the unforgiving setting that was total war, enemy aliens were viewed as hostages and many of the belligerents were prepared to use internment as leverage. There were also purely domestic considerations at work – a contracting economy and a tightening labour market that prompted officials to accept internment as an instrument of economic policy – a way to reduce pressure on employment. But no matter the political rationale – international or domestic – internment as policy brought the country in conflict with its obligations and responsibilities. As a policy response, it violated universally recognised principles and norms that Canadian officials were forced to acknowledge and, in the end, only slowly observed. This, however, was the nature of war, where assurances of civilised behaviour were rendered hollow in the absence of justice and made meaningless to those civilians interned and forced to labour as POWs.

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Notes 1 James W. Gerard, the US ambassador, conducted investigations of POW camps in Germany until the United States entered the war in 1917. His findings were published as part of the so-called White Papers, an informal name for UK parliamentary papers that reported on government policy and war-related matters. After the German authorities complained about the official publication and circulation of Gerard’s initial inquiries, subsequent reports neither appeared nor were made available for public sale. See United Kingdom. Foreign Office. Misc. No 11. The Treatment of Prisoners of War and Interned Civilians (London, 1915); and United Kingdom. Foreign Office. The Treatment of Prisoners of War in England and Germany During the First Eight Months of the War (London, 1915). 2 See Globe, 14 April 1916, 15 and 22 November 1916. 3 For a discussion on the ambiguous status of interned civilians as prisoners of war, see Bohdan S. Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War: Internment in Canada During the Great War (Montreal and Kingston, ON, 2002), pp. 60–3. 4 Vernon Internment Camp, Internee Camp Committee to the Duke of Devonshire, Governor General of Canada, 8 February 1919, in National Archives of Canada (henceforth NAC), RG 13 A2, vol. 233, file: 422–42. 5 The significance of Order-in-Council P.C. 2721 (28 October 1914) is discussed in Bohdan S. Kordan, ‘“They Will Be Dangerous”: Security and the Control of Enemy Aliens in Canada, 1914’, in B. Wright, E. Tucker and S. Binnie (eds.), Canadian State Trials, Volume 4: Security, Dissent, and the Limits of Toleration in War and Peace, 1914–1939 (Toronto and London, 2015), pp. 42–70. 6 On the enemy alien labour situation and public concern, see Bohdan S. Kordan, No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience (Montreal and Kingston, ON, 2016), pp. 64–73. 7 Rt. Hon. Robert Borden, Prime Minister of Canada, to the Hon. G. H. Perley, Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, 20 October 1914, in NAC, Borden Papers, MG 26 H1, vol. 192, reel C – 4466, pages 169306. 8 Hon. Arthur Meighen, Solicitor General of Canada, to the Rt. Hon. Robert Borden, Prime Minister of Canada, 28 August 1914, in ibid., vol. 191, reel C – 4388, page 105951. 9 Sir William Otter, Internment Operations, 1914–1920 (Ottawa, 1921), p. 6. 10 The experience of internment at Castle Mountain and Banff is relayed in Bohdan S. Kordan and Peter J. Melnycky (eds.), In the Shadow of the Rockies: The Diary of the Castle Mountain Camp, 1915–1917 (Edmonton, 1991). 11 See, for example, the account of an outing to the Banff camp in the Crag and Canyon (Banff), 2 September 1916. 12 Saskatoon Daily Star, 17 November 1914. 13 Morning Leader (Regina), 21 April 1919. 14 The government of Prime Minister Robert Borden, seeking to strengthen its hand on conscription by attempting to gain votes in the 1917 election, passed the Wartime Elections Act, disfranchising naturalised aliens of so-called enemy birth. For a discussion of enemy alien disfranchisement, see John Herd Thompson, ‘The Enemy Alien and the Canadian General Election of 1917’, in Frances Swyripa and John Herd Thompson (eds.), Loyalties in Conflict: Ukrainians in Canada During the Great War (Edmonton, 1983), pp. 23–45. 15 See Kordan, No Free Man, pp. 100–1. 16 Hon. F. Cochrane, Minster of Labour, to the Rt. Hon. R. Borden, Prime Minister, 12 November 1915, in NAC, Borden Papers, MG 26 H1, vol. 181, reel C – 4382, pp. 99334–35. 17 Petition, Great War Veterans’ Association to the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Borden, Prime Minister, 26 March 1918, in ibid., vol. 241, reel C – 4415, pp. 134929–31,

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18 Canada, House of Commons, Hansard, 22 April 1918, pp. 973–1025. 19 See Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War, pp. 90–115. 20 Germany’s use of civilian prisoners as forced labour, notably Belgian and French deportees from the occupied territories, is a matter of record and stands as an exception to the rule. But on the whole, belligerents were careful to exercise caution in the treatment of enemy alien prisoners. For a short discussion on the comparative treatment of POWs generally, see ibid. pp. 67–9. 21 R. W. Bruhn, Road Superintendent, to J. Griffith, Deputy Minister of Public Works, 10 August 1916, BC Ministry of Transportation Records, North Okanagan and Salmon Arm Districts (1915), file 211, For a general discussion on the economic dimension of internment, see Kordan, No Free Man, pp. 44–8. 22 For a discussion on the non-combatant status of the enemy alien prisoners and its implications, see Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War, pp. 73–80. 23 BC Deputy Minister of Public Works, to Major General Wm. Otter, Director, Internment Operations, 7 January 1916, BC Ministry of Transportation Records, Okanagan District (1916), file 1752, section 4, J. Griffith. 24 Major General Wm. Otter, Officer Commanding Internment Operations to the Minister of Justice, C. J. Doherty, 3 November 1916, in NAC, RG 13 A2, vol. 1929, file: 1633–1916. 25 Ibid. 26 Deputy Minister of Justice, E. Newcombe to Major General Wm. Otter, 22 November 1916, in ibid. 27 Regarding the interpretation of German imperial citizenship, see D. J. Hill, ‘Dual Citizenship in the German Imperial and State Citizenship Law’, American Journal of International Law, 12.2 (1918), pp. 356–63. For a discussion of the notion of subject status and its application in the Canadian context with implications for the enemy alien, see James Farney and Bohdan S. Kordan, ‘The Predicament of Belonging: The Status of Enemy Aliens in Canada, 1914’, Journal of Canadian Studies, 39.1 (2005), pp. 74–89. 28 Note Verbale, Berlin, 19 June 1916, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1176, file: 15 – part II; Note Verbale, Berlin, 28 July 1916, in NAC, RG 13 A2, vol. 205, file: 1450–1470; ibid., Foreign Office diplomatic note, 19 August 1916; Note Verbale, 4 August 1916, in NAC, RG B8, vol. 1364, file: September 30–October 30, 1916; ibid., vol. 1369, file: 28 June–31 August 1916, Note Verbale, 28 May 1916; and file: 5 January–21 February, 1917, Note Verbale, 22 January 1917. For a detailed account and assessment of German policy toward civilian prisoners and their use as forced labour, see Jens Thiel, ‘Between Recruitment and Forced Labour: The Radicalization of German Labor Policy in Occupied Belgium and Northern France’, First World War Studies, 4.1 (2013), pp. 39–50; and Christian Westerhoff, “A Kind of Siberia”: German Labor and Occupation Policies in Poland and Lithuania during the First World War’, First World War Studies, 4.1 (2013), pp. 51–63. 29 Note Verbale to the Embassy of the United States of America, 23 June 1915, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1156, file: 48–1; and Bonar Law, Colonial Secretary to the Governor General, 5 and 12 July 1915, in ibid. 30 George E. Foster, Acting Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs to His Royal Highness the Governor General in Council, 25 August 1915, in ibid. 31 W. H. Walker, Acting Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs to Major General Wm. Otter, 12 August 1915; Lieut. Col. D. Macpherson, Staff Officer, Internment Operations to W. H. Walker, 13 August 1915; Lieut. Col. E. Stanton, Secretary, Governor General of Canada to W. H. Walker, 13 August 1915; and Walker to Stanton, 14 August 1915, all in ibid. 32 George E. Foster, Acting Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs to His Royal Highness the Governor General in Council, 25 August 1915, in ibid.

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33 The Deputy Minister of Justice, E. Newcombe, first articulated the official position. As a report, it would be submitted to the Committee of the Privy Council and approved by the Governor General on 28 August 1915 as PC 2039. See R. Boudreau, clerk of the Privy Council, 28 August 1915, in NAC, RG 6 H1, vol. 819, file: 2616, 34 Bonar law, Colonial Secretary to Governor General with copy of Foreign Office telegram, 27 July 1915, in ibid. On the Canadian position, see R. Boudreau, clerk of the Privy Council, 28 August 1915, in NAC, RG 6 H1, vol. 819, file: 2616. 35 Note Verbale, to the Embassy of the United States of America, 16 August 1915, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1157, file: 48–2. A report on German allegations of abuses at the Amherst camp appeared in the Montreal Star, 23 August 1915 and the New York Times, 24 August 1915. Reports of conditions at the Nanaimo detention camp also appeared in the Seattle press, warranting a discussion of bringing in external observers who could counter some of the claims. See Joseph Pope, Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs to the Deputy Minister of Justice, E. Newcombe, 23 September 1915, in ibid. 36 The concern not only related to captured British military personnel, but also more particularly Canadian prisoners: ‘Reports have recently come to the knowledge of His Majesty’s Government to the effect that the German Military Authorities had issued an order that certain classes of prisoners of war were henceforth to be treated with increased severity, this order having application more especially to His Majesty’s Canadian troops’. See Diplomatic note, Foreign Office to the United States Ambassador, 10 September 1915, in NAC, Borden Papers, MG 26 H1, vol. 2884, reel C – 4442, page 16377. The British Red Cross also raised the issue of reprisals. From its own sources, Red Cross officials were led to believe that because of alleged maltreatment of German subjects in Canadian camps, reprisals against Canadian captives were taking place. See Louis Mallet, British Red Cross to the Under-Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 8 November 1915, in NAC, RG 13 A2, vol. 203, file: 1066–1085. Reprisals continued to be a concern into 1916, when, for example, the German authorities complained about the abuses and the misdemeanours of guards as well as the forced labour of civilian prisoners at the Lethbridge and Banff camps. See Bonar Law, Colonial Secretary to the Governor General, 8 March 1916, in NAC, RG 13 A2, vol. 205, file: 1450–1470. For a report to the British parliament on the issue of reprisals and the observations of the International Committee of the Red Cross during 1916, see Correspondence with His Majesty’s Minister at Berne respecting the Question of Reprisals against Prisoners of War, September 1916, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1176, file: 15 – part II. 37 Diplomatic note, Foreign Office to the United States Ambassador, 9 October 1915, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1157, file: 48–2. 38 Foreign Office, diplomatic note, 9 October 1915, in NAC, RG 13 B8, vol. 1368, file: 14 July – 30 October 1915. 39 Germany insisted that prisoners interned in the British colonies and Canada were to be treated in the same manner as those in the United Kingdom and ‘are under the same obligations vis-a-vis Germany, and are equally responsible for seeing that they receive treatment in accordance with international treaties and the laws of humanity as in the case of the latter’. German authorities were of the further view that it was not up to Germany to bring unfavourable reports to the attention of British officials, but for Britain and Canada to ensure that proper treatment was being accorded the prisoners and abuses stopped. Note Verbale, Berlin, May 28 1916, in NAC, RG 13 A2, vol. 205, file: 1450–1470. 40 Bonar Law, Colonial Secretary to the Governor General, 8 March 1916; and the UnderSecretary of State for External Affairs, Joseph Pope to the Minister of Interior, W. J. Roche, 29 March 1916, in ibid. For the statement of the Minster of Interior, W. J. Roche, see Canada, House of Commons, Hansard, 15 February 1916.

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41 ‘Prisoners of War Camp at Banff’, 29 June 1916, in The National Archives, Kew, London, FO 383/239. 42 The US consul, Harold Clum, reported after inspecting the Banff internment camp, that ‘If idle, they would only hurt themselves’. Harold Clum, US Consul, ‘Visit to Internment Camp at Banff, Alberta’, 25 May 1916, in NAC, RG 24, vol. 4721, file: 3. 43 See, for example, Major General Otter to Joseph Pope, Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, 20 December 1915, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1157, file: 48–2. 44 F. Johnson, American Consul to the US Secretary of State, 11 May 1916 and Johnson to the US Secretary of State: ‘Inspection of Fort Henry’, 14 August 1916, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1176, file: 15 – part II. 45 For a detailed description of the conditions and situation at the Spirit Lake camp, see Peter Melnycky, ‘Badly Treated in Every Way: The Internment of Ukrainians in Quebec During the First World War’, in Myroslaw Diakowsky (ed.), The Ukrainian Experience in Quebec (Toronto, 1994), pp. 51–78. For Willrich’s report, see G. Willrich, American Consul to the Secretary of State, Washington, Report on Conditions of German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Bulgarian Subjects in Quebec Consular District and in the Detention Camp at Spirit Lake, Quebec, 29 December 1916, in USNA, 763.7115/2279. 46 See, for example, Note Verbale, Berlin, 19 June 1916, in NAC, RG 25 G1, vol. 1176, file: 15 – part II; Note Verbale, Berlin, 28 July 1916; Foreign Office, diplomatic note, 19 August 1916, in NAC, RG 13 A2, vol. 205, file: 1450–1470; Note Verbale, 4 August 1916, in NAC, RG B8, vol. 1364, file: September 30-October 30, 1916; and Ibid., vol. 1369, file: 28 June-31 August 1916, and file: 5 January-21 February, 1917, Note Verbale, 22 January 1917. 47 See Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War, pp. 131–2. 48 The case is made in Barbara Roberts, Whence They Came: Deportation From Canada, 1900–1935 (Ottawa, 1988), pp. 68–9. 49 See Matthew Stibbe’s contribution to this volume.

9

Control and internment of enemy aliens in the United States during the First World War Jörg Nagler

The twentieth century – also known as the ‘Century of Camps’1 – saw two total wars in which civilians suffered tremendously. This type of warfare required the mobilisation of all economic and intellectual resources to defeat the enemy. To achieve that goal, propaganda dehumanised the enemy as the ‘other’ or ‘alien’. The home front became pivotal for the war effort where the ‘enemy within’ was fought by those who had stayed at home. The notion of a ‘fifth column’, although only formally named as such during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39, was a typical phenomenon to be found in the belligerent societies after 1914. National minorities from enemy countries were destined to become targets of the home front since they represented the ‘enemy within’, regardless of length of residence in their host society. Once they were stigmatised with the unfortunate term ‘enemy alien’, they evoked nightmare fantasies in (super)patriotic Americans. In this context, the pivotal question of citizenship arose: Does citizenship eo ipso define national loyalty in times of war? Did non-naturalised Germans pose a greater threat to national security than their fellow countrymen and neighbours who had acquired US citizenship and could call themselves German-American? Was citizenship the ultimate proof of assimilation and hence loyalty? To some extent, the United States benefitted from having observed how these issues were handled by warring countries in Europe during the years when it remained neutral (1914–17). In particular, US ambassadors Walter Hines Page (in London) and James W. Gerard (in Berlin) were heavily involved in attempts to mitigate conditions for and offer legal advice to German nationals trapped in Britain and British nationals trapped in Germany. They were able to monitor firsthand how nationalist public opinion and calls for retaliation by one side against the other could make a bad situation worse and lead to an all-round escalation in anti-alien measures. In this chapter, however, the main focus will be on the American home front after 1917 rather than American diplomacy during the neutrality period. In the United States – the country of immigration par excellence – the juxtaposition of national security and the rights of aliens in time of war produced a complex legal and ethical conundrum which differed in many ways from the situation in Europe.2 Self-proclaimed vigilante groups such as the American Protective League – officially supported by the Justice Department – increased the fear level of enemy aliens by entering their private spheres unannounced,

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interrogating them and sending reports directly to the newly established Bureau of Investigation (BI).3 If the BI decided to pursue the case, this could lead to arrest and final internment, although there was no universal internment of enemy aliens, and only a small minority ended up behind barbed wire. In what follows, I will first investigate the broader context of anti-alien measures in wartime America, before moving on to look at the internment camps themselves. A particular point of concern will be the development of informal and formal networks of surveillance, made up of government departments and ‘voluntary’ anti-German/patriotic groups acting at local level, which not only kept watch over enemy aliens (including, from 1918, women), but also initiated and made possible their arrest, internment and de facto criminalisation in certain circumstances. As will be shown at the end, the lessons learnt and experiences gained from control over enemy aliens during the war fed, almost seamlessly, into the development of the more extensive post-war domestic intelligence apparatus. The targets here were Germans and political radicals (who again were often associated with ‘aliens’ during the ‘Red Scare’ of 1919–20).

Context According to the census of 1910, 2.5 million Americans had been born in Germany. Together with second-generation Germans, they formed a formidable group of over eight million persons in a total US population of 92 million.4 In most major American cities, German-born immigrants constituted the highest percentage of the overall foreign-born population.5 The naturalisation rate for German immigrants of about 70 per cent was the highest of any immigrant group. Approximately half a million male and female German immigrants over the age of fourteen had not acquired American citizenship at the outbreak of war. With the declaration of war against Imperial Germany on 6 April 1917, these aliens found themselves to be ‘enemy aliens’. On this very day, President Wilson issued a proclamation based upon the Alien Enemy Statute of 1798 regarding enemy aliens. The twelve regulations which he found ‘necessary in the premises and for the public safety’ defined the legal framework for the wartime restrictions of aliens over the age of fourteen and born in Germany. The social and economic implications of these restrictive measures, supplemented by eight additional presidential provisions on 16 November 1917, led to economic and psychological hardships.6 The threat of arrests and internment hung over German Americans like a Damocles sword during the war. It was used by the Wilson administration to intimidate non-naturalised civilians from enemy countries and their families. The stigma of being an enemy alien was increased when some newspapers published the names and addresses of this group.7 Quarrels between the Justice Department, War Department and Treasury Department show that there existed no uniform administrative direction on how to proceed with enemy aliens. Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo pushed for a large-scale internment programme, whereas Secretary of War Newton D. Baker and Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory

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believed that such drastic measures were not necessary. The general public often demanded mass internment of enemy aliens and hence built up pressure on the administration. Due to the hectic preparations of the government for the impending entry into the war, the implementation of an internment policy was more improvised than planned. However, it is striking that the Justice Department apparently failed to observe the ongoing preparations for the internment operations initiated by the Labor Department. An academic team at Columbia University in New York had been working on behalf of the Labor Department for quite some time under the name National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor.8 At the turn of the year 1916/17, this special subcommittee had completed a long investigation into internment plans for ‘Aliens of Enemy Nationality in the United States’, with the official purpose of working out a custody system consistent with the legal framework established under the Second Hague Convention of 1907.9 The declared aim of this work was to provide meaningful employment for the internees and to protect the public from them, but interestingly also to protect them from the public.10 Detailed research had been carried out analysing the countries which had gathered experience with enemy aliens since the beginning of the war, for instance England, France, Russia, Italy and Canada.11 Members of the Committee had been sent to the respective countries to investigate the circumstances of internment there. After these visits, the positive example of Canada was clearly emphasised: ‘the experience of the Dominion may also be used in the United States’.12 At the beginning of May 1917 in the shortest possible time, three army bases were selected as sites for internment camps for the crew members of confiscated German war ships. How these camps should be managed in detail was decided only later.13 The Justice Department initially planned to place enemy aliens under its custody in federal prisons or in specially designed premises in state prisons. However, under the pressure of the State Department, fearing reprisals against American citizens in Germany, Attorney General Thomas Gregory dropped these plans. Thus, the State Department and the Justice Department finally agreed on the following formalised process from the arrest to the internment of enemy aliens: within the remit of the Justice Department, imprisoned enemy aliens were to be kept in local prisons or military camps from where they were then to be transported to the respective internment camps under military guard for security reasons. Here the administrative responsibility of the War Department began.14 In 1914, there was still no uniform international law regulation on dealing with civilians from enemy countries and their accommodation in internment camps.15 Even the Second Hague Convention of 1907 had not explicitly taken into account the possibility that civilian ‘enemy aliens’ might be held as prisoners of war. The decisive point, however, was that the United States agreed to follow the spirit of the Second Hague Convention and, more importantly, the Prussian-American Treaty of 1799, at least with regard to the equal treatment of civilians and military prisoners.

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Control: registration, surveillance, arrests The President’s second enemy alien proclamation of 16 November 1917 supplemented the first proclaim ation with eight additional restrictive provisions. In addition to the former restricted areas, Washington, DC was now declared a ‘forbidden city’ for enemy aliens and the registration of all enemy aliens became compulsory. In urban areas, the registration was supervised by the police and, in rural areas, by the post office directors. Enemy aliens had to seek formal permission for a change of residence or employment, and they also had to report to the relevant authorities at regular intervals. The last provision defined and explained the restrictions on freedom of movement.16 To implement these new restrictions and to exert an effective and intimidating effect, police and agents of the Bureau of Investigation carried out raids on enemy aliens and mass arrests of those illegally residing in restricted areas.17 In total, more than 8,500 enemy aliens were arrested and imprisoned pursuant to a presidential arrest warrant during the war.18 This figure is significantly higher than the one previously assumed by scholars.19 Thousands more whose exact number can no longer be reconstructed were temporarily held for further investigation in local prisons without a warrant issued by the Justice Department, and released after a certain amount of time.20 According to the Justice Department directives, US Attornies or US Marshals were asked to investigate suspects who had been placed under surveillance by representatives of the American Protective League, the Bureau of Investigation, or other intelligence agencies. Within two weeks, according to the official instructions, a report had to be sent to the Justice Department, stating the evidence. Then an official warrant signed by the Justice Department was sent. It is also no longer possible to determine the extent to which protective measures for enemy aliens were taken, since these were not always officially designated as such. Sentences in prisons were often used as a warning and deterrence to other enemy aliens. The person concerned was then released after three to four weeks’ imprisonment, on the understanding that they would have to face permanent internment should they show further ‘disloyal’ behaviour.21 These 1,500 to 1,800 cases of temporary incarceration have to be added to the overall picture of enemy alien captivity during the First World War.22

Internment A total of 6,300 men and a small number of women, predominantly Germans, were interned in four camps. Three of these were administered by the War Department: Fort McPherson, four miles from Atlanta, Georgia, Fort Oglethorpe, also located in Georgia and bordering Tennessee, and Fort Douglas near Salt Lake City, Utah. The fourth, Hot Springs in North Carolina, was initially administered by the Labor Department, but in July 1918, it was also taken over by the War Department, which immediately dissolved it and moved the crew members of the confiscated German merchant and passenger ships to Fort Oglethorpe.

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Three categories of internee were established. The first of these were 1,356 officers and crew members taken off German war and supply vessels which had been stuck in American ports, including the Panama Canal Zone, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Guam, at the start of the war. From August 1914, they had been prevented from leaving their harbours due to the presence of extensive British Naval forces in the region. After the severance of diplomatic relations between America and Germany, they were then placed in camps and, after the American declaration of war, received the official status of prisoners of war with the rights and duties assigned to them by the provisions of the Hague Convention. With this, they fell under the administrative remit of the War Department. About one third of them were transported immediately to Fort McPherson, and later to Fort Douglas and Fort Oglethorpe.23 The second category of internees consisted of crew members of German merchant and passenger ships stuck in American ports after August 1914. In April 1917, there were sixty-seven German and fourteen Austrian ships in this category in the United States, and an additional twenty-three in Philippine ports. After the American declaration of war, these approximately 2,300 sailors were immediately arrested and interned. As civilians, they were not protected by the relevant clauses of the Hague Convention.24 Initially, these crews were temporarily held at immigration stations such as Ellis Island, Gloucester (New Jersey), New Orleans, Angel Island (San Francisco) and Gallapus (Boston). Neither the War Department nor the Labor Department had a clear idea of how to deal with this category of internees.25 Finally they were sent to the Hot Springs Camp until the summer of 1918, and later to their final destination, Fort Oglethorpe. The third category was made up of 2,331 German and Austro-Hungarian civilian enemy aliens, classified as ‘dangerous’, who had been arrested at the instigation of the Justice Department. The vast majority of them were taken to two internment camps: Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia and Fort Douglas in Utah. A handful were initially lodged in Fort McPherson. Those enemy aliens who had been captured west of the Mississippi were transported to Fort Douglas, those captured east of that river to Fort Oglethorpe. The majority of the enemy aliens had been arrested on the basis of the twelfth point of the Enemy Alien Regulations, since this provision also contained the broadest range of interpretations for misdemeanour.26 After a closer examination of their cases, which took several weeks or even months, they were then transferred to Fort Oglethorpe or Fort Douglas after confirmation of the suspicion of disloyalty or a general risk to national security. Camp inspections were conducted by neutral powers. The Swiss Legation became responsible for German enemy aliens, and the Swedish Legation for Austro-Hungarians, who constituted about thirteen per cent of the internee population. Around 10 per cent of the internees consisted of wealthy entrepreneurs and public figures who, according to the government, constituted a danger to internal security. This category included industrialists, bankers and merchants, as well as diplomats, scientists, newspaper publishers, editors, musicians such as the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Karl Muck,27 pastors and teachers – in other words, bearers of a German culture that had become

186 Jörg Nagler the symbol of the enemy.28 These public figures were particular targets of scrutiny and hostilities. Very often the Justice Department had to react to public pressure and intervene to deal with these hostilities. These exponents and representatives of German culture and ‘the Emperor’ were checked for their loyalty, and, if necessary, interned, if only to protect them from the American public. Measures such as these also served to warn other persons in similarly exposed positions to keep out of public life as far as possible. In other cases, the Justice Department decided to intern these enemy aliens, fearing that they could have a negative influence on German Americans.29 This category of enemy aliens posed the greatest problem to the Justice Department since, owing to their social and political contacts, they were often able to defend their case against the government, or to encourage other influential Americans to defend them in public.30 The vast majority of internees, however, consisted of labourers, craftsmen and traders. A considerable number were trade unionists, socialists and other politically organised groups, and many were members of the radical Industrial Workers of the World. A third subgroup consisted of social outcasts such as ‘eccentrics’, illiterates, paupers and ‘lunatics’. Either their ignorance of the enemy alien regulations had led to their arrest, for instance by trespassing into the restricted enemy alien zones, or they had refrained from registering, or they had aroused the suspicion of their neighbours or workmates for various reasons. These persons often constituted a public nuisance for their communities, and deportation to an internment camp frequently became a convenient way of handling the situation for the local authorities. In the public arena, the ‘useless’, allegedly unproductive accommodation of enemy aliens in internment camps, was criticised repeatedly and their employment was demanded, for example, in coal mines or agriculture. Although the Justice Department repeatedly emphasised that internment should not be interpreted as punishment for a crime, attempts on the government side to criminalise ‘deliberate violations’ of the enemy aliens provisions existed. With a sideways glance to the part of the public which criticised the costs of the internment camps, President Wilson publicly stated that he personally would have tended to ‘[to] confine offenders among them in penitentiaries and other similar institutions where they could be made to work as other criminals do’.31 However, the obligations entered into under international law had not permitted this. Three of the internment camps, Fort Douglas in Utah and Forts McPherson and Oglethorpe in Georgia, were under the administration of the War Department. The National Committee on Prisons and Prison Laboratories had recommended the administration of the army camp for various reasons. The safety of the internees was a priority. Civilian guards were not adequately trained to face any unrest in the camps or in the surrounding populations. It is interesting that in its recommendations, the National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor (NCPPL) supported a plan to bring the German internees closer to ‘the true workings of American democracy and fair play’. In other words, they supported a kind of ‘re-education’ programme, as was practiced in the POW camps for German

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soldiers during the Second World War in the United States. However, this sort of project was never implemented in the First World War.32 The NCPPL was also tasked with inspecting the internment camps and making suggestions for improvements to the administration.

Internment camp Fort Oglethorpe33 Fort Oglethorpe was established only a week after the declaration of war against Germany and was divided into three compounds: Camp A, B and C. Camp A was called the ‘Millionares’ Camp’. It housed ninety enemy aliens with the means to keep common chefs and to be served more varied dishes than the rest of the camp population. There was even a bank for financial transactions at their disposal. In addition, a separate wash house provided for more comfort and privacy. Dinner in the ‘Millionärs-Camp’ was often accompanied by piano music, and none of its inhabitants were forced to work. Not everyone was a millionaire, though. Richard Goldschmidt, for example, who would later become director of the genetics research department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin, received a monthly allocation of thirty-five dollars from the Swiss Legation. This enabled him to live in Camp A. Dr. Karl Oscar Bertling, a Harvardtrained Ralph Waldo Emerson specialist and later director of the America Institute in Berlin also belonged to this category. His works included books on GermanAmerican relations which were regarded by the authorities as pro-German propaganda.34 The only real millionaire in this camp was Adolph Pavenstedt, whose sequestrated funds were estimated by the Alien Property Custodian at $ 1.6 million. Pavenstedt was interned because of his connections with German propagandists like former Colonial Secretary Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, his intimate relationship with former Ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, and suspicious financial transactions supporting German interests discovered by the British Secret Service.35 The most famous residents of Camp A were the conductor Dr. Karl Muck, the former German consul in Mexico City, Carl Heynen, and the journalist Albrecht Graf Montgelas.36 After long interrogations by agents of the Justice Department, Montgelas had admitted his contacts with the German intelligence service. The Justice Department report said: ‘Probably German agent, though no definite proof. Entered prohibited areas without permit’.37 Montgelas had connections with various important personalities of the Central Powers, and one of his relatives – Adolf Count von Montgelas – worked in an elevated position at the German Foreign Office. Albrecht Graf Montgelas was accused of sending him material for the ‘Index of Hate’ to Berlin, in which America’s hostile attitude towards Germany was to be documented. He had been an art and music critic and had also worked for the Hearst Press. In fact, his friend William Randolph Hearst had often visited him in his apartment, as Justice Department agents had discovered.38 Also the Austrian conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony orchestra, Dr. Ernst Kunwald, belonged to this privileged camp area.39

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‘Camp B’ was less comfortable and spacious and consisted of two-storey large barracks. Hundreds of internees were incarcerated without dividing walls. The inmates complained about the heat during the summer and the lack of ventilation, a condition that could not be changed according to the camp administration. The food was adequate, although there were many days without meat or bread. If the food supply was not sufficient for the internees they could earn money by voluntary work in road construction or in the nearby stone quarry to purchase additional food in the canteen.40 This privilege did not apply to the inmates of ‘Camp C’. This was a penal enclosure for those internees who had shown ‘rebellious behaviour’ or had refused, for example, to properly maintain their living quarters. The Swiss ambassador reported that camp commander C. W. Penrose had imposed severe penalties on enemy aliens, even in cases of minor or suspected violations. This procedure had led to a poisoned atmosphere between camp management and civilian internees. The Swiss found that the ‘educated’ among the camp inmates tried to establish discipline among the rebellious elements, but these efforts were mostly in vain.41 The commander imposed penalties for refusal to obey orders, refusal to work, or the use of ‘repulsive language’ and lies. In addition to the above-mentioned punishments in Camp C, the camp management ordered forced labour and solitary confinement with bread and water. Excessive protests by the inmates led to the general refusal of all work, including maintenance of the residential areas. Penrose later admitted to the Swiss Inspectorate that he had attempted to separate and discipline the members of the Industrial Workers of the World in the camp from the rest of the internees. As he clearly pointed out, he held the men in Camp C for ‘mostly IWWs and degenerate men vile in demeanour and language’.42 Shortly afterwards, around one hundred enemy aliens were kept in the penal camp. According to the camp commandant, all of them were members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and troublemakers who would have learnt a lesson from the food rationing, as he believed that ‘this class of men think more of their bellies than anything else, and have been having better food than ever before in their lives’.43 Commander Penrose complained to the War Department that he did not have enough penal measures at hand and that these detainees were treated too mildly: If the law would only permit me to administer a punishment commensurate with their offences, I would have every mother son of them at work tomorrow morning. It is a pity that we have to handle such swines with kid gloves’.44 His attitude towards the radical ‘Wobblies’ reflected the deep-seated aversion towards this group on the part of the government and the population on the home front.45 When, in June 1918, a representative of the Swiss Embassy inspected the camp again, it was noted that about 15 per cent of the 839 enemy aliens in Camp C had protested against a work assignment and were on strike. Penalties were imposed in Fort Oglethorpe not only by the camp command, but also by a court composed

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of three American guards and three internees. It convened twice a week, negotiating all easier cases, listening to witnesses and assisting defendants. The criminal code was directed by the camp administration and had to be countersigned by the commander. According to Penrose, the results of the reconciliation were always clear. More interestingly, the interned court members tended to be much more drastic with their sentences than the security officers.46 In a memorandum to the Adjutant General of the Army, Commander Penrose described the penal aspects as follows: For riot, or riotous actions, insubordination, refusal to work in connection with upkeep of the compound, theft, and minor offenses, internees are punished with the nature of the offense, by confinement on bread and water for a period not to exceed seven Days at a time, confinement on half rations, and for minor offenses, deprivation of privileges and extra fatigue.47 In July 1919, the commander sent the Bureau of Investigation a list of those enemy aliens who had either spent some time in the criminal court or had contributed to unrest in the camp through strong pro-German attitudes. He recommended that these inmates should be deported as soon as possible, as most of them were anarchists and supporters of the Industrial Workers of the World: Of the above men those marked x have been in the Penal Stockade for long periods, the others have caused more or less trouble in the camp by their strong pro-German feelings. Some have long prison records before the end of the century. . . . Most of them are I.W.W. of the worst type. I strongly recommend their deportation.48 And indeed, the overwhelming majority of the enemy aliens in Camp C were Wobblies, socialists, or anarchists. A list compiled by the camp commander indicated that 107 of the 1,461 enemy aliens had an affiliation with socialistic, syndicalist-socialistic or anarchistic ideologies. This figure corresponds to 7.3 per cent of its total population.49 This was a relatively low rate compared to the share of 13.1 per cent of the corresponding group in the second main internment camp for enemy aliens, Fort Douglas. But still, this percentage did not correspond to the overall public image of enemy aliens as typical representatives of socialism and anarchism. The different percentages of the IWW members of both camps reflect the fact that this group was far more widespread in the West and especially in the Northwest of the United States than in the East of the country.50 Some security guards made no secret of their contempt for the internees, who they pejoratively called ‘spies’ and ‘Wobblies’. But it was not only that internees were verbally attacked; they were also beaten and otherwise injured by guards. Some had to be taken to the camp hospital, or even suffered permanent health damage.51 This had fatal consequences in the case of Peter Czan, who was beaten on the way to the penalty camp because of his refusal to obey an order. When Czan, who understood almost no English, then ran away, he was shot

190 Jörg Nagler by a guard and succumbed to his injuries. The military investigation committee then found that the guards had acted correctly.52 At Fort Oglethorpe, two camp journals were published. The Orgelsdorfer Eulenspiegel53 appeared for the first time on 15 October 1918 and was halted by the censor in May 1919 after ten editions. The journal, edited by Erich Posselt, a former employee of the New Yorker Staatszeitung,54 was printed on low quality paper, each edition containing thirty pages, and had a circulation of 100 copies which were sold for twenty-five cents – for the internees a day’s wage – in the canteen.55 The authors of the Orgelsdorfer Eulenspiegel were predominantly middle-class internees from Camp A and therefore less representative of ‘comrades’ of a lower social origin and IWW internees. The paper had educational aspirations, publishing not only information on camp life, but also literary contributions, including essays and poems, artistically complemented by woodprints.56 The camp censorship would not have allowed any distant form of political expression. This can be seen from the rejected articles which were classified ‘objectionable’.57 The second camp paper was the bi-weekly Die Bombe, which appeared from August 1918. In contrast to the Eulenspiegel, the Bombe was machine-typed, reproduced on matrices, and more light-hearted in its tone and appearance. In the editorial of its first edition, the editor F. Baumgärtner explained in a humorous tone: In order to prevent misunderstandings, we mention at the outset that the “Bombe” is not a trade journal but merely a newspaper for “spies” because we are convinced that all our readers are learned spies and that we cannot learn anything from ourselves.58 Baumgärtner continued: The bi-weekly newspaper should . . . keep the readers informed of official regulations and, more importantly, the rumors in the camp, since the latter is absolutely necessary to understand the general situation. It should also report on a number of events, such as lectures held during the winter by locked-up spies.59 In addition to predominantly cynical commentaries, there were also matters of serious concerns, such as the newspaper’s aim to intensify the feeling of belonging together. There were numerous sarcastic remarks about Camp A and the abundant supplies there. The first edition also gave a detailed account of the construction of the school building and the lively interest of the internees in the courses offered there. According to these articles, more than 700 inmates had registered for the thirty-six courses.60 Sports such as football, baseball, volleyball and tennis were also offered. Interestingly, the Bombe was allowed to continue its publication after the Eulenspiegel had been discontinued by the camp authorities. Undoubtedly, the journal addressed a much broader target group within the

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camp than the Eulenspiegel, although some inmates preferred the Eulenspiegel because it was considered ‘a much better newspaper’.61 The ‘barbed wire disease’ (Lagerkoller) of internees was amplified by the uncertainity of their situation and the lack of legal support, even though they had asked for such support in numerous letters to the Justice Department. In November 1919, the Central Committee of the internees addressed Pope Benedict XV for help. In the letter, they emphasised that they were publicly portrayed as devious criminals but did not possess rights to defend themselves in court.62 By the time Fort Oglethorpe ended its wartime mission in April 1920, it held 300 enemy aliens.

Internment camp Fort Douglas63 Fort Douglas had been officially declared an internment camp on 3 May 1917, with Colonel Arthur Williams named as camp commandant. The camp consisted of fifty buildings on an area of fifteen acres. The first internees arrived in June. At its peak, more than 1,500 internees, including 870 enemy aliens, 509 German prisoners of war, and 200 American conscientious objectors64 were kept in Fort Douglas. As in Fort Oglethorpe, the American army camp was still functioning in the immediate vicinity of the internment camp.65 As in Fort Oglethorpe, the general anti-German hysteria had its effects on the conduct of the guards and the camp management. Colonel Williams declared to the press that he proposed ‘to make the Third War Prison barracks at Fort Douglas the cleanest, most sanitary and best regulated prison camp in the United States’.66 Unfortunately the last of Williams’s proposals was not put into practice, since the camp more often resembled a combat zone and penal camp than an internment camp.67 More prisoners soon arrived, including the crew of the SMS Cormoran as well as the first enemy aliens who had been arrested immediately after the declaration of war and had therefore already spent months in prison or in a military camp. In mid-August, enemy aliens arrived from Seattle, including Alvo von Alvensleben, who had already been mentioned in the national press and was said to have a close relationship with the Imperial German royal family. He soon became the most active and defiant internee.68 At first both groups – prisoners of war and enemy aliens – were kept together on the grounds of the internment camp. The crew of the Cormoran had a different status to the civilian enemy aliens and claimed certain privileges. They received new garments (uniforms), while the enemy aliens had to keep using the clothes they were wearing upon their arrival in camp. The camp administration resolved potential conflicts by dividing the two groups with barbed wire at the beginning of August. Henceforth the camp consisted of two separate units, with the military prisoners able to use sports facilities on their side that were not available to the enemy aliens. This led to protests and tension between the enemy aliens and the guards, who evidently favoured the military prisoners.69 Cursing and humiliation by the guards were routine and helped to poison the atmosphere of the camp. Very soon the Swiss legation would receive a flood of letters

192 Jörg Nagler complaining about treatment by the guards and poor hygienic facilities. Many were also concerned about the evident lack of support for the families that were left behind now that the main breadwinner was interned. Some wives of enemy aliens moved to Salt Lake City to be closer to their interned husbands.70 In the middle of September 1917, almost two hundred crew members of the ships Geier and Locksun arrived at Fort Douglas.71 An increasing number of German-speaking Industrial Workers of the World also entered the camp. Some of them came from Arizona, where they had actively participated in the strike in the copper mines and had been deported by the sheriff of Bisbee to a desert area in New Mexico.72 At this time, the administration, now under its new commandant, Colonel George Byram, learnt of the first escape attempt. By November 1917, the time of the first inspection by the Swiss embassy, eighty-seven enemy aliens were confined at Fort Douglas. In December, the first internees, two members of the IWW, managed to escape through tunnels.73 There would be many more attempts to escape from this camp. The press was always interested in escapes since such news increased the perception of threat caused by enemy aliens in the public mind. For example, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reported in February 1918: ‘Col. George L. Byram, commandant at the war prison camp, announced today that the seventeenth tunnel which interned Germans had built as a road to liberty had been discovered’.74 At the end of February 1918 a bomb, obviously built by an internee, was discovered by a guard on the camp grounds. The press reported it as a plot to kill the camp commandant and his aides.75 The commandant confirmed that the bomb had presented a real danger. He threatened to shoot every tenth internee if ‘anything serious happened in the future’.76 This statement naturally produced a good deal of tension and excitement among the internees. A telegram addressed to the Swiss embassy and requesting a committee of investigation was signed by a majority of the internees but was not permitted to be sent. As a result of this incident, as well as the increasing radicalisation of internees and the fear of negative influences from the agitation of the ‘Wobblies’ in the camp, the War Department transferred all military prisoners to Fort McPherson.77 Alvensleben increasingly came to be seen by the administration as one of the biggest troublemakers in the camp. This evaluation had serious consequences for him. He passed many days in the so-called Hindenburg House, the euphemistic term for an isolation cell measuring a mere four by seven feet, in which the prisoners endured unhygienic conditions.78 The other names of barracks and ‘streets’ reflected grotesque humour as well: the internees called the main road of the camp ‘Unter den Linden’ after the main street of Berlin, and a small mustering field was known as ‘Bolsheviki Plaza’.79 In April 1918, a camp committee was established with Alvensleben as chairman, representing an overwhelming majority of the 335 enemy aliens then in the camp. The creation of this committee was in reaction to two events. First, a general search of the camp had uncovered handmade weapons among the internees, and the camp authorities feared a violent attempt at escape. A second episode, in which an internee was shot by a guard, actually precipitated the formation of the committee. The camp

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commander refused to recognise any such committee, especially with Alvensleben as chairman. It was declared that every individual was responsible for himself and would be punished for giving false information, particularly to the Swiss embassy. Alvensleben was the first to be penalised by this regulation, having written to the embassy complaining about the unceremonious burial of an internee. He was placed again in the Hindenburg House for five days. Alvensleben’s leadership role is astonishing in view of the large number of IWWs in the camp who could have been expected to choose someone else as their spokesman. There is no doubt, however, that internal socio-economic differences were partially suspended under the impact of the shared experience of imprisonment. The harsh treatment of the internees – irrespective of their different social background – by the guards, had made this possible. A report on the camp, composed by intelligence officer Lorenzo D. Browning, reached the Military Intelligence Division (MID) in Washington DC in August 1918. At the head of the report was a general description of the camp and its then 590 enemy aliens, which the author divided into two classes: ‘the IWWs and the Germans’. According to this officer, at least some of the enemy aliens were agents of the German Empire: ‘About fifty of the worst prisoners in the camp, agitators and troublemakers, have been organized in one company and are kept separate from other prisoners. . . . This does away with a great deal of trouble in the camp’. Internees ‘loyal to America’ were mentioned, even if not by name, who provided the camp administration with information about other prisoners.80 Through these informants officials learnt of conversations in which plans were laid for setting fire to the camp. On 1 August 1918, all members of the internees’ committee, including many IWWs, were placed in a single dormitory separated from the rest of the camp by a double barbed-wire fence and fed on bread and water. These conditions provoked a riot during which several internees were wounded by gunfire.81 Internees were permitted to write four postcards and two letters a month, which were read by the censor before they could leave the camp. Relatives of an internee could visit him once a week for two hours under the control of a guard. Meanwhile the guard personnel had risen to 142 and they used curses as a matter of routine. The camp journal, Der Scheinwerfer, which first appeared in February 1919, was remarkably more liberally censored than the journals at Fort Oglethorpe, since the war had ended. It was published weekly after the camp administration had finally acquired the technical equipment. The journal was intelligent, cynical, funny and informative, undoubtedly enriching the daily camp life, and was in many respects similar to Die Bombe in Fort Oglethorpe. However, the content reflected more depressing impressions of the life of internees behind barbed wire, their accumulated emotions after a long and bitter imprisonment. Der Scheinwerfer appeared with similar objectives and motivations as the Bombe and covered comparable topics, but – with the exception of the obituaries of deceased internees – contained hardly any contribution without acrid mockery and sarcasm, which astonishly passed the camp censor.82

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The camp continued operating until April 1920. The release of the internees proceeded very slowly, in part because of the requirement of the Justice Department that only those internees be released who had employment waiting for them. This was, of course, extremely difficult in post-war conditions with an overcrowded labour market. Also, the ‘Red Scare’, which began in 1919, did its bit to keep ‘dangerous radicals’ in custody for as long as possible. This clearly demonstrated the connection between xenophobia and the fear of radicals, as the administration shifted the language it used from ‘international German conspiracy’ to ‘international communist conspiracy’.83 When Senator Reed Smoot of Utah visited the camp in March 1919, he described the internees as ‘a bunch of criminals [and] of the worst kind of men who would bring misery disaster and trouble wherever they went’.84 Despite this extremely negative assessment and the efforts of Senator Smoot to convince the Attorney General to deport as many of these ‘criminals’ as possible, 200 internees were released in April 1919. Of the 791 enemy aliens in Fort Douglas, more than half (412) were paroled, perhaps a third (271) were repatriated, and only seven were deported, ignoring the recommendation of the Attorney General that undesirable ‘enemy aliens’ should be deported en masse. The alien deportation bill passed by Congress in May 1920 came a month too late for the internees, some of whom would probably have been deported if it had been in force before their release. Apart from inmates who had previously been mentally ill and then interned, there were persons who clearly suffered psychological damage through the circumstances of their arrest and internment. Their despair had continued to grow with the time and uncertainty of their fate. The heated climate of the home front and the oppressive, aggressive and desperate camp atmosphere, the ‘barbed wire disease’ had left traces in their psyche and triggered some paranoid phenomena and other disturbances. After the closure of Fort Douglas, the camp psychiatrist, E.B.M. Casey, gave a disturbing assessment on the last ninety-seven enemy aliens in his final report: General examination of all Alien Enemies confined at these Barracks between February 29, 1920, and March 15, 1920, reveal that over (65%) sixty-five percent showed symptoms characteristic of prison incarceration, viz. anxiety, increased psychomotor unrest, mild unsystematized delusions of a persecutory nature, suspiciousness, resentfulness, indifference, and marked instability of character. Out of the (25) twenty-five prisoners picked out for complete psychiatric examination, (5) five were found to be suffering from active forms of psychosis; and (2) two from an unclassified form of psychoneurosis, showing symptoms simulating a beginning praecox reaction. The majority were found to be unstable emotionally, and a few were thought to be on the verge of a mental breakdown.85 Evidently despite the numerous courses put on at the ‘College Douglas’, the sports activities offered by the YMCA, the ‘Thalia Theater’, orchestras and

Internment in the United States Table 9.1 Data for interned enemy aliens in Fort Oglethorpe and Fort Douglas

Total Germans Austro-Hungarians Paroled Repatriated Deported Deceased Mental hospital Escaped IWW members German Austro-Hungarians Average age Year of immigration (average) Single Average time of internment in days Average time spent in prison before internment in days

195

86

Fort Oglethorpe 1,461

%

Fort Douglas 870

%

1,244 217 589 673 78 51 47 23 107 82 25 34.9 1,908

85.2 14.8 40.4 46.2 5.3 3.5 3.2 1.4 7.3 6.6 11.6

759 111 423 341 32 23 30 21 114 99 15 31.9 1,906

87.3 12.7 48.6 39.2 3.6 2.6 3.6 2.4 13.1 13.1 12.9

78.2 476 88

82.1 379 69

some other institutions, Fort Douglas, as cynically noted by its commander, was a ‘penal stockade’ rather than an internment camp when compared to Fort Oglethorpe (see Table 9.1).87

The internment of female enemy aliens The number of enemy aliens to be registered nearly doubled in April 1918 through the inclusion of women. The Department of Justice had considered this measure since the re-discovery of the 1798 Alien Enemy Statute in March 1917. Attorney General Gregory had told Secretary of State Lansing in the summer of 1917 that he would recommend to the President, in the event of a national security threat involving female enemy aliens, to extend the provisions of 6 April accordingly. Evidently the Justice Department now believed that the threat level was high enough to call for a supplement to the President’s enemy alien proclamation of 6 April. To obtain the necessary majority in Congress, the Justice Department informed Congressmen that it was receiving incoming letters about disloyal activities of female enemy aliens on a daily basis and that the culprits could not be interned under the current regulations. In February 1918, a corresponding bill was presented to the House of Representatives. It was accepted without any significant opposition and handed over to the Senate for further deliberations. When the latter wanted to add a passage exempting American women who were married to enemy aliens, John Lord O’Brian, Assistant Attorney General, was outraged. For him an American citizen had

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forfeited her citizen rights by marrying an enemy alien and could no longer be regarded a ‘loyal citizen’. If the law were passed in this changed form, married women of ‘dangerous enemy aliens’ could live in Washington DC freely, thereby giving the enemy information and representing a security risk.88 After some hesitation, a committee of senators and members of the House of Representatives agreed with the Justice Department that American women who had married enemy aliens had indeed demonstrated their disloyalty and had therefore forfeited the right to American citizenship. The proposed amendment exempting enemy alien women of American birth was deleted and the law passed without further debate in Congress.89 J. Edgar Hoover, later the long-time head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), became the principal planner and organiser of the implementation of Wilson’s Proclamation, referred to in the press as the ‘Woman Spy Bill’, which determined the surveillance and internment of female German and Austrian-Hungarian enemy aliens.90 From June 1918, female enemy aliens had to report to police stations and post offices throughout the country. As with the registration of men, their personal details were taken, questions asked, a loyalty oath and fingerprints taken, and photographs required. A total of 220,000 female enemy aliens were registered during the war. Failure to register could result in internment.91 After the introduction of the registration procedures for female enemy aliens, the Justice Department also intensified its surveillance activities in this regard, especially since public pressure had increased considerably. In spring 1918, Attorney General Gregory filed a series of reports from his US attorneys about suspicious ‘hostile women’ in their districts who might be taken into custody. Soon after this, the first of them were arrested. In fifteen cases, the Justice Department recommended internment. This measure posed a special administrative and diplomatic problem for the American government.92 Before suitable accommodation had been created for female enemy aliens, they were often housed in prisons or closed facilities. In New York, for example, they were first taken to ‘Waverly House’, a home for prostitutes and criminal women,93 where they had to share rooms with several other women under lamentable hygienic conditions. The Justice Department authorised the Swiss Consul in New York to visit the House on 26 June 1918, where he was able to discuss the conditions of imprisonment with the interned women. For security reasons, the ministry had placed a dictaphone in the room where these conversations took place. Astonishingly, however, the consul reported back to his embassy that he had no objection to the conditions there.94 Even so, the internees had cause for complaint: they were not allowed to leave the building and were confined exclusively to enclosed spaces. They did not receive daily newspapers and were not permitted to receive or write letters from overseas. When the New York World in July 1918 asked the Justice Department whether reporters could visit Waverly House to interview the female enemy aliens, O’Brian refused, as he feared a counter-reaction from the German government. Already after the end of the war, in January 1919, eight female enemy aliens detained on Ellis Island made a complaint about the circumstances of

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their confinement to the Justice Department, mentioning quality of food and lack of money. In some cases, the prolonged detention of women led to health problems and diplomatic disputes.95 Although the camp commander in Fort Oglethorpe had advised the Attorney General against the construction of new barracks in his camp for the accommodation of women,96 the War Department nevertheless decided to build an additional area in Fort Oglethorpe, at a safe distance from the existing facilities, to prevent communication between the two areas. As it turned out later, however, the spatial distance could not prevent communication between these areas. Male internees were able to ‘telegraph’ certain messages to the women’s compound.97 The preparations for the women’s camp at Fort Oglethorpe generated extensive correspondence and administrative work because many new factors had to be taken into account. In the same month, O’Brian responded to a query from the War Department as to how high he would assess the potential number of interned female enemy aliens. According to the Justice Department’s assessment, on average, approximately 140 female enemy aliens could be interned per month.98 In Fort Oglethorpe, however, there were currently only 100 places available for women, the commandant complained.99 As in other areas of internal security on the American home front, there seemed to have been a gross overestimation of the security threat. Evidently, the German Foreign Office had the same misconceptions, since it threatened to intern more American women in Germany because of the many female enemy aliens that it assumed had already been interned in the United States.100 It was not until the end of January 1919 that the fifteen female enemy aliens (of which two had applied for voluntary internment) arrived at Fort Oglethorpe, some of them after months of prison detention. Mostly they had been accused of ‘proGerman utterances’, or of being a ‘German agent’. The most publicised case was that of the fifty-four-year-old music teacher Emma Campen, who was arrested in New York on 19 October 1918 and was first interned at the House of Good Sheperd Convention in Chicago. However, after the announcement of her imminent internment in January 1919, she escaped and was sought by warrant throughout the United States. She was captured on 9 March 1919 in Cincinnati and transferred to Fort Oglethorpe. In justification for her internment, the Justice Department stated: She was engaged in sending packages to interned German prisoners in all parts of the world . . . caused a disturbance by pro-German utterances at a Liberty Loan meeting. Was secretary of the New York branch of the German Aid Society for interned prisoners.101 Campen was a member of the Women’s Peace Party under the chairmanship of the well-known American war opponent Jane Addams, who Campen had often visited. According to the findings of the Bureau of Investigation, during the neutrality phase, she had contacts with the German consul in Chicago, Baron von Reiswitz, and with the Austro-Hungarian consul in San Francisco.102

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In general, the federal administration misjudged the alleged danger posed by female enemy aliens. Only fifteen (German) women gave cause for internment (two of whom had applied for voluntary internment). This misjudgment, which had been accompanied by long congressional debates and involved tremendous costs and administrative efforts suggests, however, that the assessment of the potential male and female German subversion during the war and even beyond, had indeed been exaggerated. As with the surprising absence of sabotage actions, the low number of interned enemy aliens was not attributed to the de facto absence of subversive activity among them, but to the preventive power of the surveillance network, which was able to demonstrate a clear success.

Conclusion It is no coincidence that in the climate and mentality of 100 per cent Americanism of the American home front of the First World War,103 for the first time in its history the United States experienced the total control of a substantial part of a national minority. The establishment of the most thorough and effective police system in American history constituted the origin of the American national security state that developed within this climate and had its starting point in the control of enemy aliens. A surveillance apparatus was established, accompanied by the expansion of different intelligence agencies. Public opinion, although channelled by official sources in the first months of war, became uncontrollable and affected the administrative handling of enemy aliens. The reaction of American society, in the throes of total war, toward an ethnic/national minority and enemy aliens in particular serves as a lens to examine the national experience on the home front in the United States. It sheds light on the question of how a government and population acted and reacted toward threats to national security during time of war with all its implications in official and private everyday-life settings. It also sheds light on the question of human rights violations and the extension of the domestic political intelligence apparatus during the war. The prime targets of officials and vigilante surveillance organisations in the context of the home front were left radical groups and enemy aliens. It should be emphasised that the internment policies of the Wilson administration were profoundly influenced by the emotionally charged spirit of Germanophobia and anti-Germanism of the home front that had already developed during the neutrality period and further increased after America’s entry into the war.104 The hostile public attitude towards enemy aliens and the administrative measures created a general atmosphere of suspicion and often hatred, and consequently the implementation of the internment procedures became corrupted. The dialectic interplay between patriotic hysteria on the home front, popular fear of the ‘enemy within’ and the federal administrative actions regarding enemy aliens very often resulted in a loss of control and restraint.105 The surveillance and internment procedures of the First World War became a rehearsal and blueprint for the next world war, only twenty-two years later, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066.106 However, in

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the case of mass internment of Japanese enemy aliens and also Americans of Japanese descent, the Roosevelt administration deviated from the policy of individual screening. Again, social hysteria combined with nativism and this time racism in the name of patriotism and national security led to the arrest and internment of enemy aliens as representatives of the ‘enemy within’.

Notes 1 See Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Das Jahrhundert der Lager?’, in Mihran Dabag and Kristin Piatt (eds.), Genozid und Moderne: Strukturen kollektiver Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert (Opladen, 1998), pp. 81–99. 2 For the legal ramifications see J. Gregory Sidak, ‘War, Liberty, and Enemy Aliens’, New York University Law Review, 67 (1992), pp. 1402–31. 3 The BI’s records of surveillance can be found in the extensive file collection made available to researchers in 1977: Record Group (RG) 65, Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation, 1908–1922, in National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC (henceforth NARA). The total of 955 microfilms in this collection are divided into several segments and relate primarily to the wartime period. The largest segment, which includes the records labelled Old German or OG, comprises 594 microfilms and relates to the surveillance and verification of the loyalty of enemy aliens. 4 Thirteenth Census of the United States, I (Population, General Report and Analysis), pp. 788, 818 and 875–9. 5 Ibid., p. 819. 6 U.S., President, Proclamation, ‘Alien Enemy Regulation’, Statutes at Large, vol. XL, Part 2, pp. 1651–2; U.S., President, Proclamation, ‘Additional and Supplemental Regulations Concerning Alien Enemies’, Statutes at Large, vol. XL, Part 2, pp. 1716–18. 7 The New York Herald, for instance, published 28,000 names and addresses of enemy aliens in the city between 4 and 9 December 1917. See New York Herald’s Complete and Alphabetical List of Names and Addresses of the German Alien Enemies Registered in New York City in the State Military Census (New York, NY, 1917). 8 See RG 85, Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, Labor Department, File 54261/132, Box 237 NCPPL, ‘Plan for Internment of Aliens of Enemy Nationality in the United States’ (125 pages; see also New York Times, 28 April 1917, p. 20). 9 On the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 see Jost Dülffer, Regeln gegen den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen von 1899 und 1907 in der internationalen Politik (Frankfurt/Main, 1981). 10 National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor, ‘Plan for Internment of Aliens of Enemy Nationality in the United States’, in NARA, RG 85, Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Service, Department of Labor, 54261/132. 11 Bohdan S. Kordan, No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience (Montreal, 2016). 12 ‘Plan for Internment’ (as note 10 above), p. 5. 13 General Order, No. 54, War Department. Cited in Lyman Clarence Pedersen, History of Fort Douglas, Utah (Unpublished dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1967), p. 311. 14 See Gerald H. Davis, ‘“Orgelsdorf”: A World War I Internment Camp in America’, Yearbook of German-American Studies, 26 (1991), pp. 249–65 (here p. 252). Many internees had been incarcerated for an extended period of time in immigration reception centres such as Ellis Island. This, however, had not been planned from the beginning and was only meant to be a temporary solution. 15 On the international/global situation of enemy aliens see Matthew Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment (Britain, Imperial Germany, USA)’, in 1914–1918 online.

200

16 17 18

19

20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28

Jörg Nagler Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keane, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Onlineenemy_aliens_and_internment-2014-10-08.pdf; idem., ‘The Internment of Civilians by Belligerent States During the First World War and the Response of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41.1 (2006), pp. 5–19; idem., ‘Ein globales Phänomen: Zivilinternierung im Ersten Weltkrieg in transnationaler und internationaler Dimension’, in Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel (eds.), Lager vor Auschwitz: Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2013), pp. 158–76; Panikos Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime: The Experience of National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America and Australia During the Two World Wars (Oxford, 1993); idem., Germans as Minorities During the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham, 2014); and Kay Saunders and Roger Daniels (eds.), Alien Justice: Wartime Internment in Australia and North America (St. Lucia, Queensland, 2000). See Annual Report of the Attorney General (1918), pp. 681–2; and New Yorker Staatszeitung, 20 November 1917, p. 2. New Yorker Staatszeitung, 21 November 1917, p. 1. The numbers are compiled by an analysis of the information found in NARA, RG 60–294, Dockets of Presidential Warrants Issued, 1917–1919, 11 Vols.; RG 407, War Department, World War I, Prisoners of War and Alien Enemies in the United States, Box No. 1–39, 383–7. See also Annual Report of the Attorney General (1920), p. 175. See, for instance, John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925, 2nd ed., corrected and with a new preface (New York, NY, 1984), p. 210; and Horace C. Peterson und Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War: 1917– 1918 (Madison, WI, 1957), p. 86. Annual Report of the Attorney General (1918), p. 27; and NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12, between 434 and 432. See, for instance, the cases in which an incarceration in prison was taken as a substitute for internment – ‘to teach them a lesson’ – in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–4577 and 9–16–12–4500–21. Shorter prison terms were also used as a measure to warn striking enemy aliens. See, for instance, NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–1171. The exact number could not be verified. Even the Justice Department could only guess these numbers. See NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12, Gen., 12 September 1919. Ibid. See Howard S. Levie, Prisoners of War in International Armed Conflicts (Naval War College International Law Studies), Vol. 59 (Newport, RI, 1977), p. 63. See Richard B. Speed III, Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (Westport, CT, 1990), p. 155. See Annual Report of the Attorney General (1917), p. 59. On Muck see Alan Howard Levy, ‘The American Symphony at War: GermanAmerican Musicians and Federal Authorities During World War I’, Mid-America: An Historical Review, 71 (1989), pp. 5–13; Edmund A. Bowles, ‘Karl Muck and His Compatriots: German Conductors in America During World War I and How They Coped’, American Music, 25.4 (2007), pp. 405–40; and Jessica C. E. GienowHecht, ‘Trumpeting Down the Walls of Jericho: The Politics of Art, Music and Emotion in German-American Relations, 1870–1920’, Journal of Social History, 36.3 (2003), pp. 592 and 602–3. To this category also belonged Dr. Isaac Straus, who had been arrested on 18 February 1918 in New York City. He had managed the Chromos Chemical Co. and had organised the production of chemicals and explosives after the American declaration of war. Straus had also published a Jewish weekly and during an interrogation he

Internment in the United States

29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38 39

40 41 42

201

acknowledged the fact that he had entered the United States to ‘distribute Jewish propaganda’. On 21 August 1919, he was temporarily released from Fort Oglethorpe for thirty days to regulate his business in New York. His behaviour in the camp was characterised as ‘strongly pro-German’ und his deportation was strongly recommended – see NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–2857. Straus had entered the United States in September 1914, and in May 1916 had started to publish the American Jewish Chronicle, a weekly that continued to circulate until 1918. The Justice Department had analysed the publication very closely but concluded that it contained no pro-German propaganda. Straus for example had propagated the recruitment of Jewish Americans into the American army. On Straus, see also Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda, Report and Hearings of the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 66th Congress, 1st Session, 1919, 2 Vols. (Washington, DC), Vol. II, p. 1450; and Reinhard Doerries, Imperial Challenge: Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German-American Relations, 1908–1917 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989), pp. 59–64. A. Bruce Bielaski (director of the Bureau of Investigation) to BI agents, 22 June 1917, Library of Congress, Charles Warren Papers, Box 1. See, for example, H. L. Mencken’s letters to the Attorney General, 6 and 15 April 1919, in NARA, RG 407, Box 186. Wilson in his Annual Message on the State of the Union, 4 December 1917, WP, Vol. XLV, p. 200. E. Stagg Whithin (NCCPL) to Secretary of State, 25 August 1917, in NARA, RG 59, 763.72114/2845; Whithin to Secretary of Labor, 30 August 1917, in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–579. On ‘re-education’ of German POWs in the United States during the Second World War, see Ron Theodore Rabin, The Barbed-Wire College: Re-educating German POWs in the U.S. During World War II (Princeton, NJ, 1995). For a micro-history of the camp see Jörg Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten im Krieg: ‘Feindliche Ausländer und die amerikanische Heimatfront während des Ersten Weltkrieges’ (Hamburg, 2000), pp. 549–90. See Davis, ‘“Orgelsdor”f’, p. 257. NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–2460; and Doerries, Imperial Challenge, p. 56. Albrecht Montgelas, Abraham Lincoln: Die Schöpferische Kraft der Demokratie (Hamburg, 1949). For the immediate circumstances of their arrest see: New York Times, 25 January1918, p. 7; Chicago Tribune, 25 January 1918, p. 13; Chicago Tribune, 3 February 1918, I, p. 7; and Justice Department Memorandum to State Department, 10 January 1918, in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–2101. NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–2101. Justice Department Memorandum to State Department, 10 January 1918 (as note 36 above). See the Swedish Envoy to Lansing, 3 July 1918, cited in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1918, Supplement 2, p. 195; and Lansing to the Swedish Ambassador in the United States, 17 September 1918, cited in FRUS, 1918, Supplement 2, p. 199. In his memorandum, Lansing again emphatically justified Kunwald’s internment. On Kunwald, see also Gienow-Hecht, ‘Trumpeting down the Walls of Jericho’, p. 603. Inspection Report, Fort Oglethorpe, 3–4 June 1918, in Bundesarchiv (henceforth BA) Koblenz, R 85, Archiv des Ausschusses für deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Frankfurter Vereins vom Roten Kreuz/Archiv für Kriegsgefangenforschung, 4612.] See Swiss Inspection Report, 3 October 1917, in NARA, RG 407, Box 76. See also NARA, RG 59, State Department, 763.72114/2976, Reel 304 (October to December 1917). Penrose to Adjutant General, 2 July 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 76, Folder 7.

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43 Penrose to Major J.S. Jones, Adjutant General, 7 May 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 74, Folder 31. 44 Ibid. 45 See Adam Hodges, ‘“Enemy Aliens” and “Silk Stocking Girls”: The Class Politics of Internment in the Drive for Urban Order during World War I’, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 6.4 (2007), p. 437. 46 See Penrose to Adjutant of the Army, ‘Report Reference to Interned Aliens’, 18 August 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 84; and Proposed Data for Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1919, 4, in NARA, RG 407, Box 96. 47 Penrose to Adjutant General, 14 August 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 84. 48 F. M. Conklin, Mayor, U.S. Army, 22 July 1919, in NARA, RG 65 (BI), OG 185211 (Microfilm Nr. 588). 49 See lists of I.W.W. members and ‘Men of Anarchistic Tendencies in Internment Camps. Held at Fort Oglethorpe’, in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–7869; and RG 65 (Bureau of Investigation) 369609 Microfilm No. 811. 50 See Joseph R. Conlin (ed.), At the Point of Production: The Local History of the I.W.W. (Westport, CT, 1981), pp. 12–13. 51 Frank Ewantschitz to Attorney General, 16 July 1919, in NARA, RG 407, Box 7, NA. 52 ‘Proceedings of a Board of Officers Convened Upon the Shooting of Enemy Alien Peter Czan’, 9 July 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 133. 53 For a complete set of this journal see NARA, RG 407, Box 7 and 23. Also Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, collection Ts European War: Prisoners and Prisons, O 68. See also Jeanne Glaubitz Cross and Ann K. D. Myers, ‘“Orgelsdorfer Eulenspiegel” and the German Internee Experience at Fort Oglethorpe, 1917–19’, Georgia Historical Quarterly, 96.2 (2012), pp. 233–59. 54 Posselt was arrested in July 1918 for making disloyal statements and allegedly deliberately incorrect translations of German texts which had to be submitted to the Alien Property Custodian for review. While searching his apartment, agents of the Bureau of Investigation supposedly found a poem by Posselt celebrating American losses in rhyme form. New York Times, 21 July 1918, p. 10. 55 See Davis, ‘“Orgelsdorf”’, p. 259. 56 NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–1761. 57 NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–1761. 58 Die Bombe, 10 August 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 3. 59 It was not possible to determine when Die Bombe stopped its publication. See NARA, RG 407, Box 3. 60 Several courses were offered: English, Spanish, Russian, French, Economics, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, History, Art History, Music and Law. Die Bombe, 10 August 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 3. Articles from the Bombe were quoted in some German-American newspapers, such as the Schenectady Herold Journal, 9 May 1919, p. 5. 61 Tagebuch F. W. Legler (n.d.), in NARA, RG 407, Box 16. 62 See Britanny Sealey, ‘Criminalizing a Culture: Race, Citizenship, and Internment in World War I Georgia’, Federal Lawyer, 64.7 (2017), pp. 68–75 (here p. 72). 63 For a micro history of the camp, see Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, pp. 599–630. 64 See Frances H. Early, A World Without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse, NY, 1998), p. 106. 65 For the history of the military camp during the First World War, see Pedersen, History of Fort Douglas, Utah, pp. 302–17. 66 Salt Lake Tribune, 11 June 1917, p. 14. 67 For a detailed description, see Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, pp. 599–630.

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68 See Jörg Nagler, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment in World War I: Alvo von Alvensleben in Fort Douglas, Utah, a Case Study’, Utah Historical Quarterly, 58 (1990), pp. 388–405. 69 See Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, p. 602. 70 See George L. Byram to Adjutant General of the Army, 21 September 1918, in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–97–11; and Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, p. 611. 71 As with the arrival of the Cormoran crew in June, once again a big crowd of people gathered in Salt Lake City – see Salt Lake Tribune, 12 September, 1917, p. 7. 72 See William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933, 2nd ed. (Urbana and Chicago, IL, 1994), p. 249. 73 On Kurt G. Wilkens, one of the escapees, see David G. Wageman, ‘“Rausch Mit”: The I.W.W. in Nebraska During World War I’, in Joseph R. Conlin (ed.), At the Point of Production: The Local History of the I.W.W. (Westport, CT, 1981), pp. 124–5. 74 Seattle Post Intelligencer, 24 February 1918, in NARA, RG 165, MID, 9771–23–1103. 75 Salt Lake Tribune, 24 February 1918, p. 1. 76 See Nagler, ‘Alvo von Alvensleben’, p. 237. 77 Ibid., p. 238. 78 Alvensleben to Swiss Legation, 1 June 1919: ‘I had to spend altogether eleven days in the guardhouse under humiliating conditions’, in NARA, RG 165, MID 10972–20. 79 Erich Brandeis, ‘Little Prussia’ in an Internment Camp’, American Law Review, 53 (1919), pp. 107–8. 80 See Browning’s report, 1 August 1918, in NARA, RG 165, MID, 10972–7–2. 81 Nagler, ‘Alvo von Alvensleben’, p. 240. 82 Der Scheinwerfer, Nr. 1, 16. Februar 1919, RG 407, Box 85, NA. 83 See Jörg Nagler, ‘Amerikanischer Antikommunismus von der First Red Scare zu McCarthy’, in Norbert Frei and Dominik Rigoll (eds.), Der Antikommunismus in seiner Epoche: Weltanschauung und Politik in Deutschland, Europa und den USA (Göttingen, 2017), p. 210. 84 Cited in Alvensleben to Attorney General, 10 April 1919, in NARA, JD, 9–16–12–3 3–29. 85 Psychologist Casey to Adjutant General of the Army, War Prison Section, Washington, DC, 28 April 1920, in NARA, RG 407, Box 224, 386.6. Alvensleben was released from Fort Douglas in March 1920 on parole as one of the last internees and returned to Seattle. See Nagler, ‘Alvo von Alvensleben’, pp. 242–3. 86 Statistical calculations based on the data in NARA, RG 407, War Department, World War I, Prisoners of War and Alien Enemies in the United States, Box No. 1–39, 383–7. 87 See Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, p. 634. 88 See O’Brian to Webb, 30 March 1918, in NARA, RG 60, 187871–29 and O’Brian to Overman, 4 1918, in NARA, RG 60, 187871–33. 89 The Alien Property Custodian sequestrated over 25 million worth from these women during the war. See Adam J. Hodges, World War I and Urban Order: The Local Class Politics of National Mobilization (New York, NY, 2016), p. 106; and Kimberly Jensen, ‘From Citizens to Enemy Aliens: Oregon Women, Marriage, and the Surveillance State During the First World War’, Oregon Historical Quarterly, 114.4 (2013), pp. 453–73. 90 Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, NY, 1987), p. 54. 91 US Department of Justice, The Registration of German Alien Females, General Rules Dated April 19, 1918 (Washington, DC, 1918). See also the photograph in NARA, RG 165-WW-164-10 ‘Alien enemy women registering under the alien enemy women

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92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

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Jörg Nagler law’; ‘Alien Enemy Being Registered by the Authorities’, in ibid., 165-WW 164-D-5 (June, 1918); and Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor (eds.), Gender and the Great War (New York, NY and Oxford, 2017), pp. 19–20. O’Brian to Secretary of War, 19 September 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 74. See Sealey, ‘Criminalizing a Culture’, p. 71. See NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–5052. O’Brian to Secretary of War, 22 November 1918, in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–1450. Penrose to Major J.S. Jones, Adjutant General’s Department, 7 May 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 74. C. W. Penrose to Adjutant General, 8 August 1918, in NARA, RG 407, Box 74. O’Brian to Major Riley, 12 August 1918, in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12-Gen Sec. See NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–1254, Gen. Sec. Louis Post to J. Edgar Hoover (n.d.), in NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–5085. See NARA, RG 60, 9–16–12–7180, with photograph. Ibid. The historiography on the American home front in the First World War is now substantial, though very often the subject of enemy aliens and internment is neglected. For instance, David Kennedy in his classic study Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, NY, 1980), mentions enemy aliens only twice without referring to their internment. Some more recent publications, however, such as Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (Oxford and New York, NY, 2008) have a chapter on enemy aliens and their internment. One of the best analysis of Germanophobia in the neutrality period is Frank Trommler, ‘The Lusitania Effect: America’s Mobilization Against Germany in World War I’, German Studies Review, 32.2 (2009), pp. 241–66. See also Frederick Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War I (DeKalb, IL, 1974); and Katja Wüstenbecker, Deutsch-Amerikaner im Ersten Weltkrieg: US-Politik und nationale Identitäten im Mittleren Westen (Stuttgart, 2007). See Jörg Nagler, ‘Pandora’s Box: Propaganda and War Hysteria in the United States During the First World War’, in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), How Total Was the Great War? (New York, NY, 2000), pp. 73–93. Jörg Nagler, ‘The Mobilization of Emotions: Propaganda and Social Violence on the American Home Front During the First World War’, in Jessica Gienow-Hecht (ed.), Emotions in American History: An International Assessment (New York, NY and Oxford, 2010), pp. 66–91. Sandra C. Taylor, Roger Daniels et al., Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress (Seattle, WA, 2013). For Internment of German enemy aliens in the United States during the Second World War, see Jörg Nagler, ‘Internment of German Enemy Aliens in the United States During the First and Second World War’, in Saunders and Daniels (eds.), Alien Justice, pp. 74–9.

10

The New Zealand occupation of German Samoa during the First World War, 1914–18 Enemy aliens and internment Sandra Barkhof

During the First World War, around 400,000 enemy aliens were interned in Europe alone, although internment policies and practices varied in each country.1 Increasingly, civilian internment outside Europe, which may have involved around 50,000 to 100,000 civilians in total,2 has also received historiographical attention within the context of global and colonial warfare during the First World War.3 Yet only very few scholars have studied the First World War and wartime internment in the German Pacific colonies, largely due to the fact that although civilian internment had been introduced in Australia4 and New Zealand,5 it did not apply to the occupied German Pacific colonies with the exception of German Samoa.6 Germany had acquired a number of small colonies in the Pacific, including German Samoa (1899), German New Guinea (1884), and a range of small island chains in the Caroline, Marianne and Marshall Islands.7 These colonies were occupied in the autumn of 1914 by Australia, New Zealand and Japan until the end of the war, and they were then permanently removed from German control under the peace settlement of 1919. German New Guinea, with a German population of around 1,150,8 surrendered to Australian forces in September 1914 after a brief fight (making it the only German Pacific colony to offer notable armed resistance) and signed a Treaty of Surrender. Under this treaty, only members of the regular German Armed Forces were classed as prisoners of war, while civilians who had taken part in the fighting would be allowed to swear an oath of neutrality and return to their homes. Similarly, staff members of the former German administration were retained upon swearing an oath of neutrality. Only those who refused to swear the oath were to be deported to Australia but would then be allowed to return to Germany in accordance with the Treaty of Surrender.9 In practice, some of them found themselves at least temporarily in internment camps in Australia while waiting for onward transport. An exception was the island of Nauru, where all Germans from the island were deported. It would seem that the main reason for this was to bring the phosphate on the island under Australian control.10 Yet, civilian internment as such did not take place on New Guinea. The only exception was when Administrator Pethebridge was absent in June and July 1915 and his Acting Administrator Toll, suspecting a German led conspiracy to retake Rabaul, put the colony under martial law and interned all German inhabitants including

206 Sandra Barkhof women and children for a month, and deported around 30 Germans to Sydney. These measures, however, were suspended soon after Pethebridge’s return.11 The German Pacific colonies north of the Equator, including the Micronesian Island groups of the Marshall, Caroline and Marianne Islands, were occupied by Japan in October 1914. Again, no civilian internment took place in Micronesia, and initially the Germans on these islands were allowed to remain there, although those islanders wishing to return to Germany were given safe passage via Japan and the United States. However, after Australia expelled the Germans from Nauru, Japan followed suit in the case of the island of Angaur, which also contained phosphate deposits. Expulsion orders for other islands followed suit, although some missionaries remained on some of the islands until the end of the war.12 In contrast to New Guinea and the other islands, German Samoa, which was occupied by New Zealand forces, faced a different wartime experience. In the absence of a Treaty of Surrender, the New Zealand Administrator, Colonel Robert Logan, governed German Samoa through a series of proclamations which regulated wartime life on the island and relations with ‘subjects of an enemy nation’. Logan also sent a considerable proportion of all male German Samoans to be interned in New Zealand and constructed an internment camp on Samoa. So far, the wartime experience of these Samoa Germans has not been examined in depth, largely due to the comparatively small number of Germans involved and the relative lack of available primary sources. Yet, its unique experience in terms of military occupation and its consequences provides an interested micro study. Using a wide variety of primary sources including internee letters, memoirs as well as related government documents, this chapter will examine New Zealand’s occupation policy in Samoa including the internment of Samoa Germans in both Samoa and New Zealand. The chapter also aims to analyse selected aspects of internment to illustrate how the affected Samoa Germans perceived of, narrated and remembered their experiences. This chapter will highlight some of the more common complaints made by the internees and explore how these relate to and often were an expression of less tangible concerns such as a more general bitterness resulting from internment and the separation from home and family. It will examine how being recast as subjects of an enemy nation impacted on their perceptions of identity and how they utilised concepts of patriotism to make sense of their changed circumstances. Although the occupation authority in Samoa is referred to in contemporary documents as ‘British’ due to New Zealand’s status at the time as a British Dominion, this chapter will refer to matters concerning New Zealand as ‘New Zealand’ to avoid confusion.

The New Zealand occupation of German Samoa: administration and internment policies Prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, just over 300 Germans lived in German Samoa. The 1912–13 official German report on its colonies in Africa and the South Seas lists 222 male German adults (out of a total of 372 adult

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white males), sixty-three female adult Germans (out of ninety-nine adult white females) and forty-five children under fifteen years of age (out of seventy-three white children).13 Of the male German adults, forty were government officials, sixty-eight were planters/farmers or similar, sixty-four worked in trade and thirteen were registered as priests or missionaries. German Samoa was the first German colony to be occupied during the First World War. Both the German Imperial government at home, as well as the German administrative government in Samoa had quickly come to the conclusion that Samoa was indefensible, both due to its remote location and relative geopolitical insignificance, as well as the lack of fortification or other defensive measures on the island. As such, the Samoan governor, Dr Erich Schultz, had decided that no resistance was to be offered in case of attack.14 The New Zealand occupational force arrived on 29 August 1914 with 1,400 troops, demanding the immediate surrender of the island. In the end, no official treaty of surrender was concluded, and as a result, the ‘guidelines for the military administration of an occupied territory laid down in the Hague Convention applied to relations between the German civilian population and the occupying troops’.15 In theory, German Samoa remained German territory until a peace treaty decided otherwise, and as such the established laws and policies were to remain in place.16 The Hague Convention stipulated that the temporary administration was supposed to respect ‘unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country’.17 Yet, as Matthew Stibbe has pointed out, ‘even these more general principles were not adhered to by most of the belligerent states during the war’.18 In the case of German Samoa, the newly appointed administrator of Samoa, Colonel Robert Logan, who received his instructions from New Zealand under the auspices of the British Colonial Office, promulgated a series of proclamations designed to regulate wartime life and relations with ‘enemy nation subjects’, which often eroded and ‘continually diluted’ the existing German laws as well as the provisions laid out by the Hague Convention.19 The result was what has been called a ‘ramshackle administration’ consisting of a mix of existing laws and wartime occupation decrees.20 Wartime laws and policies were enforced by means of a military court that often utilised internment as a punishment for occupation law offences. In Samoa many complaints were made regarding the ‘harsh’ punishments for occupation law violations. For example, one Samoa German was sentenced by a military court to two years’ hard labour for being drunk and resisting arrest by striking the officer with his umbrella, while another one was away from his residence after curfew and was sentenced to 120 days hard labour before being interned until the end of war.21 Several others received similar punishments for comparative offences. The German Imperial Government complained about the severity of the punishments for these ‘minor offences considering the wartime circumstances’ and against the internment of the offenders in New Zealand ‘prisons like common criminals’.22 Hermann Hiery describes the legal proceedings against Germans accused of crimes and occupation law offences as ‘a farce’ whereby penalties were often set by proclamation only after the trial, and the accused were denied a defence

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council or the right to call witnesses.23 Yet, strictly speaking these legal proceedings were in accordance with military occupation jurisdiction, which resulted in there only being military courts.24 Therefore, these courts tried civilians who received punishments echoing the provisions of New Zealand’s War Regulations Act,25 which stipulated that enemy aliens arrested for seditious activities or for being considered ‘disaffected and dangerous’ could be imprisoned or detained (interned) by the military authorities or even executed.26 Although the Act was never extended to Samoa as such, it would still seem that its policies regarding enemy aliens also influenced how the wartime administration treated the Samoa Germans, including the application of civilian internment. Civilian internment was not ‘explicitly covered’ by the Hague Convention.27 However, civilian internment was widespread during the First World War, with differing practices in each state. In New Zealand, civilian internment was introduced in 1914. Somes Island, in Wellington harbour, was the main internment camp in New Zealand during the war. In August 1915, it contained 171 Germans, fourteen Austrians, one Hungarian and one Turkish national. Of these, seventy-two were military POWs, and 115 were civilian internees.28 The accommodation consisted of a number of rooms in various buildings of a former quarantine station. Each floor was heated by two fireplaces, and the rooms contained iron or wooden bedsteads and simple wooden tables.29 In 1917, another camp inspection report noted that the camp now housed 271 prisoners of war, of whom 222 were German subjects.30 Most of these were New Zealand enemy aliens. In 1914, an additional regulation (No 12) to the War Regulations Act was passed that authorised and allowed persons convicted in militarily occupied territory abroad to be detained in New Zealand.31 Most Samoa Germans destined for internment were thus also sent to New Zealand internment camps. This did not just include persons who had violated, in some form or other, the wartime regulations on Samoa. In fact, the first wave of internees consisted of the German governor Dr Schultz, as well as German officials who did not wish to remain in office as part of the new British administration.32 Based on the primary sources, it can be assumed that altogether no more than around sixty or seventy Samoa Germans were interned in New Zealand in the course of the war (some of whom were released at various point before 1918), perhaps around a quarter to a third of the male white German population of Samoa.33 The vast majority of these Samoa Germans were interned in New Zealand’s second internment camp on Motuihi Island in Auckland harbour, an abandoned mental hospital consisting largely of two buildings, one for the ‘first-class’ and one for the ‘second-class’ internees. It also housed some New Zealand enemy aliens, but was much smaller than Somes Island and was established as a ‘first-class’ internment camp.34 A letter dated 10 February 1915 from Motuihi camp stated that about forty prisoners of war lived in this camp, including the former governor of German Samoa, the chief judge, nearly all former German Samoa government officials, ten naval cadets and several others.35 Initially, two women had accompanied their husbands from Samoa to Motuihi but both had left for Germany via the United States by early 1916.36 A camp inspection report dated 1917 noted that the Motuihi camp

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now housed a total of eighty-four prisoners of war. The report also noted that a new hut for second-class prisoners had been completed, and a permanent supply of hot water been installed.37 Samoa Germans were sent for internment to New Zealand for both practical and logistical reasons. As indicated above, internment camps and associated protocols and processes had been set up in New Zealand with the outbreak of war and the implementation of the War Regulations Act. Occupied Samoa on the other hand lacked the required facilities needed for a large camp, which would have also put a strain on provisions, finances and personnel in Samoa, especially once the original expeditionary force had been replaced by a much smaller contingent of mostly older New Zealand soldiers.38 Nevertheless, an internment camp on Samoa was also eventually created in Sogi, Apia sometime prior to May 1917 in sheds on the grounds of the Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft (DHPG, German Trading and Plantation Company), housing no more than twenty Germans at a time.39 The camp was commanded by Lieutenant Carter, although a German prisoner was the actual supervisor.40 The Samoa internees were mostly men thrown out of employment through the closing of German stores after many German businesses in Samoa were sequestered in 1916.41 Although Logan wanted to send them to New Zealand as usual, the New Zealand Government thought they could just as well be looked after on Samoa.42 In January 1918, twenty-nine men in total had been interned on Samoa of whom thirteen had already been released by this time.43 In June 1918, the number of internees in Samoa was given as nineteen.44 Although a few women had left Samoa, many families of those interned stayed behind, which caused great anxiety among the married internees. Mr Hanssen, who had been the Managing Director of the DHPG in Samoa and who was deported to and interned in New Zealand in 1916, made a plea in May 1918 for the married Samoa Germans interned in New Zealand to be allowed to return to Samoa to enable them to look after and protect their families. He claimed that one wife had been a victim of attempted rape, another one had her children taken away after she fell grievously ill, and a third was turned into a ‘home-wrecking adulteress’ by the absence of her husband.45 He lamented that children were growing up without knowing their fathers, and that their families were living in ‘HELL: Pardon the expression’.46 Mr Hanssen noted in his diary in 1914 that a delegation of Samoa Germans had visited Colonel Logan to beg for protection of their families and allow more time for anyone about to be arrested to make sure their families were safe, if necessary by relocating them to a secure place. It was also enquired if the families could be sent to a neutral place such as the United States, which Logan promised to consider on a case-by-case basis.47 Mr Arendt similarly feared that the families of the married internees were left in Samoa without protection and mentioned how one wife of an interned planter was allegedly harassed by ‘Samoans’.48 The home front on Samoa also often meant financial hardships especially for dependants of those interned in New Zealand. A request for relief was denied by the British Government who advised that those concerned should ask the Swiss Consul to telegraph the

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German authorities to make relief funds available.49 A wholesale repatriation of Samoa German women and children during the war did not take place, although those who wished to return to Germany were often allowed to do so while this was still possible. The general route was via ship to the American West Coast, then cross country via train before taking another ship from the US East Coast across the Atlantic often to neutral Scandinavia and then onwards to Germany. However, this route was closed in 1917 when the United States entered the war, which also put a stop to repatriation from both Samoa and New Zealand until the end of the war.

Patriotic enemies and enemy patriots The treatment of enemy aliens as well as ‘subjects of enemy nations’ was influenced to a great extent by public patriotic fervour that often led to widespread Germanophobia. The demand for an extension of civilian internment in New Zealand stemmed in large part from increasing public pressure for stricter enemy alien control in the wake of the Gallipoli losses, the sinking of the Lusitania and the allegations of German atrocities in Belgium and France, as Andrew Francis’ study has shown.50 Thus, ‘as early as September 1914, items appeared in the press expressing concern’ about the perceived favourable treatment of enemy aliens in New Zealand.51 For instance, Consul Winslow noted in April 1916 when he inspected Motuihi Island, that some restrictions had been put in place regarding visits by internees to Auckland. Previously, internees had been allowed to go to Auckland under guard once a month, to go shopping or visit the doctor.52 Now these visits were being curtailed, ostensibly because the prisoners had started of late to abuse these privileges according to the camp commander – but this was also due to negative reports in the press about the ‘luxuries’ of camp life and lax security.53 As Mr Payne declared in the New Zealand Parliament on 12 May 1916, the internees on Motuihi Island were supposedly ‘having a high old time at the expense of this country’.54 At other times, press reports detailing German atrocities in Europe could trigger public demands for some sort of retaliation. For example, Dr Schultz noted that whenever the internees in the Motuihi camp complained, they were told that this was revenge for the German atrocities committed in Belgium.55 Mr Klehn, smuggling a letter to his family in Germany, complained about the New Zealand soldiers’ plundering at Christmas 1915, apparently with the justification that the Germans were also plundering to their heart’s desire in Belgium.56 A letter from the DHPG to the German Colonial Office in 1916 blamed the alleged bad treatment of the POW on anti-German rabble-rousing in the New Zealand press.57 This was by no means unique to New Zealand; newspapers and public opinion played an important role in many Allied countries in creating anti-German stereotypes and propaganda, spy fever and Germanophobia, often exerting pressure and leading campaigns for further enemy alien exclusion, including demands for their wholesale internment and/or expulsion.58 Indeed, after the sinking of the Lusitania, and the subsequent riots throughout the Empire, the British Prime Minister

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Herbert H. Asquith ‘declared the introduction of wholesale internment for males of military age’ for their own protection and to minimise the security threat they posed.59 In addition, women, children and men over military age were made subject to repatriation.60 In New Zealand, although policy on internment was based on British instructions, and despite increasing domestic public pressure, neither wholesale internment nor large scale repatriation were introduced, partly because it would have been impossible to intern or repatriate all enemy aliens and their descendants. In addition, many enemy aliens had been in New Zealand for decades, had made great contributions to their new home country and had often been naturalised.61 Events and opinions in New Zealand also influenced policy on Samoa, where rumours emerged after the sinking of the Lusitania that the internment of all German Samoans was planned.62 Logan apparently told some members of the DHPG that he was expecting an imminent order to intern all remaining Germans, including women and children, and was making plans to convert the copra sheds of the DHPG into an internment camp.63 Apparently, and mirroring Asquith’s declaration in favour of mass internment in May 1915, Logan had explained to the native Samoans that German soldiers had killed women and children in Belgium, which had enraged his soldiers so much, that the Germans might have to be interned for their own security. Yet, in the case of Samoa, it seems that public pressure for tighter enemy alien controls originated largely from New Zealand rather than from the allied residents of Samoa. As early as August 1914, a petition signed by ninety-three British, French and Belgian residents of Samoa pledged that they fully appreciate[d] the kindness shown to us by Dr Schultz and the German officials and residents in Samoa since the war was announced on the 4th instant, and hope that in the event of a change of flags, His Excellency Dr Schultz and the German residents will meet with the same consideration that we received.64 Mr Arendt, a Samoa German who had left Samoa in late 1915, reported that some of the British residents in Samoa had continued to treat the German residents ‘very kindly’, and had even protested to Logan against the announced internment.65 Daniel Steinbach notes similar expressions of support by British citizens for their German colleagues in his study on German East Africa.66 This would appear to be a reflection of the multinational make-up of colonial society. German Samoa, in 1913, registered eighty-seven British, nineteen French and twenty-eight US ‘White Males’ plus thirty-one ‘White Females’ from these countries.67 As such, colonial society was not exclusively German, and many had developed close ties to foreign national neighbours and business partners. In addition, much of the German Samoan trade had been conducted with British business partners, especially in Australia and New Zealand.68 Therefore, the desire to safeguard this German trade during the war led the German Samoa Company to note in October 1914 that the British occupation rescued the plantations and the

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Samoan economy from ‘unspeakable wartime calamities – apart from political and patriotic considerations’.69 They recommended friendly cooperation with the military administration ‘as far as this could be reconciled with one’s national sensibilities’.70 Not everyone, however, was able to follow this recommendation since patriotism was a major driving force behind wartime attitudes. As shown above, antiGerman patriotism steered public opinion in New Zealand, but equally, it also played an important role in shaping the self-identity of many Samoa Germans. The more pragmatic approach of some was considered by others as deeply unpatriotic under the wartime circumstances. For example Mr Arendt complained bitterly about the glaring lack of Deutschtum on Samoa since the occupation: ‘A terrible servility has developed here’, he wrote in 1915, listing fellow Samoa Germans who allegedly had fraternised with the New Zealand occupation force and had even held five o’clock teas ‘for English ladies’.71 He equally lamented the anti-German reports now featured in the Samoa Times, although the paper was still published by a Samoa German.72 Mr Arendt believed that some Samoa Germans simply wanted to avoid trouble out of ‘a despicable fear’ of the potential consequences. He also thought that since some Samoa Germans had left Germany years or decades ago, they had lost all sense of national identity. ‘They are not German anymore’, Mr Arendt wrote, ‘and do not deserve the honour of our attention’.73 In pre-war German discourse, the concept of the German nation as Heimat had been extended to include the German colonies and the German diaspora abroad in an effort to construct a mythical global Deutschtum as part of imperial nationalism in the Wilhelmine period.74 According to Stefan Manz, during the war, ‘pro-German nationalism was an increasingly powerful force in ethnic [German] communities’ abroad, which helped turn the war into a ‘truly global war’.75 Now, the continued belief in and defence of this Deutschtum appeared to symbolise the longing for and belonging to the national community, whereby Samoa remained a piece of Heimat despite its occupation. Defiant patriotism, according to Mr Arendt, who advocated supporting and defending this Heimat and the Fatherland regardless of potential consequences, equated to moral superiority. Those who had ‘assimilated’, or who had developed ‘Anglophile’ tendencies during the war, were seen as weak and deserving of Mr Arendt’s contempt since they had descended ‘to “lower” levels [of] civilisation’.76 Moral superiority hereby managed to replace, to a certain extent, colonial political and military superiority, which had been lost in the occupation. Patriotism as such provided a focus of self-identification and helped negate the new status of Samoa Germans as occupied ‘second-class people’ in their own colony. An important aspect of this patriotism was the continued link with the metropolis to uphold the belief that Samoa continued to be part of the greater German Empire. Consequently, many Samoa Germans felt an overwhelming desire to be part of the ‘Grosse Zeit’77 and the national ‘grand, unified collective’ during this ‘time of greatness’.78 Many of their letters and memoirs bear witness to ‘their longing for home’.79 It is therefore not surprising that one of the most persisted complaints from Germans on Samoa was that they were not allowed to send or receive mail

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from home or read German newspapers. Since the occupation of Samoa, all mail correspondence with Germany had been forbidden. The complete lack of contact constituted for many Samoa Germans a painfully felt separation from the imagined national community. Mrs Zieschank wrote in her memoirs that the worst thing was the cruel hardship of not being allowed to send or receive mail to and from their loved ones. She wrote that ‘we are excluded from our holy Volksgemeinschaft’ [national community].80 Mr Klehn lamented that the Samoa Germans were entirely dependent on food and drink from Australia and New Zealand. A tin of German sausage was a rare culinary delight, and ‘we would pay Lord knows how much for a good cigar or a bottle of good German beer’.81 Yet, Mr Klehn remained optimistic: all Germans here without exception are steadfastly convinced of German victory. . . . Germany is armed against the whole world and prepared for all eventualities . . . despite the English web of lies indicating time and again that we conjured up this war.82 This continued belief in the ultimate superiority of the German Empire vis-à-vis its enemies repeated the pre-war discourse of Great Power hierarchy. The war was perceived by some as a Kulturkrieg – whereby Germany’s perceived superior civilisation resulted in its mission to usher ‘in a new age of European civilization’.83 ‘Germany’ was frequently equated to ‘good’ and a ‘German victory would further the cause of culture’.84 As Jeffrey Verhey’s study has shown, fervent patriotism was de rigeur in Germany in the autumn of 1914.85 In Samoa, far removed and cut off from the frontlines, one might argue that it continued to be so long after the initial 1914 euphoria had been dampened by the realities of trench warfare, loss and suffering at home in Germany. To Mr Klehn, military occupation by an enemy force was but a minor setback en route to eventual German victory and the assertion of Germany’s status as the leading Great Power and ‘superior civilisation’.86 As such, his patriotic beliefs helped him negate the impact of the reality of defeat and occupation.

Suffering for the fatherland: wartime internment Similarly, those who experienced a double loss of freedom through both occupation and subsequent internment were vocal about how they considered the internment conditions to be not ‘befitting’ their supposedly leading role in the cultural hierarchy of civilisations. This was often expressed through complaints about the ‘primitive’ nature of the accommodation, which was frequently described as unsuitable for Europeans. In the case of the internment camp on Samoa, the Imperial German Government protested sharply against this internment in ‘a hot and damp tropical island like Samoa [which] involves the greatest physical and moral injury to those concerned’.87 This was a reflection of the common belief that living in the tropics would expose Europeans to the ‘deleterious mental and physical effects of the hot sun and climate’.88 As Deborah Neill

214 Sandra Barkhof points out, ‘there was an entire subfield of medical studies on mental disorders that Europeans might contract in warm climates’.89 In Britain, these were often referred to as tropical neurasthenia, while in Germany the idea of the Tropenkoller (an ill-defined and highly ambivalent ‘disease’ affecting white colonials brought about by the tropical climate) featured widely in political debates ‘as well as in the discourses of tropical medicine and contemporary psychiatry’ around the turn of the century.90 Tropenkoller or ‘tropical nervous breakdown’, as well as the ‘corruption of the nervous system by the climate or colonial environment’,91 was considered to be the extreme form of the adverse effect of the tropical climate and was often used to explain, or even excuse, colonial violence or brutality as ‘an exceptional lack of judgement and temporary loss of control caused by climatic influences’.92 These beliefs were common place until at least the 1930s,93 and persisted in some places even after that, albeit usually in a more diluted form. For instance, in a manner reminiscent of the Tropenkoller argument, Hiery claims that the ‘Germans in Samoa had the worst time of all [South Pacific German colonies]’, since Colonel Logan seemed to have been bored, drunk with dictatorial power, and was ‘obviously affected mentally by the tropical climate’.94 Thus, exposure to the ‘primitive’ environment of the tropics was often considered as posing a threat to ‘civilised peoples’ contributing to the outbreak of tropical neurasthenia.95 Under normal circumstances, European residences and clothing in the tropics were designed to maximise protection from the ‘solar threat’, while also establishing a visual distinction from the ‘native’ colonial sphere.96 This reflected certain contemporary opinions which argued, in a mixture of racial and quasimedical arguments, that Europeans, weakened by the tropical climate, needed to be separated and protected from the ‘unhealthy and unsanitary “natives”’ and their infectious diseases.97 By extension, unsanitary and basic ‘native’ living conditions, so it was believed, would wreak havoc on their European bodies. Indeed, in the case of tropical internment, internees often lamented that they were forced to reside in conditions resembling the crude nature of native tropical accommodation. Echoing similar complaints made in other internment camps located in tropical countries during the First World War,98 the internees on Samoa bemoaned the relatively ‘primitive’ conditions of their camp, which supposedly offered little protection from the climate. They complained that the bathing house and the kitchen were ‘too warm’ since they were covered with corrugated iron. They also complained about the lack of shaded exercise space, which meant that the heat often forced them to remain inside their shed all day especially since an early curfew did not allow them to use the cooler evening for exercise. The shed itself was described as primitive and unhealthy, exposed to the wind, with no windows, just blinds. Under the shed was a cellar, in which standing water would create an unhealthy atmosphere in the shed above. The prisoners were convinced that the unhealthy accommodation had led to many illnesses.99 The Principal Medical Officer, inspecting the camp in March 1918, agreed that the sheds were ‘not suitable for further occupation’, noting the damp, lack of air flow, likelihood of flooding and issues with the dirty flooring, although he also found no

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major sickness among the prisoners apart from minor health complaints and an anaemic appearance.100 Mr Hanssen claimed that German civilians were interned on Samoa in ‘unhealthy and inhuman’ conditions.101 Outraged, he complained to Logan that it would be impossible to accommodate Europeans in the foul smelling old copra sheds of the DHPG.102 Having to stay in such a tropical internment camp, he argued, must be ‘the height of horrors’.103 Despite the protestations, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, categorically stated that ‘subject to the ordinary dictates of humanity, His Majesty’s Government have every right to establish camps for prisoners of war wherever they please’.104 As a further justification, it was argued that those interned in Samoa were there because they objected to deportation.105 Nevertheless, a report by the Principal Medical Officer, who claims to have visited the camp each month, noted that the valid complaints had been addressed, the cellar filled in, the sheds whitewashed and that there had been ‘no sickness among the prisoners’ since the camp had been established.106 He also noted that the internees on Samoa ‘are extremely lazy’, which prompted him to give orders for compulsory exercise, either in the cooler morning and evening (making no mention of curfew restrictions), to benefit their health and ‘remove their anaemic appearance’.107 Furthermore, in August 1918, it was decided that although ‘Samoa cannot be regarded as unhealthy, arrangements will nevertheless be made to transfer the prisoners of war now interned there, to New Zealand at the first convenient opportunity’, with or without the consent of the detainees.108 The twenty remaining internees in Samoa were eventually transferred to the Motuihi camp, New Zealand on 13 October 1918.109 Yet transfer to New Zealand did not put an end to complaints relating to climate and accommodations. The Samoa Germans, many of whom had lived in the tropics for some time, now bemoaned the sudden climate change and its damaging consequences for their health. For instance, Mr Tecklenburg, who was accompanied by his wife, wrote that the Samoa Germans initially interned on Somes Island in September 1914 could not suffer the ‘cold and windy climate’ there and were transferred to Motuihi Island within a month of their arrival.110 On Motuihi Island, an inspection report from June 1915 by Mr Winslow, the American General Consul, reported that the German prisoners were in good health apart from Dr Schultz, who claimed to suffer from bronchitis and rheumatism due to the cold climate.111 According to a fellow internee, the climate change posed a direct and imminent threat to the life and health of Dr Schultz, who had spent fifteen years in the tropics and was now exposed to the ‘decidedly rough and inhospitable climate of New Zealand’ with ‘permanent cold southerly winds’.112 The accommodation on Motuihi received as much criticism as the sheds on Samoa. Although the Sydney Morning Herald reported on 17 September 1915 that the New Zealand authorities were ‘doing everything to make the quarters on the island comfortable’,113 the accommodation in New Zealand was often equally criticised by the internees as ‘primitive’ and ‘unsanitary’. A letter by an internee from February 1915 described the Motuihi camp as primitive, consisting of two wooden houses covered in corrugated iron and subdivided

216 Sandra Barkhof into 6 x 9 feet wooden cells that had formerly been occupied by mental patients.114 Mrs Charlotte Sossous (Sessous) who visited her husband in Motuihi en route to the United States thought the accommodation was very small and primitive. She described the house as near derelict and commented that the old mental hospital had been closed as the houses were too old and in disrepair. She noted only two fireplaces in the barrack, one in the so called ‘ladies parlour’, the other in the corridor.115 Dr Schultz also complained about the fact that the camp had not been sufficiently cleaned before they moved in, and had leaking toilets, both of which, he claimed, put the health of the prisoners in danger and had led to ‘rashes’ (although US Consul Winslow noted that he checked the toilets and found them not leaking, and that none of the prisoners had any rashes).116 These complaints about the ‘primitive and unsanitary’ nature of their accommodation in sheds, a quarantine station and a derelict mental hospital were part and parcel of the bitterness among the internees over enemy alien treatment, the loss of their freedom and the ‘grim realities of internment’.117 In some cases, this was further aggravated by demands for treatment according to prewar social status. Indeed, enemy alien classification and treatment often followed established social norms regarding class structure. Generally speaking civilian internment camps worldwide were often split into camps and sections for different classes or similar distinctions based on ‘wealth, education and occupation’ be it in the form of ‘gentlemen’s camps’ in England, the ‘millionaires camp’ in the United States,118 or the first and second-class huts at Motuihi. This not only meant that people of privilege were often grouped together in camps with superior accommodation, they could also use their own funds to further improve the facilities. Treatment according to social status was not only often provided, but also expected. Dr Schultz repeatedly complained that he and the higher civil servants were not being treated according to their rank (and in the case of Dr Schultz, his status as former Governor).119 He particularly objected to having to share the accommodation with lower ranking officers. When Dr Schultz was offered a transfer to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands (in response to his complaints about the cold climate in New Zealand), he apparently declined the offer since it was only extended to himself and not to the other internees of higher rank.120 In the case of Dr Schulz, the accommodation issue was eventually addressed, and a bungalow of ‘some six or eight rooms . . . comfortably furnished’ was built for Dr Schultz.121 Yet although camp conditions and treatment may have bruised individual, national and patriotic sensibilities, they rarely had a lasting effect on the physical or mental health of the internees. Nevertheless, it must not be ignored that many internees’ psychological well-being progressively deteriorated the longer the internment lasted. It would appear that the daily monotony of camp life was the main culprit in causing a specific melancholy and form of depression, which was described by the Swiss expert Dr Vischer as ‘barbed wire disease’.122 In larger camps, a vibrant cultural life often developed, which was an important survival strategy that created the illusion of some sort of normal life behind the

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wire. The extent to which camp culture could develop depended on a number of factors that varied from camp to camp. As Heather Jones points out: Captives often displayed incredible levels of ingenuity and creativity in improvising this kind of camp culture; however, such activities were effectively limited to the larger, well-resourced prison camps or to officer prisoners.124 However, even in camps with ‘buzzing activity’ the ‘mental state of inmates deteriorated steadily as internment dragged on’, as Stefan Manz and Tilman Dedering observed in their study of internment in South Africa during the First World War.125 In the small camps of Samoa and Motuihi, with limited space and only few inmates, there were hardly any diversions on offer to help alleviate the unrelenting boredom and daily tedium felt by the internees struggling with monotonous daily schedules. Herr Kafka, a Motuihi internee who had been released in 1915, mentioned the dullness of camp life as a defining parameter of his internment.126 Similarly, a camp inspection in 1915 noted that the German internees were unhappy about the dull nature of life in captivity.127 ‘It is not so much boredom, but the monotony of our existence that depresses us’, wrote Mr Mars in 1915.128 Some internees wished for work to relieve the boredom, yet paid work was not readily available on the island camps in New Zealand, or on Samoa. At Somes, which was a somewhat larger camp with more internees, it was noted that the only work asked of the prisoners was to help in the kitchen, serving dishes and cleaning the camp. In good weather, the prisoners had to be outside for two hours each morning and afternoon, although specific exercises were not prescribed.129 Repetitive daily schedules even seemed to extend to the weekly menu. Mrs Sessous thought the food provided at Motuihi was good (apart from the coffee) and plentiful, although there were complaints that mutton was served far too often.130 The weekly menus reproduced in the camp inspection reports seem to confirm this. Several prisoners at Somes also complained about the monotony of the food (again mutton featured heavily on the provided meal plan) and the lack of more fresh vegetables.131 On the surface, these complaints may seem somewhat trivial, but they were symptomatic of the much deeper psychological effects of internment. Internment constituted for many a loss of power and control resulting in an inability to influence even the most mundane aspects of life, be it the weekly food schedule or the question of which book to read in the evening. This often contributed to feelings of self-loathing and uselessness.132 Indeed, some internees, especially the ones of military service age, conveyed envy that friends and family at home were able to experience this Grosse Zeit from close proximity, while the internee’s own life was ‘inconsequential’, cut off from the momentous events in Europe and unable to make a difference.133 Frustrated, one internee bemoaned that he was ‘unable to do anything while the whole world is in motion’.134 Similarly, Mr Pfeil wrote of his regret about being powerless to do anything for ‘our beloved Fatherland’.135 Mr Pfeil had

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left Samoa without permission in an effort to go home to Germany to do his bit for the war effort. He was captured and imprisoned for three years. In prison, he was devastated that he ‘had to watch from a far how at home, far far away, our comrades risk their lives in battle for Emperor and Fatherland’.136 While we might argue that he and his fellow internees were better off than their comrades at the front, for him, imprisonment was an emasculating experience that disturbed his understanding of ‘masculine selfhood and self-worth’.137 In Germany, as Sonja Levsen has argued, the military had profoundly influenced images of masculinity throughout the nineteenth century, whereby the military ideal of manliness became culturally dominant by 1900.138 Hull has observed that ‘military service became synonymous with manhood and with citizenship’.139 As such, the soldier came to embody an idealised form of masculinity, and was regarded, especially by many women in Imperial Germany, as the man, the model man, the prototype.140 The military ideal of manliness encompassed ‘desirable’ values and attributes such as discipline, obedience, cleanliness, reliability, self-sacrifice; and enshrined the soldier hero who would be willing to die for the fatherland.141 As such, especially during wartime, the soldier became the ‘quintessential figure of masculinity’.142 In addition, as Graham Dawson has observed, after 1914 this figure of the soldier-hero became intrinsically linked to the nation and national identity, the masculine complement to ‘a vision of domestic femininity’.143 This in turn gave rise to the idea of the ‘Frontgeist’, which was understood as the ‘supreme moral authority’ generated by ‘the voice of the frontline soldier’.144 Therefore, some internees, like their compatriots still on Samoa, may have turned to patriotism in order to emphasise their national solidarity with the fatherland, and the troops fighting at the front.145 For the internee, this was an indirect way to still be part of the nationalised masculine space. Unable to join the fight, or otherwise ‘do their bit’, expressions of patriotism were limited to, for example, celebrating the Emperor’s birthday, with a festive church service and appropriately patriotic theatre performance in the afternoon.146 Similarly, the internees tried to maintain a lifeline to Volk and Vaterland through the mail, which became a tangible part of the Heimat, and therefore a way to alleviate the feelings of exclusion. German books were highly priced but difficult to come by.147 German newspapers were not permitted in the camps. However, unlike their compatriots in Samoa, the German Samoan internees in New Zealand were permitted to write and receive letters. Indeed, pleas for more letters as well as anxious enquiries if letters had reached their destination feature in much of the internees’ correspondence. For instance, Mr Pfeil begged his sister; ‘Please do write me’, anxious for news from the home front.148 The narrative of continued suffering was another link to the national community at home and the comrades in the trenches. Jennifer Kewley Draskau points out that at least some prisoners of war ‘aspired to share in the glory through the exaggeration of their own hardships’ and felt a ‘need to be perceived as casualties of war’.149 Thus, the complaints and the hardships endured by the internees served to fulfil the wartime norm of equating masculinity with suffering. As shown above, especially the internees far removed from the European frontlines

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often felt that they had been side-lined and excluded, and as such felt the need to stress their continued suffering for the distant fatherland.150 Although this was by far not the only reason for complaints, it helps to explain some of the bitterness among internees, despite the fact that, on the face of it, it could be argued that especially those in the Motuihi camp were far better off than their comrades in the trenches or in other internment camps worldwide. Yet, the very fact that their conditions were better might have led some internees to highlight the negative aspects so that they would not perceived to be sitting out the war in cosy and safe imprisonment at the far side of the world.151 Anxious to demonstrate the opposite, pleas for help were sent home, often in code to bypass the New Zealand censor. For instance, one interesting letter from Somes Island appears to contain a code whereby certain words have been underlined (by the internee?) that spell out: ‘why are you not helping 9 men already mentally ill’ (expressed through reference to a well-known mental asylum in Germany, a code that would not be picked up by the censor). The word ‘300’ is also underlined in the sentence ‘300 men are here’ possibly to indicate that the situation had a general detrimental effect on the mental health of those interned on Somes Island.152

Conclusion In conclusion, this analysis of the German experience of the First World War in Samoa and New Zealand provides an insight into a number of complex issues that might also be observed in other colonial theatres of the First World War where war and internment had a similar impact on colonial Germans. The experience of Samoa Germans was different to those living in other German Pacific colonies as Samoa was put under military occupation and administered through a series of military proclamations and decrees, which introduced policies that resembled the provisions of the New Zealand War Regulations Act, even though the Act was not formally extended to Samoa. As such the Germans living there found themselves re-classified as ‘subjects of an enemy nation’ – not quite enemy aliens, although in reality this distinction was often purely theoretical. Those Samoa Germans refusing to swear an oath of neutrality and officials who were not retained in, or who resigned from, the administration were interned in New Zealand, along with others who had been found guilty of occupation law offences. In their case, internment usually followed other punishments, often in the form of hard labour or other imprisonment. Generally speaking, enemy alien policy in New Zealand was to some degree influenced by popular Germanophobia, which increasingly demanded stricter enemy alien treatment. This also influenced policy on Samoa, although here, it can be noted that the pre-war multinational make-up of the colony and its business interests may have contributed to somewhat less hostile feelings among the European residents. Many Samoa Germans also sought refuge in patriotism during the war, which often served as a coping mechanism to re-imagine the occupation and to maintain the otherwise severed links to the German metropolis. This applies both to those who remained on Samoa, and those who were interned in New Zealand.

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Complaints concerning the ‘unsuitable’ climate and ‘unworthy’ accommodation expressed bitterness over the new status as ‘second-class’ Europeans whereby fervent expressions of patriotism tried to maintain the pre-war narrative of Germany as a leader among the European Great Powers. Patriotism was also gendered; especially internees of military service age often expressed regret at not being able to join their comrades at the front and fulfil their patriotic masculine duty. Their complaints often served to highlight that despite their internment in distant New Zealand, they were also suffering for the Fatherland, to counter the idea that they were sitting out the war in their ‘cosy imprisonment’. In addition, many internees suffered from the effects of boredom and monotony. In the case of Samoa and especially the internment camp on Motohui, the small size of the camps and the relatively few internees there made it difficult to establish an active and varied camp life that could often be found in larger internment camps in Europe and elsewhere. The resulting daily monotony contributed to ‘barbed wire’ depression and feelings of uselessness and inconsequentiality among some internees. The mental and physical displacement caused by the occupation and internment did not end in 1918. After the war, New Zealand continued to administer former German Samoa as a League of Nations mandate. As a result, most Samoa Germans were forcibly repatriated to Germany, despite often desperate pleas to be allowed to return to Samoa. Some had Samoan wives there, others stood to lose most of their possessions. However, they often had little choice but to try and build a new life in the Weimar Republic.

Notes 1 Jonathan F. Vance, ‘Civilian Internees World War One’, in Jonathan F. Vance (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Prisoners of War and Internment (Santa Barbara, CA, 2006), pp. 49–50 (here p. 50). 2 Matthew Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe, 1914–20’, Immigrants & Minorities, 26.1–2 (2008), pp. 49–81 (here p. 49). 3 For example, Kay Saunders and Roger Daniels, Alien Justice: Wartime Internment in Australia and North America (St Lucia, Queensland, 2000); Tammy M. Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1914–1918 (New York, NY and London, 2010); and Panikos Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities During the First World War (London, 2014). 4 See, for example, Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront Experience in Australia 1914–1920 (St Lucia, Queensland, 1989). 5 See, for example, Andrew Francis, “To Be Truly British, We Must Be Anti-German”: New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War Experience, 1914–1919 (Frankfurt/ Main and New York, NY, 2012); and Francis, ‘From “Proven Worthy Settlers” to “Lawless Brutish Huns”: Germans in New Zealand during the Great War’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 289–310. 6 See, for example, Hermann J. Hiery, The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War 1 (Honolulu, HI, 1995). 7 Not discussed as part of this chapter is the German colony of Qingdao in China. 8 New Guinea Government Gazette, 1 December 1914. Copy in Bundesarchiv Berlin (henceforth BArch), R1001/2611. 9 Cf. Hiery, The Neglected War, p. 25.

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10 Ibid., p. 40. 11 Charles Dunford Rowley, The Australians in German New Guinea, 1914–1921 (Melbourne, 1958), p. 57. 12 Livia Loosen, Deutsche Frauen in den Südseekolonies des Kaiserreichs (Bielefeld, 2014), pp. 568–70. 13 Reichs-Kolonialamt, Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1912– 1913 (Berlin, 1914), p. 34. 14 Mr Hanssen, War Diary, entry 28 August 1914, in BArch, R1001–2624. 15 Hiery, The Neglected War, p. 41. 16 Malama Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa (Fiji, 1987), p. 106. 17 The Hague Convention 1907, Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV), Annex to the Convention, Section III Military Authority Over the Territory of the Hostile State, Article 43, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp (accessed 12/ 06/2017). 18 Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment’, p. 56. 19 Hiery, The Neglected War, p. 42. 20 J. W. Davidson, Samoa mo Samo: The Emergence of the Independent State of Samoa (Melbourne, 1967), pp. 92–3. 21 Letter by US Consul Mason Mitchell, Apia, Samoa to the Secretary of State in Washington, dated 26 November 1914, in BArch, R1001/2624. 22 Auswärtiges Amt, Verbalnote to the US Embassy, 19 March 1915, in BArch, R1001/ 2624. 23 Hiery, The Neglected War, p. 43. 24 David Clark and Gerard McCoy, Habeas Corpus: Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific (Sydney, 2000), p. 182. 25 November 1914 with further amendments in 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, and revoked in 1920. 26 The War Regulations Act 1914 and its amendments can be found at https://nzhistory. govt.nz/war/index-wartime-laws-and-regulations-1914-21#_Toc332613729 (accessed 28/12/2016) and also in The National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth TNA), CO 210/38. 27 Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment’, p. 55. 28 US Consul-General Mr. Winslow, Camp Inspection Report Somes Island, 25 August 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 29 Ibid. 30 Mr Pugh, Swiss Consul in New Zealand, Camp Inspection Report, 12 July 1917, in BArch, R1001/2628. 31 Clark and McCoy, Habeas Corpus, p. 181. 32 See, for example, The Auckland Star, Prisoners of War, 25 September 1914. Copy in BArch, R1001/2624. Mrs Sessous claims that wives had been permitted to accompany their husbands to New Zealand (see her report dated 1915, BArch, R1001/ 2625) presumably as a temporary measure until repatriation back to Germany via the United States could be arranged. Two wives made use of this offer. Mrs Sessous was later allowed to stop off at Motuihi camp to visit her husband on her way home to Germany. 33 For example, Mrs Zieschank reported that in May 1916, twelve persons were sent to New Zealand (BArch, R1001/2627). A list [from 1916?] gives names of forty-eight Samoa Germans interned in New Zealand (BArch, R1001/2627) while another unofficial report from early 1916 lists twelve more (BArch, R1001/2627). A list of ‘colonial Germans interned in New Zealand and Australia’ features thirty-seven Samoa Germans, mostly on Motuihi Island (BArch R1001/2632). 34 Leilani Tamu, Restricted: Motuihi Island Internment Camp, 1914–18 (Auckland, 2015), p. 16.

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35 R. Hirsch, Letter From Motuihi Camp to the Atlantic Communication Company New York, 10 February 1915, BArch, R1001/2625. 36 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Report of Motuihi Island, 26 April 1916, in BArch, R1001/2627. 37 Mr Pugh, Swiss Consul for New Zealand, Camp Inspection Report, 17 July 1917, in BArch, R1001/2628. 38 See, for example, the report by the DHPG to the Colonial Office, based on earlier information from their agent in Pago Pago, 6 December 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 39 There is evidence that by May 1917, Mr Helg had been appointed ‘to inspect the internment camps at Samoa’. See Government House file on ‘Internment in Samoa’ from The Secretary of State For the Colonies, 30 October 1917, in New Zealand National Archive, Wellington (henceforth NZNA), G1 Box 227. 40 Mr Helg to Mr Pugh, Camp Inspection Report Samoa, written in Nifana, 22 January 1918, in BArch, R1001–262. 41 Although private property was protected by the Hague Convention, the New Zealand administration enabled the liquidation of businesses owned by enemy nation subjects. See for example British Military Occupation of Samoa, Proclamation No 29. Enemy Trading, 1916, in Australian National Archives, Canberra (henceforth ANA), 1916/ 28433. 42 Telegram from the Governor-General of New Zealand to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on 17 July 1918, in NZNA, EX19/17, p. 157. 43 Mr Helg to Mr Pugh, Camp Inspection Report Samoa, written in Nifana, 22 January 1918, in BArch, R1001/262. 44 Cable from the Administrator of Samoa to the Ministry of Defence in Wellington, 21 June 1918, in NZNA, EX29/17, p. 184. 45 Mr Hanssen, Letter to the Governor General of New Zealand from Motuihi Camp, 21 May 1918, in TNA, FO383/434. 46 Ibid. 47 Mr Hanssen, War Diary, 19 September 1914, in BArch, R1001/2624, p. 23. 48 Mr Arendt, Third Report on the Conditions in Samoa, attached to a report dated 14 November 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626, p. 3. 49 Note from the Colonial Office to the Prisoners of War Department, London, 4 November 1918, in TNA, FO383/434. 50 Francis, ‘To Be Truly British’, pp. 7 and 133. 51 Ibid., p. 114. 52 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Report, Motuihi camp, June 1915, in BArch, R1001/2625. 53 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Report, Motuihi, 26 April 1916, in BArch, R1001/2627. 54 Mr Payne addressing the New Zealand Parliament, 12 May 1916. New Zealand, Parliamentary Debates. May 9 to June 15, 1916 (Wellington, 1916), p. 102. 55 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Report Motuihi Island, 8 September 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 56 Mr Klehn, Letter to His Parents in Germany, Apia 10 March 1916, in BArch, R1001/ 2625. 57 Letter DHPG to Reichs-Kolonialamt, 4 January 1916, in BArch, R1001/2626. 58 Panikos Panayi, ‘Germans as Minorities During the First World War: Global Comparative Perspectives’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 11–12. 59 Ibid., p. 15. 60 Zoe Denness, ‘Gender and Germanophobia: The Forgotten Experiences of German Women in Britain, 1914–1919’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, p. 76. 61 Francis, ‘To Be Truly British’, pp. 134 and 151. 62 Report From Apia to the DHPG dated 6 December 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626.

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63 According to a report by Mr Arendt on the situation in Samoa dated 8 October 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 64 Sub Enclosure 1 to Despatch No 1, Apia, Samoa, 29 August 1914. European War: Correspondence relating to the Occupation of German Samoa by the expeditionary force from New Zealand. September 1915, London, Cd. 7972 [in British Library]. 65 Ibid. 66 Daniel Steinbach, ‘Power Majorities and Local Minorities: German and British Colonials in East Africa During the First World War’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, p. 273. 67 Reichs-Kolonialamt, Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, p. 34. 68 Cf. Hiery, The Neglected War. 69 Report from Mr Marggraff of the German Samoa Company (Deutsche Samoa Gesellschaft) in Samoa to the German Samoa Company in Berlin, Kriegszustand und spezielle Dispositionen, Tapatapao 10 October 1914, in BArch, R1001/2624. 70 Ibid. 71 Mr Arendt, Report on the Conditions on Samoa, 8 October 1915, in BArch, R1001/ 2626, pp. 17–18. Mr Arendt wrote this report after he had been allowed to repatriate from Samoa due to illness. 72 Ibid., p. 21. 73 Ibid., p. 20. 74 For more detail see, for example, Stefan Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora: The “Greater German Empire”, 1871–1914 (London, 2014). 75 For a full discussion, see Stefan Manz, ‘Diaspora and Weltpolitik in Wilhelmine Germany’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 27–46. 76 On ‘Verengländerung’, cf, Manz, Constructing, p. 59. 77 See, for example, Jennifer Kewley Draskau, ‘Kulturkrieg and Frontgeist From Behind the Wire: World War I Newspapers From Douglas Internment Camp’, in Gilly Carr and Harold Mytum (eds.), Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War (London, 2012), pp. 207–26. 78 Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939–45 (Oxford, 2003), p. 7. 79 A. J. Barker, Behind Barbed Wire (London, 1974), p. 141. 80 Frieda Zieschank, Ein Jahrzeht in Samoa 1906–1916 (Leipzig, 1918), p. 149. 81 Mr Klehn, Letter From to His Parents in Germany, Apia 10 March 1916, in BArch, R1001/2625. 82 Ibid. 83 Kewley Draskau, ‘Kulturkrieg and Frontgeist’, p. 208. 84 Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2004), p. 118. 85 Ibid. 86 Cf. Manz, Constructing, p. 67. 87 Memorandum No 6 in Government House file on ‘Internment camp at Samoa’ from The Secretary of State For the Colonies, 8 August 1918, in NZNA, G1 Box 229. 88 Anna Crozier, Practicing Colonial Medicine: The Colonial Medical Service in British East Africa (London, 2007), p. 36. 89 Deborah J. Neill, Networks in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Speciality, 1890–1930 (Stanford, CA, 2012), p. 67. 90 Stephan Besser, ‘Tropenkoller: The Interdiscursive Career of a German Colonial Syndrome’, in George Sebastian Rousseau (ed.), Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 303–21 (here p. 304). 91 Eva Bischoff, ‘Tropenkoller: Male Self-Control and the Loss of Colonial Rule’, in Maurus Reinkowski and Gregor Thum (eds.), Helpless Imperialists: Imperial Failure, Fear and Radicalization (Gōttingen, 2013), pp. 117–36 (here p. 120).

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92 Eva Bischoff, ‘Jack, Peter and the Beast: Postcolonial Perspectives on Sexual Murder and the Construction of White Masculinity in Britain and Germany at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, in Ulrike Lindner, Maren Möhring, Mark Stein and Silke Stroh (eds.), Hybrid Cultures – Nervous States: Britain and Germany in a (Post)Colonial World (Amsterdam and New York, NY, 2010), pp. 43–64 (here p. 58). 93 Cf. the discussion in Crozier, Practicing Colonial Medicine, pp. 36–8. 94 Hiery, The Neglected War, p. 41. 95 Ibid. 96 Dane Kennedy, ‘Minds in Crisis: Medico-Moral Theories of Disorder in the Late Colonial World’, in Harald Fischer-Tiné (ed.), Anxieties, Fear and Panic in Colonial Settings (Basingstoke, 2017), pp. 27–48 (here p. 32). 97 Neill, Networks, p. 70. 98 On German internees in India see, for example, Steinbach, ‘Power Majorities’, pp. 276–80. 99 Mr Helg to Mr Pugh, Camp Inspection Report Samoa, written in Nifana, 22 January 1918, in BArch, R1001/262. 100 Camp Inspection Report by the Principal Medical Officer, 25 March 1918, in TNA, FO 383/434. 101 Mr Hanssen, Letter to the Imperial Colonial Ministry in Berlin, 9 October 1919, in BArch, R1001/2629. 102 According to a report by Mr Arendt on the situation in Samoa dated 8 October 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 103 Mr Hanssen, Letter Sent From Motuihi Internment Camp Intended for the German Government, 2 May 1918, in TNA, FO 383/434, p. 6. 104 Foreign Office, Statement to the Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 2 February 1918, in ibid. 105 Telegram The Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Governor General of New Zealand, 4 July 1918, in ibid. 106 Camp Inspection Report by the Principal Medical Officer, undated, 1918, in ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Foreign Office, Note to the Swiss Minister, 24 August 1918, in NZNA, 1918/2870. 109 Memorandum for his Excellency the Governor General, dated 15 July 1919, in NZNA, EX29/17, p. 71. 110 Mr Tecklenburg and his wife, Letter to Mrs Milton-Eisner, 26 November 1914, Motuihi Camp, in BArch, R1001/2624. 111 Camp Inspection Report Motuihi Island, 3 July 1915, in BArch, R1001/2625. 112 Verbal report given by Mr Kafka to the Imperial German Consulate in San Francisco, June 1915. Mr Kafka had been interned on Motuihi Island, but the report was dictated to him by Dr Sessous, a Samoa German also interned on Motuihi to be passed on to the authorities. See BArch, R1001/2625. 113 Sydney Morning Herald, 17 September 1915. Copy in BArch, R1001/2625. 114 Hirsch, Letter From Motuihi Camp to the Atlantic Communication Company New York. 115 Mrs Sessous, Report, 1915, in BArch, R1001/2625. 116 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Tour of Motuihi Island on 8 September 1915, and Devonport Camp on 18 September 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 117 Panikos Panayi, ‘“Barbed Wire Disease” or a “Prison Camp Society”: The Everyday Lives of German Internees on the Isle of Man, 1914–1919’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 99–121 (here p. 102). 118 Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, p. 214. 119 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Tour, September 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 120 US Consul-General Winslow, Camp Inspection Report, Motuihi Island, 3 July 1915, in BArch, R1001/2625.

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121 Mr Pugh, Swiss Consul for New Zealand, Camp Inspection Report, Motuihi Island, 17 July 1917, in BArch, R1001/2628. 122 See A. L. Vischer, Barbed Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War. (London, 1919). 123 Panikos Panayi, ‘“Barbed Wire Disease”’, p. 121. 124 Heather Jones, ‘A Missing Paradigm? Military Captivity and the Prisoner of War, 1914–18’, in Matthew Stibbe (ed.), Captivity, Forced Labour and Forced Migration in Europe During the First World War (London, 2009), pp. 19–48. 125 Stefan Manz and Tilman Dedering, ‘“Enemy Aliens” in Wartime: Civilian Internment in South Africa During the First World War’, South African Historical Journal, 68.4 (2006), pp. 536–56 (here p. 553). 126 Mr Kafka, Report on the Camp With the German Authorities in San Francisco, 17 June 1915, in BArch, R1001/2625. 127 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Report, Motuihi camp, June 1915, in BArch, R1001/2625. 128 Mr Mars, Letter to Herr Marquardt, Motuihi camp, dated 10 September 1915, in BArch, R1001/2625. 129 US Consul-General Mr Winslow, Camp Inspection Report, Somes Island, 25 August 1915, in BArch, R1001/2626. 130 Mrs Sessous, Report, 1915, in Barch, R1001/2625. 131 Mr Pugh, Swiss Consul in New Zealand, Camp Inspection Report, Somes Island, 12 July 1917, BArch, R1001/2628. 132 See Vischer, Barbed Wire Disease. 133 ‘N.N.’, Letter Addressed to Käthe, dated 10 May 1915 from Motuihi camp, in BArch, R1001/2625. 134 Mr Mars, Letter to Herr Marquardt, Motuihi camp, dated 10 September 1915, in ibid. 135 Franz Pfeil, Letter to His Sister, dated 16 June 1915, from Devonport Barracks, in ibid. 136 Ibid. 137 Matthew Stibbe, ‘Gendered Experiences of Civilian Internment During the First World War: A Forgotten Dimension of Wartime Violence’, in Ana Carden-Coyne (ed.), Gender and Conflict Since 1914: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 14–28 (here p. 18). 138 Sonja Levsen, ‘Constructing Elite Identities: University Students, Military Masculinity and the Consequences of the Great War in Britain and Germany’, Past & Present, 198 (2008), pp. 147–83. 139 Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY and London, 2005), p. 104. 140 Ute Frevert, ‘Das Militär als Schule der Männlichkeiten’, in Ulrike Brunotte and Rainer Herrn (eds.), Männlichkeiten und Moderne: Gechlecht in den Wissenskulturen um 1900 (Bielefeld, 2008), pp. 56–76 (here p. 62). 141 Cf. ibid., p. 70. 142 Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes:. British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London, 1994), p. 1. 143 Ibid., p. 2. 144 Kewley Draskau, ‘Kulturkrieg and Frontgeist’, p. 218. 145 For a more detailed discussion see Rainer Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt (Essen, 2006). 146 See description of the Emperor’s birthday celebrations in a letter by R Hirsch to Mr Graf, Motuihi Camp, 8 February 1916, in BArch, R1001/2627. 147 See, for example, Hirsch’s Letter, Motuihi Camp, 5 July 1915, in BArch, R1001/ 2625, requesting German books. 148 Letter by Franz Pfeil to His Sister, dated 16 June 1915, from Devonport Barracks, in BArch, R1001/2625.

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149 Kewley Draskau, ‘Kulturkrieg and Frontgeist’, p. 219. 150 Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt, pp. 170 and 279. 151 For a discussion of similar internment narratives among prisoners of war in Japan during the First World War, see Sandra Barkhof, ‘German Prisoners of War in Japan During the First World War: Letters From the Colonial Frontline’, Journal of War and Culture Studies (forthcoming in 2017). 152 Karl, Letter to His Sister, Somes Island, 21 August 1918, in BArch, R1001/2628.

11

Internment in neutral and belligerent Romania, 1914–19 Andrei Şiperco

In the five years between the outbreak of the First World War and August 1919, Romania passed through many different and dramatic changes. Having remained neutral for the first two years of the war, it fought on the side of the Allies for fifteen months from August 1916. With its armies largely defeated by December 1916, and with two-thirds of its territory, including its capital, Bucharest, occupied by the Central Powers, it continued to offer resistance from the unoccupied eastern regions of the country and from a temporary seat of government at Iaşi, until it was finally forced to conclude an armistice in December 1917. A peace treaty signed at Bucharest on 7 May 1918 was followed by Romania’s re-entry into the war on 10 November 1918. Considered one of the victor countries by the western Allies, and making claim to former Habsburg, Bulgarian and Russian territories after the war, the newly liberated Kingdom of Romania moved to crush the post-March 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic led by the communist revolutionary Béla Kun. In August 1919, its troops temporarily occupied the Hungarian capital Budapest, but were forced to withdraw shortly thereafter under Allied pressure.1 Both in 1916, and again in the somewhat different circumstances of 1919, Romania interned enemy civilians, including alien minorities resident in its own territory and ‘suspects’ from occupied areas. Even in 1914–16, as a neutral country, it interned deserters from foreign armies who accidentally or deliberately strayed across its borders to escape the fighting or evade capture by enemy forces. The main objective of this chapter is to explore the background to Romania’s internment policies and to analyse the situation of the civilian prisoners held in Romania as reflected in the main Romanian newspapers and in reports from three different bodies: neutral Swiss inspectors, delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and members of a special inquiry set up by the Inter-Allied Military Mission in Hungary in 1919. During the period of Romania’s neutrality, the Romanian press and public opinion showed relatively little interest in international debates on the question of the treatment of POWs and civilian internees. The same indifferent attitude was shown towards soldiers and deserters from the belligerent armies who were interned in Romania. These men in uniform were not POWs as such, because Romania was not at war with any country, but it was obliged to intern them to uphold its international obligations as a neutral. They were thus ‘military

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internees’, and their particular experiences in Romanian captivity before 1916 in many ways foreshadowed the experiences of civilian internees interned in Romania after August 1916.2 According to Bogdan Negoi, during the period of its active participation in the war against the Central Powers, Romania interned 50,366 prisoners of war and 37,929 civilians (enemy aliens and internal enemies).3 The enemy aliens were made up of the following groups: Austrians, many of them Jews and/or merchants who had settled in Romanian towns before the war; Austro-Hungarian subjects evacuated from the invaded parts of Transylvania when the Romanian army withdrew from this region, among them people of Romanian origin who enjoyed favourable treatment; Germans, most of them merchants and civil servants who had settled in Romania before the war; and Bulgarian and Turkish workers and peasants.4 The internal enemies (domestic subjects) account for 15,000 to 20,000 of the total figure of 37,929 interned civilians, and they were mostly ethnic Bulgarians with a smaller number of ethnic Turks.5 Both of these groups lived mainly in the Dobruja region on the Romanian border with Bulgaria. The Romanian-subject Bulgarians were interned not only in reprisal for the alleged attrocities and massacres committed by Bulgarian troops against ethnic Romanians in southern Dobruja in September 1916, but also because, together with the ethnic Turks, they were suspected of disloyalty towards the Romanian state. Of the 37,929 civilian internees 24,343 were repatriated, 2,349 were set free, 534 escaped, 243 were missing and 10,460 died (marking a 27.57 per cent death rate).6 After the end of First World War, and following the successful Romanian military campaign against Béla Kun’s regime, Hungarian civilians suspected of communist activity were briefly interned by the Romanian occupation authorities. This led to an investigation by the delegates of the ICRC and by a special commission of the Inter-Allied Military Mission in Hungary.

The Romanian press and the international problem of POW and civilian internees during the period of Romanian neutrality (August 1914–August 1916) The political class and public opinion in Romania were deeply divided with regard to which side they should support after the outbreak of war in August 1914. An active and outspoken majority wanted to enter the war alongside the Allies (the Triple Entente) to lay claim to Transylvania (a province of the Habsburg Empire with an ethnic Romanian majority). An equally vocal minority advocated entering the war alongside the Central Power, with the goal of recovering Bessarabia, a territory which had once belonged to the eastern province of Moldavia, but which had been annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812. In what follows, four newspapers will be examined as representative of the Romanian press at this time: Universul (The Universe), the main Romanian newspaper; Adevărul (The Truth) and ‘Epoca’ (The Epoch) both of which adopted a pro-Entente orientation; and Ziua (The Day), a pro-Central Powers paper that was financed by the German Legation in Bucharest. Between July 1914 and August 1916 all these

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newspapers allotted a large amount of print space for news from the different fronts in the war, but Ziua stood apart from the rest because of its deliberate policy of relying solely on official statements coming from the Central Powers. The issue of prisoners of war and civilian internees featured in Romanian press reports of this time in a number of ways. First, statistical information was taken from official statements of the belligerents concerning the number of captured enemy military personnel each of them held. Second, Romanian newspapers also made use of protest notes and reports from official inquiries into alleged infringements of the laws and customs of war conducted by neutral bodies. Third, accounts in the foreign press regarding cases of good or bad treatment of prisoners – including published reports issued by the ICRC or neutral countries acting as protecting power – were also used for information on conditions in particular camps. Finally, the Romanian press published official denials from belligerents who had been accused of mistreating prisoners, as well as announcements from foreign governments regarding the introduction, or cancellation, of reprisals. Universul and Ziua also published their own, somewhat overly positive, articles about the situation of prisoners of war, but only in relation to Allied military personnel held captive in Germany. For instance, the special correspondent of Universul visited the Zossen camp near Berlin in July 1915, and one of Ziua’s journalists visited the Königsbrück and Mainz camps in August 1915. According to the Universul report on Zossen camp, ‘about 7,000 French prisoners, 4,000 Russian and several Belgian and English prisoners’ were interned here. Some of them have never experienced such high living standards as they now have in captivity. Prisoners enjoy full freedom to think and move and all sports are allowed to them. All of us left with the conviction that civilised treatment and kindness are present here too.7 The Königsbrück camp in Saxony (which held about 10,000 French, Belgian and Russian POWs) was compared in the Ziua report to ‘a spa, a health resort’.8 Among other things, readers were offered information about the ‘excellent’ sanitary conditions, the good treatment offered to the ‘only’ seventy-one patients9 in the infirmary, the prisoners’ work and pay, and the food and opportunities to practise their religion on offer in the camp.10 The French, Belgian, Russian and handful of British prisoners held in the officers’ camp at Mainz were living in ‘spacious, clean rooms with ten to twelve beds’. The French officers in particular were ‘in good spirits, healthy, and were not subjected to humiliation’.11 Depending on which side in the war they supported, Romanian newspapers published widely diverging reports on the behaviour of belligerent armies in those territories of the Habsburg Empire that were inhabited by Romanian speakers and which changed hands a number of times between the Central Powers and the Tsarist Russian armies between 1914 and 1916. Thus Universul and Epoca published accounts which spoke about the Austrian ‘horrors’ and ‘savagery’ in Bukovina,12 while both Epoca and Adevărul carried pieces on the ‘murders’ and

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‘atrocities’ allegedly committed by Hungarians in Maramureş in the north-eastern Carpathians.13 On the other hand, Adevărul and Ziua also brought out pieces on Russian ‘massacres’, ‘barbarities’ and acts of looting supposedly carried out during their occupation of Bukovina.14 The same strategy was used to inform the public about the fate of Romanian-speaking recruits serving in the Austro-Hungarian army. Adevărul and Epoca insisted on recording the losses in their ranks15 and alleged that the regiments with Romanian recruits from Transylvania and Bukovina were deliberately sent into the deadliest, and least winnable, battles.16 On the other hand, using information gleaned from the Austrian and Hungarian press, Ziua emphasised the Habsburg Romanians’ loyalty to the Emperor, their fighting spirit and heroism, and the decorations they received for valour on the battlefields.17 Universul, Adevărul and Epoca all took an interest in the treatment of Romanianspeaking Habsburg subjects who had fallen into Allied captivity, whether as POWs or civilian internees. Universul and Adevărul noted that they were receiving good treatment in France and Russia, but they were distressed that nobody in Romania seemed to be taking any interest in their fate.18 The Romanian public was asked to contribute books and money for the Romanian-speaking AustroHungarian captives in Russia.19 Public appeals were made for donations of books, newspapers, clothes, tobacco and money to be sent to the forty-one Habsburg-subject Romanian civilian internees held at the Île Longue camp, near Brest in Brittany,20 who were visited on several occasions by Epoca’s special correspondent in France.21

Internment camps in neutral Romania (August 1914–August 1916) In accordance with the Hague Convention of 1899 (Hague II), neutral Romania interned combatants and deserters from the belligerent armies which entered its territory.22 The four newspapers previously mentioned published news about the situation in the camps at Şipote and Işalniţa set up for interning troops and deserters from the belligerent armies, most of them Austro-Hungarians and Russians. The Romanian press generally showed little or no interest in the prisoners held in Romanian internment camps. Exceptional situations such as revolts and mass escapes were the only subjects attracting the newspapers’ attention. In November 1914, Adevărul published an article under the title ‘Cruelties in the Şipote Camp’, which detailed the complaints of some of the Romanian deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army: We are treated as the biggest murderers. We have no heating and nothing to wrap ourselves up in. We sleep on straw without undressing. We are given bran bread and salty water. We are in the worst torment. All of us now see that we have made the wrong choice by entering Romania. If we had known that we were to undergo such things in Romania, we would have preferred to die on the spot.

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The injured were not receiving proper medical attention and were forced to like on the ground in a state ‘worse than dogs!’23 In May 1915, Adevărul returned to the ‘unbearable situation’ of the military internees at Şipote, who from their very first moment [in captivity] . . . found themselves in real hell. They are required to perform hard labour, are subjected to inhuman treatment, are beaten, and have come to regret not being seized by the opposing army, who would not have behave as badly as the “hospitable” host of their wretchedness.24 Colonel Boureanu who was ordered by General Prezan, commander of the IV Army Corps, to investigate the complaints, reported that the Şipote camp held 213 military internees from Austria-Hungary (including eight Jews) and 137 from Russia. The allegations of the internees were refuted by the colonel who reported that their complaints were motivated by the lack of freedom and the life under military custody.25 Between 1 November 1914 and 15 August 1915, a number of Habsburg-subject Romanian deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army interned in Şipote camp were released: five of the six officers, thirteen of the twenty-three first sergeants, sixteen of the twenty-one sergeants, nineteen of the twenty-three corporals, and 628 of the 1,132 soldiers. These deserters or foreign military internees were set free at their own request, or at the request of family members living in Romania, both as a humanitarian gesture and with the purpose of relieving problems with overcrowding in the Şipote Camp.26 In September 1915, Adevărul reported that, ‘because of the inhuman treatment’, sixty-eight Russian and twenty-six Austro-Hungarian military internees held at Şipote tried to escape and some of the Russians were injured.27 The unofficial government newspaper Viitorul (The Future) refuted these allegations in a piece which asserted that ‘the refugees in question are well treated’ so that such negative reports should not be published in the press.28 Adevărul responded: ‘Such abuses should not happen and, if they did not, then nothing would be published about them in the newspapers’.29 In February 1916, Universul, Epoca and Ziua provided reports on a mass escape attempt of military internees from the Işalniţa Camp. Of the thirty-five escapees, one was killed, seven injured, twenty-three were quickly caught, and four succeeded in getting away.30 The authorities decided that, from then on, instead of militiamen, a guard consisting of regular soldiers should carry out watch duty at the camp. They also decided to dissolve the canteen, probably as a collective punishment.31 In March 1916, Adevărul carried a piece on the visit of General Prezan to the Şipote Camp, where he ordered a number of improvements, including better food, more regular access to mail, an end to persecution of internees, and greater opportunities to better their situation.32 However, even after the general’s visit, the internees voiced the same complaints. Receiving no satisfaction, they called a hunger strike for two days, and thirty-six of them escaped.33

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According to an article in Universul in June 1916, the Habsburg-subject Romanian military internees in the Şipote and Işalniţa camps were set free, while the two camps had become ‘absolutely cramped’ as a result of the ever-increasing number of deserters entering Romanian territory.34 The neutral states approached the deserter issue differently. For example, in the Netherlands the genuine deserters from the belligerent armies were released on parole with limits on their freedom of movement and under police surveillance.35 In Romania only some of the Habsburg-subject Romanians deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army were set free, namely the ones who could provide the police with proof that they had a permanent place of residence in the country.36 Moreover, unlike the situation in the Netherlands and Switzerland after 1917, Romania did not encounter food shortages during neutrality.

The first one hundred days of war: Romania on the brink of collapse On 17 August 1916, Romania signed a secret agreement with the Entente Powers stipulating that in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary, it would receive the Habsburg territories of Transylvania, Crişana, Maramureş, Banat and most of Bukovina, all of which had Romanian-speaking majorities. On 27 August 1916, Romania entered the war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and declared a state of siege on the home front, allowing censorship of the press and mobilisation of the army. On the same day, two commissions were set up at the Directorate of Statistics within the Ministry of War, which was charged with looking after prisoners of war and civilian internees.37 A Department for prisoners of war and civilian internees and an Information and Aid Bureau for Romanian prisoners of war in enemy hands were to be set up.38 On 29 August 1916, the authorities informed the public that an operation has been started to intern enemy aliens, namely subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its allies.39 These aliens were given timetables for trains leaving the Bucharest railway stations for designated places of internment.40 Well-to-do Romanian families voiced their concern over the fate of their house servants and maids, many of whom were of Hungarian or German origin. As a result, the decision was reversed, at least for a limited period of time. On 9 September 1916, Epoca reported that the Romanian government, taking into account the request of a great number of subjects of the countries with which we are at war, has given orders that, until completion of the ongoing works on the internment camps, aliens of higher social standing should be interned in the capital. Several buildings have been emptied for these purposes, and equipped with all the necessary items of comfort. The internees’ wives and children who, according to the decision, have not been sent to the places of internment with their husbands, are to stay where they are.41

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On 6 September 1916, the Romanian army was defeated by the GermanBulgarian armies on the southern front at Turtucaia. Epoca labelled the German and Bulgarian soldiers as ‘beasts’, ‘brutes’, ‘savages’ and ‘murderers’, accusing them of having executed and maimed prisoners. Therefore, it would be ‘a necessary act of barbarity’ on Romania’s side ‘to pay them back in their own coin’.42 The same newspaper asserted that the Bulgarians in Dobruja, most of them Romanian subjects after the annexation of the Cadrilater (Southern Dobruja) in the aftermath of the Second Balkan War in 1913, ‘must be sent to prison camps’ because ‘they are related to the barbarians and murderers at Turtucaia. They kill and mutilate Romanians. It would be a weakness to treat savages with kid gloves’.43 Between September and November 1916, 15,000 to 20,000 Romanian subjects of Bulgarian descent were evacuated from Dobruja and interned in Moldavia, in the north-east of the country.44

0

Internment Regions Deserters Camps Camps

C

50

0

A

100

25

50

R

Dn ie s

P

A

T H

IA

N

S

North Internment Region

IN

R U S S I A N

Sipote

TA S A

I

Y T R A N S Fagaras Sibiu Brașov

Hunedoara

Focșani

Galaţi

Brăila

F

VALACHIA

O

Olt

Ploiești Tirgoviște

D O K I N G

Isalnita Craiova

Chișinău

South Internment Region

Danube

Timişoara

I A M O L D A V

R O M A N I A

I N N

E M P I R E

t

Dagata Bacau

A LV

Iași

Vulpasesti

E M P I R E Arad

Pr u

et Sir

N

Cluj

Bucharești

M

Ialom

iţ a

Slobozia Internment Region Constanţa

S

E

Vidin

Turtucaia

Danube

B l a c k

I A R B

CADRILATER Balcik Pleven

Nis

Varna

B Sofiya

E

W

U

H U N G A R I A N

Mures

100 miles

ter

A

Tisza

V

O

Oradea

O

M

A U S T R O -

75

200 km

Chernivtsi

K

N

Satu Mare Debrecen

BU

150

BALK

U

L G

A

R

I A

AN MO U N TA I N S

Map 11.1 Map of wartime Romania showing principal interning regions.

S e a Kavarna International boundaries, 1916 Present day international boundaries

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After the outbreak of hostilities with the Central Powers, several prisonerof-war camps were set up and the re-organisation of the Şipote Camp was ordered to increase its holding capacity to 20,000 prisoners ‘so as not to put prisoners in improvised shelters’.45 In November 1916, the shelters under construction (most of them huts), with space for 10,000 prisoners of war in sixteen locations in Moldavia, were regarded as just a starting point.46 Beginning in late August 1916, in Walachia, in the south of the country, the Slobozia Interning Region for civilian internees was organised, and it included twenty-eight centres.47 The Central Powers protested against the internment of their subjects and the bad treatment they allegedly received. As a reprisal, between December 1916 and summer 1917, several thousand Romanian civilians were interned in camps run by the Central Powers in occupied Romania.48 After the Turtucaia disaster, the Romanian army went on the defensive on the southern front, fighting to prevent a full-scale enemy invasion. On 6 December 1916 the German-Bulgarian troops, under Mackensen’s leadership, occupied Bucharest. The royal family, the government, the civilian authorities and the army had already begun an evacuation programme to Moldavia on 25 November 1916.49 Upper-class women who had volunteered their services to the Romanian Red Cross at the start of the war now chose to seek refuge in Moldavia, ‘in effect abandoning a mission that [they] could no longer shoulder’.50 Enemy prisoners of war and civilian internees in Romanian hands were also evacuated. The crucial moment for these unfortunate people was the retreat towards Moldavia and the winter season. The highest death rate coincides with that period and it affected almost exclusively elderly people and those whose frail constitution could not resist the exhaustion and privations they had to endure during the first months of their stay in the disorganised camps in Moldavia.51 The internment of the civilians had proceeded without any differentiation. Old people, young people, sick people, the disabled have all been taken far from their homes. Many of these poor people were incapable of enduring the inherent exhaustion brought by internment, and here is to be found one of the causes of the high death rate which ravaged some of the centres.52 Vasile Th. Cancicov, Romanian barrister and politician, and an eyewitness to the mass departure towards Moldavia, noted in November 1916: These refugees’ convoys, most taking the highroads, . . . are the most tragic in these moments. I have seen the wounded and sick lying on straws in wagons, I have seen cripples with bandaged wounds crawling. Poorly provided and neglected, in a few days they will be dead and abandoned on

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the fields next to the roads without being buried. Those too exhausted [to carry on] will stay on the edge of the road where the cold nights and the snow will freeze [their bodies] and cover them forever. And the children swaddled in their mothers’ clothes will become nothing but food for the dogs following these convoys.53 Although the Romanian authorities had two years of neutrality in which to get ready, they did not make adequate preparations for managing enemy POWs and civilian internees once war broke out. The extremely fast and unfavourable evolution of the fighting did not grant them the necessary respite and room for manoeuvre. Internment as an instrument for waging war against enemy aliens and domestic political suspects or internal enemies had already been practised by other belligerents. For the Romanian authorities, it was also a means of appeasing nationalist public opinion.

The Swiss enquiry into civilian internees in Romania, 1917–18 Following the fall of Bucharest on 6 December 1916, two-thirds of Romanian territory was occupied by the Central Powers. The Russian and Romanian armies were determined to defend Moldavia, the only part of Romania that remained free, and won a series of battles at Mărăşti (24 July–1 August 1917), Marăşeşti (6–9 August 1917) and Oituz (8–22 August 1917). After the October Revolution the new Bolshevik government in Russia called for a general armistice on the eastern front and the beginning of peace talks on 21 November 1917. The Russian army in Romania came under Bolshevik influence and its soldiers immediately demanded peace and demobilisation. On 3 December General Scerbacev, the commander-in-chief on the Romanian front, agreed to the negotiations that ended with the Focşani Armistice with the Central Powers on 9 December. The general armistice on the easternl front was concluded at Brest Litovsk on 15 December. On the Romanian front, the Russian army began to disintegrate as the revolutionary movement spread. Romanian troops now had to occupy the front-line abandoned by the Russians. It also had to stop looting by Russian soldiers, meaning that it had to disarm them and persuade them to leave Romanian territory. Several minor clashes occurred between the former allied troops. By the end of January 1918, all Russian troops had left Moldavia.54 In the spring of 1917, the Central Powers entrusted Switzerland to represent their interests in non-occupied Romania. Doctor Luciano Bacilieri, a major in the Swiss army, was appointed by Switzerland’s chargé d’affaires, Gustave Boissier, to inspect the Romanian camps. He wrote reports on the living conditions of the prisoners of war and civilian internees in twenty-three camps and centres visited in March and May 1917, and in sixteen camps and centres inspected in October and November 1917.55 Conditions varied from one camp or centre to the other, but a series of problems were common: the sanitary service and

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personal hygiene left much to be desired, and was made worse by the shortage of clothes and footwear, the insects and parasites, unsatisfactory latrines and the monotonous, often maggot-infested food.56 From January to March 1918, Dr René Guillermin and Captain Walther von Stockar – Swiss citizens, appointed by the Swiss Federal Political Department – visited fifty-six camps, workplaces and centres for internees in Moldavia, at the request of the Central Powers. In April 1918, Guillermin and Stockar wrote a report on these visits, where they recorded 12,672 prisoners of war (9,778 Austro-Hungarians; 2,452 Germans; 313 Turks; 129 Bulgarians) and 8,553 civilian internees (3,913 Austro-Hungarians; 2,579 Turks; 1,812 Bulgarians; 249 Germans). According to the data received from the Romanian Ministry of War, the North Internment Region, centred on Dângeni, comprised sixteen camps with 8,152 civilian internees, while in the South Internment Region, based around Huşi, there were 5,109 civilian internees in thirteen camps. As the Swiss report noted, these numbers were higher than the real number of inmates as they include internees who had been repatriared before April 1918, and escapees.57 The inspection reports written by Bacilieri, Guillermin and Stockar offer a vivid impression of the main features of civilian internment in non-occupied Romania, and it can be examined under the following sub-headings.

Categorisation of civilian internees The civilian internees in Romania were divided into four categories: Class 1A: those who could support themselves financially, having enough money of their own to purchase food from government stores at very low prices (army prices), albeit with limitations on the quantity of each item of food that could be bought. The official rations, as for the entire civilian population, were insufficient so they had to purchase black market products from the peasants at high prices. Class 1B: those practising liberal professions: lawyers, teachers, high ranking clerks, merchants, proprietors and so on. They received an allowance of 2.50 lei per day and were allowed to purchase food products from the state warehouses, up to a fixed amount. Class 2: the petty bourgeoisie, small employees, anybody who was not a peasant or worker. This group received a daily allowance of 1.80 lei and they also could purchase fixed quantities of food from state warehouses. Class 3: all those who did not belong to the previous categories, mainly farmers, workers, tailors, shoemakers and so on. They were given no allowance but received food and accommodation for free. In most camps, the classes were mixed, but some contained only civilian internees of the first class58 or of the third class,59 and one camp functioned without divisions of inmates according to class.60

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Women and children If at the beginning of the war whole families were interned, later on the women and children regained their freedom. Still, a certain number of women insisted on staying with their husbands and were allowed to live in the internment camps as free persons.61 In the Stroieşti – Giurgeşti camp, visited by Bacilieri on 5 May 1917, there were 660 Austro-Hungarian and German internees, among them women with young children. ‘I have found a lot of dirt, especially in Giurgeşti where women are interned: they are crowded in the small rooms of the peasants’ houses; they are short of everything, even of cloth to swaddle the newborns: they are haggard, and their faces express much suffering in the past. That points to the fact that, in the case of women, captivity had a much more harmful impact than in the case of men. Homesickness, children left behind, privations, either material or moral, all these have both a physical and psychological effect on these human beings who are in general less strong and resilient’.62 The Călăraşi camp held 172 Austrian and German internees of the third class – among them ten women and eight children – and thirty-four of the first class; in Mihălăşeni (with a total of 240 Bulgarian and sixty Albanian and Turkish inmates) ‘five women with four children are interned . . . as they wanted to accompany their husbands into captivity’.63 In the Ringhileşti sub-centre, there were several women with children who willingly accompanied their husbands,64 in the Bivolari camp there were some children aged twelve to fifteen years old, in the Ripiceni camp, with 1,012 internees, there were two women,65 and at Hulubu, with 153 internees, there were fiftyseven women and twenty children under five years old. ‘These women and children were willingly interned in order to follow the head of the family and almost all of them are from Siebenbürgen [Transylvania]. Many of them seem to be anaemic’.66 In the Răducăneni Camp, with 800 internees, there were also a certain number of women who wanted to follow their husbands and were voluntarily interned.67

Accommodation The internees from the first three categories could rent a room, for a maximum of 30 lei per month, regardless of the number of people living in it. Generally, the rooms were well equipped and often even comfortable, with big stoves in almost every room and individual beds.68 As a general rule these internees were assigned to the cities and bigger villages. Those in Huşi,69 Răducăneni and Ştefăneşti camps had the best living conditions, while those in small villages had to be content with sharing small rooms in peasants’ houses and often had to sleep on planks.70 Bacilieri noted what he believed to be the typical characteristics of the Romanian peasant house: small and square, with thatched roof and the floor made of beaten clayey earth. The latrine was outside, at about 12 m distance. Near the

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entrance door, on both sides of the hall, two doors lead to the two rooms of the house, each about 4m2 and 2.3m in height, and with two small windows. The stove was used for heating and cooking. One of the rooms was usually rented to the internees of the first and second classes for 25 lei per month. For coverlets, sofas, blankets and carpets the internees had to pay extra. In general, the internees of the third class were given an empty room, sometimes with a table and chairs. Around the room were four or five plank beds, at 50 to 60 cm above ground, covered with straw, pieces of sheets or sacks. In many places, the internees were sleeping on bare planks, protected from the cold only by the clothes they wore.71 According to Guillermin and Stockar, in the spring of 1918, the civilian internees of the third class generally slept on planks with straw mattresses. Where the number of the village houses was not sufficient, huts were built – wooden barracks covered with straw and rammed earth. Only Bulgarians72 and Turks, accustomed to this kind of dwelling, were satisfied with these huts. In use for both the Romanian army and Russian troops, they were generally well equipped, clean and very warm during the winter, being well adapted to the climate of the country.73

Food In May 1917 in the Boteşti camp, the daily ration for the civilian internees of the third class consisted of 500 grams of bread, 50 grams of onions, 10 grams of salt, 5 grams of sugar, 1 gram of tea, and 250 grams of green peas, often wormy, replaced with beans. The twelve civilian internees and eleven sick soldiers in the infirmary received 9 litres of milk; 17 eggs; 50 grams of onions per person; 10 grams of salt per person and sugared tea ad libitum.74 In October 1917, the civilian internees of the third class received each day the same quantity of bread, onions and tea as in May, an extra 5 grams of sugar; 4 grams of vinegar; 10 grams of cooking oil; 30 grams of tomatoes; half of hot pepper and 400 grams of cabbage. The five people in the infirmary received 2 kilogrames of meat; 2 kilogrames of potatoes; 400 grams of tomatoes; 150 grams of cooking oil; 4 breads; 2 litres of milk; 400 grams of onions. The first- and second-class internees were given 600 grams of sugar; 30 grams of tea; 400 grams of semolina; 300 grams of salt; 250 grams of cooking oil; 8 kilogrames of maize.75 ‘There is enough food but it is unsubstantial and devoid of variation. Such a statement is typical for all camps’ noted Dr Bacilieri in May 1917. On the whole, the internees do not have a general perspective on the conditions throughout the country; as in the cities the food problem becomes more and more difficult, either because of lack of products, or because of transport difficulties; they pretend to receive fat and butter only with great difficulty; the population can get those with great difficulty. Although there is a scarcity of sugar and tea and the population can hardly get it, the internees receive 10 grams of sugar and one gram of tea every day, an amount much superior to the one obtainable by the civil population.76

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A couple of months later, in July 1917, Bacilieri noted that the whole civilian population and the internees in the southern camps have a daily ration of 500 grams of bread, and the ones in the north have 750 grams of bread. As far as food is concerned I briefly repeat that the food products offered by the authorities are enough for the people who have a very limited workload. . . . I must also draw attention to the fact that the internees suffered less because of lack of heating and food than the poor part of population in the country. In this respect, suffice it to say that after a short time, the internees who had been set free asked to be interned again because they could not get the means of subsistence.77 In the period to November 1917, meat rations were reduced all over the country; the diet was less varied, but the amount of food that the civilian internees received was sufficient, and in all camps, hot meals were distributed twice a day.78 The Cişmăneşti camp/centre was an exception: here the internees received ‘only soup for lunch’ and were expected to buy in their own breakfast and dinner.79 Bacilieri noted that the food problem had become ‘very serious’ for the firstand the second-classes: The amount and range of food products the internees can purchase every month are limited and getting supplies from peasants is becoming more difficult with every day that passes. A number of isolated cases of ill-will concerning the sale of produce to the internees have been reported to me by third parties. These cases are the main reason why the internees are not able to provide for themselves as they used to. In particular it is a matter of excessive prices being charged for certain products . . . due partly to competition among the internees themselves.80 Furthermore, peasants were often more interested in exchanging products instead of selling them to internees for money.81 From January to March 1918, Guillermin and Stockar noted a good level of nutrition in almost all centres or camps. The food was sufficient but very monotonous, especially during the winter. The meat consumption had been cancelled for the entire population since the end of 1917, and the daily bread ration of 500 grams had been replaced by 800 grams of maize porridge twice a week. Pea and bean seeds, often wormy, formed the basis of all menus, and almost each centre cultivated a vegetable garden during the summer. Certain vegetables could also be preserved for the winter.82 ‘We do recognise that food during the winter is tedious and monotonous but claiming that the internees are gradually dying of hunger (according to a complaint made at Brădiceşti) is really a notorious exaggeration’.83 The food situation of the civilian internees was ‘relatively good’ in the Northern Internment Region, better than in the Southern Internment Region, but for the internment classes 1A and IB, the living conditions were more difficult, because

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of the high price of consumer goods. The allowance of 2.50 lei and 1.80 lei, completely adequate one year previously, had become insufficient.84 Guillermin and Stockar noted that the Turks and the Bulgarians, accustomed to the food diet in the country, are satisfied with the food delivered by the Romanian government. The Austrians and the Germans, who are interned in small numbers, can easily get supplies, especially after the withdrawal of the Russian troops.85

Medical assistance and sanitary conditions As expected, the medical assistance and sanitary conditions were sufficient only in a small number of camps or centres. In the confinement centre at Podoleni and Podu Hagiului, with 977 Austro-Hungarian and German internees, where the active interest shown by the commander was ‘remarkable’, the sanitary situation was good during the winter and in the infirmary, there were no sick internees.86 The Epureni camp/centre, near Huşi, with 632 internees of the third class and 250 internees of the first and second classes of German and Austro-Hungarian origin, was ‘the only centre where the infirmary is kept in good condition and the patients are very well taken care of’.87 Bacilieri noted that in the camps/ centres at Boteşti, Gugeşti and Porcişeni, with 745 internees, most of them Austro-Hungarians and Germans and a few Turks, ‘the village school is, as usual, turned into an infirmary which is kept in fairly good condition; the patients’ diet is a bit better: milk, eggs and, now and then, a little meat’.88 Disinfestations have been carried out everywhere. At the beginning, facing resistance and difficulties among the civilian population, especially among women, a heroic method had to be used: the more recalcitrant women were disinfected by force and their hair was cut. Such measure proved sufficient to compel the other ones. Disinfestations would have been more complete if there had been lime at their disposal to whitewash the houses.89 The medical assistance and sanitary conditions at Cosmeşti camp/centre, Buneşti camp and Cişmăneşti centre can be considered representative for the vast majority of the civilian internment places. At Cosmeşti, which held 487 internees belonging to the third class, including a few Turks, and 108 AustroHungarian and German internees belonging to the first class, the hygiene and personal cleanliness are not the best; insects and parasites are widespread – although the commander and a doctor reside in the centre little has been done to battle against this scourge in spite of the fact that recently they have had a disinfection oven at their disposal.90 At Buneşti, with about 850 German and Austro-Hungarian internees, most of them belonging to the third class, Bacilieri noted:

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67 people died in this camp, 20 of them on 8 March [1917], the day when the doctor started to work in Buneşti; typhus exanthematicus appeared during the first week. Currently there are 10 cases among the internees. The disinfection oven started to function only in the last few days and the disinfection of the whole village has been started. One of the reasons why the infectious diseases spread so easily lies in the fact that everywhere there is too much overcrowding in primitive houses and also because the disinfection of the houses is not possible due to the lack of lime. Moreover, the internees do not have fresh clothes to change into and soap to wash themselves with.91 At Cişmăneşti, with 1,100 Austro-Hungarians and Germans, the sanitary service works very badly for both cleanliness and delivering medicines. . . . In this centre, settled only two days ago, nothing has been done about disinfection. I could not get the official number of the deceased: the internees gave me the number 270.92 For Bacilieri, the sanitary-medical conditions were the only aspect of captivity in non-occupied Romania ‘deserving of serious criticism’.93 The following extract from his report is worth quoting at length: the life of a patient is not considered to have the same value here and, if the patient recovers, it is largely due to nature and to the degree of resistance of the body. Everything is reduced to fatalistic theory. The low value placed on individual lives could derive from the high birth rate among the oriental population, or maybe from the atavistic conception of a so-called upper class – the noblemen, former boyars [or men of higher rank] – who, up to the current generation, always considered the lower class – peasants, former servants – as a class destined to servitude, of lesser worth, a hangover from a kind of slavery which, under different forms and regardless of who is in power, always ruled in this part of Europe.94 Bacilieri was a man destined by education and training to see the realities of Romania through a set of assumptions specific to Western culture and to criticise medical conditions and practices along these lines. Yet, he was also prepared to concede that the sanitary service was defective not only for prisoners or internees: everybody had to suffer from the harsh consequences of such a state of things. Everybody had the same treatment; as far as I remember there was no difference between internees, prisoners and [Romanian] civilians. Romanians and foreigners lay in the same hospital, in the same infirmary and on the same planks.95 With the ‘unfortunate exception’ of the Şipote camp, the sanitary conditions were ‘always relatively good’ and ‘undoubtedly better’ than those experienced by the

242 Andrei Şiperco Romanian civilian population and military, and the death rate among camp inmates brought about by a common or an infectious disease was ‘much lower’ than the death rate recorded in the country at large.96 Referring to the peasants living in Dângeni, the Romanian army medical officer Dr Victor Gomoiu described in his memoires the disastrous situation the population in Moldavian villages was facing: Half of the population is sick. The typhus exanthematicus, recurrent typhus, typhoid fever and dysentery were spreading. A dreadful poverty, fenceless yards, small houses, broken and some with damaged rooves (many of the men had been mobilised for a long time and the women were not really hard-working). All living beings in a household (women, children, poultry and pigs) were sharing the same room (some on the bed and other under the bed) in a putrid atmosphere, crowded because of the cold. When asked about their diet, they answered almost stereotypically: ‘we eat what we can’ or ‘what we can manage’.97

Clothing During 1917, the lack of linen, clothes and shoes was a widespread problem among the civilian internees. In any centre there are many people with nothing else but ragged trousers and a vest on their bare skin, with no shoes and, sometimes, with caps on their heads. . . . The clothing issue led, in some camps, to occasional tension between commanders and the internees, especially the ones belonging to the second class, who sometimes refused to go to work claiming they only had one suit and, once it had been worn out, they would not be able to change it.98 In 1918, the Romanian authorities distributed shirts, underpants, traditional Romanian sheepskin coats (cojoc) and peasant leather sandals fixed with a string (opinci) to the civilian internees. Sold at very low (or military) prices,99 these products were not available to the civilian population. Clothes as well as linen were distributed through the Swiss legation and the Swedish Red Cross.100 It is worth mentioning that in the Rădăuţi-Prut centre, with 71 Bulgarians, 83 Turks, 367 Romanians and one Austrian, ‘the Turks earned a lot of money by exchanging contraband with the Russians and were able to purchase clothes in particular for a very good price’.101

Work and freedom of movement As a rule, the internees of Class 1A, Class 1B and the second class were not obliged to work,102 and those of the second class were used only at certain

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times for cultivating vegetables. The internees of the third class were used for various kinds of work and received wages for it.104 The vast majority of the working internees were employed in agriculture, on the railways, on gardening projects or in work looking after horses.105 In some camps, there were irregularities with the payment of the working days, for example at Boteşti, where the money sent to the internees by postal order arrived only after a few weeks.106 The internees at the Pâhneşti Camp also complained to Bacilieri about the treatment experienced by those sent out to work.107 The civilian internees enjoyed great freedom compared to the military prisoners of war. A circle of sentinels around the villages where the internees were confined marked the limit they should not pass beyond, but the civilians had an area of several square kilometres in which they could move freely. The regulations prohibiting visits from one centre to another were inconsistently enforced by the commanders. As a result, some internees could receive their comrades from a neighbouring centre but could not make return visits.108 Those civilian internees who had settled in Moldavia with their families and/or had established businesses there could go home on leave. At the suggestion of the Swiss delegates Guillermin and Stockar, the Romanian authorities organised a new rota system for internees eligible to go on leave. In several centres, the internees could obtain leave for a certain amount of money, meaning that the rich ones could go on leave more often.109 In some camps, the civilian internees of the first class enjoyed a rather unique freedom of movement. About one hundred well-off people interned in the Huşi Camp were free to come and go as they pleased and could have meals in restaurants from 10am to 2pm and from 5pm to 8pm. Furthermore, eight engineers interned in the Ştefăneşti camp were allowed to make occasional trips into Iaşi for business reasons.110

Hostility towards civilian internees At Buneşti camp, with around 850 German and Austro-Hungarian internees, most of them of the third class, Bacillieri observed a hostile reaction from the local Romanian civilian population, largely incited by the village priest. Such hostility becomes manifest either by reluctance to give what is needed for the houses, or by refusal to sell food products to the internees. The representative of the Romanian government took note of the complaint, and the priests as well as the civilian population were warned about their behaviour which, if it continued, could lead to harsh measures. The peasants were given orders to sell products to the internees according to their ability to do so.111 At two other camps, Duda and Pâhneşti, there was ‘a certain amount of hostility from the civilian population – sometimes nothing can be purchased from peasants even with money’.112

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Escapes and repatriation Numerous escapes occurred at Podoleni Camp, ‘either because of the prospect of winter or because of the proximity of the frontier’.113 Of the 672 internees in the Rădăuţi-Prut centre, 148 succeeded in fleeing, while at Iacobeni, 138 out of 704 internees got away.114 The departure of the Russian troops at the turn of the year 1917–18 made escapes very easy. For 12 lei, an internee could get a Russian coat, for 3 lei a Russian cap. The prisoner could then join the Bolshevik columns leaving Moldavia and make good his escape. In exchange for several bottles of brandy a prisoner could acquire a complete set of clothes and, possibly, even a horse and a cart.115 According to the Guillermin and Stockar reports, 7,200 Bulgarian internees116 were repatriated on 9 March 1918 and 6,000 to 7,000 Austrian and German internees were also released and sent home.117 The repatriation measures improved the general situation of the civilian internees, relieving congestion in the centres and allowing the closure of the most overcrowded ones.118 In some cases, repatriation was controversial. During their inspections at the Răducăneni camp, where Jews formed the majority of the 686 Austrian and 114 non-Austrian internees, Guillermin and Stockar received complaints about bribery and corruption. One civilian internee who did not fulfil the criteria for repatriation had allegedly given 1,000 lei to the doctor in charge of the selection process and was repatriated, while another was rejected because the amount of money he offered was too small.119 At the end of their April 1918 report, Guillermin and Stockar recorded the following observations of a general nature: It would be inaccurate to suggest that the Romanian government deliberately maltreats its prisoners. . . . It is not true that Germans are treated more harshly than prisoners of other nationalities. . . . We will quote the words of a [French] general, Henri Mathias Berthelot, an ally of the Romanians, who told them: ‘Your country is nowadays admirably disorganised’. We totally share the general’s opinion and maintain that the prisoners suffered as a result of this disorganisation to the same degree, no more and no less, than the Romanians themselves.120 The report concluded that the present general situation of prisoners and civilian internees in Romania is absolutely good. Except the workplaces at Bernova and Cotnari, where health and treatment leave very much to be desired, everywhere we have found people in a satisfactory condition regarding their health. Thanks to the preventive measures taken by the government, last year’s epidemics

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have not come back this year. . . . We found that Romanian officers and soldiers do not have better housing conditions than the prisoners. We are in a position to state that the Romanian population is not privileged in any way in comparison with the civilian internees. In well-organised centres, internees in fact experience better material conditions than the local Romanian inhabitants.121

The war after the war: the Swiss and inter-allied special commission enquiry reports concerning the Hungarian civilian internees in 1919 Six months after signing a definitive peace treaty with the Central Powers, Romania re-entered the war on 10 November 1918, just in time to be among the victor states in the First World War. Romanian troops advanced into Transylvania but stopped on the line of the Mureş River, because the French General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey had concluded an armistice with the Hungarians on 13 November, under which the course of the Mureş was agreed as the demarcation line between the Allied armies and Hungarian forces. Over the following months, the Allies permitted Romania to send its troops across the Mureş and occupy further territories in Transylvania. The new Hungarian government, with communist Béla Kun as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, ordered a military attack on Romanian forces on 15–16 April 1919, but a successful counter-offensive allowed the Romanians to advance to the Tisa river by 1 May. The Allied Supreme War Council called for the end of the Romanian military operations, but after warding off a short-lived attack by Hungarian troops, the Romanians won the battle of Tisa on 20–26 July, entered Budapest on 4 August, and occupied the whole of the neighbouring region on 20 August. The Allied Supreme War Council institued an Allied Commission in Budapest, composed of four generals (one each from France, Britain, the United States and Italy). On 16 November 1919, the Romanian occupation authorities handed over Budapest to the Allied Commission and agreed to evacuate all their troops from Hungarian territory by March 1920.122 From the end of May 1919, Romanian camps and places of internment for suspected Hungarian communists had been visited by Constantine Naville, a delegate of the ICRC and by the same Dr Bacilieri mentioned above, who was now attaché to the Swiss Legation in Romania.123 Their reports and the numerous complaints received by the ICRC concerning the violation of the 1906 Geneva Convention by the Romanian army in Transylvania, as well as the fact that, at the end of September 1919, its delegate G. Burnier, was prevented from carrying out his inspection of the camps at Arad and Czegléd, drew Geneva’s attention to the perilous situation faced by Hungarian prisoners and civilian internees in Transylvania.124 The Inter-Allied Military Mission in Hungary took note of the serious concerns raised by Burnier after his unsuccessful visit to the camp at Arad,125 and, following the suggestion of the ICRC, set up a special commission to investigate the

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situation. In October 1919, the four members of the commission (an American colonel, an English physician, an Italian lieutenant of the first class, and an ICRC delegate) inspected a number of camps and centres in Transylvania and addressed reports to the Inter-Allied Military Mission in Hungary.126 On 24 October 1919, the special commission wrote a report on the conditions in the military prison in Braşov Citadel where 370 prisoners of war (including 121 civilians and six women) and 441 soldiers were held in quarantine.127 The six women were imprisoned in a room that was ‘fairly light but without heating . . . too small and not very dry – about 10 by 19 feet’.128 Furthermore, ‘there were no sanitary arrangements for these women and, consequently, they had to use the same toilet facilities as the men, namely open public latrines’.129 On 27 October 1919, the same commission signed a report on the situation of the ‘civilian prisoners’ in Arad, Braşov and Făgăraş. At Arad about 100 men and young people occupy several blockhouses of the fortress. As far as they are concerned, no preparations have been made for them. There were no beds or even planks to sleep on and the floors were made of concrete. . . . There were no stoves and the weather was rainy and extremely cold. Only a few civilian internees owned overcoats, some had no vests, none had a coverlet and many had no boots and linen. ‘It would be difficult to describe the lamentable state of these men and young people. Many of them were blue with cold. Half of them suffered from hunger and were worried about their ability to survive’. At Braşov Citadel the situation was unchanged, while at Făgăraş there were seventy-two ‘civilian prisoners’, five of them interned in the city. Most do not have boots and underclothes, and one of them does not have trousers. He wears a kilt made of a piece of carpet. Many of them don’t have overcoats and all of them wear rather unsuitable clothes for the winter time. They accuse the Romanian soldiers, and in some instance their officers, of stealing their clothes, boots and private property.130

Conclusion Despite over two years of neutrality during which it interned foreign troops and deserters from belligerent armies, Romania entered the Great War without any concrete plans for managing military prisoners and civilian internees. Quickly defeated and losing much of its territory, the Romanian state continued to resist the Central Powers in the region of Moldavia until the peace treaty signed at Bucharest in May 1918. If we leave aside the greater restrictions on their freedom of movement, the general situation of the civilian internees, enemy aliens and domestic political suspects (internal enemies) on the Romanian home front was very similar to the fate of the Romanian civilian population as a

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whole. Both groups were exposed to the harsh realities of the war: evacuations, epidemics, food shortages and lack of medical assistance and medicines. The questionable treatment of Hungarian civilian internees in 1919 was justified by the refusal of Béla Kun’s communist regime to accept the union of Transylvania with Romania, although it was also motivated by a desire for revenge against a ‘historic enemy’ – the Hungarian nation. Further research is needed on civilian internees in wartime and post-war Romania, not least to integrate findings here into a much-needed general history of civilian internees in south-eastern Europe during the First World War. Such an endeavour is complicated by the longstanding geopolitical rivalries and nationalist hostilities in this region, which were further inflamed by the Great War and its aftermath.

Notes 1 For a useful overview of Romania during and immediately after the First World War, see Harald Heppner and Rudolf Gräf, ‘Romania’, in 1914–1918 online. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keane, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin, 2014), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Onlineromania-2014-10-08.pdf (accessed 08/10/2014). Also Wolfgang Höpken, ‘Rumänien’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich and Irina Renz (eds.), Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg (Paderborn, 2003), pp. 804–7. 2 On the equivalent Dutch and Swiss management of ‘military internees’ during the war, see Susanne Wolf, Guarded Neutrality: Diplomacy and Internment in the Netherlands During the First World War (Leiden, 2013); and Anja Huber’s contribution to this volume. 3 Bogdan Negoi, România şi lagărele de prizonieri în timpul primului război mondial (Piteşti, 2011), p. 64. 4 Dr René Guillermin and Walther v. Stockar, Report of the Swiss mission in Romania, April 1918 (henceforth Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918), in Swiss Federal Archives, Bern (henceforth SFA), E 2020 No. 111. All Swiss documents cited in the present study were published in Romanian (translated from French). See Andrei Şiperco (ed.), Tragedii şi suferinţe neştiute. Prizonieri de război şi internaţi civili în România 1917–1919: Documente elveţiene (Bucharest, 2003). 5 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. The Bulgarian Red Cross estimated that 14,000 ethnic Bulgarians were forced from their homes in Northern Dobruja after August 1916 – see Matthew Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians by Belligerent States During the First World War and the Response of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41.1 (2006), pp. 5–19 (here pp. 7–8). 6 Romanian military statistics, in Negoi, România şi lagǎrele de prizonieri, p. 64. 7 Universul, 4 July 1915, p. 4. In Romania the Julian calendar was in force, and the newspapers publication dates appear accordingly. In this text, however, the Gregorian calendar is used. 8 Ziua, 14 August 1915, p. 2. 9 Ibid. 10 Ziua, 17 August 1915, p. 4. 11 Ziua, 5 September 1915, p. 1. 12 Universul, 29 June 1916, p. 1; and Epoca, 12 October 1914, p. 3. 13 Epoca, 12 December 1914, p. 1; and Adevărul, 23 November 1914, p. 3. 14 Adevărul, 6 January 1915, p. 1; and Ziua, 3 September 1914, p. 2; 1 November 1914, p. 1; 18 July 1915, p. 1; 30 November 1914, p. 1.

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15 Adevărul, 10 June 1915, pp. 1–2; 1 September 1915, p. 4; and Epoca, 17 October 1914, p. 2. 16 Adevărul, 18 August 1915, p. 1; and Epoca, 12 November 1914, p. 1. 17 Ziua, 25 September 1914, p. 3; 4 February 1915, p. 3; 23 February 1915, p. 4; 1 March 1915, p. 4; 8 March 1915, p. 4. 18 Universul, 1 October 1915, p. 1; and Adevărul, 19 June 1915, p. 1; 6 April 1916, p. 1; 19 April 1916, p. 3; 27 June 1916, p. 3. 19 Adevărul, 28 May 1916, p. 1. 20 Adevărul, 26 August 1915, p. 2; and Epoca, 26 August 1915, p. 1 and the following issues up to 5 September 1915. 21 Epoca, 25 August 1915, p. 3; 14 September 1915, p. 1; 25 April 1916, p. 1. 22 Article 57 of the 1899 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague II) stated that: ‘A neutral State which receives in its territory troops belonging to the belligerent armies shall intern them, as far as possible, at a distance from the theatre of war’. ‘It can keep them in camps, and even confine them in fortresses or locations assigned for this purpose. It shall decide whether officers may be left at liberty on giving their parole that they will not leave the neutral territory without authorization’. Article 58 further stipulated that ‘Failing a special convention, the neutral State shall supply the interned with the food, clothing, and relief required by humanity. At the conclusion of peace, the expenses caused by the internment shall be made good’. See https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/ART/150-110064?OpenDocument. Also Wolf, Guarded Neutrality, pp. 14–17. 23 Adevărul, 12 November 1914, p. 2. 24 Adevărul, 9 May 1915, p. 1. 25 Iulian Stelian Boţoghină, paper presented at the International Session of Scientific Communications, Muzeul Judeţean Mureş, Târgu-Mureş, 23–24 October 2015. 26 Iulian Stelian Botoghină, ‘Realităţile frontului de est dezvăluite de militari ai armatei austro-ungare refugiaţi în România neutră’, MARISIA XXXVI, Studii şi Materiale Istorie, Muzeul Judeţean Mureş, Târgu-Mureş, 2016, p. 107. 27 Adevărul, 24 September 1915, p. 3; and Ziua, 26 September 1915, p. 2. 28 Adevărul, 29 September 1915, p. 3. 29 Ibid. 30 Universul, 27 February 1916, p. 1; and Ziua, 28 February 1916, p. 2. 31 Epoca, 27 February 1916, p. 3. 32 Adevărul, 16 March 1916, p. 3. 33 Ibid.; Universul, 16 March 1916, p. 3; and Ziua, 16 March 1916, p. 2. 34 Universul, 15 June 1916, p. 1. 35 Wolf, Guarded Neutrality, p. 129. 36 Boţoghină, ‘Realităţile frontului’, p. 107. 37 Negoi, România şi lagărele de prizonieri, p. 45. 38 Ibid., p. 46. 39 Epoca, 16 August 1916, p. 2. Law No.812 of 19 March 1915 ‘for checking foreigners, for checking some public establishments and for setting up a population bureau to administer the records of foreigners and procedures for issuing identity documents’. From December 1915 the Ministry of Internal Affairs was charged with keeping a register of foreigners in Romania. 40 Epoca, 16 August 1916, p. 2. 41 Epoca, 27 August 1916, p. 1. 42 Epoca, 28 August 1916, p. 1; 31 August 1916, p. 1. On the other hand, the Bulgarian press was full of references to the ‘unprecedented cruelties’ of the Romanians. See Rumen Cholakov, Prisoners of War in Bulgaria During the First World War (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012), p. 59.

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43 Epoca, 8 September 1916, p. 1. 44 Cholakov, Prisoners of War in Bulgaria, p. 59; and Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918 (as note 4 above). 45 Negoi, România şi lagărele de prizonieri, p. 83. 46 Ibid., p. 97. 47 Ibid., p. 125. 48 Constantin Kiriţescu, Istoria războiului pentru întregirea României 1916–1919, Vol. II (Bucharest, 1989), p. 276. See also Lisa Mayerhofer, Zwischen Freund und Feind: Deutsche Besatzung in Rumänien 1916–1918 (Munich, 2010), pp. 99–113. 49 Kiriţescu, Istoria războiului pentru întregirea României, Vol. I, p. 555. 50 Alin Ciupală, Bătălia lor. Femeile din Romania în primul război mondial (Bucharest, 2017), p. 174. 51 Report by Dr Bacilieri, 15 July 1917 (henceforth Bacilieri, July 1917), in SFA, E 2020, No. 1/91. 52 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. 53 Vasile Th. Cancicov, Jurnal din vremea ocupaţiei: Impresiuni şi păreri personale din timpul războiului României. Jurnal zilnic, Volume 1: 13 August 1916–31 August 1917 (Bucharest, 2015), p. 123. 54 Constantin Kiriţescu, Istoria războiului pentru întregirea României, Vol. 2, pp. 59–164 and 196–213. 55 The Swiss delegates used both the terms ‘camp’ and ‘centre’ for the internment places for civilians. No distinction whatsoever was made between these two terms, and the same place of internment was referred to as being ‘camp’ or ‘centre’. 56 Report by Dr Bacilieri, 29 November 1917 (henceforth Bacilieri, November 1917), in SFA, E 2020, No. 1/77, 57 The statistics are taken from Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918, as is the information on categorisation of internees. 58 Bacilieri, November 1917. The Huşi and Isaia camps. 59 Ibid. The Moşna camp. 60 The Mihălăşeni centre/camp, with 240 Bulgarian internees and 60 Albanian and Turkish subjects., Dr Bacilieri’s report, 22 May 1917 (henceforth Bacilieri, May 1917), in SFA, E 2020, No.1/91. 61 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. 62 Bacilieri, May 1917. 63 Ibid. 64 Bacilieri, November 1917. 65 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. At Huşi centre, ‘the housing for the first classes ones is very good, often elegant. Two and no more than three internees live in a good room’. 70 Bacilieri, July 1917. 71 Bacilieri, November 1917. 72 The Bulgarian civilian internees formed the majority in several camps of the North Internment Region visited by Guillermin and Stockar: Bivolari, Trifeşti, Ringhileşti, Româneşti, Ştefăneşti, Ripiceni, Mihălăşeni, Hăneşti, Vlăsineşti, Săveni, RădăuţiPrut and Iacobeni. 73 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918: ‘The Germans and the Austrians were everywhere installed in villages, living with local people’. 74 Bacilieri, May 1917. 75 Bacilieri, November 1917. 76 Ibid.

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77 Bacilieri, July 1917. In the part of Romania occupied by the Central Powers, coupon cards for bread were introduced and the daily ration in the cities with populations of 5,000 and above was 375 grams of wheat per person, corresponding to 400 grams of wheat and maize flour bread. Beginning in March 1918, the daily ration of bread was lowered to 300 grams for the Romanian civilian population. See Kiriţescu, Istoria războiului pentru întregirea României, Vol. 2, p. 272. 78 Bacilieri, November 1917. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. Until late 1917 Imperial Russian troops stationed in the region had relied heavily on non-occupied Romania for food supplies. Their departure thus freed up supplies for use by German and Austrian prisoners. 86 Bacilieri, May 1917. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. ‘Almost everywhere special food, more abundant than the rations available to the other internees, is served in infirmaries’. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Bacilieri, July 1917. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Victor Gomoiu, Viaţa mea: Memorii, Vol. 1 (Craiova, 2006), p. 469. 98 Bacilieri, November 1917. 99 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. ‘Cojoc’ – 80 lei; complete suit, jacket – 41 lei; ‘opinci’ – 1.50 lei. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Bacilieri, November 1917. 104 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. 105 Ibid. 106 Bacilieri, November 1917. 107 Ibid. 108 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. 109 Ibid. 110 Bacilieri, May 1917. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., Bacilieri, November 1917. 114 Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. 115 Ibid. 116 Inhabitants of the Cadrilater region of Dobruja, which Romania conceded to Bulgaria under the terms of the 1918 Treaty of Bucharest. 117 These repatriations were a consequence of the Focşani Armistice signed by the Russians and Romanians with the Central Powers on 9 December 1917, and of stipulations on prisoners of war and interned civilians of the Peace Treaties of Brest

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125 126 127 128 129

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Litovsk: the one of 9 February between the Ukrainian National Republic and the Central Powers (art. 6 and art. 8), and the one of 3 March between Bolshevik Russia and the Central Powers (art. 7 and art.12). These Peace Treaties led on to the Buftea Preliminary Peace Treaty between Romania and the Central Powers, signed on 5 March 1918. Guillermin and Stockar, April 1918. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Kiriţescu, Istoria războiului pentru întregirea României, Vol. 1, pp. 413–70. See Bacilieri and Naville’s report, 29 May–1 June 1919; and Naville’s report, 30 June 1919, both in SFA, E 2020, No. 1/91. Archives du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva (henceforth ACICR), Rapports de la mission du CICR à Budapest 4/7 Mis 4.5/266- Mis 4.5/348, Report by G. Burnier, 10 October 1919 (henceforth Burnier report, October 1919). Arad had previously been used by the Habsburg military authorities as a camp for Serb political suspects deported from Bosnia and occupied Serbia. See Matthew Stibbe’s contribution to this volume. Burnier report, October 1919. See Şiperco, Tragedii şi suferinţe neştiute, pp. 259–93 and 297–301. ACICR, Rapports de la mission du CICR à Budapest 4/8 Mis 4.5/349 à Mis 4.5/432, Report of the Special Commission to the Inter-Allied Mission in Hungary, Budapest, 24 October 1919. Ibid. Ibid. ‘The latrines consist of a small circular concrete pit, surrounded by an iron platform, rising to two feet in height, on which men and women have to stand. Partial divisions have been built. Here everything is dirty. The pissoir are in the same condition. Everything is inadequate’. Report of the Special Commission to the Inter-Allied Mission in Hungary, Budapest, 24 October 1919.

12

The internment of prisoners of war and civilians in neutral Switzerland, 1916–19 Anja Huber

During the First World War, an estimated 8.5 million soldiers fell into enemy captivity. This was a shock to many military and government officials because none of the belligerent countries were really prepared for mass captivity.1 The total number of civilians interned in Europe between 1914 and 1920 is not known, probably several hundred thousand, while around 50,000 to 100,000 were also imprisoned in countries outside Europe.2 In the course of the war, a network of prisoners of war (POW) and civilian internment camps was established across the world.3 Conditions in internment varied enormously from country to country and claims and counter-claims about alleged cases of mistreatment fed into the propaganda war between the Allies and the Central Powers.4 Public opinion, as well as the views of the politically powerful sections of the population, were therefore crucial in shaping internment practices.5 Since Switzerland adhered throughout the war to the concept of armed neutrality, there was no question of interning ‘enemy’ soldiers captured on the battlefield or ‘enemy aliens’ in the traditional sense of the term (an alien residing in a country at war with the one of which he or she was a citizen). However, it would be wrong to assume that no foreigners were held as prisoners of war – or rather as internees – in neutral Swiss territory. In response to the plight of sick or long-term prisoners in different warring countries, and under the influence of public opinion at home, the Swiss government decided in 1916 to intern some foreign prisoners of war in Switzerland as an act of humanity. Other foreigners were interned – or at least monitored by the state – to protect Switzerland’s neutrality and the security of its borders. This applied in particular to people who crossed into Switzerland on their own initiative, such as deserters and draft-dodgers.6 This chapter focuses on the internment of sick and wounded prisoners of war in Switzerland as a result of international agreements between Switzerland and warring states, starting with the accord between France and Germany in January 1916. The soldiers and civilian internees who benefitted from this type of internment came from several warring European states and from British dominions and colonies including Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand. Separated by nationality, they were distributed throughout Switzerland and accommodated in sanatoria, hotels and pensions. The motive here

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was humanitarian, although there were also certain practical advantages for Switzerland. In particular, the financially stricken tourist industry profited from the need to house foreign prisoners of war in appropriate accommodation. However, there was also a shift in public attitudes toward the internees in Switzerland as the war continued. Initially they were seen as ‘desirable war guests’, but later they became ‘undesirable foreigners’. This special form of ‘neutral’ wartime internment, and the public reactions it produced, will be discussed in more detail below. Towards the end of the chapter, the place of Switzerland in the global framework of internment policies, and the differences and similarities between internment in neutral as opposed to belligerent states, will also be considered.

Causes and precedents Switzerland and the First World War Unlike most countries in Europe, Switzerland was not drawn into the 1914–18 conflict, and it succeeded in maintaining its status as an armed neutral for the entire duration of the war. Nonetheless, in view of the many, and varied, forms of cultural and material exchange that took place between Switzerland and the belligerent powers, the war also had a decisive impact on the Swiss nation. Although there was no fighting on Swiss soil, the ‘battles of material’ and economic totalisation of the war in surrounding territories led, especially from 1916, to the progressive impoverishment of wide sections of the Swiss population. In particular, the Allies sought to restrict the amount of goods that Switzerland could import as part of its strategy of blockading the Central Powers. The growing food shortages and social polarisation culminated in the general strike of November 1918.7 The war also gave rise to new migratory patterns in Switzerland. Traditional forms of labour migration came to a virtual standstill, as most foreign workers left Switzerland to return to their home countries.8 Many of the foreigners who elected to stay in Switzerland were draft-dodgers who wished to avoid wartime military service in one of the belligerent armies. After the war had begun, increasing numbers of deserters also sought refuge in neutral Switzerland. In total, almost 26,000 deserters and draft-dodgers enjoyed Swiss protection during the war. Most of them were Italians but there were also many Germans as well as soldiers from Austria-Hungary, France and Russia.9 Throughout the war, Switzerland was also a transit point for the exchange of wounded soldiers, civilian internees and evacuees from occupied territories – especially between Germany and France and Austria-Hungary and Italy. Various information bureaus and aid organisations for prisoners of war, civilian internees, hostages and refugees were also established on Swiss soil, mainly under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).10 Finally, the First World War led to increased state intervention in the lives of private individuals in Switzerland, just as it did in the belligerent countries.

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Most wartime measures were accepted by the populace as being in the interests of national security, even when they infringed on personal freedoms or on the sovereignty of individual cantons.11 Under the federal constitution of 1848, authority was shared between the Confederation (central state), the cantons and halfcantons (federal states) and the smaller local communes, or municipalities, with each canton having its own constitution and laws. At the beginning of the war there were therefore no consistent guidelines concerning border control in Switzerland and every canton had its own system. Within the framework of the wartime emergency law, the Federal Council or Bundesrat managed to establish a Federal Immigration Authority in 1917, the ‘Eidgenössische Fremdenpolizei’, which supervised control of the country’s borders and the residential status of foreigners.12 Internment in Switzerland In 1859, at the time of the second Italian war of independence, 650 soldiers from the Austrian army were interned in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Neutral internment of foreign soldiers took place on a much bigger scale in spring 1871. During the latter stages of the Franco-Prussian war, 87,000 men from the French Armée de l’Est (nicknamed the ‘Bourbaki army’) crossed the border at Les Verrières in order to avoid falling into enemy hands, and were held, in rather comfortable and benign conditions, for six weeks.13 The legal foundations for the internment of soldiers who had deliberately strayed into neutral territory to evade imminent death or capture, and of sick and wounded prisoners who, in certain circumstances, might legitimately be transferred from enemy to neutral captivity, were laid down in the 1899 Hague Convention (revised in 1907), and by the Geneva Convention of 1906. Article 57 of the 1899 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague II) stated that: A neutral State which receives in its territory troops belonging to the belligerent armies shall intern them, as far as possible, at a distance from the theatre of war. It can keep them in camps, and even confine them in fortresses or locations assigned for this purpose. It shall decide whether officers may be left at liberty on giving their parole that they will not leave the neutral territory without authorization. Article 58 further stipulated that ‘Failing a special convention, the neutral State shall supply the interned with the food, clothing, and relief required by humanity. At the conclusion of peace, the expenses caused by the internment shall be made good’.14 Article 2 of the 1906 Geneva Convention stated that belligerent countries were ‘free to arrange with one another such exceptions and mitigations with reference to sick and wounded prisoners as they may judge expedient’. In specific terms, they might agree:

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To restore to one another the wounded left on the field after a battle To repatriate any wounded and sick whom they do not wish to retain as prisoners, after rendering them fit for removal or after recovery To hand over to a neutral State, with the latter’s consent, the enemy’s wounded and sick to be interned by the neutral State until the end of hostilities15

At the end of October 1914, the Swiss Political Department contacted the French and German governments at the request of the ICRC with an offer to facilitate the transport of seriously injured prisoners of war to their home countries via Switzerland. The Vatican also intervened in the negotiations and eventually an agreement was reached between Germany and France. In March 1915, the first train with seriously injured POWs passed through Switzerland. By November 1916, 2,350 German and 8,670 French soldiers had been sent home under this arrangement.16 In further negotiations after these transports had started, the French government voiced concern that repatriated German soldiers who were only moderately injured might eventually recover and re-join the war effort. The president of the ICRC and future member of the Swiss Federal Council, Gustave Ador, suggested that such soldiers might be interned in Switzerland until the end of the war.17 In late December 1915, a new agreement was reached – again through the offices of the Vatican – between Switzerland, the German Empire and France. A list of different diseases and injuries was drawn up under which prisoners of war could be selected for internment in neutral Switzerland.18 Candidates for neutral internment had to undergo a medical examination conducted by a mixed commission of doctors in the camps where they were being held, and a further examination at the repatriation stations in Constance or Lyon. From there they were despatched to different regions of Switzerland and were accommodated in hospitals, empty hotels and sanatoria. Some regions took wounded German prisoners, and others French; there was no mixing of nationalities, with the exception of the mixed internment regions in Bern and Lucerne. Purpose-built camps for the accommodation of the internees were not built – although there had been plans to do so.19 However, two prison and work camps were set up in the cantons of Vaud and Thurgau, one for the members of the Entente powers, the other for the German-speaking prisoners of war.20 On 26 January 1916, the first 100 French and German prisoners of war who had been selected for neutral internment arrived in Switzerland. The German soldiers were brought to Davos, the French to Leysin. The number of military internees grew over the following months. By early February 883 Frenchmen were already located in the regions of Montana, Montreux, Leysin and the Bernese Oberland, while 364 Germans had been accommodated in the Lake Lucerne and Davos regions.21 In May 1916, Great Britain joined the scheme for the internment of wounded prisoners of war in Switzerland.22 A total of 67,700 military internees stayed in Switzerland from the beginning of the Franco-German agreement in January 1916 until the repatriation of the last German prisoners in February 1919 – but never more than 30,000 at the same time. Most of the internees were Germans and Frenchmen. However, some Belgian and British soldiers

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(including Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Indians) were also held captive in Switzerland.23 Among the interned prisoners of war there was also a number of civilian internees. On 31 October 1917, a total of 1,491 French, 809 German, 463 Belgian and 380 Austria-Hungarian civilians found themselves in Swiss captivity.24 They were allowed to take up residence outside the official internment centres – as long as they could pay their own living costs. Otherwise they were accommodated together with the prisoners of war.25 The civilian internees were subject to the control of the ‘Sanitary Department’ of the Swiss military. Outside the official internment centres, the local police authorities were responsible for their supervision. The civilian internees had to register themselves at the nearest police station in their temporary place of residence and were required to report themselves twice a week for additional checks. In contrast to the paperless foreign military refugees (i.e. deserters and draft-dodgers) who were also allowed to choose their own place of residence,26 civilian internees were not required to put up any bail money during their stay in Switzerland, because it was expected that they would leave the country after the war. According to the Swiss territorial service, there was therefore no risk that the civilian internees could become a ‘burden’ on their host cantons.27 By contrast, it was assumed that deserters and draft-dodgers would try to stay in Switzerland to avoid the threat of (post-war) military justice in their own countries. Organisation of internment The internment of prisoners of war in Switzerland was regarded as a military measure. However, the person in charge, military doctor Colonel Hauser, reported directly to the head of the Political Department and not to his military superior, General Ulrich Wille. Conditions of internment were regulated by a special decree issued by the military doctor.28 Colonel Hauser had fifteen ‘directing medical officers’ at his disposal, who presided over an equal number of regions (administratively combined organisational units). Within the internment centres, direct control was usually left to the internees themselves. For instance, they could choose their respective ‘floor and room representatives’.29 On 19 July 1918, the Federal Council designated Colonel von der Mühll as head of the newly founded ‘department for foreign interests and internment’. Henceforth he took over the military-social leadership of the internment of prisoners of war from the military doctor. However, Colonel Hauser, as chief of the Sanitary Department, retained some supervisory powers over the new body.30 The organisation of internment was based on agreements between the belligerent states and Switzerland. The warring parties bore the financial burden of neutral internment, as was expected of them under the 1906 Geneva Convention. The amounts were advanced to the Federal Political Department of the Swiss National Bank and were claimed back from the belligerent nations on a monthly basis. The sums invoiced from January 1916 to August 1919 amounted to a total of about 137 million Swiss francs.31

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From mid-1916, the Federal Council imposed a general employment obligation on the internees. As a consequence, they were allocated certain types of work, tailored to their current health and physical condition.32 However, a number of internees were apparently unaware of the requirement to work. According to the minutes of a meeting between the directing medical officers and the army doctor in February 1917, it was noted that Most of the internees live under the illusion that the employment opportunities offered to them are voluntary; this is not the case. It is worth remembering that we are not asking the internees to work for us, but for themselves, so that after the war they can return to their home countries as productive individuals [fleissige Menschen].33 However, among the military internees, officers and sergeants were excluded from the requirement to work. The internees were divided into six different classes according to their ability to perform manual or intellectual labour (see Table 12.1). On 28 July 1916, Colonel Hauser gave the directing medical officers the authorisation to organise labour for the internees of class III and to establish studios and workshops for this purpose. The allocation of labour for internees of class IV was organised by a central commission, which directed three regional commissions for Romandy, Eastern Switzerland and Central Switzerland. Work in the studios and workshops was mainly intended for internees who were not in good health or who could no longer practise their previous trade or profession because of their injuries. The purpose was not to make profit out of the labour of the internees but to ensure that they remained productive human beings and did not lose the habit of engaging in meaningful work. Approximately one in five of the internees were employed in such studios and workshops.34 They received a wage, part of which was deducted to meet accommodation costs.35 The manufactured products were not allowed to compete with local trade and

Table 12.1 Classification of the internees according to their ability to work I Class Persons completely unable to work II Class Persons partially able to work who received no compensation for their work III Class Persons partially able to work who worked in specially created studios and workshops. They received 60 per cent of the standard wages. IV Class Persons able to work who could work outside their places of internment, for example as building workers in a factory. They received normal wages, but their country of origin no longer paid for their internment. V Class Internees who had to learn a new profession because of their injuries and therefore became apprentices VI Class Students Source: Georges Schild, Die Internierung von ausländischen Militäreinheiten in der Schweiz 1859, 1871, 1916–19: Eine geschichtlich-postalische Studie (Bern, 2009), p. 163.

258 Anja Huber were therefore intended largely for export to the internees’ home countries.36 Selected products were also put on show to the Swiss public in a series of special exhibitions with the intention of demonstrating that the internees were making themselves useful. By April 1917, more than half – or 8,000, out of the 15,000 internees in Switzerland – were working.37 In addition, many interned students were allowed to continue their studies at Swiss universities. In the summer semester of 1917, a total of 1,650 prisoners of war were enrolled at different higher education institutes in Switzerland.38 However, the figures also tell us that in April 1917, one in three of the internees were neither working nor participating in training or education – either for health reasons or because they were officers and chose to spend their time on other pursuits.

Interned prisoners of war as desired foreigners? Reception of the internees At the beginning of internment in 1916 the injured prisoners of war were warmly welcomed by the Swiss population and were often showered with care packages or ‘Liebesgaben’. The British consul Maurice Galland described the reception of the British internees in Lausanne on their way to Château-d’Œx in August 1916 as follows: The convoy arrived at Lausanne at 4.30 A.M., where an enthusiastic ovation was made to our soldiers by about 2000 people, principally Swiss. . . . The train stopped at Lausanne at about 25 minutes during which the ladies of the Red Cross offered coffee to our men, while any amount of articles such as cigarettes, soap, tooth-brushes, flags, flowers etc. . . . were handed to them by the people.39 According to the files of the British Foreign Office, the internees were utterly spoiled by the resident population and Swiss visitors to the region after they had arrived in Château-d’Œx. Since the municipality was a summer health resort, the Swiss authorities could not prevent active contact between the internees and the local inhabitants: ‘All that could be done was to prohibit free access to the establishment except by special permit and this was done’.40 The situation was similar in other parts of Switzerland where internees were accommodated. It therefore came as no surprise that during internment many sexual relationships developed – whether between Swiss women and prisoners of war or foreign migrant workers, or between tourists and internees. According to Hauser, there were many applications for permission to get married from the internee population. Representatives of the Swiss Political Department were obliged to enter into negotiations with the relevant foreign embassies and consuls in Switzerland to achieve a resolution of this question. The Swiss authorities had no objection in principle to marriages between Swiss or other nationals

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and internees. However, for members of some nations, there was an obligation to purchase a marriage licence issued by the home state.41 Internees as additional manpower The central commission for internee labour received many requests from Swiss companies because of the growing manpower shortages in Switzerland. Employers and internees were brought together by official employment agencies attached to foreign embassies, by advertisements in newspapers or through the efforts of the directing medical officers of the different internment regions.42 Employers were not allowed to hire the internees directly but had to make a request to the competent regional commission for labour. These commissions examined the application and sent it with a recommendation to the central commission in Bern, which made a final decision in consultation with the army doctor.43 By the end of 1916, nearly 1,200 applications had been received, and 1,000 of them approved. By the end of 1917, a total of 5,556 internees were employed in Switzerland outside their place of internment.44 The internees worked in many different industries as skilled workers or auxiliary staff. The kind of roles they were allocated ranged from hairdresser, mechanic, tailor and electrician to decorator, salesman, collier, pharmacist, plasterer, agricultural worker and musician.45 The involvement of the commissions was an attempt to offset fears – expressed both by the administrators of the internment regime and by Swiss trade unions – that a free labour market would lead to lower wages and discrimination against local workers.46 Likewise the commission served to protect the internees from exploitation and in the case of labour disputes the regional commission represented their legal interests. To ensure approval of a request, an employer had to enjoy a good reputation, be willing to pay the local customary wage, and provide evidence that no local labourer had been ousted by a foreign internee. Also necessary was an attestation of the responsible medical officer that the internee was healthy enough to perform the type of labour envisaged and was not needed at his place of internment.47 Further the commissions made sure that ‘no internee was assigned to an employer who belonged to a nation at war with his own, and no internee was required to work on munitions production’.48 In view of the increasing food supply crisis in Switzerland, made worse by a noticeable lack of agricultural workers from autumn 1917, a number of internees were withdrawn from industrial employment to work on farms or in peat extraction.49 The role of the tourist industry The First World War plunged the tourist industry, which had made significant new capital investments in the period up to 1914 and was therefore heavily in debt, into a deep recession.50 There was particularly high unemployment in the hotel sector as a result of the sudden end of the tourist season. From one day to the next, almost 20,000 hotel workers found themselves surplus to requirements. In

260 Anja Huber Interlaken, for example, the number of tourists fell within a few weeks of the start of the war from 50,000 to 3,000.51 Throughout Switzerland, foreign guests were suddenly missing, and hotels and sanatoria were left largely empty. In addition, various rumours about Switzerland deterred foreign tourists from visiting. For instance, it was reported that Switzerland would suffer from famine as a result of the war, and that it would run out of cash.52 The crisis in the hotel industry worsened again in the second year of the war. In July 1915, the ‘Central Office of the Swiss Hotel Association’ therefore launched an appeal to the Swiss population to spend their holidays in Switzerland. This was described as a national duty.53 The Hotel Association also applied to the Federal Council to provide special protection for their branch of the economy. In November 1915, an ordinance for the protection of the hotel industry against the consequences of war was enacted.54 The internment of injured prisoners of war and civilians from 1916 offered Swiss hoteliers a potential way out of this economic crisis.55 As the tourism trade heard about the upcoming internment measures, each region tried to present itself in the best light to get as many internees as possible for their empty hotels and sanatoria. In the Swiss Federal Archives, one can find a large number of letters in which the different tourism regions sought to promote themselves. The extent to which these letters influenced the actual distribution of prisoners of war across the different regions of Switzerland is difficult to say due to the lack of the sources.56 But it is a fact that the soldiers were not, as originally planned, accommodated in specially created camps or military barracks,57 but in vacant buildings of the tourist industry. By the end of 1917, nearly 30,000 internees occupied 195 hotels, guest houses, hospitals and sanatoria throughout Switzerland.58 In June 1917, the tourist offices from the cantons of Bern, Lucerne, Obwalden and Nidwalden, supported by their respective governments, complained in a letter to Colonel Hauser that the number of internees was not large enough to satisfy the needs of the hotel industry.59 Hauser replied that he had no influence over the number of internees because this was a matter for agreement between the states concerned. In addition, an increase in the number of internees was not possible for security reasons, especially border control, according to Hauser. But he told the tourist offices that he would pay attention to the equal consideration of the regions.60 Apparently, the military doctor prioritised adherence to international agreements and the safeguarding of national security above the interests of the hotel industry. But the concerns of the hoteliers were borne in mind wherever possible. It is interesting to examine how the Federal Council sought to explain internment to the Swiss population. In a communiqué from the press office of the army staff in June 1916, the population was informed about the hospitalisation of sick and wounded prisoners of war in Switzerland. The country’s fortunate position of not being involved in the war was stressed. The Federal Council argued that Switzerland, as a neutral state, was duty-bound to provide assistance to foreign nationals in what was an extraordinary situation. But he was also at pains to emphasise that the internment of injured prisoners of war differed from that of fugitive

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prisoners of war, deserters and draft-dodgers. At the end of the press release, the economic benefits of internment were also pointed out: Turning now to the advantages that have accrued to our own land as a result of this humanitarian venture, the main beneficiary has been the longsuffering hotel industry. In relation to the welfare of the internees there has also been a practical benefit, which should likewise be mentioned.61 Switzerland’s economic interests were clearly formulated here and even served as a justification for the implementation of internment. The war had gone on longer than expected, and resources were gradually running out. The purpose of internment had to be made understandable to the Swiss population; humanitarian considerations alone were no longer enough.62 Another advantage, according to the Swiss Federal Council, was the fact that Swiss doctors could educate themselves further in the techniques of war surgery through care of wounded prisoners of war. Right through to the end of internment in February 1919, it remained difficult for the Federal Council to satisfy the demands of the tourist industry. While the hoteliers were mainly interested in the economic aspects of internment, the Federal Council saw an opportunity to cultivate Switzerland’s image as a humanitarian country. After 1919, the hoteliers still tried to profit from internment. Lawyers and courts had to deal with claims for compensation by the hoteliers due to damages and extraordinary wear and tear in their property. With an order of January 1922, the Federal Council recognised the claims of the hotel industry in principle and provided a loan of 3.5 million Swiss francs for compensation payments.63

Internees as undesired foreigners? Criticism of internment During their stay in Switzerland, internees committed a variety of criminal offences for which they were brought before the Swiss military courts. Swiss military justice also had to deal with escaped prisoners of war.64 According to Hauser, the number of foreign prisoners of war who had been sentenced to more than ten days arrest by November 1916 amounted to fifteen Belgians, thirteen British internees, 124 Frenchmen and thirty-four Germans. These cases mainly concerned offences committed under the influence of alcohol.65 Only one Belgian, nine Frenchmen and four Germans were convicted following formal trials before a military court. They had committed property crimes or sexual offences.66 Alcohol abuse was identified as a problem among the internees – but also among Swiss soldiers. In order to discourage excessive drinking, alcohol-free soldiers’ bars were established at various locations in Switzerland under the direction of Else Züblin-Spiller.67 Drunkenness sometimes led to scuffles, brawling and verbal disputes between interned prisoners of war and Swiss civilians.68 Often jealousy played a role because Swiss

262 Anja Huber women started relationships with interned soldiers, and their brothers, fathers or friends took it upon themselves to intervene.69 During and after the internment period (1916–19), Swiss courts had to deal with miscellaneous paternity suits filed by Swiss women against foreign internees.70 The employment of the internees also aroused the concern of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions, which in 1916 complained that wage competition was driving wages down. It called for the protection of the native worker against the negative economic side effects and consequences of the war: We approach you with the urgent request that you take all necessary steps to ensure that the employment of prisoners of war takes places only as a means of ensuring a rapid and complete restoration of the health and fitness [of the internees in question], and that it does not slide over into acquisitiveness or unfair competition [Schmutzkonkurrenz].71 Through its supporters in parliament, the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions demanded protection of native workers and restrictions on the internees’ engagement in waged labour. The abuses that appeared most often in their complaints were illegal employment, wage reductions or the sacking of native workers in favour of internees. For example, two local employees were replaced through a French internee in a mechanical repair shop in Thun, Canton Bern, which led to protests from the local population.72 The Federal Council reacted by prohibiting the employment of prisoners of war in the production of war materials of any kind. However, there was no adequate enforcement of this order and entrepreneurs did not always abide by it. Eventually, with the growing labour shortages, the Federation of Trade Unions decided to abandon its campaign to restrict the employment of internees because in terms of numbers, they posed no serious competition on the labour market.73 In 1917 the economic arguments for internment came under criticism. For example, the Bernese pastor Hans Zurlinden argued in his journal: ‘We pride ourselves on being a land of Samaritans. We take pride in our treatment of internees and child evacuees, but all we are doing in reality is trying to replace our lost interest in foreign industry’.74 Foreigners in Switzerland also began to voice criticisms of internment. Many members of the German colony, for example, were of the opinion that internment was first and foremost a ‘business matter’ for Switzerland.75 Supply crisis in Switzerland In autumn 1917, the economic situation in Switzerland became more and more strained, especially in relation to the supply of food and raw materials.76 The Swiss population became increasingly critical of the continued internment of foreign prisoners of war. In a letter from the Federal Food Agency to the Political Department in October 1918 it was noted: ‘In the broadest sections of Swiss society there reigns a great deal of dissatisfaction over the large number of foreigners that

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we . . . have to support’. For this reason, the Federal Council was keen to counter any impression that the internees were being favoured over the Swiss population or that they were enjoying better access to food and other scarce resources. Further difficulties were caused by the fact that the family members of internees were permitted to enter Switzerland to visit them. Federal Councillor Eduard Müller, head of the Federal Department of Justice and Police, argued in December 1917 that visits made by relatives of the internees had nothing to do with internment itself and therefore should be restricted ‘because otherwise Switzerland risks having to bear the full cost of supporting the inward migration of penniless dependents of [those prisoners we are holding]’.78 Unlike the internees, who were only ‘temporarily’ in Switzerland and had no legal basis for making claims for residency permits, their families could take up residence in Switzerland if the respective cantonal authorities granted them the right to do so.79 At the same time, the Swiss confederation received no monies from foreign governments to support the costs of accommodating the dependents of internees. In February 1918, the Federal Department of Justice and Police issued a new regulation for the police directors of the cantons. Restrictions were now placed on visits by relatives of the internees, with the worsening economic situation cited as justification. On the one hand, the visits should now last no longer than fourteen days. On the other hand, the cantonal authorities were told that they should grant residence permits to the families of the internees only in in exceptional cases. In line with the new regulation, Swiss legations and consulates abroad were instructed to put a stamp in the passports of the relatives, which stated that their stay in Switzerland was only permitted within a specific time period. However, compliance by the cantonal authorities with the regulations was only half-hearted, largely because of the lack of resources devoted to cantonal migration control and the business interests of the local tourist industry.80 During 1918, 1,539 families of foreign internees – amounting in total to 2,613 persons – were granted entry into Switzerland.81 How many of them stayed in the country after the end of the war is not known. From around mid-1917, complaints from internees concerning the deterioration of the food supply began to multiply. The Federal Council therefore enacted a regulation requiring more consistent supply of the Swiss population and the internees.82 Because of the strengthening of economic control and blockade measures by the belligerent states, the Department of Economic Affairs had to come up with ever more inventive arguments for increasing the modest quotas of goods it could import in negotiations with the warring parties. Citing the extra mouths it had to feed in view of its ‘custody of a large number of internees’, it managed on a number of occasions to increase its import allowance for fertiliser, potatoes and coal.83 Overextension through internment The coordination of the various interested parties involved in internment was sometimes very difficult. General Wille complained regularly about the division

264 Anja Huber of powers in the organisation of the internment system. In May 1917, the Federal Council decided to recognise service by soldiers in the ‘Prisoners of War Internment’ system as active military service.84 The general was not enthusiastic about this measure. He observed that the Swiss Armed Forces were overstretched by the number of internees. According to Wille, the use of many Swiss soldiers in the organisation of internment had serious consequences for the normal operation of the army and its defensive capability.85 In spring 1917, the military doctor informed the belligerent nations that Switzerland could not accommodate more than 30,000 internees at any one time because of its changed political and military situation and growing difficulties in food and raw material supply.86 He stated that the country’s capacity to accommodate new prisoners of war was exhausted for the time being. There are interesting sources on this subject in the British National Archives in Kew, London. In the general correspondence from the ‘Prisoners of War and Aliens Department’ one can find records about the proposed internment of Serb prisoners of war in Switzerland in August 1917.87 The British Minister in Bern, Horace Rumbold, informed the British Foreign Office that the Serb Minister had asked the Swiss government by letter whether they would agree to intern Serb prisoners of war in Switzerland. The Federal Council replied that they were in principle ready to do so. But Rumbold argued that besides food shortages, there was the further difficulty of finding suitable places where Serb prisoners of war, not speaking any language except their own, could be interned.88 Besides, the Swiss Minister for Foreign Affairs had asserted that there was a growing feeling in the country against taking in any more prisoners of war beyond those already in Switzerland.89 The Swiss Minister promised to study the question nevertheless. In September 2017, Horace Rumbold received the following answer: The Political Department, mindful of Switzerland’s philanthropic traditions, declares itself willing to examine this question. . . . Whatever we decide, the number of Serb prisoners cannot be very large. Especially in view of the current economic conditions, Switzerland cannot keep adding indefinitely to the number of internees it already holds.90 Unfortunately, the British Foreign Office records do not reveal whether any final decision was made, although there is a reference to the possibility of wounded Serb POWs being interned in Spain instead. There is also no evidence in the Swiss sources that Serb POWs were ever interned in Switzerland. The military doctor was also worried about the appropriate treatment of internees suffering from tuberculous. Those already in Switzerland were accommodated in well-furnished sanatoria, but he saw no prospect of establishing new tuberculosis wards because after the end of the war these wards would not be suitable for use as normal health resorts.91 For Hauser, the acceleration of repatriation of recovered or incurable prisoners of war was therefore the only appropriate measure to relieve the situation. He therefore invited the Federal Council to start new negotiations with the belligerent states, with the aim of organising the speedy

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and unhindered repatriation of the internees concerned. As a result of these negotiations the role Switzerland played in the global system of captivity began to change in the last two years of the war. From a place of forced residency, it became primarily a place of transit. On 26 May 1917, the military doctor issued a general directive for repatriation. The cantons that relied heavily on tourism protested vehemently against the departure of the internees and argued that whole areas would lose an important source of revenue.93 The end of internment On the day of the armistice on the western front on 11 November 1918, a total of 25,000 internees were still in Switzerland. By the end of that year, all Allied internees – except several hundred injured soldiers who were not fit for travel – were transported back to their home countries. However, the repatriation of internees from the Central Powers extended far into the summer of 1919. The last German prisoners of war left Switzerland on 12 August 1919 after the French government gave its consent to their release.94 A large number of internees – no exact numbers are known – opted to stay in the neutral country. The cantonal and municipal authorities were in general badly informed about the legal status of the internees. Therefore, they often considered that former foreign prisoners of war were entitled to domicile status in the canton or municipality where they chose to live, and issued them residence permits. The head of the ‘Prisoners of War Internment’ department noted in a letter to the head of the ‘Federal Immigration Authority’ in May 1919 that ‘the internees believe that they have a right to stay in Switzerland after their release from internment’.95 He further argued that the internees had no legal domicile in Switzerland in their capacity as prisoners of war, but only a ‘Zwangsaufenthaltsort’ or place of forced residency. Therefore, there was no obligation or justification for issuing them with resident permits. To obtain a residence permit every internee had to submit the usual entry application, which was then evaluated by the Federal Immigration Authority.96 The head of this authority, Heinrich Rothmund, replied that he agreed with this procedure. He ordered that every internee who could not present a residence permit at the time of release should be repatriated to his home country.97

Conclusion For Switzerland, this scheme was beneficial in many ways: the ‘war guests’ brought the ailing tourist industry a welcome reprieve, the home countries were paying for the accommodation costs, the internees were a good argument for seeking an increase in the import quota, and internees were used as skilled workers if their health was good enough.98 So concludes one of the leading Swiss scholars on wartime internment, Georg Kreis. It might be added that the accommodation of sick and wounded prisoners of war and civilian internees was also a political measure designed by the Federal Council to defend Switzerland’s neutrality in and outside the nation’s borders.

266 Anja Huber During their stay in Switzerland, the internees committed various crimes for which they were occasionally brought before the Swiss military courts. And already in 1916, the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions complained that competition from internees was having a noticeable impact on in the Swiss labour market, leading it to call for greater protection of native workers. The supply crisis of 1917 was then a catalyst for growing criticism of internment, which went hand in hand with a defensive mind-set against foreigners in Switzerland. Furthermore, the accommodation of the internees took up an increasing amount of civilian and military resources. In spring 1917, the capacity to accommodate new prisoners of war in Switzerland was exhausted. Consequently, Switzerland demanded the repatriation of recovered internees and those whose injuries were incurable. As a result of these negotiations, Switzerland found that its role changed in the last two years of the war, moving from a place of residence to a place of transit. What does all this mean for attempts to place the Swiss example within the global framework of internment during the First World War? And were there any significant differences between internment in a belligerent country and internment in a neutral one? In all belligerent countries the creation of an effective system for the coordination of internment became necessary. This resulted in an increased centralisation of power in the hands of the state.99 Switzerland experienced something very similar. Here too responsibility for interning prisoners of war was placed in the hands of the army, and the person in charge, military doctor Colonel Hauser, reported directly to the head of the Political Department. The creation of a central office for directing internee labour was a further result of wartime centralisation. But because of Switzerland’s federal organisation and its neutral status, the cantons still enjoyed considerable freedom in shaping their own internment policies. Growing difficulties in the administration of internment can also be observed in all belligerent countries. Governments were either poorly prepared or not prepared at all for the challenge of interning prisoners of war and struggled to manage the large numbers of internees involved. The reason for this struggle lay in the lack of any immediate precedent. Like so much else in the war, a novel situation arose. Therefore, only experience, born from trial and error, could solve the problem.100 Switzerland, too, was overstretched by the arrival of large groups of internees, especially in 1917, and tried to limit their number. At the same time, the use of military personnel to run the internment system placed significant strains on resources, and led to conflicts of competence within the army. But unlike belligerent countries, Switzerland could place a significant limit on the number of internees, it was prepared to accommodate because the reasons for internment were not linked to concerns about reducing the military strength of the enemy, but rather were of a humanitarian and economic nature. Furthermore, many belligerent countries introduced wholesale internment for reasons of national security.101 By contrast, reasons of national security meant that Switzerland was only willing to accommodate a limited number of internees. There could

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be no equal distribution of prisoners across all regions, as some were considered to be too close to the border with belligerent countries. The use of the rank-and-file prisoners of war as additional manpower was a global phenomenon during the war.102 This was also the case in Switzerland. However, prisoner labour was exploited to a lesser degree and the motive was somewhat different. Swiss internment was presented as a humanitarian gesture, and in line with this, prisoners were expected to help heal themselves by maintaining self-motivation and a work ethic even while in captivity. In many belligerent countries, public opinion played a role in shaping government policies on internment and on the control of enemy aliens more generally.103 This was also the case in Switzerland. But in comparison to belligerent countries, the Swiss people were encouraged to regard internment as an act of humanity. At the same time, it was a good business opportunity and for this reason hoteliers were eager to get as many internees as possible for their empty hotels and sanatoria. Although Switzerland had its own national and humanitarian motives for introducing a particular form of neutral internment, a necessary pre-condition for these internment measures was an agreement between the warring parties, starting with France and Germany. Therefore, Switzerland could not initiate neutral internment of sick and wounded prisoners on its own – it had to work within a global system. As the war continued, and with it the economic blockade, global economic factors also placed limits on the ability of Switzerland to take more internees. At the same time, it was able to use the fact of internment to mitigate some of the global economic effects of war, for instance via negotiations for increased import quotas or agreements which allowed the incurable prisoners to be sent home. Nonetheless, Switzerland also contributed to the shaping of the global system by dint of pioneering neutral internment. Switzerland was in part a model for the practice of neutral internment in the Netherlands. In 1917 the Dutch government also mediated a similar agreement between the German Empire and Britain, involving the internment of wounded military prisoners and civilian internees in the Netherlands.104 Ahead of this agreement, a Dutch representative, Major General M. Onnen, was sent on a ‘fact-finding mission’ to Bern. Altogether 16,000 sick and wounded prisoners were interned in the Netherlands in 1917–18. But in contrast to Switzerland, they were accommodated in barracks or private houses.105 In spite of these global aspects, national and regional factors were also important in the development and practice of neutral internment in Switzerland. For the central authorities, questions of military and border security were increasing vital – as they were in belligerent countries and in the Netherlands. There was also the question of appeasing and managing an increasingly hostile public opinion towards foreigners. For some regions, however, particularly those which relied on internees to prop up the long-suffering tourist industry, the desire was to expand the internment system, not place limits on it. New migration streams were needed to replace those disrupted by the war, so internment was not only about restricting movement – it could also be about searching for new migration streams to replace those disrupted by the war. All these national and regional

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factors helped to shape Switzerland’s contribution to internment as a global system.

Notes 1 Heather Jones, ‘A Missing Paradigm? Military Captivity and the Prisoner of War, 1914–1918’, in Matthew Stibbe (ed.), Captivity, Forced Labour and Forced Migration in Europe During the First World War (London, 2009), pp. 19–48 (here pp. 20–1). 2 Matthew Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe, 1914–20’, in ibid., pp. 49–81 (here p. 49). 3 Jones, ‘A Missing Paradigm?’, p. 24. 4 Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment’, p. 56. 5 Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain During the First World War (Oxford, 1991), p. 3. 6 See, for example, Thomas Bürgisser, ‘Unerwünschte Gäste’: Russische Soldaten in der Schweiz 1915–1920 (Zurich, 2010). 7 Roman Rossfeld, ‘Neue Zugänge zur Geschichte der Schweiz im Ersten Weltkrieg: Vorwort zum Themenschwerpunkt’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 63 (2013), pp. 337–42 (here pp. 337–8). 8 ‘Statistisches Büro des Eidgenössischen Departementes des Innern’, in Statistisches Jahrbuch der Schweiz, Vol. 27 (Bern, 1918), p. 30. 9 Bettina Durrer, ‘Auf der Flucht vor dem Kriegsdienst: Deserteure und Refraktäre in der Schweiz während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Carsten Goehrke and Werner G. Zimmermann (eds.), ‘Zuflucht Schweiz’: Der Umgang mit Asylproblemen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Zurich, 1994), pp. 197–216 (here pp. 198–9). 10 Georges Schild, Die Internierung von ausländischen Militäreinheiten in der Schweiz 1859, 1871, 1916–19: Eine geschichtlich-postalische Studie (Bern, 2009), p. 160. 11 Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, p. 45. 12 Uriel Gast, Von der Kontrolle zur Abwehr: Die eidgenössische Fremdenpolizei im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Wirtschaft 1915–1933 (Zurich, 1997), p. 37. 13 Hervé de Weck, ‘Bourbakiarmee’, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLK-online), www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D26892.php (accessed 22/10/2016). See also Patrick Deicher, Die Internierung der Bourbaki-Armee 1871: Bewältigung einer humanitären Herausforderung als Beitrag zur Bildung der nationalen Identität (Lucerne, 2009); and Schild, Die Internierung. 14 See https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/ART/150-110064?OpenDocument. Also Susanne Wolf, Guarded Neutrality: Diplomacy and Internment in the Netherlands During the First World War (Leiden, 2013), pp. 14–17. 15 See www.amdro.org.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Learning/Nat%20Curr%207%20%2014/History/Curr%20Links/WW1%20Documents/GENEVA%20CONVENTION %20OF%20JULY%206th.pdf. The 1906 Geneva Convention was replaced by a new Convention in 1929 – see Jonathan F. Vance (ed.), Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, 2nd ed. (New York, NY, 2006), p. 150. 16 Schild, Die Internierung, p. 74. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 See Vorbereitung zur Unterkunft von Internierten in verschiedenen Ortschaften, 1915, in Swiss Federal Archives, Bern (henceforth SFA), E27#1000/721#13996. 20 Schild, Die Internierung, p. 88. 21 Ibid., p. 76. 22 See Henry Phillip Picot, The British Interned in Switzerland (London, 1919). Also Thomas Bürgisser, ‘Menschlichkeit aus Staatsräson: Die lnternierung ausländischer

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27 28 29 30 31

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Kriegsgefangener in der Schweiz im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Roman Rossfeld, Thomas Buomberger and Patrick Kury (eds.), 14/18: Die Schweiz und der Grosse Krieg (Baden, 2014), pp. 266–89 (here pp. 270–2). Roland Gysin, Sanitätsfestung Schweiz: Über das Erheben der Stimme der Menschlichkeit/internierte fremde Militärpersonen in der Schweiz 1916–1919 (Masters dissertation, University of Zurich, 1993), p. 6. IX. Bericht des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung über die von ihm auf Grund des Bundesbeschlusses vom 3. August 1914 getroffenen Massnahmen, 20 November 1917, p. 591, www.amtsdruckschriften.bar.admin.ch. Schreiben der Leitung des Territorialdienstes an die Polizeibehörden der Kantone, 29 June 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14016. During the war a large number of foreign deserters and draft-dodgers sought refuge in Switzerland. Often they had no official papers. See, for example, Anja Huber, Fremdsein im Krieg. Die Schweiz als Ausgangs- und Zielort von Migration, 1914–1918 (Zurich, 2018). Schreiben der Leitung des Territorialdienstes an die Polizeibehörden der Kantone, 29 June 1916 (as note 25 above). Darstellung des Pressebüros des Armeestabes betreffend Hospitalisierung von Kranken und verwundeten Kriegsgefangenen in der Schweiz, 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13953. Instruktion des Armeearztes über den allgemeinen Gang der Internierung von kriegsgefangenen Kranken und Verwundeten in der Schweiz, 21 April 1916, pp. 4–5, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13952. Gysin, Sanitätsfestung Schweiz, p. 65. Roland Gysin, ‘Die Internierung fremder Militärpersonen im 1. Weltkrieg: Vom Nutzen der Humanität und den Mühen in der Asylpolitik’, in Sébastien Guex et al. (eds.), Krieg und Stabiliserung: Die Schweiz in der Zwischenkriegszeit (Zurich, 1998), pp. 33–46 (here p. 38). Schild, Die Internierung, p. 164. Protokoll der Konferenz der Regionskommandanten und Sanitätsoffiziere mit dem Armeearzt, 26 February 1917, p. 1. Copy in SFA, E27#1000/721#13956. Schild, Die Internierung, p. 168. Marianne Walle, ‘Les prisonniers français internés en Suisse 1916–1919’, in Christophe Vuilleumier (ed.), La Suisse et la guerre de 1914–1918 (Geneva, 2015), pp. 57–72 (here p. 67). Tagblatt der Stadt Thun, No. 278, 25 November 1916, p. 3. Franco Arnold, ‘Unsere Kriegsgäste’ oder ‘Verräter ihres Landes?’ Die Wahrnehmung der ausländischen Bevölkerung durch die Einheimischen im Oberwallis während des Ersten Weltkriegs (Masters dissertation, Simplon-Dorf, 2011), p. 44. Copy available at http://doc.rero.ch/record/28643 (accessed 20/12/2016). Georg Kreis, Insel der unsicheren Geborgenheit: Die Schweiz in den Kriegsjahren 1914–1918 (Zurich, 2014), p. 242. Report of Consul Galland on the Reception of British War Prisoners, 13 August 1916, in The National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth TNA), FO 383/217. Report of Colonel Picot, Officer in charge British Interned in Switzerland, 8 December 1916, in TNA, FO 383/219. See also Picot, The British Interned in Switzerland. Schreiben des Eidgenössischen Politischen Departementes an den Armeearzt, 7 April 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14014. Wegleitung für die Arbeitgeber betreffend den Geschäftsgang, Regionalkommission Zentralschweiz, October 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14002*. Protokoll der Regionalkommission Zentralschweiz, 26 September 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14002. Schild, Die Internierung, p. 164.

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45 Jon Keller, Krisenjahr 1918 in der Stadt Thun. Letztes Weltkriegsjahr: Rationierungen, Wohnungsnot, Teuerung, Grippeepidemie, Ausländische Internierte, Landesstreik (Thun, 2008), pp. 48–9. 46 Protokoll der Zentralkommission No. 56, 19 October 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/ 721#14002. 47 Wegleitung für die Arbeitgeber betreffend den Geschäftsgang, Regionalkommission Zentralschweiz, October 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14002. 48 Organisation und Geschäftsgang der Kommissionen für die Beschäftigung der Internierten, 20 November 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14002. 49 Protokoll der Regionalkommission Zentralschweiz, 12 June 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14002. 50 Christian Pfister, Im Strom der Modernisierung: Bevölkerung, Wirtschaft und Umwelt 1700–1914 (Bern, 1995), p. 284. 51 Kreis, Insel der unsicheren Geborgenheit, p. 28. 52 Schreiben des Präsidenten des Schweizer Hotelvereins an den Schweizer Bundesrat, 21 August 1914, in SFA, E2001A#1000/45#815. 53 Ibid. 54 Botschaft des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung betreffend die Beteiligung des Bundes bei Errichtung einer schweizerischen Hotel-Treuhandgesellschaft vom 20. September 1920, in Schweizerisches Bundesblatt, 4.4 (1920), p. 347. 55 The military use of hotels during the war was also a subject of debate in AustriaHungary. See Julia Walleczek-Fritz, Verena, Moritz, ‘Zimmer Frei! Das Zusammenspiel von Krieg und Tourismus am Beispiel der Unterbringung von Kriegsgefangenen in Österreich-Ungarn im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Patrick Gasser, Andrea Leonardi and Gunda Barth-Scalmani (eds.), Krieg und Tourismus. Im Spannungsfeld des Ersten Weltkrieges (Innsbruck, 2014), pp. 293–312. 56 See Internierungs-Regionen, u.a. Eingaben von Kantonen, Hotels usw betr. Belegung von Ortschaften mit Internierten, 1915–1919, in BAR E27#1000/721#13960. 57 See Vorbereitung zur Unterkunft von Internierten in verschiedenen Ortschaften, 1915, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13996. 58 Gysin, Sanitätsfestung Schweiz, p. 89. 59 Schreiben des Armeearztes an das Eidgenössische Politische Departement, 28 June 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13960. 60 Ibid. 61 Pressemitteilung des Pressebüros des Armeestabes über die Hospitalisierung von Kranken und verwundeten Kriegsgefangenen in der Schweiz, June 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13953. 62 How the internment of prisoners of war was judged by the government and the army is difficult to say based on the existing sources. 63 Gysin, Sanitätsfestung Schweiz, p. 87. 64 Schild, Die Internierung, pp. 91–2. 65 Schreiben des Armeearztes an das Eidgenössische Politische Departement, 23 November 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14020. 66 Ibid. 67 Schild, Die Internierung, p. 175; and Elizabeth Joris, ‘Else Züblin-Spiller’, in 1914– 1918 online. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keane, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin), https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/19141918-Online-zublin-spiller_else-2015-08-12.pdf. 68 See Unruhen, Streiks, Internierten-Feiern, u.a. Wahlpropaganda der deutschen Internierten in der Schweiz, u.a. für Hermann Hesse, 1916–1919, in SFA, E27#1000/ 721#14022. 69 Bürgisser, ‘Menschlichkeit aus Staatsräson’, p. 284.

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70 Gutachten des Eidgenössischen Justiz- und Polizeidepartement betreffend den Gerichtsstand für eine Vaterschaftsklage gegen einen in der Schweiz internierten Kriegsgefangenen, 31 January 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14018. 71 Schreiben des Schweizerischen Gewerkschaftsbundes an den Schweizer Bundesrat, 24 May 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14001; and Bürgisser, ‘Menschlichkeit aus Staatsräson’, p. 284. 72 Protokolle der Zentralkommission, No. 13, 22 December 1916; No. 14 (29 December 1916); and No. 16 (12 January 1917), all in SFA, E27#1000/721#14002. 73 Gysin, ‘Die Internierung’, p. 42. 74 Zurlinden, ‘Die Symphonie des Krieges’, 113–203 (journal May 1914 – May 1918), entry for 2 April 1917, p. 160.9. 75 Schreiben des Prokuristen Franz Bettschart an das Volkswirtschafts-Departement, 7 August 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13966. 76 Christian Pfister, ‘Auf der Kippe: Regen, Kälte und schwindende Importe stürzten die Schweiz in 1916–1918 in einen Nahrungsengpass’, in Daniel Krämer, Christian Pfister and Daniel Marc Segesser (eds.), ‘Woche für Woche neue Preisaufschläge’: Nahrungsmittel-, Energie- und Ressourcenkonflikte in der Schweiz des Ersten Weltkrieges (Basel, 2016), pp. 64–76. 77 Schreiben des Eidgenössischen Ernährungsamtes an das Eidgenössische Politische Departement, 11 October 1918, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13996. 78 Schreiben des Eidgenössischen Justiz- und Polizeidepartementes an das Eidgenössische Politische Departement, 3 December 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14016. Emphasis in the original. 79 Schild, Die Internierung, p. 89. 80 Kreisschreiben des Eidgenössischen Justiz- und Polizeidepartementes an die Polizeidirektionen der Kantone, 16 February 1918, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14016. 81 Favre, L’internement en Suisse des prisonniers de guerre malades ou blessés 1918– 1919, vol. 3 (Geneva and Basel, 1919), p. 88. 82 Kreisschreiben an die Regierungen sämtlicher Kantone betreffend Lebensmittelversorgung der Internierten, 6 March 1918, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13996. 83 Schreiben des Eidgenössischen Volkswirtschafts-Departementes an das Eidgenössische Politische Departement, 17 September 1917, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13996. 84 Armeeangehörige im Dienst der Internierung, 1916–1924, in SFA, E27#1000/ 721#13959. 85 Ibid. 86 Favre, L’internement 1918–1919, vol. 3, pp. 2–3. 87 See Miscellaneous (General): Prisoners, including: Proposed internment in Switzerland, 1917, in TNA, FO 383/357. 88 Letter of Horace Rumbold to the British Foreign Office, 30 August 1917, in TNA, FO 383/357. 89 Ibid. 90 Letter of the Swiss Minister for Foreign Affairs to Horace Rumbold, 3 September 1917, in TNA, FO 383/357. 91 Schreiben des Armeearztes an Bundesrat Hoffmann, Eidgenössisches Politisches Departement, 16 July 1916, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13966. 92 Gysin, Sanitätsfestung Schweiz, p. 93. 93 Gysin, ‘Die Internierung’, pp. 41–2. See also Internierungs-Regionen, u.a. Eingaben von Kantonen, Hotels usw. betreffend Belegung von Ortschaften mit Internierten, 1915–1919, in SFA, E27#1000/721#13960. 94 Gysin, Sanitätsfestung Schweiz, p. 96. 95 Schreiben des Chefs der Kriegsgefangenen-Internierung in der Schweiz, Eidgenössisches Politisches Departement, an den Chef der Eidgenössischen Zentralstelle für Fremdenpolizei, 14 April 1919, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14016.

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96 Ibid. 97 Schreiben des Chefs der Eidgenössischen Zentralstelle für Fremdenpolizei an den Chef der Kriegsgefangenen-Internierung in der Schweiz, Eidgenössisches Politisches Departement, 15 April 1919, in SFA, E27#1000/721#14016. 98 Kreis, Insel der unsicheren Geborgenheit, p. 240. 99 Matthew Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment’, in 1914–1918 online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keane, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson, Freie Universität Berlin, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-enemy_ aliens_and_internment-2014-10-08.pdf, first published 8 October 2014. 100 Panayi, The Enemy in our Midst, pp. 97–8. 101 Stibbe ‘Enemy Aliens and Internment’ (as note 99). 102 Jones, ‘Missing Paradigm’, pp. 28–30. 103 Panayi, The Enemy in our Midst, p. 97. 104 Wolf, Guarded Neutrality, p. 143. 105 Ibid., pp. 153–5.

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Index

Page numbers in italic indicate figures; those in bold indicate tables. Addams, Jane 197 Ador, Gustave 255 Aghazarian, Stepan G. 152 Ahmednagar camp in India 27 Aid Society of German Jews 44 Akçam, Taner 149, 158n22 Alexandra Palace Camp in London 20 Alien Enemy Statute (1798) in the United States 132, 182, 195 alien pauper 6 Aliens Act (1905) in Britain 6, 17n31 Aliens Restriction Act (1914) in Britain 132 Allied Supreme War Council 245 Alvensleben, Alvo von 191–3, 203n78 Americanism 198 American Protective League 181, 184 American Vacuum Oil Company 145, 150 Ananian, Gurji 151 Ankut, Krikor 155 anti-Germanism 198, 204n104 armed neutrality 252 Armee Oberkommando (AOK, Habsburg army high command): Bosnian Serb subjects and Reich Serb civilians for removal 69–70; de-nationalisation policies 76; Habsburg war aims 61; jurisdiction of 65–6, 71; preparations for expected siege by invading Russian forces 64; public opinion 73; strategy for occupied Serbs 72 Armenian(s) 2, 9, 10; in Ottoman Syria 145; Turkish genocide against Ottoman 13, 61 Armenian genocide 145, 156–7n4; concentration camps and 145–7, 149–50, 152–4, 156; controlling movement 151;

death and burial 153–4; destruction of Ottoman Armenians 145, 147–8; documents of accounts 149, 159n27; humanitarian resistance 154, 156; liquidation of camps 155; mathematical accuracy 148, 158n22; overview of 148–9; on paper and in practice 149–51; sexualised violence 152–3; survivors writing about experiences 155–6 Arndt, Max 33 Arsenian, Hagop 151 Arslanian, Father Dadjad 145, 153 Asquith, Herbert H. 210–11 Aubert, Isidore 112, 114 Auburtin, Victor 119 Auschwitz 3, 146, 156, 157n11 Australia, destination for captured Germans 23, 24 Austria: internment camps and civilian confinement in interior (Cisleithania) 63–9 Austria-Hungary: internment policies 73–6; notion of vassal status 61, 77n2; role in First World War 61; treatment of enemy civilians 76–7; wartime experiences of subjects 62; see also Habsburg Empire Austrian Red Cross 66, 70 Austrophilism 131 Bacilieri, Luciano 235–9, 241, 243, 245 Baker, Newton 182 Balfour, Arthur James 215 barbed wire disease: concept of 8, 191; depression and 216–17; spread of 32–3 Barkhof Sandra 2, 5, 205 Bassoul, Jean-Baptiste 95

Index Battle of Caporetto (1917) 64, 75, 134, 137–9 Baumgärtner, F. 190 Becker, Annette 1 Belgian civilians, deportation to Germany 48–54 Beloch, Julius 138 Benedict XV (Pope) 191 Beneš, Edvard 126 Benesch, Richard 137 Berchtold, Leopold 73 Bernau, Auguste 145, 150, 152, 154 Bernstorff, Johann Heinrich von 187 Berrima Gaol 29 Bertling, Karl Oscar 187 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von 44 Birchebner, Tita 130–1 Bissing, Freiherr Max Ferdinand von 50 Blason, Remigio 135, 136 Boer War 3, 15, 32, 34 Bolshevism 61 Borden, Robert 177n14 Bosnia-Herzegovina, internment camps in 63–9 Brázda, Oskar 126–7, 135 Brausewetter, Max 117, 118 British Empire 3; bureaucracy and transport 21–5; camp communities and cultural life 30–2; extent and typology of camps 25–30; globalisation of internment 4–5; Home Office report 20–1; internment and deportation 20–1; internment as global experience 34–5; prison islands 28–9 British Red Cross 71, 179n36 Browning, Lorenzo D. 193 Bulgarian Red Cross 247n6 Bureau of Investigation (BI) 182, 197, 199n3 Byram, George L. 192 Caglioti, Daniela L. 10, 125 Campen, Emma 197 Canada 2; assessing internment 175–6; civilians as POWs 162–3; conditions and diplomacy in internment 169–75; interned German enemy aliens in 173–5, 179n39; internment and rights 164–6, 168–9; internment camps (1914–20) in 167; The King v. Superintendent of Fine Street Police Station, Ex parte Liebmann (1916) 171; Order-in-Council P.C. 1501

293

168; Order-in-Council P.C. 2721 165, 169; War Measures Act (1914) 163, 164, 168, 172 Cancicov, Vasile Th. 234–5 Caribbean 23 Carr, Gilly 30 Casey, E.B.M. 194 Cecil, Lord Robert 21, 24 Chavush, Zeynel 152, 153 Chytil, Bohumír 127 Cisleithania 63–9 Cocking, Dorothy 68, 69 Cohen-Portheim, Paul 8 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) 148 concentration camp(s) 3–4, 12; during Armenian genocide 145–7, 149–50, 152–4, 156; genesis of 146; Italy and 128, 130–1, 136–7, 139; term 3, 53 confinement (Konfinierung) 10, 64–65 convent of Corbara (Corsica) 5, 85–121 Corbellini, François 95 Cuban War of Independence 3 Czan, Peter 189–90 Dachau 146 Dadrian, Vahakn 156 Dawson, Graham 218 Dedering, Tilman 217 de-escalation 12, 18n55, 72; violence in Bosnia and Serbia 12, 18n55, 72 defeatism 131 Dernburg, Bernhard 187 Der Scheinwerfer (journal) 193 d’Espèrey, Louis Franchet 245 Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft (DHPG, German Trading and Plantation Company) 209, 210, 215 Die Bombe (bi-weekly magazine) 190, 193 Diyatalawa camp 26 Douglas Camp, Isle of Man 33 Drawkau, Jennifer Kewley 218 Dual Monarchy 61, 64 Duisberg, Carl 50 Dündar, Fuat 149 du Pisani, Kobus 3 Elliott, Sir Gilbert 88 Ellis Island in New York 6, 8, 185, 196, 199n14 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 187

294

Index

Enemy Alien Regulations in the United States 185 Ewence, Hannah 2 Farcy, Jean-Claude 6 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 196 Federal Immigration Authority 254, 265 Fernando, A. M. 79n26 Ferri, Enrico 132 fifth column 181 First World War 1; Austria-Hungary’s role in 61; Canada’s internment and rights 164–6, 168–9; civilian internment in Germany during 41, 54–5; experience of civilian internment 7–10; internment as global phenomenon 3–5; Monarchy’s treatment of enemy aliens in 61–3; Switzerland and 253–4; United States’ internment procedures in 181–2, 198–9 Fleming, Ian 120 Fort Douglas in Utah 185, 186, 191–4, 195 Forth, Aidan 3, 4 Fort McPherson in Georgia 184–5, 192 Fort Napier in South Africa 25, 27, 30, 31 Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia 8, 184–90, 195 Fort Verdala in Malta 27, 28 France 85–6; Corsica invasions and dominations 88–9; internment camp of Ile-Longue at Crozon 121–2n4; internment in 86–8; internment in convent of Corbara in Corsica 89–90, 90, 91; see also convent of Corbara (France); Hammer, Julius (amateur artist) Francis, Andrew 210 Franco-Prussian War 254 Galland Maurice 258 Gellhorn, Walter 32 Geneva Convention: (1906) 122n9, 245, 254, 256, 268n15; (1929) 18n60; (1949) 13 genocide(s): Herero and Nama 3, 146; Turkish, against Ottoman Armenians 13, 61; see also Armenian genocide gentleman’s camps, England 216 George III (King) 88 Geranian, Vartan 150 Gerard, James W. 162, 177n1, 181 Germanophobia 198, 204n104 German Red Cross 28 German Samoa, New Zealand occupation of 206–10; see also New Zealand German South West Africa (GSWA) 3, 146, 155

Germany: civilian internee population by site 43; civilian internees by census dates 42; civilian internment during First World War 41, 54–5; forced deportation of Belgian workers 48–54; interned enemy aliens in Canada 173–5, 179n39; internment camp at Traunstein in Bavaria 46–8; internment numbers and places 41–4; policies of internment 44–6 Gerwarth, Robert 19 Giuseppi, Simon 2, 5, 85 Glendairy Prison 29 Globe (newspaper) 162 Goldschmidt, Richard 187 Golubović, Mihajlo T. 68 Gomoiu, Victor 242 Grady, Tim 2 Grant-Smith, Ulysses 71 Gregory, Thomas W. 182, 183, 195, 196 Griffith, J. 171 Grosskoff, Adolfo 137 Guillermin, René 236, 239–40, 243–4 Gumz, Jonathan 61 Habsburg Empire 4, 9, 229; Armee Oberkommando (AOK) 61, 64–6, 71–4, 76; Battle of Caporetto (1917) 64, 75, 134, 137–9; internees and confinees in Hungary 70; internees and confinees in Waidhofen district 67; internment camps and civilian confinement in Cisleithania and Bosnia-Herzegovina 63–9; internment camps and confinement places in Transleithania 69–73; internment in, in European and global context 73–6; Monarchy’s treatment of enemy aliens in First World War 61–3; Reich Serb subjects and Bosnian Serbs 64 Hacker, Friedrich 23 Hague Convention of 1899 (revised 1907) 7, 9, 38n62; Article 6 of 173; civilian internees in Canada 30, 32, 162, 165, 166; document for conduct 48; emergency tasks 51; Fourth 173; Laws and Customs of War on Land 248n22, 254; New Zealand 207–8, 221n17, 222n41; in Romania 230, 248n22; Rules of Land Warfare 122n9, 136; Second 183, 254; in Switzerland 254; United States 185 Hamidian massacres 148, 158n24 Hammer, Julius 86–120

Index Harcourt, Lewis 22 Harkin, J. B. 171 Hauser, Colonel 256–8, 260–1, 264, 266 Havelberg camp in Germany: civilian internee population 43; German camp 43–4; living conditions 43–4 Hazarabedian, Yeghisheh 155 Hearst, William Randolph 187 Helbig, Paul 23 Henry, Albert 116 Herero and Nama genocides/revolt 3, 146 Heynen, Carl 187 Hiery, Hermann 207, 214 History of the Armenian Genocide, The (Dadrian) 156 Hitler, Adolf 47 Hobsbawm, Eric 6 Holocaust 146, 156 Holsworthy 27, 30, 31, 33 Holzminden camp in Germany 42, 44; civilian internee population 43 Hong Kong 26 Hoover, Herbert 12 Hoover, J. Edgar 196 Horne, John 2 Hüseyin, Kör 152, 153, 154 Huber, Anja 5, 252 Hugenberg, Alfred 50 Hungary: internees and confinees in 70; internment camps and confinement places in interior (Transleithania) 69–73; see also Austria-Hungary; Habsburg Empire Hyslop, Jonathan 146 Ibsen, Henrik 31 Il giorno del giudizio (The Day of Judgement) (Satta) 125 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) 184, 188–90, 193 Inter-Allied Military Mission in Hungary 227–8, 245–6, 248 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 9, 12, 13, 66, 70, 74, 100, 101, 118, 127, 136, 227, 253, 255; International Prisoners of War Agency 1 International Labour Organisation (ILO) 13 International Prisoner of War Agency 127 Isle of Man 5, 7, 22, 25; Douglas Camp 33; Knockaloe camp 25, 27–30; musical life on 31 Italian-Turkish Peace Treaty 133 Italo-Turkish war of 1911–12 10, 128, 132

295

Italy: from Caporetto to end of war 137–9; confinement over concentration camps 136; displacement and confinement at beginning of war 129–31; domicilio coatto (forced domicile) 79n28, 125, 131–7; establishment of Kingdom of 10, 125; internment policy 135, 137, 139–40; Kingdom of 130 J’accuse (Brausewetter) 117 Jahr, Christoph 2, 8, 41 Jones, Heather 7, 217 Jungle, Be Gentle (Lehnert) 95 Kahn, Bernhard 44–5 Kailitz, Steffen 13 Kain, Walter 33 Kaiser, Hilmar 149 Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology 187 Kévorkian, Raymond 147, 149 Keegan, John 147 Kelegian, Dikran 158n22 Kenyan Emergency 12 Ketchum, John Davidson 8, 30 Kibbert, Karl 32 Kieser, Hans-Lukas 149 Kirazian, Rakel 154 Knockaloe camp, Isle of Man 5, 22, 25, 27–30 Konzentrationslager 146 Kordan, Bohdan 5, 7, 162 Kotek, Joël 147 Kramer, Alan 2 Kreis, Georg 265 Kriegsüberwachungsamt (War Supervisory Office, KÜA) 65, 66, 70, 74, 80n32 Kröpke, Wilhelm 20, 23, 29 Krüger, Rudolf 33 Kükenthal, Georg 95, 96, 105 Kun, Béla 12, 227, 228, 245, 247 Kuncz, Aladár 85, 122n5 Kunwald, Ernst 187 Lansing, Robert 182, 195 League of Nations 14, 77 Lehnert, Rudolf 95 Lemkin, Raphael 156 Lenin, Vladimir Illych 67 Le siècle des camps (Kotek and Rigoulot) 147, 157n15 Levsen, Sonja 218 Libyan War 132 Lilienthal, Botho 23

296

Index

Lino, Gustave 114 Logan, Robert 206, 207, 209, 211, 214 London Agreement (1915) 139 Lusitania (ship) 25, 26, 35, 210–11 McAdoo, William G. 182 Manela, Erez 19 Manz, Stefan 1, 5, 19, 212, 217 Marwick, Arthur 4 Masaryk, Tomáš 126 mathematical accuracy, Armenian genocide 148, 158n22 Matossian, Setrag G. 152 Mijatović, Čedomir 68 Millionaires’ Camp: Fort Oglethorpe 187, 216 Milocco, Giorgio and Sara 139 Mongalo, B. E. 3 Montgelas, Albrecht Graf 187 Morning Leader (newspaper) 168 Mosone, Filiberto 136 Mouradian, Khatchig 2, 7, 145 Mühlhahn, Klaus 147 Mühsam, Erich 11, 47 Müller, Eduard 263 Muck, Karl 185, 187 Mytum, Harold 30 Nagler, Jörg 6, 181 National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor 183, 186–7 Naville, Constantine 245 Negoi, Bogdan 228 Neill, Deborah 213–14 Newcombe, E. 171, 178n26, 179n33 New Zealand 2; destination for captured Germans 23, 24; German experience in Samoa and 219–20; mental disorders 214, 216–17, 219; occupation of German Samoa 206–10; patriotic enemies and enemy patriots 210–13; primitive environment of tropics 214–17; War Regulations Act 208, 209, 219, 221n25–6; wartime internment 213–19 O’Brian, John Lord 195, 197 October Revolution 235 Onnen, M. 267 Orgelsdorfer Eulenspiegel (journal) 190, 191 Otter, William 165, 170, 171 Ottoman Empire 7, 9, 10, 129, 130, 133; civilian internment 146–8; see also Armenian genocide

Ottoman Syria 2, 145, 149, 151, 156, 159n35 Ottoman Turkey 2, 147, 156 pacifism 131 Page, Walter Hines 181 Panayi, Panikos 1, 5, 19 patriotism 62, 126, 138, 199, 206, 212–13, 218–20 pauperism 6, 7, 76, 176 Pavenstedt, Adolph 187 Pellican, Leopoldine 136 Penrose, C. W. 188, 189 Pfordten, Theodor von der 47 Philippine War 3 Piña y Millet, Rámon 136–7 Pöppinghege, Rainer 8 Popper, Rudolf 114 Porro, Carlo 134 Ports Island 28–9 Posse, Amelie 126–7, 135, 138 Posselt, Erich 190, 202n54 prison camp society, phrase 8 prison islands 28–9 Proctor, Tammy 4, 19 Protzen, Carl Theodor 114, 123n28 Prussian-American Treaty of 1799 183 Prussian War Ministry 49, 50, 53, 66 Rathenau, Walther 50 Red Cross 9, 11, 30, 76 Red Guardists 12 Red Scare 182, 194 Reiswitz, Baron Kurt von 197 Rigoulot, Pierre 147 Rink, Joseph 118–20 Roberts Heights military base in South Africa 26 Rohner, Beatrice 150, 154 Romania 12, 227–8, 246–7; accommodation 237–8; categorisation of civilian internees 236; clothing 242; escapes and repatriation 244–5; first one hundred days of war 232–5; food 238–40; hostility towards civilian internees 243; interning regions during wartime 233; internment camps during neutrality period (August 1914–August 1916) 230–2; map of wartime 233; medical assistance and sanitary conditions 240–2; neutrality of 227; newspapers during neutrality period 228–30; problem of POW and civilian

Index internees during neutrality of (August 1914–August 1916) 228–30; Swiss and inter-allied special commission enquiry 245–6; Swiss enquiry into civilian internees in (1917–18) 235–6; war after the war 245–6; women and children 237; work and freedom of movement 242–3 Romanian Red Cross 232, 234 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 198 Rössler, Walter 152 Rothmund, Heinrich 265 Rottnest Island 26, 28 Ruff, Fred 120–1 Ruhleben camp near Berlin 6, 7, 8, 35, 41, 42, 43, 45–6 Rumbold, Horace 264 Salandra, Antonio 133 Samoa see New Zealand Samoa Times (newspaper) 212 Satta, Salvatore 125, 138 Sbriccioli, Mario 132 Scheipers, Sibylle 3, 157n9 Schulze-Sölde, Max 114–15 Seattle Post Intelligencer (newspaper) 192 Second Balkan War in 1913 233 Şeker, Nesim 147 Senftleben, E. F. 33 Serbian Red Cross 71–2 Serbian Relief Fund 72 Sessous, Charlotte 216, 217 Shemmassian, Vahram L. 149 Simonian, Yeranouhie 152 Şiperco, Andrei 7, 9, 12, 227 Smith, Iain R. 3 Smoot, Reed 194 SMS Cormoran 191 Society of Friends 30 Sonnino, Sidney 135 South African War 27, 29 Spanish Civil War 181 Spatz, Paul 95 Stibbe, Matthew 1, 4, 5, 7, 41, 61, 127 Stinnes, Hugo 50 Stockar, Walther von 236, 239, 240, 243, 244 Straus, Isaac 200–201n28 Stucki, Andreas 3 Stürgkh, Karl von 73 Swedish Red Cross 242 Swiss Federal Council 11, 255, 256–7, 260–1, 262–3, 264 Swiss Federation of Trade Unions 262, 266 Swiss Hotel Association 260

297

Switzerland 252–3, 265–8; causes and precedents of internment in 253–8; classification of internees 257; criticism of internment 261–2; end of internment 265; First World War and 253–4; interned POWs as desired foreigners 258–61; internees as additional manpower 259; internees as undesired foreigners 261–5; internment in 254–6; organisation of internment 256–8; overextension through internment 263–5; reception of internees 258–9; role of tourist industry 259–61; supply crisis in 262–3 Swoboda, Hans 66 Sydney Morning Herald (newspaper) 215 Syria: Armenians in Ottoman 145; concentration and transit camps in 151 Syrian Israelite refugees, France 89, 92, 122n19 Tarpinian, Yetvart 154 Ten Years’ War 3 Thiel, Jens 2, 8, 41 Tisza, István 69, 70 traitors 15, 54, 75, 125 Transleithania, internment camps and confinement places in 69–73 Traunstein camp in Bavaria: civilian internee population 43; internment in rural setting 46–8 Treaty of Brest Litovsk (1918) 68 Treaty of Lausanne 14 Treaty of Ouchy 133 Treaty of Versailles 14 Trial Bay Gaol 29, 33 Triple Alliance 76 Trotha, Lothar von 3 Turkish genocide against Ottoman Armenians 13, 61 United States: American context 6, 182–3; data for interned enemy aliens in Fort Oglethorpe and Fort Douglas 195; internment camp Fort Douglas 191–5; internment camp Fort Oglethorpe 187–91; internment in 184–7; internment of female enemy aliens 195–8; internment procedures in First World War 181–2, 198–9; Japanese enemy aliens in Second World War 199; registration, surveillance and arrests 184 University of Siena 138

298

Index

Verdala Barracks 33 Verdala ‘Camp Nachrichten’ 31 Vischer, A. L. 8, 32, 216 Wachsmann, Nikolaus 146 Waidhofen, internees and confinees in Austria 67, 67–8 War Measures Act (1914), Canada 163, 164 War Regulations Act (1914), New Zealand 208, 209, 219, 221n25–6 Watson, Alexander 19 Wille, Ulrich 256, 263–4 William II (King of Württemberg) 31

Williams, Arthur 191 Willrich, Gebhard 174–5 Wilson, Woodrow 182, 198 Wolf, Anton 118 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) 13, 18n62 Women’s Peace Party 197 Wrischek, Karl 22 ZABs (Zivil-Arbeiter-Bataillone) 12, 52 Zöllner, Kurt 34 Züblin-Spiller, Else 261 Zürcher, Erik-Jan 148 Zurlinden, Hans 262