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Civilian Internment during the First World War pp 77–128Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Internment and War Governance in the First World War

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on internment as an aspect of war governance in five of the main belligerent states: France, Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. It explores entanglements with other aspects of state-sponsored wartime violence against civilians, including arrests, deportations, hostage-taking, forced evacuations, persecution of ‘internal enemies’ and, in the exceptional case of the Ottoman empire, genocide. It argues that there was a plurality of different camp systems in Europe and the wider world between 1914 and 1918, with no single model dominating. Above all there were constant conflicts within and between the different military and civilian bodies responsible for internment decisions. However, practices of war governance in different localities, regions and empires could also overlap and interact with each other, as could camp networks in occupied territories and on home fronts. From a global perspective, this meant that internment was characterised by elements of convergence as well as differentiation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, pp. 475–6.

  2. 2.

    Henry Kissinger, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History (London, 2014), esp. pp. 2–4 and 23–31.

  3. 3.

    Joseph Redlich, Austrian War Government (New Haven, CT, 1929).

  4. 4.

    Richard S. Grayson, Dublin’s Great Wars: The First World War, the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution (Cambridge, 2018).

  5. 5.

    Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, p. 204; Agamben, State of Exception, pp. 11–12.

  6. 6.

    On the instability of these concepts, see Charles S. Maier, ‘Transformations of Territoriality, 1600–2000’, in Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad and Oliver Janz (eds.), Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen, 2006), pp. 32–55.

  7. 7.

    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).

  8. 8.

    Wilhelm Deist, ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II. als Oberster Kriegsherr’, in John C. G Röhl (ed.), Der Ort Kaiser Wilhlems II. in der deutschen Geschichte (Munich, 1991), pp. 25–42.

  9. 9.

    Although Montengro, Serbia and Turkey had failed to ratify the 1907 convention by 1914, and were therefore not party to it, they were still bound, as state signatories of article 4, to honour the 1899 convention, which was virtually identical to the 1907 convention, give or take a handful of ‘minimal changes’. See Isabel V. Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War (Ithaca, NY and London, 2014), p. 89.

  10. 10.

    See §§ 43 and 45 of the 1907 HLKO at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp

  11. 11.

    Kissinger, World Order, p. 58. See also Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford, 2005), p. 8.

  12. 12.

    British Foreign Office to the US ambassador in London, 28 August 1916, in TNA, FO 383/198. On the Easter 1916 deportations from Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing, see Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre, pp. 68–77.

  13. 13.

    Karl Josef Partsch, ‘Die Armenierfrage und das Völkerrecht in der Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges: Zum Wirken von André Mandelstam’, in Mihran Dabag and Kristin Platt (eds.), Genozid und Moderne. Band 1: Strukturen kollektiver Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert (Opladen, 1998), pp. 338–46 (here p. 345).

  14. 14.

    Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order (London, 2014), pp. 324–6.

  15. 15.

    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 (here esp. pp. 1332–3 and 1339).

  16. 16.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration.

  17. 17.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity.

  18. 18.

    Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians’, p. 7.

  19. 19.

    CICR, Rapport général, p. 137.

  20. 20.

    According to Richard M. Watt, Dare Call it Treason: The True Story of the French Army Mutinies of 1917 (New York, 1969), p. 39, there were 2501 names on the list in 1914.

  21. 21.

    CICR, Rapport général, p. 156. On hostages, see also Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 53–6; Paul Smith, ‘The Kiss of France: The Republic and the Alsatians During the First World War’, in Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime, pp. 27–49 (here pp. 27–8); and François Laurent, 1914–1918: Des Alsaciens-Lorrains otages en France: Souvenirs d’un Lorrain interné en France et en Suisse pendant la guerre, edited by Camille Marie (Strasbourg, 1998).

  22. 22.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 6–7.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., pp. 51–62 and 180–5; Smith, ‘The Kiss of France’, pp. 31–2.

  24. 24.

    Giuseppi, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in France’, p. 89.

  25. 25.

    Nortoriously, it was members of the (officially non-existent) statistical section of the deuxième bureau who had helped to frame the Alsace-born French-Jewish artilliery officer Captain Albert Dreyfus as a German spy in 1894. The ensuing scandal, which ended in Dreyfus’ eventual full acquittal and rehabiltation in 1906, damaged the reputation of the army, at least within anti-clercial and radical republican circles, and may explain the stronger positon enjoyed by the more staunchly republican Interior Ministry in matters of internal security—epsecially during the period when the Radicals Georges Clemenceau (1906–1909), Aristide Briand (1909–11, 1913) and Louis Malvy (1914–17) served as Ministers. For further details, see Watt, Dare Call it Treason, pp. 38–40.

  26. 26.

    This is emphasised in particular by Garner, ‘Treatment of Enemy Aliens’, p. 46.

  27. 27.

    The problem of ‘bouches inutile’ is discussed in the Prussian context by 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.

  28. 28.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 6.

  29. 29.

    Caglioti, ‘Waging War on Civilians’, p. 192.

  30. 30.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 8.

  31. 31.

    On xenophobia in France at the beginning of the war, see Cabanes, August 1914, pp. 128–51.

  32. 32.

    Watt, Dare Call it Treason, pp. 43–4.

  33. 33.

    See ‘Der französische Ausweisungsbefehl’, Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, 8 August 1914. Copy in Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen (henceforth LNRW), Abteilung Rheinland, Oberpräsidium Düsseldorf, No. 14986, Bl. 4.

  34. 34.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 8.

  35. 35.

    Aladar Kuncz, Black Monastery, translated from the Hungarian by Ralph Murray (New York, 1934), pp. 9–11.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., pp. 21–2.

  37. 37.

    Giuseppi, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in France’, p. 85.

  38. 38.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 151.

  39. 39.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 127 and 129.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 134.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., p. 135.

  42. 42.

    Caglioti, ‘Waging War on Civilians’, p. 161.

  43. 43.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 20–4.

  44. 44.

    Kuncz, Black Monastery, p. 11.

  45. 45.

    Mai, Die Marokko-Deutschen, pp. 659–61.

  46. 46.

    Kuncz, Black Monastery, pp. 47–244. For the camp at Île-Longue, which was the largest in France during the First World War, see the very informative website created by local historians at http://www.ilelongue14-18.eu/

  47. 47.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 177–8.

  48. 48.

    Garner, ‘Treatment of Enemy Aliens’, p. 46, n. 44.

  49. 49.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 91 and 134–7.

  50. 50.

    Laurent Dornel, Les étrangers dans la grande guerre (Paris, 2014), p. 18.

  51. 51.

    Simon Giuseppi, Corse: Terre d’Accueil, Terre d’Exil, 1914–1918 (Ajaccio, 2017).

  52. 52.

    Idem., ‘The Internmment of Enemy Aliens in France’‚ p. 116.

  53. 53.

    Ibid.‚ pp. 93–4 and 121.

  54. 54.

    Partsch, ‘Die Armenierfrage’, p. 345.

  55. 55.

    Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 112.

  56. 56.

    Garner, ‘Treatment of Enemy Aliens’, pp. 43–8.

  57. 57.

    Bade, Europa in Bewegung, pp. 217–18. See also Aliens Act, 1905, at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1905/13/pdfs/ukpga_19050013_en.pdf

  58. 58.

    Martin John Farrar, ‘The Illusory Threat: Enemy Aliens in Britain during the Great War’, Ph.D dissertation, King’s College London, 2016, pp. 10 and 54.

  59. 59.

    Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London, 2009), pp. 5 and 29–52.

  60. 60.

    Farrar, ‘The Illusory Threat’, pp. 44–66 (here esp. pp. 53–4 and 65).

  61. 61.

    Ibid., p. 62.

  62. 62.

    Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 50–3.

  63. 63.

    Section 1 of the Aliens Restriction Act, 5 August 1914, at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1914/12/pdfs/ukpga_19140012_en.pdf

  64. 64.

    On the ARA, see also Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, pp. 47–61; and John C. Bird, Control of Enemy Alien Civilians in Great Britain, 1914–1918 (London, 1986), pp. 14–44.

  65. 65.

    Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, p. 74.

  66. 66.

    Ibid., pp. 223–58.

  67. 67.

    Even the Quaker activist Stephen Hobhouse (cousin of Emily) seems eventually to have been persuaded by the Home Office’s argument that internment could be in the ‘interests of the aliens to protect them from possible future outbreaks’ of anti-German violence. See his letter to Elisabeth Rotten, 24 May 1915, in Society of Friends Library, London (henceforth SFL), FEWVRC/EME/06.

  68. 68.

    Kevin James, ‘Aliens, Subjects and the State: Surveillance in British Hotels during World War I’, Immigrants and Minorities, 36.3 (2018), pp. 199–231.

  69. 69.

    Home Office to Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, 7 October 1915, in TNA, FO 383/88. Salonika passed from Turkish into Greek hands following the two Balkan Wars of 1912–13. Under Article IV of the Treaty of Athens, November 1913, persons born in the city and now living elsewhere in the world were given a six-month ‘period of option’ to decide whether they wanted to apply for Greek citzenship, the default assumption being that they would otherwise remain Turkish. For the text of Article IV, see Coleman Phillipson, Termination of War and Treaties of Peace (New York, 1916; reprinted Clark, NJ, 2008), p. 299.

  70. 70.

    Farrar, ‘The Illusory Threat’, pp. 13–14. On the Prisoner of War Department, see also Lord Newton, Retrosepction (London, 1941).

  71. 71.

    Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, p. 81.

  72. 72.

    Bird, Control of Enemy Alien Civilians, p. 217.

  73. 73.

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

  74. 74.

    See the relevant documents in TNA, FO 383/8 and 383/254.

  75. 75.

    Notes of interview with the Home Office Aliens Department, 19 May 1915, in SFL, FEWVRC/CAMPS/2.

  76. 76.

    Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, pp. 81–2.

  77. 77.

    ICRC, Rapport de MM. Ed. Naville et J. Martin sur une seconde visite aux camps en Angleterre en janvier 1916 (Geneva and Paris, 1916), pp. 17–26 (here esp. p. 19).

  78. 78.

    See Manz and Panayi, Enemies in the Empire.

  79. 79.

    Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, pp. 83 and 152.

  80. 80.

    Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, pp. 45 and 94.

  81. 81.

    Bird, Control of Enemy Alien Civilians, p. 148.

  82. 82.

    See ‘Annexe: Règlement du camp spécial de Douglas’, in Rapport de MM. Ed. Naville et J. Martin sur une seconde visite aux camps en Angleterre, pp. 28–9.

  83. 83.

    Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, pp. 111–12.

  84. 84.

    Manz and Panayi, Enemies in the Empire.

  85. 85.

    Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, p. 14.

  86. 86.

    Catriona Pennell, ‘“The Germans Have Landed!”: Invasion Fears in the South-East of England, August to December 1914’, in Jones, O’Brien and Schimdt-Supprian (eds.), Untold War, pp. 95–116. See also Jacqueline Jenkinson, Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain (Liverpool, 2009).

  87. 87.

    Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, pp. 65–6.

  88. 88.

    See Rapport de MM. Ed. Naville et J. Martin sur une seconde visite aux camps en Angleterre, pp. 21–2; and Deutsches Kolonialblatt, vols. 28–30, 1917–19, pp. 158 and 185–6. Also Murphy, Colonial Captivity, pp. 46, 175 and 184; and Tim Grady, ‘Landscapes of Internment: British Prisoner of War Camps and the Memory of the First World War’, Journal of British Studies, 58.3 (2019), pp. 543–64 (here p. 548).

  89. 89.

    The German seaman Wilhelm Karl Paul Scheffelinge, who died of heart failure at Knockaloe in late 1918, was reported to have been arrested at Lagos on 19 August 1914 and to have been transferred from Alexandra Palace, London to Knockaloe on 16 June 1916. See ‘Alien Inquests’, Peel City Guardian, 23 November 1918.

  90. 90.

    Mustapha Shefket to the Swedish Legation in London, n.d. [September 1917]. Copy in Manx National Heritage, Library and Archives, Douglas, Isle of Man (henceforth MNH), MS 13127.

  91. 91.

    Andrew Francis, ‘To Be Truly British We Must Be Anti-German’: New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War Experience, 1914–1919 (Oxford, 2012), esp. pp. 113–17.

  92. 92.

    Panayi, The Germans in India, pp. 203 and 211–12.

  93. 93.

    Bohdan S. Kordan, ‘Internment in Canada during the Great War: Rights, Responsibilities and Diplomacy’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 162–80 (here esp. pp. 166–7 and 174). See also Chap. 4.

  94. 94.

    CICR, Rapport général, p. 137.

  95. 95.

    Ferrière in the Bulletin international des sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, January 1915. Cited in Max Turmann, La Suisse pendant la guerre: L’aide aux victimes (Paris, 1917), p. 33.

  96. 96.

    ICRC, Rapport de MM. Ed. Naville et V. van Berchem, Dr. C. de Marvel et A. Eugster sur leurs visites aux camps de prisonniers en Angleterre, France et Allemagne en mars 1915 (Geneva and Paris, 1915), p. 26.

  97. 97.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, pp. 186–7.

  98. 98.

    See the minutes of the periodic inter-departmental meetings that took place between representatives from these bodies in BArch, R 1501/112361–112365.

  99. 99.

    Jahr and Thiel, ‘Adding Colour’, pp. 44–5.

  100. 100.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 190–2.

  101. 101.

    See the relevant documents in BayHStA-KA, Stellvetretendes Generalkommando 1. Armeekorps (WK), Bd. 1984—Ausländer—Allgemeines, 1914.

  102. 102.

    For examples from the tenth army corps district (Hanover and surroundings), see NHStA, Hann 122a, No. 7010–7011, Akten betreffend Kontrolle, Festnahme und Heimbeförderung der Ausländer feindlicher Staaten; for examples from the thirteenth army corps district (Stuttgart and surroundings) see Württembergisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (henceforth WHStA), M 77/1, 821 and 826–7; and for examples from the fourteenth army corps district (Grand Duchy of Baden), see Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (henceforth GLA), Bestand 456/F8, No. 269.

  103. 103.

    Chief of the deputy general staff to all acting general commanders, 8 October 1914, in NHStA, Hann 122a, No. 7010, Bl. 44.

  104. 104.

    Jahr and Thiel, ‘Adding Colour’, p. 42.

  105. 105.

    See Ulrich Herbert, Geschichte der Ausländerbeschäftigung in Deutschland 1880 bis 1980: Saisonarbeiter, Zwangsarbeiter, Gastarbeiter (Bonn, 1986), pp. 87–8 and 100.

  106. 106.

    Chief of the deputy general staff to President of the Province of Hanover, 3 November 1914 and 11 December 1914, in NHStA, Hann 122a, No. 7011, Bl. 77–9 and 185.

  107. 107.

    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.

  108. 108.

    See the relevant instructions in NHStA, Hann 122a, No. 7010, Bl. 391 and 394, and No. 7011, Bl. 107 and 117.

  109. 109.

    Jahr and Thiel, ‘Adding Colour’, p. 43. On the enemy alien civilians held at Schloß Celle, see also Hilke Langhammer, ‘Das Celler Schloss als Internierungslager für “Feindstaatenausländer’, in Hilke Langhammer (ed.), Hinter Stacheldraht: Die Kriegsgefangenenlager in Celle 1914–1918 (Celle, 2018), pp. 30–59.

  110. 110.

    Jahr and Thiel, ‘Adding Colour’, p. 45.

  111. 111.

    Chief of the deputy general staff to the President of the Province of Hanover, 7 August 1918, in Hann 122a, No. 7010, Bl. 472.

  112. 112.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 129 and 137–8.

  113. 113.

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

  114. 114.

    Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, p. 166.

  115. 115.

    Ferrière, Conférence des Croix-Rouges Neutres, p. 2.

  116. 116.

    Extract from letter sent by H. W. Dixon (Stadtvogtei) to C. W. Donnelly (Ruhleben camp), 10 October 1916, in Harvard Law Library, Cambridge, MA (henceforth HLL), Ruhleben: Maurice Ettinghausen Collection, Box 6, File 9.

  117. 117.

    The key study on this episode is Thiel, ‘Menschenbassin Belgien’. For Bissing’s ‘principled’ opposition, see also Hull, A Scrap of Paper, p. 132.

  118. 118.

    See, for example, Etappen-Inspektion der 6. Armee, ‘Richtlinien für die Heranziehung der Bevölkerung besetzter Gebiete zu öffentlichen Arbeiten’, 14 June 1917, in BHStA-KA, Etappenformationen (WK), 147. For a broader discussion, see also Jahr and Thiel, ‘Adding Colour’, pp. 51–3.

  119. 119.

    Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 400–5; Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 73–4.

  120. 120.

    This is the main argument in my forthcoming book chapter, ‘(Dis)entangling’.

  121. 121.

    Kriegs- und Zivilgefangene in Gefangenenlagern, Lazeretten und Austauschstationen (zahlenmäßige Aufstellungen nach dem Stand vom 10. Oktober 1918), in BArch, R 67/525.

  122. 122.

    For 60,000 in France (including Algeria), see Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 129; and for 47,000 in Britain and its empire, see Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees’, p. 73.

  123. 123.

    Alan Kramer, ‘Wackes at War: Alsace-Lorraine and the Failure of German National Mobilization, 1914–1918’, in John Horne (ed.), State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 105–22 (here esp. p. 106).

  124. 124.

    Jon Parry, ‘“The Black Hand”: 1916 and Irish Republican Prisoners in North Wales’, in Paul O’Leary (ed.), Irish Migrants in Modern Wales (Liverpool, 2004), pp. 139–55 (here p. 139).

  125. 125.

    Ibid., p. 147. See also Grayson, Dublin’s Great Wars, pp. 173–4.

  126. 126.

    Christopher Andrew argues that DORA ‘gave the [British] government powers close to martial law’—see Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 53–4.

  127. 127.

    See Darrow, French Women and the First World War, pp. 284–308.

  128. 128.

    Christian Schudnagies, Der Kriegs- und Belagerungszustand im Deutschen Reich während des Ersten Weltkrieges: Eine Studie zur Entwicklung und Handhabung des deutschen Ausnahmezustandsrechts bis 1918 (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1994). See also Agamben, State of Exception, pp. 6–7.

  129. 129.

    For two particularly useful accounts of how Austria-Hungary fought the war at home, as well as beyond its borders, see Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA, 2016), pp. 385–441; and Hannes Leidinger, Der Untergang der Habsburgermonarchie (Innsbruck, 2017), pp. 147–297.

  130. 130.

    Stibbe, ‘Krieg und Brutalisierung’, esp. pp. 90–4.

  131. 131.

    On summary executions, see Holzer, Das Lachen der Henker, esp. pp. 66–86 and 112–32. On Austrian brutalities against enemy civilians more generally, see Hannes Leidinger, Verena Moritz, Karin Moser and Wolfram Dornik, Habsburgs schmutziger Krieg: Ermittlungen zur österreichisch-ungarischen Kriegsführung 1914–1918 (St. Pölten, 2014).

  132. 132.

    See Statthalter of Tyrol and Vorarlberg to District Commissioners and the Police Commissioner in Trent, 28 November 1912 and 1 December 1913, in Tiroler Landesarchiv Innsbruck (henceforth TLA), Statt. Präs 1915, 1012/3.

  133. 133.

    Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees’, p. 68.

  134. 134.

    See, for instance, the complaint sent by the Statthalter of Tyrol and Vorarlberg to the Minister of Interior in Vienna, 17 June 1915, in TLA, Statt. Präs 1915, 1012/107. Here, it was claimed that the military had exceeded its authority and that those it arrested as ‘politically unreliable’ were ‘for the most part persons against whom there were no suspicions, apart from their openly espoused Italian national cultural views; it is a well-known fact that the local civil authorities were given no say in the drawing up of lists of suspects’.

  135. 135.

    Martin Moll, Die Steiermark im Ersten Weltkrieg: Der Kampf des Hinterlandes ums Überleben 1914–1918 (Graz, 2014).

  136. 136.

    See 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.

  137. 137.

    Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens’, p. 66.

  138. 138.

    On Austrian censorship, see Scheer, Die Ringstraßenfront. According to Pieter Judson, ‘the Hungarian press often reported far more freely on the war than Austrian newspapers could’—see Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 393.

  139. 139.

    Jonathan E. Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2009).

  140. 140.

    Hermann J. W. Kuprian, ‘“Frondienst redivivus im XX. Jahrhundert!”: Arbeitszwang am Beispiel von Flucht, Vertreibung und Internierung in Österreich während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, Geschichte und Region/storia e regione, 12.1 (2003), pp. 15–38.

  141. 141.

    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 pp. 495–6); Hannes Leidinger, ‘“Der Einzug des Galgens und des Mordes”: Die parlamentarischen Stellungnahmen polnischer und ruthenischer Reichsratsabgeordneter zu den massiven Hinrichtungen in Galizien’, Zeitgeschichte, 32 (2006), pp. 235–60.

  142. 142.

    The best study on this is Mark Cornwall, The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (Basingstoke, 2000).

  143. 143.

    See Militärkommando Graz to the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of War, 1 February 1918, in Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Vienna, Kriegsarchiv (henceforth ÖStA-KA), Kriegsministerium 1918, Karton 2049,10/14/3. Also Georg Hoffmann, Nicole-Melanie Goll and Philipp Lesiak, Thalerhof 1914–1936: Die Geschichte eines vergessenen Lagers und seiner Opfer (Herne, 2010), p. 95, who document 1448 deaths at Thalerhof in 1914–15.

  144. 144.

    Talergofs’kyj al’manach, Vol. 4, p. 128.

  145. 145.

    See the British intelligence report from Italian General Headquarters, 23 June 1916, in TNA, FO 383/123. Also the accusations made by the Czech deputy Jiří Stříbrný in the Reichsrat on 14 June 1917, in Stenographische Protokolle des Abgeordnetenhauses des Reichsrates, XXII. Session (Vienna, 1917), pp. 240–50—republished in Czech as Thalerhof (Prague, 1934). Further evidence of abuses against prisoners during the journey from East Galicia to Thalerhof and Theresienstadt is provided by Katharina Wesener, ‘Internment in WW1: The Case of Thalerhof’, in Oto Luthar (ed.), The Great War and Memory in Central and South-Eastern Europe (Leiden, 2017), pp. 111–22 (here esp. pp. 114–15).

  146. 146.

    Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 59–60.

  147. 147.

    Bericht der italienischen Zensurgruppe B, 23 September 1915, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3732, Zl. 1913.

  148. 148.

    Reinhard Mundschütz, ‘Internierung im Waldviertel: Die Internierungslager und –stationen der BH Waidhofen an der Thaya, 1914–1918’, D.Phil dissertation, University of Vienna, 2002, p. 65; 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 p. 258).

  149. 149.

    Baron von Reicher to Statthalterei-Präsidium Innsbruck, 11 June 1915, in TLA, Statt. Präs 1915, 1012/153.

  150. 150.

    Oswald Haller, ‘Das Internierungslager Katzenau bei Linz: Die Internierung und Konfinierung der italienischsprachigen Zivilbevölkerung des Trentinos zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges’, Dipl. Arb., University of Vienna, 1999, p. 45.

  151. 151.

    Baron von Reicher, Instruktion für die zur Bewachung der internierten verwendete Mannschaft, Katzenau, 30 March 1916, in Museo storico italiano della guerra, Archivio storico, Rovereto (henceforth ASR), Fondi Tematici: Bestand Katzenau, fasc. 3, Bl. 8.

  152. 152.

    Baron von Reicher, Kundmachung/Avviso, 3 February 1916, in ASR, Fondi Tematici: Bestand Katzenau, fasc. 5, Bl. 42.

  153. 153.

    Landeschef Sarajevo to the Austrian War Ministry, Department 10, 1 December 1914, in ÖStA-KA, Kriegsministerium 1914, Karton 565, Zl. 18137.

  154. 154.

    The most detailed, albeit still unpublished study, is Walter Mentzel, ‘Kriegsflüchtlinge in Cisleithanien im Ersten Weltkrieg’, D.Phil dissertation, University of Vienna, 1997.

  155. 155.

    Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees’, p. 496. For the situation in the Trentino, see also Paolo Piccolo and Armando Vadagnini, Degasperi: Un trentino nella storia d’Europa (Soveria Mannelli, 2004), p. 103.

  156. 156.

    Italienische Zensurgruppe D, Sanitäre Verhältnisse im Konzentrationslager Wagna bei Leibnitz, 18 December 1915, in ÖStA-KA, AOK/GZNB, Karton 3737, Zl. 3025.

  157. 157.

    Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 411.

  158. 158.

    District Governor of Trieste to Police Chief of Trieste, 22 December 1915, passing on latest orders from the AOK. Copy in Archivio di Stato di Trieste (henceforth AST), Direzione di Polizia, Atti Presidiali Riservati, no. 387.

  159. 159.

    Verzeichnis der seit 20. Mai 1915 von Triest aus internierten und konfinierten Personen, 18 March 1916, in ibid.

  160. 160.

    See the scores of denunciations, written in both Italian and German, in AST, Direzione di Polizia, Atti Presidiali Riservati, no. 380. The quotations are taken from an undated letter signed by a ‘faithful Austrian’ [un fedele austriaco], and from an unsigned letter dated 22 September 1915 and sent in the first instance to the police inspectorate in Vienna (which forwarded it to Trieste).

  161. 161.

    See the lists of internees held at Oberhallabrunn and Göllersdorf internment camps, with reasons for their internment added in the margins, in AST, Direzione di Polizia, Atti Presidiali Riservati, no. 387. The lists are undated but were probably drawn up in September or October 1915.

  162. 162.

    District Governor of Trieste to Police Chief of Trieste, 12 December 1915, in ibid.

  163. 163.

    Judson, The Habsburg Empire, pp. 392–3.

  164. 164.

    Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918 (Harlow, 1989), pp. 212, 218 and 225.

  165. 165.

    See also József Galántai, Hungary in the First World War (Budapest, 1989).

  166. 166.

    Nicholas J. Miller, Between Nation and State: Serbian Politics in Croatia Before the First World War (Pittsburgh, PA, 1998), p. 169.

  167. 167.

    Caglioti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau’, p. 257.

  168. 168.

    Giovanni Stelli, Storia di Fiume: Dalla origini ai giorni nostri (Pordenone, 2017), pp. 208–9.

  169. 169.

    Andrej Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, 1914–1918 (London, 2007), p. 76.

  170. 170.

    Holzer, Das Lächeln der Henker, p. 76.

  171. 171.

    Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, p. 369, n. 113.

  172. 172.

    See the German translation of a note from the Spanish embassy to the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Ottokar Czernin, 10 April 1917, in ÖStA-HHStA, 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 Becker, ‘Captive Civilians’, p. 272.

  173. 173.

    War Ministry to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, n.d. [February 1918], in ÖStA-KA, Kriegsminsterium 1918, 10/18/1/37.

  174. 174.

    Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens’, p. 66.

  175. 175.

    Baron von Reicher (Commander of Katzenau camp) to Statthalterei-Präsidium Innsbruck, 11 June 1915, in TLA, Statt.-Präs. 1915, 1012/153.

  176. 176.

    Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 60–1; Cagliotti, ‘Tra la Sardegna e Katzenau’, p. 260.

  177. 177.

    Gemeinsames Zentralnachweisebureau der AOK, Zentralstelle für Kriegsgefangene, to the ICRC, 22 August 1916 and 19 October 1916. Copies in ACICR, C G1, A 15-10.

  178. 178.

    See Stibbe, ‘Ein globales Phänomen’. Also Chap. 2 of this book.

  179. 179.

    Stibbe, ‘Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees’, pp. 487 and 497.

  180. 180.

    Matteo Perissinotto, ‘L’attività del Consolato italiano e dell’Associazione Italiana di Beneficenza in Trieste a favour dei regnicoli (agosto 1914-maggio 1915)’, in Matteo Ermacora (ed.), Neutralità e guerra: Friuli e Litorale austriaco nella crisi del 1914–1915 (Trieste, 2015), pp. 59–73 (here p. 59).

  181. 181.

    For the most comprehensive study, see Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London, 2011) [French original, 2006]. A countervailing, but less convincing view, which asserts the wider prevalence and European-based ‘normalisation’ of genocidal and near-genocidal acts during and after the First World War era, can be found in Mark Levene, ‘Frontiers of Genocide: Jews in the Eastern War Zones, 1914–1920 and 1941’, in Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime, pp. 83–117; and idem., The Crisis of Genocide. Vol 1: Devastation: The European Rimlands, 1912–1938 (Oxford, 2013), here esp. p. 12.

  182. 182.

    Jay Winter, ‘Under Cover of War: The Armenian Genocide in the Context of Total War’, in Winter (ed.), America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 37–51 (here p. 41). See also Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, pp. 149–50; Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, pp. 99–116; Peter Mansfield, A History of the Middle East, 4th ed. (London, 2010), p. 170.

  183. 183.

    Khatchig Mouradian, ‘Internment and Destruction: Concentration Camps during the Armenian Genocide, 1915–16’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 145–61 (here pp. 149 and 155). Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, pp. 104–10 designate some of these camps as ‘death camps’ and give a higher figure of 630,000 Armenians who died in them.

  184. 184.

    Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, pp. 625–96.

  185. 185.

    Rössler to the Embassy in Constantinople, 6 April 1916, in Wolfgang Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives (New York and Oxford, 2014) [German original, 2005], pp. 573–4 (here p. 573).

  186. 186.

    Wolff-Metternich to Bethmann Hollweg, 10 July 1916, in ibid., pp. 601–3 (here p. 601).

  187. 187.

    Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, pp. 106–7.

  188. 188.

    Mouradian, ‘Internment and Destruction’, pp. 150–1.

  189. 189.

    Cited in Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 25.

  190. 190.

    Mouradian, ‘Internment and Destruction’, p. 150.

  191. 191.

    Gust (ed.), The Armenian Genocide, p. 25.

  192. 192.

    Mihran Dabag, ‘Jungtürkische Visionen und der Völkermord an den Armenien’, in Dabag and Platt (eds.), Genozid und Moderne Band 1, pp. 152–205 (here p. 154).

  193. 193.

    See also the similar point made by Jo Laycock, Imagining Armenia: Orientalism, Ambiguity and Intervention (Manchester, 2009), pp. 112–17.

  194. 194.

    Winter, ‘Under Cover of War’, p. 37; Becker, ‘Captive Civilians’, pp. 280–1; Segesser, Empire und Totaler Krieg, pp. 507–8.

  195. 195.

    Dabag, ‘Jungtürkische Visionen’, p. 155.

  196. 196.

    Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, p. 112.

  197. 197.

    Martin Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo: A Word to Germany’s Accredited Representatives (London, 1917), pp. 1 and 24. Online copy at https://archive.org/stream/horrorsofaleppos00niep/horrorsofaleppos00niep_djvu.txt

  198. 198.

    Becker, ‘Captive Civilians’, p. 281.

  199. 199.

    Benjamin Ziemann, ‘The First World War and National Socialism’, in Shelley Baranowski, Armin Nolzen and Claus-Christian Szejnmann (eds.), A Companion to Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2018), pp. 47–61 (here p. 51). See also the various thought-provoking contributions to Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism: Nazism and Stalinism Compared (Cambridge, 2009).

  200. 200.

    Cf. Garner, ‘Treatment of Enemy Aliens’.

  201. 201.

    Stone, Concentration Camps, pp. 13–14.

  202. 202.

    See Chap. 6.

  203. 203.

    Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914, p. 528, n. 18. See also Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, pp. 6–7 and 115–69; Laycock, Imagining Armenia, pp. 99–143; Yair Auron, The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied (Tel Aviv, 2013), pp. 93–8.

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    Matthew Stibbe

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Stibbe, M. (2019). Internment and War Governance in the First World War. In: Civilian Internment during the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57191-5_3

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