Skip to main content

Internment and International Activism: The Search for More Humane Alternatives

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
  • 211 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter offers the first in-depth analysis of international activism in relation to the internment question. It begins by exploring the precedent set by the British campaigner Emily Hobhouse during the Boer war of 1899–1902. It then goes on to examine how bodies like the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, the Quaker-led Friends Emergency Committee in London and its Berlin-based counterpart, the Auskunfts- und Hilfsstelle für Deutsche im Ausland und Ausländer in Deutschland, sought to mitigate the consequences of internment for individuals and families, while also explaining why their quest to end internment of civilians as prisoners of war by means of international pressure failed. Further sections look at neutral internment in Switzerland and the Netherlands as an additional, albeit limited, attempt to humanise wartime captivity, and at the ‘medicalisation’ of the internment phenomenon, particularly through the development of the internationally recognised but scientifically contested term ‘barbed-wire disease’.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD   139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    See in particular Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge, 2014).

  2. 2.

    David S. Patterson, The Search for Negotiated Peace: Women’s Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I (London and New York, 2008).

  3. 3.

    See, for example, Fiona Reid, Medicine in First World War Europe: Soldiers, Medics, Pacifists (London, 2017); Hull, A Scrap of Paper; Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Women Activists between War and Peace: Europe, 1914–1923 (London, 2017); Bernard Degen and Julia Richers (eds.), Zimmerwald und Kiental: Weltgeschichte auf dem Dorfe (Zurich, 2015); Heather Streets-Salter, World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict (Cambridge, 2017); Xu Guoqi, Asia and the Great War: A Shared History (Oxford, 2017); Das, India, Empire, and First World War Culture; Adriane Danette Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Cambridge, MA and London, 2010); Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill, NC and London, 2011); R. Craig Nation, War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the Origins of Communist Internationalism, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL, 2008) [1989].

  4. 4.

    Firth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism, p. 220.

  5. 5.

    Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism, p. 39; Gorman, International Cooperation, p. 206.

  6. 6.

    Mathieu Deflem, Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation (Oxford, 2002), pp. 102–3.

  7. 7.

    Marco Duranti, ‘European Integration, Human Rights, and Romantic Internationalism’, in Nicholas Doumanis (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 440–58.

  8. 8.

    Reid, Medicine in First World War Europe, p. 8.

  9. 9.

    Henry Dunant, A Memoir of Solferino (Geneva, n.d.) [1862].

  10. 10.

    See Antonie Girardet-Vielle, ‘Bureau international féministe en faveur des victimes de la guerre’, Jahrbuch der Schweizerfrauen, 1 (1915), pp. 68–73. I would like to thank the Gosteli-Stiftung—Archiv zur Geschichte der schweizerischen Frauenbewegung in Bern-Worblaufen for sending me a copy of this article. On the IWSA’s 1913 congress in Budapest, see also Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ, 1999), p. 135.

  11. 11.

    Reid, Medicine, pp. 149–62.

  12. 12.

    Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington DC, 1914), p. 4.

  13. 13.

    Bauerkämper, ‘National Security and Humanity’, pp. 76–9.

  14. 14.

    A. L. Vischer, Die Stacheldraht-Krankheit (Zurich, 1918). Translated into English as Barbed-Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War (London, 1919).

  15. 15.

    Seibold, Emily Hobhouse, p. 40.

  16. 16.

    Gill, Calculating Compassion, pp. 138–42.

  17. 17.

    Emily Hobhouse, Report of a Visit to the Camps of Women and Children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies (London, 1901).

  18. 18.

    Emily Hobhouse, Onthullingen uit de vrouwenkampen in Zuid-Afrika (Rotterdam, 1901).

  19. 19.

    Emily Hobhouse, Die Zustände in den südafrikanischen Konzentrationslagern (Berlin, 1901). There was also a version published in a French newspaper under the title Le Cri du Transvaal—see Seibold, Emily Hobhouse, p. 84.

  20. 20.

    Gill, Calculating Compassion, pp. 150–1.

  21. 21.

    Milner to Chamberlain, 7 December 1901. Cited in ibid., p. 152.

  22. 22.

    Manz and Panayi, Enemies in the Empire; Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism, p. 221; Zoë Denness, ‘“A Question which affects our Prestige as a Nation”: The History of British Civilian Internment, 1899–1945’, Ph.D Dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2012, pp. 159 and 183–6.

  23. 23.

    Christoph Marx, ‘“Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht”: Kriegsgefangene im Burenkrieg 1899–1902’, in Overmans (ed.), In der Hand des Feindes, pp. 255–76 (here p. 274). Marx also notes that Hobhouse resorted to the standard racial tropes of the day regarding the dividing line between ‘civilised’ and ‘barbaric’ forms of warfare when she cited ‘numerous examples’ of attacks by blacks on ‘defenceless white Boer women’ in her reports. Andrea Pitzer admittedly does mention a speech made by Hobhouse in 1913, at the dedication for a memorial to the dead of the South African camps, at which she made reference to the ‘many thousands of the dark race’ who also lost their lives whilst in British captivity—but her overriding emphasis remained on the suffering of white Boer families. See Pitzer, One Long Night, pp. 86–7.

  24. 24.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, p. 142. See also John V. Crangle and Joseph O. Baylen, ‘Emily Hobhouse’s Peace Mission, 1916’, Journal of Contemporary History, 14.4 (1979), pp. 731–43.

  25. 25.

    ‘Eine unbequeme Zeugin’ Frankfurter Zeitung, 9 November 1916. Copy in EZA, Bestand 51 C III l 13.

  26. 26.

    Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, p. 308.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., pp. 4 and 189–247.

  28. 28.

    Stibbe, ‘Elisabeth Rotten’.

  29. 29.

    Rotten to Hobhouse, 26 April 1915, in SFL, FEWVRC/EME/06.

  30. 30.

    Society of Friends, Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in Distress, Reports for October 1914, December 1914 and Year Ending 30 June 1916 (London, 1914–16), pp. 3 and 6.

  31. 31.

    Society of Friends, Friends’ Emergency and War Victims’ Relief Committee: A Brief Outline of Relief Work in Europe, 1914–19 (London, 1919).

  32. 32.

    Stibbe, ‘Elisabeth Rotten’, p. 200. See also Souvenir du Bureau International Féministe de Renseignements en faveur des Victimes de la Guerre, Octobre 1914–Juillet 1919 (Lausanne, 1919), p. 12.

  33. 33.

    See the records in EZA, Bestand 51 C III g 2.

  34. 34.

    Stibbe, ‘Elisabeth Rotten’, p. 201.

  35. 35.

    Ibid.

  36. 36.

    On the International Women’s Congress, see Rupp, Worlds of Women, pp. 26–9.

  37. 37.

    Several leading members of the BNV, including Jannasch, appeared on a police list of known pacifist agitators living in the Berlin area on 31 January 1918. See Ingo Materna and Hans-Joachim Schreckenbach (eds.), Berichte des Berliner Polizeipräsidenten zur Stimmung und Lage der Bevölkerung in Berlin 1914–1918 (Weimar, 1987), pp. 243–4.

  38. 38.

    Stibbe, ‘Elisabeth Rotten’, p. 200.

  39. 39.

    Lilli Jannasch’s views were expressed in her post-war pamphlet, also translated into English and French, criticising German occupation polices in France and Belgium. See Jannasch, Untaten des preussisch-deutschen Militarismus im besetzten Frankreich und Belgien (Berlin, 1924).

  40. 40.

    See, for instance, the correspondence between Elisabeth Rotten and Mrs Bridgewater of the FEC, mostly about missing persons and individuals repatriated from Germany to Britain, and vice versa, in SFL, FEWVRC/EME/03.

  41. 41.

    Stibbe, ‘Elisabeth Rotten’, p. 201.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 202.

  43. 43.

    Romberg to the legal department of the AA, 31 January 1917, in BArch, R 901/82917. See also Bureau international féministe de renseignements en faveur des victimes de la guerre to Romberg, 26 December 1914, in R 901/82914.

  44. 44.

    Solf to Prince Max von Baden, 31 October 1918, in BArch, R 901/82918.

  45. 45.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 148 and 156.

  46. 46.

    See minutes of meeting of camps committee held at 167 St Stephen’s House, 13 July 1916, in SFL, FEWVRC/CAMPS/1 M1.

  47. 47.

    Dr Eric Higgins, ‘Connection of Dr Rotten with Ruhleben’, six-page record of interview, 10 March 1919, in TNA, FO 383/524.

  48. 48.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 145–6.

  49. 49.

    On Solf, see also Stibbe, ‘The German Empire’s Response’, pp. 61–2; and Peter J. Hempenstall and Paula Tanaka Mochida, The Lost Man: Wilhelm Solf in German History (Wiesbaden, 2005), pp. 133–4 and 154.

  50. 50.

    Society of Friends, Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in Distress, Report for Year ending 30 June 1918 (London, 1918), p. 7. See also Zweck und Ziele des Internationalen Hilfskomitee für Zivilgefangene (Zurich, n.d. [1917/18]), pamphlet in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  51. 51.

    See the minutes of the meeting of camps committee held at 167 St Stephen’s House, 14 March 1918, in SFL, FEWVRC/CAMPS/1 M2.

  52. 52.

    Cited in Joanna Bourke, What it Means to be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present (London, 2011), p. 206.

  53. 53.

    Stibbe, ‘Elisabeth Rotten’, p. 200.

  54. 54.

    Jones, ‘International Law and Western Front Prisoners’, p. 31.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 37. See also Roxburgh, The Prisoners of War Information Bureau, pp. 4–5.

  56. 56.

    Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians’, p. 19.

  57. 57.

    See Turmann, La Suisse pendant la guerre, esp. pp. 1–37 and 111–26.

  58. 58.

    This was adopted as point 34 of the ‘Resolutions presented to the peace conference of the powers in Paris’—see http://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1919.pdf

  59. 59.

    Marcus M. Payk, Frieden durch Recht? Der Aufstieg des modernen Völkerrechts und der Friedensschluss nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2018).

  60. 60.

    Hull, A Scrap of Paper, p. 274.

  61. 61.

    Jones, ‘International Law and Western Front Prisoners’, p. 47. See also John Horne, ‘Introduction: Wartime Imprisonment in the Twentieth Century’, in Pathé and Théofilakis (eds.), Wartime Captivity in the Twentieth Century, pp. 13–24 (here p. 16).

  62. 62.

    Reid, Medicine, p. 197. On the crisis caused by the ICRC’s alleged failures in respect to the promotion of humanitarian values during the Second World War, and its attempts to rectify this after 1945, see Gerald Steinacher, Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Oxford, 2017).

  63. 63.

    Gorman, International Cooperation, pp. 147–8.

  64. 64.

    CICR, L’Agence internationale des Prisonniers de Guerre à Genève, 1914 et 1915 (Geneva, 1915), p. 47.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., p. 43.

  66. 66.

    Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians’, p. 5.

  67. 67.

    Conférence des neutres à Genève, 10–14 septembre 1917, Protocole de Clôture, part V, in ACICR, C G1, A 09-10.

  68. 68.

    Ibid.

  69. 69.

    Ibid.

  70. 70.

    Ibid.

  71. 71.

    Ibid.

  72. 72.

    ‘Le code du prisonnier de guerre: Rapport présenté par le Comité international à la Xme Conférence’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 26 (February 1921), pp. 100–28 (here p. 105).

  73. 73.

    Ibid.

  74. 74.

    Conférence des neutres à Genève, Protocole de Clôture, part V (as note 67 above).

  75. 75.

    Ibid.

  76. 76.

    Ibid.

  77. 77.

    ‘Résolutions et voeux votés par la XIIe Conférence internationale de la Crox-Rouge, Genève, 7–10 octobre 1925’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 82 (October 1925), pp. 814–31 (here p. 824).

  78. 78.

    Ibid.

  79. 79.

    Stibbe, ‘Gendered Experiences of Civilian Internment’.

  80. 80.

    See note 58 above.

  81. 81.

    Sluga, ‘Female and National Self-Determination’, p. 507; Weitz, ‘From the Vienna to the Paris System’, pp. 1331–2.

  82. 82.

    CICR, Rapport général, pp. 157–8.

  83. 83.

    Ibid., p. 158. See also Rapports de MM. Thormeyer, Em. Schoch et le Dr. F. Blanchod sur leurs visites aux camps de prisonniers de guerre ottomans et d’internés autrichiens et allemands aux Indes et en Birmanie, février, mars et april 1917 (Geneva and Paris, 1917).

  84. 84.

    H. Cuénod, ‘L’internement en Italie des prisonniers du “Heimai-Maru”’, Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 35 (November 1921) pp. 1094–7 (here pp. 1095–6).

  85. 85.

    See Rupp, Worlds of Women, esp. pp. 51–2.

  86. 86.

    As somewhat optimistically argued by Édouard Favre, Swiss Internment of Prisoners of War. An Experiment in International Humane Legislation and Administration: A Report (New York, 1917).

  87. 87.

    See ibid., p. 2. Also G. Vanneufville, ‘Intitiatives et interventions charitables du St. Siège pendant la guerre’, Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 7 (July 1919), pp. 800–34 (here p. 820).

  88. 88.

    Duranti, ‘European Integration’, pp. 441–3.

  89. 89.

    Alberto Monticone, La croce e il filo spinato. Tra prigionieri e internati civili nella Grande Guerra 1914–1918: La missione umanitaria dei delegati religiosi (Soveria Mannelli, 2013). See also Turmann, La Suisse pendant la guerre, pp. 67–82 and 144–6; Hinz, Gefangen im Großen Krieg, pp. 115–16.

  90. 90.

    Annette Becker, ‘Religion’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich and Irina Renz (eds.), Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg (Paderborn, 2003), pp. 192–7 (here p. 194); Thiel, ‘Menschenbassin Belgien’, pp. 184–5.

  91. 91.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 34; ‘Civilian Prisoners in Germany—Promised Exchange Revoked—A Revengeful Pretext’, The Times, 20 May 1915. Copy in BArch, R 901/83952.

  92. 92.

    See Prussian War Ministry to acting military commands, 20 September 1915. Copy in LNRW, Abteilung Rheinland, Oberpräsidium Düsseldorf, No. 14996, Bl. 62.

  93. 93.

    Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, p. 85; Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, p. 126.

  94. 94.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 33.

  95. 95.

    Details of the Franco-German agreement can be found in a note from the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Berlin to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, 18 May 1916. Copy in ÖStA-AVA, MdI, Allg. Sign. 19/1916, Zl. 33334. For the Anglo-German agreement, see Foreign Office (Britain), Correspondence with the United States Ambassador respecting the Transfer to Switzerland of British and German Wounded and Sick Combatant Prisoners of War (= misc. no. 17) (London, 1916).

  96. 96.

    Favre, Swiss Internment, pp. 3–7.

  97. 97.

    Turmann, La Suisse pendant la guerre, p. 151; Anja Huber, ‘The Internment of Prisoners of War and Civilians in Neutral Switzerland, 1916–1919’, in Manz, Panayi and Stibbe (eds.), Internment during the First World War, pp. 252–72 (here p. 256).

  98. 98.

    Mai, Die Marokko-Deutschen, pp. 686–7.

  99. 99.

    See the relevant correspondence between the Swiss and Habsburg authorities in SBA, E 2200.53, 1000/1758, BD: 1, 10.

  100. 100.

    Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Berlin to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, 18 May 1916. Copy in ÖStA-AVA, MdI, Allg. Sign. 19/1916, Zl. 33334.

  101. 101.

    Huber, ‘The Internment of Prisoners of War and Civilians’, pp. 257–8.

  102. 102.

    Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Berlin to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, 18 May 1916 (as note 100 above).

  103. 103.

    See Colonel Hauser (médicin d’armée), Organisation de l’internement des malades et blessés prisonniers de guerre en Suisse, 25 January 1916; and idem., Regulatif concernant l’administration de l’internement des prisonniers de guerre malades et blessés en Suisse, 25 February 1916. Copies of both documents in TNA, FO 383/244.

  104. 104.

    Huber, ‘The Internment of Prisoners of War and Civilians’, p. 256.

  105. 105.

    Evelyn de Roodt, Oorlogsgasten: Vluchtelingen en krijgsgevangenen in Nederland tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Zaltbommel, 2000), p. 280; Susanne Wolf, Guarded Neutrality: Diplomacy and Internment in the Netherlands during the First World War (Leiden, 2013), p. 152.

  106. 106.

    A copy of the accord can be found in ACICR, C G1, A 09-08. The above figures come from paragraphs 12 and 13, and the quotes from paragraphs 12 and 8 of the accord.

  107. 107.

    Ibid., point 2 of 6 additional articles signed by Friedrich.

  108. 108.

    Ibid., paragraph 1.

  109. 109.

    Anja Huber, Fremdsein im Krieg: Die Schweiz als Ausgangs- und Zielort von Migration 1914–1918 (Zurich, 2018), pp. 207 and 212–14. See also Susan Barton, Internment in Switzerland during the First World War (London, 2019).

  110. 110.

    Huber, ‘The Internment of Prisoners of War and Civilians’, p. 257.

  111. 111.

    See the records in SBA, E 27, 1000/721, BD: 2921: Herstellung eines Films über die Internierung.

  112. 112.

    Maartje M. Abbenhuis, The Art of Staying Neutral: The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914–1918 (Amsterdam, 2006), p. 110.

  113. 113.

    Huber, Fremdsein im Krieg, pp. 216–19; Wolf, Guarded Neutrality, pp. 143–7 and 177.

  114. 114.

    de Roodt, Oorlogsgasten, esp. pp. 137–209 and 339–55; Huber, Fremdsein im Krieg, pp. 167–9.

  115. 115.

    Wolf, Guarded Neutrality, esp. pp. 2 and 171.

  116. 116.

    Huber, ‘The Internment of Prisoners of War and Civilians’, p. 264.

  117. 117.

    On ‘food security’ see Abbenhuis, The Art of Staying Neutral, pp. 110–11; and the various contributions to Daniel Krämer, Christian Pfister and Daniel Marc Segesser (eds.), ‘Woche für Woche neue Preisaufschläge’: Nahrungsmittel-, Energie- und Ressourcenkonflikte in der Schweiz des Ersten Weltkrieges (Bern, 2016).

  118. 118.

    See also Monticone, La croce e il filo spinato, pp. 248–54.

  119. 119.

    A. Repond, ‘L’hystérie chez les prisonniers de guerre internés en Suisse’, Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie/Archives suisses de neurologie et de psychiatre/Archivio svizzeri di neurologia e psichiatria, 3.1 (1918), pp. 128–46 (here pp. 128–9).

  120. 120.

    Ibid., p. 146.

  121. 121.

    Turmann, La Suisse pendant la guerre, p. 153.

  122. 122.

    Grant Duff to Sir Edward Grey, 2 June 1916, cited in Anon., The Reception of Wounded Prisoner Soldiers of Great Britain in Switzerland (London, 1916), pp. 1–5.

  123. 123.

    See, for instance, Favre, Swiss Internment, pp. 34–46. Also, Turmann, La Suisse pendant la guerre, pp. 171–203.

  124. 124.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, p. 83.

  125. 125.

    Ibid., p. 57.

  126. 126.

    Wolf, Guarded Neutrality, pp. 175–6.

  127. 127.

    Abbenhuis, The Art of Staying Neutral, p. 103.

  128. 128.

    Wolf, Guarded Neutrality, p. 143.

  129. 129.

    Rachamimov, ‘Liminality and Transgression’, p. 89.

  130. 130.

    Hinz, Gefangen im Großen Krieg, pp. 115–16.

  131. 131.

    Académie de Droit International, La Haye, Recueil de Cours 1928 (Paris, 1929), Vol. 21, p. 81, n. 2.

  132. 132.

    Cf. Repond, ‘L’hystérie chez les prisonniers de guerre’.

  133. 133.

    Prof. Ch. Julliard, ‘La Captivitose: Communication à la Société médicale de Genève, le 4 juillet 1917’, Revue médicale de la Suisse romande, 20 July 1917, pp. 464–6 (here p. 465).

  134. 134.

    Ibid.

  135. 135.

    Sir Timothy Eden, handwritten notes on Ruhleben, undated [October 1916], in Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (henceforth LC), RUH 18. Emphasis in the original.

  136. 136.

    Foreign Office (Great Britain), Correspondence with the United States ambassador respecting the conditions in the camp at Ruhleben (= misc. no 3) (London, 1916).

  137. 137.

    Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre, pp. 133–4; Hinz, Gefangen im Großen Krieg, pp. 11 and 115, n. 211. According to a textbook written by the German specialist Hans W. Gruhle, Psychiatrie für Ärzte, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1922) [1918], p. 82, the term cafard had its origins in a specific malaise known to members of the French Foreign Legion. See also Massimo Andreatini, Cafard (Rome, 1951), which is dedicated ‘A tutti gli Italiani che nella Legione Straniera Francese solfrono e combattono’—‘to all the Italians who have suffered and fought in the French Foreign Legion’.

  138. 138.

    Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt, p. 161; Ketchum, Ruhleben, p. 306.

  139. 139.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 128–9.

  140. 140.

    Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, pp. 126 and 158, n. 19.

  141. 141.

    See the Medical Record, vol. 95 (1919), p. 929, which tentatively suggests that its origins were Swiss. Also Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, pp. 52–3; Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, pp. 84–5.

  142. 142.

    See, for instance, the newspaper clippings in SFL, FEWVRC/CAMPS/2.

  143. 143.

    Newton, Retrospection, p. 249.

  144. 144.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 37.

  145. 145.

    An English-language version of this treaty can be found in ACICR, C G1, A 09-08.

  146. 146.

    Ibid.

  147. 147.

    ‘Ruhleben: The Third Anniversary’, Daily Mail, 6 November 1917. Copy in LC, RUH 31.

  148. 148.

    See Rapport de MM. Alfred Boissier et Dr. Adolf Vischer sur leur inspection des camps de prisonniers en Turquie, Octobre 1916 à Janvier 1917 (Geneva and Paris, 1917); Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, p. 24.

  149. 149.

    Rapport de MM. Alfred Boissier et Dr. Adolf Vischer, p. 14.

  150. 150.

    See Schwyzer and Vischer to the Swiss Minister in London, Gaston Carlin, 30 July 1917, in TNA, FO 383/277; Schwyzer and Vischer to Carlin, 1 July 1917, in ibid.; and Swiss Legation, London, ‘Report on a Visit of Inspection to Nell Lane hospital, West Didsbury, on February 21st, 1919’, dated 19 March 1919, in TNA, FO 383/506. This same report shows that Vischer and Schwyzer had visited Nell Lane on two previous occasions before the end of the war, on 11 December 1917 and 29 August 1918.

  151. 151.

    A. L. Vischer, Report covering a visit of inspection to the place of internment for civilian prisoners of war at Oldcastle, Co. Meath, Ireland, on July 26th, 1917, dated 7 August 1917, in TNA, FO 383/277.

  152. 152.

    See A. L. Vischer, Report covering a visit of inspection to the place of internment for civilian prisoners at Douglas, Isle of Man on November 26th, 1917, dated 29 November 1917, p. 5; and A. L. Vischer, Report covering a visit of inspection to the place of internment for civilian prisoners at Knockaloe, Isle of Man, from November 19th to November 24th, 1917, also dated 29 November 1917, p. 12, both in ibid.

  153. 153.

    On Vischer’s time at Barts, see Avi Ohry and Zahava Solomon, ‘Dr Adolf Lukas Vischer (1884–1974) and “Barbed-Wire Disease”’, Journal of Medical Biography, 22.1 (2014), pp. 16–18 (here p. 17).

  154. 154.

    Egbert Edamland [medical editor of John Bale & Sons Ltd.] to W. R. Hughes, 19 February 1919, in SFL, FEWVRC/CAMPS/1 M2.

  155. 155.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, pp. 35, 39–40, 45, 47, 49 and 53.

  156. 156.

    Ibid., p. 53.

  157. 157.

    Ibid., p. 55.

  158. 158.

    Vischer, An der serbischen Front, p. 150.

  159. 159.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, p. 33.

  160. 160.

    Ibid., pp. 36, 42, 45 and 50–1.

  161. 161.

    Ibid., p. 60.

  162. 162.

    See Appel en faveur de rapatriement des prisonniers de guerre, 26 April 1917, and Manifeste relatif à l’accord sur le repatriement des prisonniers et des civils conclu à Berne entre L’Allemagne et la France, 15 May 1918, both reproduced in Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre, pp. 391 and 392–3.

  163. 163.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, p. 25.

  164. 164.

    Stibbe, ‘The Internment of Civilians’, p. 5.

  165. 165.

    Carl Sifakis, The Encyclopedia of American Prisons (New York, 2003), p. 130.

  166. 166.

    Gruhle, Psychiatrie für Ärzte, pp. 96–7. See also Karl Wilmanns, Über Gefängnispsychosen (Halle, 1908).

  167. 167.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, pp. 26–7.

  168. 168.

    Vischer, Report on Knockaloe, 29 November 1917 (as note 152 above), p. 13.

  169. 169.

    Ibid., p. 14.

  170. 170.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, pp. 71–82.

  171. 171.

    Ibid., pp. 71–82.

  172. 172.

    Favre, Swiss Internment, p. 37.

  173. 173.

    Ibid., pp. 38 and 46.

  174. 174.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, pp. 40, n. 21 and 84, n. 55.

  175. 175.

    Society of Friends, St. Stephen’s House: Friends’ Emergency Work in England, 1914 to 1920, compiled by Anna Braithwaite Thomas and others (London, 1926), p. 52.

  176. 176.

    Ibid., p. 53.

  177. 177.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, p. 9.

  178. 178.

    Ibid., pp. 18–19.

  179. 179.

    Ibid., p. 14.

  180. 180.

    See Loughran, Shell-Shock, esp. p. 6.

  181. 181.

    Ibid., p. 13. See also Jason Crouthamel, An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality, and German Soldiers in the First World War (Basingstoke, 2014), esp. p. 22; Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt, p. 156.

  182. 182.

    Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre, p. 134.

  183. 183.

    Louis Huot and Paul Voivenel, Le Cafard (Paris, 1918), p. 227.

  184. 184.

    Yücel Yanikdağ, Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914–1939 (Edinburgh, 2013), p. 195.

  185. 185.

    The following quotes come from a 1941 English translation, The Sexual History of the World War, republished in 2006 by the University Press of the Pacific.

  186. 186.

    Ibid., p. 124.

  187. 187.

    Ibid., pp. 134–5.

  188. 188.

    Ibid., p. 235.

  189. 189.

    Ibid., pp. 226–7.

  190. 190.

    Ibid., p. 31. Cf. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle [Jenseits des Lustprinzips], trans. by John Reddick, Penguin Modern Classics (London, 2003) [1920]; Civilization and its Discontents [Das Unbehagen in der Kultur], trans. by Joan Riviere (London, 1930) [1930].

  191. 191.

    Hirschfeld, The Sexual History, p. 227.

  192. 192.

    Ibid., pp. 124 and 233.

  193. 193.

    Dr Eric Higgins, ‘Connection of Dr Rotten with Ruhleben’, six-page record of interview, 10 March 1919, in TNA, FO 383/524.

  194. 194.

    Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, p. 89. Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents had appeared in 1930 in both the original German and in English translation—see note 190 above.

  195. 195.

    Vischer, Barbed-Wire Disease, p. 42.

  196. 196.

    Ibid., p. 40.

  197. 197.

    Ibid., p. 43.

  198. 198.

    ‘Die Stacheldraht-Krankheit’, Berliner Tageblatt, 21 October 1918. Copy in BArch, R 8034 II 7664, Bl. 1.

  199. 199.

    Ibid.

  200. 200.

    See Mark Edmundson, introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. viii. Also Benjamin Ziemann, Gewalt im Ersten Weltkrieg: Töten, Überleben, Verweigern (Essen, 2013), p. 15.

  201. 201.

    Sluga, Internationalism, p. 71.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthew Stibbe .

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Stibbe, M. (2019). Internment and International Activism: The Search for More Humane Alternatives. In: Civilian Internment during the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57191-5_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57191-5_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57190-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57191-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics