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Civilian Internment during the First World War pp 31–76Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

First World War Internment Across the Globe

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Abstract

This chapter provides a chronological and geographical overview of internment during the First World War, beginning with the worldwide incarceration of Germans and Austro-Hungarians in Allied countries in 1914–18, moving on to examine the response of the German and Habsburg empires, including their decision to introduce retaliatory measures, and ending with a consideration of civilian captivity in the Balkan and Middle East regions. It argues that different internment systems were not only forged within self-contained national or imperial frameworks, but were mutually constitutive, leading to the establishment of an inter-connected chain of camps across the world. It also demonstrates that civilian internees were not just white men of military age, as is often assumed, but could include women, children and black and Asian subjects of European empires. In this sense, the internment phenomenon also exposed overlapping regional and global issues of racial and gender inequality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for instance, Bade, Europa in Bewegung, pp. 246–54; Gosewinkel, Schutz und Freiheit?, pp. 124–7.

  2. 2.

    Cf. Douki and Minard, ‘Histoire globale, histoires connectées’.

  3. 3.

    See, for instance, Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 76–90; Procacci, Warfare-Welfare, p. 106.

  4. 4.

    Matthew 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.

  5. 5.

    Simon Dixon, ‘Allegiance and Betrayal: British Residents in Russia during the Crimean War’, The Slavonic and East European Review, 94.3 (2016), pp. 431–67. See also Fahrmeir, Citizenship, p. 85.

  6. 6.

    Stibbe, ‘Krieg und Brutalisierung’; Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA, 2003).

  7. 7.

    Fahrmeir, Citizenship, pp. 120–1.

  8. 8.

    Jan Rüger, Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea (Oxford, 2017), pp. 94 and 147–50.

  9. 9.

    Frederick C. Luebke, Germans in Brazil: A Comparative History of Cultural Conflict during World War I (Baton Rouge, LA and London, 1987), pp. 1, 66 and 174.

  10. 10.

    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. 10).

  11. 11.

    See Chap. 5.

  12. 12.

    Peter Gatrell, ‘Refugees and Forced Migrants during the First World War’, Immigrants and Minorities, 26.1–2 (2008), pp. 82–110 (here esp. pp. 94–101). See also Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford, 2013), pp. 41–8.

  13. 13.

    Gosewinkel, Schutz und Freiheit?, pp. 128–9.

  14. 14.

    Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Enemy Aliens and Colonial Subjects: Confinement and Internment in Italy, 1911–19’, in Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War: A Mass Global Phenomenon (London and New York, 2019), pp. 125–44 (here p. 126).

  15. 15.

    See also 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.

  16. 16.

    Fahrmeir, Citizenship, p. 120.

  17. 17.

    See, for instance, Gertrud Bäumer (Nationaler Frauendienst) to the Reich Office of Interior, 27 November 1914, in Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (henceforth BArch), R 1501/112364, Bl. 157. Similar concerns were raised by some American women’s political organisations after the passing of the Expatriation Act of 1907—see Candice Lewis Bredbenner, A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship (Berkeley CA, and London, 1998), pp. 4–5 and 47.

  18. 18.

    For further details, see Matthew Stibbe, ‘The German Empire’s Response: From Retaliation to the Painful Realities of Defeat’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 47–68. Also Chap. 6.

  19. 19.

    Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, p. 60. See also Relazioni della reale commissione d’inchiesta sulle violazioni del diritto delle genti commesse dal nemico, Vol. 3: Trattamento dei prigionieri di Guerra e degli internati civili (Rome, 1920).

  20. 20.

    Vladimir Ćorović, Crna Knjiga: Patnje srba Bosne i Hercegovine za vreme Svetskog Rata 1914–1918 (Belgrade and Sarajevo, 1920) [Black Book: The Suffering of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Great War, 1914–1918]; Talergofs’kyj al’manach: Propamjatnaja knyga avstryjs’kych žestokostej, yzuvirstv y nasylij nad karpato-russ’kym narodom vo vremja vsemyrnoj vojny 1914–1917 gg., 4 Vols. (Lvov, 1924–32) [Thalerhof Almanach: Book of remembrance to the Austrian atrocities and acts of violence against the Carpatho-Ruthenian people during the World War, 1914–1917].

  21. 21.

    Petra Svoljšak, ‘The Sacrificed Slovenian Memory of the Great War’, in Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War (New York and Oxford, 2016), pp. 216–32 (here p. 226).

  22. 22.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 11–12.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., p. 129; Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War (Providence, RI and Oxford, 1991), p. 87; Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees’, p. 73. The ICRC reported knowledge of 47,600 civilian prisoners in Britain and its colonies by the end of the war, and described the British lists as ‘très complètes’, but was not so flattering about the French lists and declined to give even an estimate of numbers there. See CICR, Rapport général du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge sur son activité de 1912 à 1920 (Geneva, 1921), p. 137. A British source gives 20,050 German civilians interned in Britain and 9850 ‘elsewhere in H.M. Dominions’ as of June 1918—see Foreign Office to H.H. Richardson MP, 14 June 1918, in The National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth TNA), FO 383/416.

  24. 24.

    Panayi, Prisoners of Britain. On Stobs in particular, see Stefan Manz, ‘“Enemy Aliens” in Scotland in a Global Context, 1914–1919: Germanophobia, Internment, Forgetting’, in Hannah Ewence and Tim Grady (eds.), Minorities and the First World War: From War to Peace (London, 2017), pp. 117–42; and on Lofthouse Park, see Sternberg and Stowe (eds.), Pleasure, Privileges, Privations.

  25. 25.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 135–9. On Corsica, see also Simon Giuseppi, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in France during the First World War: The “Depot” at Corbara in Corsica’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 85–124.

  26. 26.

    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 (here p. 545).

  27. 27.

    Peter Lieb, ‘Der deutsche Krieg im Osten von 1914 bis 1919: Ein Vorläufer des Vernichtungskriegs?’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 65.4 (2017), pp. 465–506 (here p. 473).

  28. 28.

    Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia During World War I (Bloomington, IN, 1999), pp. 23–4; Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, pp. 129–37; Dittmar Dahlmann, ‘The Russian Germans: A Heterogeneous Minority during the First World War’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 171–88 (here esp. pp. 177–9). For the fate of Germans in Congress Poland specifically, see also Pascal Trees, ‘Russland und die deutsche Zivilbevölkerung in Polen während des ersten Weltkriegsjahres 1914/15’; and Sergej Nelipović, ‘Die Deportation der deutschen Bevölkerung aus dem Gouvernement Warschau 1914/15’, both in Eisfeld, Hausmann and Neutatz (eds.), Besetzt, interniert, deportiert, pp. 199–230 and 231–62, respectively.

  29. 29.

    Alexander Watson, ‘“Unheard-of Brutality”: Russian Atrocities against Civilians in East Prussia, 1914–1915’, Journal of Modern History, 86.4 (2014), pp. 780–825 (here p. 794); Lieb, ‘Der deutsche Krieg im Osten’, p. 469. See also Serena Tiepolato, ‘L’internamento di civili prussiani in Russia (1914–1920)’, in Bianchi (ed.), La violanza contro la populazione civile, pp. 107–25 (here p. 108), who cites the figure of 13,600 German deportees, including 4000 women and more than 2500 children.

  30. 30.

    Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, pp. 427 and 539; Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 156.

  31. 31.

    Luebke, Germans in Brazil, p. 174.

  32. 32.

    See the correspondence in TNA, FO 383/244, for efforts by the British authorities in 1916 to persuade the Chilean and Argentinian governments to continue to retain the crews of German battleships captured off Quiriquina Island and Martin Garcia Island respectively, and to increase security after reports of escapes and attempted escapes. Writing to the Foreign Office on 6 June 1916, the Admiralty urged that unless Britain kept up the diplomatic pressure on Chile and Argentina, the prisoners would be released, and then ‘somewhere in South America there [would be] a number of trained enemy seamen ready for any desperate enterprise’.

  33. 33.

    See the letter signed by the thirty-two Panama-Germans at Fort Oglethorpe sent to the Swiss Chargé d’Affaires in Washington DC, 26 July 1918, and demanding ‘permission to return at once to Panama, if not to our homes, then back to our former internment Camp at Taboga Island’. Copy in BArch, R 901/83614.

  34. 34.

    See the relevant correspondence in Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv Bern (henceforth SBA), E 2020, 1000/130, BD. 73, DE 95.

  35. 35.

    Deutscher Reichstag (ed.), Das Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses, 1919–1928 (henceforth WUA), Reihe 3: Völkerrecht im Weltkrieg. Bd. III/2: Gutachten des Sachverständigen Geh. Rates Prof. Dr. Meurer (Berlin, 1927), pp. 820–2. See also Panikos Panayi, The Germans in India: Elite European Migrants in the British Empire (Manchester, 2017), p. 51.

  36. 36.

    One was admittedly released early due to poor health. Other Germans were allowed to live at liberty in Haiti, provided that they report each day to their local police station. See Swiss Legation in Washington DC to the Swiss Political Department, Section for Foreign Interests and Internees, 19 March 1919, and further correspondence, in SBA, E 2020, 1000/130, BD. 73, DA 53.

  37. 37.

    For a useful overview, see Panikos Panayi, ‘Germans as Minorities during the First World War: Global Comparative Perspectives’, in Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities, pp. 3–25.

  38. 38.

    Bruno Cabanes, August 1914: France, the Great War, and a Month that Changed the World Forever, trans. by Stephanie O’Hara (New Haven, CT and London, 2016) [2014], pp. 135–6.

  39. 39.

    Marcia Klotz, ‘The Weimar Republic: A Postcolonial State in a Still-Colonial World’, in Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz and Lora Wildenthal (eds.), Germany’s Colonial Pasts (Lincoln, NA and London, 2005), pp. 135–47 (here p. 138).

  40. 40.

    David Blackbourn, ‘Germans Abroad and Auslandsdeutsche: Places, Networks and Experiences from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 41 (2015), pp. 321–46 (here p. 344).

  41. 41.

    On anti-German riots in mainland Britain, see Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, pp. 223–58. On anti-German riots in Moscow see Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, pp. 31–54. For Sydney and Melbourne, see Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront Experience in Australia, 1914–1920 (St. Lucia, 1989), p. 125; and for South Africa, see Tilman Dedering, ‘“Avenge the Lusitania!”: The Anti-German Riots in South Africa in 1915’, Immigrants and Minorities, 31.3 (2013), pp. 256–88.

  42. 42.

    Luebke, Germans in Brazil, pp. 119–46 and 162–74.

  43. 43.

    Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, pp. 384–403.

  44. 44.

    See Schmidt to Gompers, 28 June 1918, and further materials relating to this case, in National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland (henceforth NARA), RG 174, General Records of the Department of Labor, Box 54, 16/640.

  45. 45.

    R. A. Paterson, ‘Aspects of Internment in Australia during the First World War’, in Jeanette Covacevich, John Pearn, Donna Chase, Ian Chapple and Gael Phillips (eds.), History, Heritage and Health: Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Australian Society for the History of Medicine (Brisbane, 1996), pp. 77–82 (here pp. 77–8).

  46. 46.

    For examples of this, see Stefan Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914 (London and New York, 2014), pp. 261–4.

  47. 47.

    This is the conclusion of the two pioneering works in this area: Luebke, Germans in Brazil; and Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst.

  48. 48.

    See the various contribution to Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime; and idem., (ed.), Germans as Minorities.

  49. 49.

    See WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, pp. 719–855. Many of the conclusions of this post-war report drew on the wartime ‘investigations’ of the Reichskommissar zur Erörterung von Gewalttätigkeiten gegen deutsche Zivilpersonen in Feindesland, Dr. Just. Examples of the Reichskommissar’s material, which was labelled ‘only for internal government use’ [nur für Dienstgebrauch], can be found in BArch, R 67/779 and R 901/82916-82917.

  50. 50.

    Pedro Aires Oliveira, ‘Diplomacy (Portugal)’, in 1914–1918 online, edited by Daniel et al., https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-diplomacy_portugal-2014-12-08.pdf

  51. 51.

    Strachan, The First World War in Africa, pp. 6 and 161.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., pp. 79–80; Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘The Portuguese Empire’, in Gerwarth and Manela (eds.), Empires at War, pp. 179–96 (here p. 186).

  53. 53.

    On pre-war Portuguese atrocities in Africa, see Gorman, International Cooperation, pp. 78 and 98.

  54. 54.

    See British Foreign Office to British consul general in Lourenço Marques, 21 October 1915, reporting on a message it had received from the Portuguese government via the British Legation in Lisbon. Copy in TNA, FO 929/1.

  55. 55.

    See Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 155.

  56. 56.

    Reference is made to those held on boats at Lourenço Marques in a petition sent by German internees held at Peniche to the King of Spain, 10 May 1918. Copy in Arquivio Histórico Militar Lisbon (henceforth AHM), PT/AHM/DIV/1/35/0428/02. For the equivalent situation in Luanda, see the German minister in Lisbon to Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 19 October 1915, in BArch, R 1505/20, Bl. 43.

  57. 57.

    For British complaints about instances when Portugal failed to uphold these bans in 1915, and the increasingly desperate-sounding assurances offered by the Portuguese Governor General in Mozambique that his officials would continue to maintain a ‘strict and constant vigilance on the frontier’, despite the grossly inadequate resources at their disposal, see the correspondence in TNA, FO 929/1–2.

  58. 58.

    A. H. de Oliveira Marques, A Short History of Portugal (Lisbon, 2018), p. 183.

  59. 59.

    Maria Fernanda Rollo, Anna Paula Pires and Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘Portugal’, in 1914–1918 online, edited by Daniel et al., https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-portugal-2017-08-30.pdf

  60. 60.

    See the newspaper article ‘Rechtzeitig gewarnt’, Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, 27 March 1916. Copy in BArch, R 901/83531.

  61. 61.

    Johannes Kriege to the State Secretary of Interior, 30 April 1916, in ibid.

  62. 62.

    Figures produced by the Lisbon-based Comissão Central de Informacões sobre Prisioneiros de Guerra for the period May 1916 to May 1919, in AHM, PT/AHM/DIV/1/35/0436/01.

  63. 63.

    See Manuela Franco, ‘Os Desnacionalizados da Primeira República’, in Filipo Ribeiro de Meneses and Pedro Aires Oliveira (eds.), A Primeira República Portuguesa: Diplomacia, Guerra e Império (Lisbon, 2011), pp. 245–65.

  64. 64.

    See note 62.

  65. 65.

    See the relevant correspondence in SBA, E 2020, 1000/130, BD. 63, DE 89.

  66. 66.

    See the November 1919 report of the Comissão Central de Informacões sobre Prisioneiros de Guerra, in AHM, PT/AHM/DIV/1/35/0436/01.

  67. 67.

    Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘The Portuguese Empire’, p. 179.

  68. 68.

    See note 62.

  69. 69.

    Strachan, The First World War in Africa, pp. 174–84; Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘The Portuguese Empire’, pp. 188–91.

  70. 70.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 156.

  71. 71.

    See the petition sent to the King of Spain by prisoners at Peniche, 10 May 1918, in AHM, PT/AHM/DIV/1/35/0428/02.

  72. 72.

    See note 62 above.

  73. 73.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 161.

  74. 74.

    See ICRC to the Prussian Ministry of War (Colonel Friedrich), 2 July 1915, in Archives du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, Geneva (henceforth ACICR), C G1, A 35–03. On the fate of the several hundred German civilians in Morocco, who were deported first to Algeria in August 1914 and then to metropolitan France in March 1916, see also Gunther Mai, Die Marokko-Deutschen 1873–1918 (Göttingen, 2014), pp. 663–80.

  75. 75.

    Berichte des Hamburgischen Landesvereins vom Roten Kreuz über die Lage der deutschen Zivil- und Kriegsgefangenen im feindlichen Ausland während des Krieges, zusammengefasste Wochenberichte, 15 February 1915, p. 13. Copy in BArch, R 901/82920.

  76. 76.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, pp. 161–2. See also Stibbe, ‘The German Empire’s Response’ p. 60; WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, pp. 846–55; and the extensive material on Dahomey collected by the ICRC, including an undated, twenty-two-page ‘Denkschrift über die Gesundheitszustände der afrikanischen Lager’, probably put together by the German Colonial Office in 1915/16, in ACICR, C G1, A 35–06.

  77. 77.

    See the references to two visits made by the US consul on 13 December 1915 and 28 February 1916 in Berichte des Hamburgischen Landesvereins vom Roten Kreuz über die Lage der deutschen Zivil- und Kriegsgefangenen im feindlichen Ausland während des Krieges, Wochenbericht No. 83, 24 June 1916, pp. 4–5. Copy in BArch, R 901/82929.

  78. 78.

    See the naval intelligence report on these confiscated letters, dated 5 April 1918, in BArch, R 1505/21. Bl. 293–4. Theseus was one of the most important hero-kings in ancient Greek mythology, reputedly the unifier of Athens and Attica, and slayer of the Cretan Minotaur.

  79. 79.

    Grace P. Hayes, World War I: A Compact History (Folkestone, 1973), p. 300.

  80. 80.

    ‘Die Verletzung der Neutralität Griechenlands: Gutachten des Sachverständigen Wirklichen Geheimen Rates Dr. Kriege’, in WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. II, pp. 17–46 (here pp. 46 and 32).

  81. 81.

    Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, p. 307.

  82. 82.

    Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi, ‘The Internment of Civilian “Enemy Aliens” in the British Empire’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 19–40.

  83. 83.

    Fischer, Enemy Aliens, pp. 278 and 280–302.

  84. 84.

    See Swiss Legation in London to Swiss Political Department in Bern, 11 April 1917, in SBA, E 2020, 1000/130, BD. 51, DE 13. Also ‘List of German Persons Removed from New Guinea and Interned in Australia’, 15 March 1917, in ibid.

  85. 85.

    Sandra Barkhof, ‘The New Zealand Occupation of German Samoa during the First World War 1914–1918: Enemy Aliens and Internment’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 205–26.

  86. 86.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 63. In early 1918 the German Foreign Office complained to the Swiss authorities that letters sent from German internees in Egypt to their relatives in East Africa were being directed through London, leading to unacceptable delays. See the correspondence in SBA, E 2020, 1000/130, BD. 73, DE 92.

  87. 87.

    On the German hostages taken from Jaffa and Jerusalem and sent first to a temporary camp at Rafah in Egypt in December 1917, and then to the permanent camp at Sidi Bishr near Alexandria, see the relevant correspondence between the German Foreign Office and the Swiss federal authorities in SBA, E 2020, 1000/130, BD. 73, DE 97. Also Deutsches Kolonialblatt, vols. 28–30, 1917–19, p. 185; and Manz and Panayi, Enemies in the Empire.

  88. 88.

    WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, p. 822. According to the Swiss Consul in Bombay, 2500 enemy aliens were still being held in India in October 1919, although some of these would have been Austro-Hungarians and possibly Turks, as well as Germans. See Panayi, The Germans in India, pp. 212 and 218.

  89. 89.

    See Deutschösterrisches Staatsamt für Äußeres to the Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 3 July 1919, and R. Slatin to the KGF, 10 July 1919, both in Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Archiv der Republik (henceforth ÖStA-AdR), Bestand KGF, Karton 15: 1919, Zl. 12,536 and 13,433.

  90. 90.

    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 (here p. 172); Murphy, Colonial Captivity, pp. 199–200.

  91. 91.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 147.

  92. 92.

    WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, p. 822.

  93. 93.

    Chief of the deputy German general staff to the Prussian Ministry of Interior, 23 September 1914. Copy in Niedersächsiches Hauptstaatsarchiv Hanover (henceforth NHStA), Hann. 122a, No. 7011, Bl. 224.

  94. 94.

    Chief of the deputy German general staff to the Prussian Ministry of Interior, 3 November 1914; and Chief of the deputy German general staff to the Prussian Ministry of Interior, 11 December 1914. Copies of both in ibid., Bl. 77–9 and 185.

  95. 95.

    Matthew Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in the Habsburg Empire’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 61–84 (here pp. 65–6).

  96. 96.

    Guidelines issued by the KÜA, 15 November 1914. Copies in TNA, FO 383/5, and Österreiches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv (henceforth ÖStA-HHStA), F36, Karton 556, 26/2a, Zl. 14.

  97. 97.

    CICR, 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.

  98. 98.

    Prussian War Ministry to the acting commanding general of the 10th army corps, 5 September 1916. Copy in NHStA, Hann. 122a, No. 7010, Bl. 391.

  99. 99.

    Prussian War Ministry to acting commanding general of the 10th army corps, 10 October 1916. Copy in ibid., Bl. 394.

  100. 100.

    Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 59–61.

  101. 101.

    See KÜA to Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 3 June 1917, also containing reference to earlier correspondence dated 13 September 1916 and 8 February 1917, in ÖStA-HHStA, Karton 600, 45 1/a, Zl. 59.

  102. 102.

    Daniel Steinbach, ‘Challenging European Colonial Supremacy: The Internment of “Enemy Aliens” in British and German East Africa during the First World War’, in Laura Rowe, Alisa Miller and James Kitchen (eds.), Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War (Newcastle, 2011), pp. 147–69 (here pp. 156–9).

  103. 103.

    H.M.S.O., Treatment by the Germans of British Prisoners and Natives in East Africa: Report Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty (London, 1917).

  104. 104.

    Ibid., p. 7.

  105. 105.

    Ibid., pp. 28–9.

  106. 106.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, p. 59.

  107. 107.

    See ‘List of Merchant Seamen and Fishermen, detained as Prisoners of War in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, issued by the Board of Trade, 12 October 1916’, pp. 45–9. Copy in TNA, FO 383/244.

  108. 108.

    The figure of 860 comes from Franziska Roy, ‘Indian Seamen in World War I Prison Camps in Germany’, Südasien-Chronik – South Asia Chronicle, 5 (2015), pp. 63–91 (here p. 63); and the figure of around 300 British Indians in Havelberg, ‘chiefly sailors and ships’ stewards’, from the American chargé d’affaires in London to the British Foreign Secretary, 18 September 1916, in TNA, FO 383/210. The Board of Trade’s figures in the list mentioned in note 107 suggest 213 Indian seamen at Havelberg in October 1916.

  109. 109.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 98–9.

  110. 110.

    Letter from the prisoners to US consul Busser, 27 September 1914, in NARA, RG 84, Vol. 170.

  111. 111.

    Letter from the prisoners to US consul Busser, 18 October 1914, in ibid.

  112. 112.

    See K. Landwehrarrest., ‘Namensverzeichnis für die hier internierten Briten und Franzosen’, 21 November 1914, in ibid.

  113. 113.

    Helon Habila, Travellers (London, 2019), p. 165.

  114. 114.

    See, for instance, Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Ruhleben’, in Die Woche, no. 37, 11 September 1915, p. 1313; und ‘Im Gefangenenlager Ruhleben’, in Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, no. 47, 21 November 1915, p. 652.

  115. 115.

    See, for example, translation of an untitled article in the Trieste newspaper Il Piccolo, 10 November 1914, in NARA, RG 84, Vol. 185.

  116. 116.

    Translation of an untitled article in the Trieste Tageblatt, 10 November 1914, in ibid.

  117. 117.

    Ibid. See also Die Kriegsgefangenen in Deutschland: Gegen 250 Wirklichkeitsaufnahmen aus deutschen Gefangenenlagern mit einer Erläuterung von Professor Dr. Backhaus (Siegen, 1915).

  118. 118.

    Höpp, Muslime in der Mark.

  119. 119.

    See Chap. 4.

  120. 120.

    Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre, pp. 317–25; Christian Koller, ‘Von Wilden aller Rassen niedergemetzelt’: Die Diskussion um die Verwendung von Kolonialtruppen in Europa zwischen Rassismus, Kolonial- und Militärpolitik (1914–1930) (Stuttgart, 2001).

  121. 121.

    Acting commander of the third Prussian army corps to acting commander of the first Bavarian army corps (and others), 22 July 1916, in Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich: Abteilung IV: Kriegsarchiv (henceforth BayHStA-KA), Generalkommando I. Armeekorps (WK) 2005.

  122. 122.

    Die Kriegsgefangenen in Deutschland, pp. 110–11. See also Uta Hinz, ‘“Die deutschen ‘Barbaren’ sind doch die besseren Menschen”: Kriegsgefangenschaft und gefangene “Feinde” in der Darstellung der deutschen Publizistik 1914–1918’, in Rüdiger Overmans (ed.), In der Hand des Feindes: Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 1999), pp. 339–61.

  123. 123.

    Joseph Powell and Francis Gribble, The History of Ruhleben: A Record of British Organisation in a Prison Camp in Germany (London, 1919), p. 10.

  124. 124.

    Christoph Jahr, ‘Zivilisten als Kriegsgefangene: Die Internierung von “Feindstaaten-Ausländern” in Deutschland während des Ersten Weltkrieges am Beispiel des “Engländerlagers” Ruhleben’, in Overmans (ed.), In der Hand des Feindes, pp. 297–321 (here p. 308).

  125. 125.

    I would like to thank Mark Long, Russell’s great-grandson, for providing me with details of this story in two emails on 9 and 20 May 2019. See also the relevant documents in TNA, FO 383/68, 209 and 318.

  126. 126.

    Busser to the US ambassador in Vienna, Frederic C. Penfield, 4 November 1914, in NARA, RG 84, Vol. 185.

  127. 127.

    Busser to Penfield, 2 December 1914, in ibid.

  128. 128.

    Grant-Smith to Busser, 19 September 1914, in NARA, RG 84, Vol. 202.

  129. 129.

    Christoph Jahr and Jens Thiel, ‘Adding Colour to the Silhouettes: The Internment and Treatment of Foreign Civilians in Germany during the First World War’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 41–60 (here pp. 44–5).

  130. 130.

    CICR, Rapport général, p. 138.

  131. 131.

    Reinhard Mundschütz, ‘Internierung im Waldviertel: Die Internierungslager und –stationen der BH Waidhofen an der Thaya, 1914–1918’, D.Phil dissertation, University of Vienna, 2002. See also Mundschütz, ‘Markl Internment Camp’, in 1914–1918 online, edited by Daniel et al., http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-markl_internment_camp-2016-04-26.pdf

  132. 132.

    Walter Mentzel, ‘Weltkriegsflüchtlinge in Cisleithanien 1914–1918’, in Gernot Heiss and Oliver Rathkolb (eds.), Asylland wider Willen: Flüchtlinge in Österreich im europäischen Kontext seit 1914 (Vienna, 1995), pp. 17–44.

  133. 133.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 59 and 124–5.

  134. 134.

    Eli Nathans, The Politics of Citizenship in Germany: Ethnicity, Utility and Nationalism (Oxford and New York, 2004), p. 185. See also Fahrmeir, Citizenship, p. 121.

  135. 135.

    See Stibbe, British Civilian Internees in Germany, p. 59; and Tim Grady, A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War (New Haven, CT and London, 2017), pp. 62 and 139. On the concept of ‘national indifference’, see Tara Zahra, ‘Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis’, Slavic Review, 69.1 (2010), pp. 93–119.

  136. 136.

    Prussian War Ministry to acting commanding general of the 10th army corps, 16 February 1916. Copy in NHStA, Hann. 122a, No. 7011, Bl. 433.

  137. 137.

    Prussian War Ministry to German Foreign Office, 8 June 1915, in BArch, R 901/82916. The notion that Russian-subject Polish civilians in German-occupied Poland were ‘evacuated’ (rather than deported) in order to protect them from artillery fire in the fighting zones is also emphasised—perhaps a little uncritically—in Lieb, ‘Der deutsche Krieg im Osten’, p. 474.

  138. 138.

    Prussian War Ministry, Unterkunftsdepartement, to the editors of Die Eiche, 5 February 1916, in Evangelisches Zentralarchiv Berlin (henceforth EZA), Bestand 51 C III g 3. The term ‘Schutzgefangene’ is difficult to translate into English. It should not be confused with ‘Schutzhaftling’, the term used for German political suspects held in ‘protective custody’ or detention without trial, but it implies something vaguely similar—persons held not as prisoners of war but as ‘prisoners for their own protection’.

  139. 139.

    Further evidence of the terrible poverty faced by Russian evacuee-internees in 1915–16, especially the women accompanied by children and babies, can be found in letters and postcards collected in ibid., Bestand 51 C III g 1.

  140. 140.

    Prussian War Ministry to German Foreign Office, 4 September 1916, in BArch, R 901/82917. The use of the phrase ‘internierte Zivilpersonen’ in this communiqué suggests that officials in the Prussian Ministry of War had forgotten about their earlier designation of these prisoners as ‘Schutzgefangene’.

  141. 141.

    James W. Garner, ‘Treatment of Enemy Aliens: Measures in Respect to Personal Liberty’, American Journal of International Law, 12.1 (1918), pp. 27–55.

  142. 142.

    The link between internment and ‘totalisation of war’ [Totalisierung des Krieges] is also stressed by Segesser, Empire und Totaler Krieg, pp. 522–7.

  143. 143.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 41.

  144. 144.

    Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, p. 99.

  145. 145.

    See the relevant documents in TNA, FO 383/8. According to a note from the Swedish Chargé d’Affaires in London to the British Foreign Office, 18 October 1917, there were by then only fifty or so British subjects still living in Bulgaria, ‘most of whom carry on their business in full freedom’. See TNA, FO 383/254.

  146. 146.

    American consulate, New Brunswick, Canada, to Secretary of State, Washington DC, 7 April 1916. Copy in BArch, R 1505/23, Bl. 488–91.

  147. 147.

    Manz and Panayi, Enemies in the Empire.

  148. 148.

    Foreign Office to the Under-Secretary of State in the Colonial Office, 10 April 1915, in TNA, FO 383/88. This letter was written six months or so before Bulgaria’s entry into the war, but neatly anticipates the difficulties, perhaps because Macedonians could also still technically count as (enemy) Ottoman subjects.

  149. 149.

    Aliens Restriction (Armenians, &c.) Order, 7 January 1915. Copy in TNA, FO 383/88.

  150. 150.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 43 and 45.

  151. 151.

    According to an ICRC report on a visit to the civilian camp at Berrouaghia, just south of Algiers, made on 22 January 1916, there were 204 prisoners, including 148 male and 5 female Germans, 22 male and 5 female Austro-Hungarians, 9 Turkish men and 3 Turkish women, 5 children of Habsburg nationality and 7 men from Alsace-Lorraine. They had all been there since May 1915. See Rapports de M. le Dr. A. Vernet et M. Richard de Muralt sur leurs visites aux dépôts de prisonniers en Tunisie et de MM. P. Schazmann et Dr. O.-L. Kramer sur leurs visites aux dépôts de prisonniers en Algérie en Décembre 1915 et Janvier 1916 (Geneva and Paris, 1916), p. 102.

  152. 152.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 44.

  153. 153.

    Anthonie Holslag, The Transgenerational Consequences of the Armenian Genocide: Near the Foot of Mount Ararat (London, 2018), p. 84. See also Edmond Khayadjian, Archag Tchobanian et le mouvement arménophile en France (Aix-en-Provence, 1983).

  154. 154.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 43.

  155. 155.

    War Office to Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, 27 June 1915, in TNA, FO 383/88.

  156. 156.

    Under Secretary of State, Home Office, to Under Secretary of State, Foreign Office, 3 July 1915, in ibid.

  157. 157.

    War Office to Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, 27 June 1915, in ibid.

  158. 158.

    See the relevant documents in ibid. According to Manz and Panayi, Enemies in the Empire, there were six Turks among the 2426 prisoners held at Fort Napier in South Africa in August 1916.

  159. 159.

    CICR, Rapport général, p. 138.

  160. 160.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 46.

  161. 161.

    See the relevant documents, including correspondence with the French government, in TNA, FO 383/332.

  162. 162.

    See American consul general, Smyrna, to Sir Francis Elliot, British Minister, Athens, 26 December 1914 and 21 January 1915, both in TNA, FO 383/88.

  163. 163.

    See Foreign Office to Secretary of the Board of Trade, 23 January 1915, in ibid.

  164. 164.

    Accord entre les Gouvernements Britannique et Ottoman au sujet des prisonniers de guerre et des civils, Bern, 28 December 1917. Copy in TNA, FO 93/110/79. The extent to which this agreement had been carried out before the end of the war is not clear from the documents.

  165. 165.

    Frédéric Ferrière, Conférence des Croix-Rouges Neutres à Genève: Questions concernant les Civils (Geneva, 1917), p. 3. Copy in ACICR, C G1, A 09–10. See also Ferrière to the President of the Bulgarian Red Cross Society, 10 February 1917, in ACICR, C G1, A 15–15.

  166. 166.

    Societé serbe de la Croix-Rouge to the ICRC, 14 July 1916, in ACICR, C G1, A 15–15.

  167. 167.

    Horace Rumbold to British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, 26 November 1917, in TNA, FO 383/254.

  168. 168.

    Serb Legation in London to Balfour, 2 July 1918, in TNA, FO 383/463.

  169. 169.

    Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck to Foreign Office, 20 December 1916, in TNA, FO 383/244.

  170. 170.

    For a comprehensive study of these prejudices, see Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997), here esp. p. 162. On the Balkan wars of 1912–13 in particular, see Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 132–40, here esp. p. 137.

  171. 171.

    Adolf L. Vischer, An der serbischen Front: Erlebnisse eines Artzes auf dem serbisch-türkischen Kriegsschauplatz 1912 (Basel, 1913), p. 9.

  172. 172.

    Gorman, International Cooperation, pp. 36 and 105.

  173. 173.

    John Reed, War in Eastern Europe: Travels Through the Balkans in 1915 (New York, 1916; reprinted, London, 1994), pp. 160–1. For a more recent critical study, which ‘challenges the widely held view that there is something morbidly distinctive about violence in the Balkans’ and instead finds that ‘Balkan armies and paramilitary forces were little different in their behavior from armed forces of the era throughout the Western world’, see Stefan Sotiris Papaioannou, ‘Balkan Wars between the Lines: Violence and Civilians in Macedonia, 1912–1918’, Ph.D dissertation, University of Maryland, 2012.

  174. 174.

    Vischer, An der serbischen Front, p. 79.

  175. 175.

    Count Tarnowski to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1 March 1916, in ÖStA-HHStA, F 36, Karton 573, 28 2/a, Zl. 107.

  176. 176.

    CICR, Rapport général, p. 138.

  177. 177.

    Ibid., pp. 137–8.

  178. 178.

    Andrei Şiperco, ‘Internment in Neutral and Belligerent Romania (1914–1919)’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment During the First World War, pp. 227–51 (here p. 228).

  179. 179.

    Clavin, ‘Time, Manner, Place’, p. 636.

  180. 180.

    Ibid., p. 626.

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    Matthew Stibbe

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Stibbe, M. (2019). First World War Internment Across the Globe. In: Civilian Internment during the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57191-5_2

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