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Conclusion and Epilogue

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Civilian Internment during the First World War

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Abstract

The conclusion sums up the main findings of the book, noting that a variety of local, national, transnational and international actors helped to give civilian internment multiple and globally-intertwined meanings in the years 1914–20. The very diversity of their observations marks this period out as the most significant turning point in the political and cultural history of the camp phenomenon. The book’s arguments also have broader methodological and theoretical implications for how scholars might write the history of the First World War as a European-wide and global conflict, involving new types of human and non-human movement across borders and competing jurisdictions. The epilogue explores the further develop of the internment phenomenon after 1920. Rather than ending the story with the Soviet gulag and Nazi concentration camp systems, it considers how the power relationships that underpinned internment during the First World War continue to shape detention practices in the world today.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, p. 5.

  2. 2.

    A full list of all these writings is not possible here, but would have to begin with Hobsbawm’s Age of Revolution and include, among others, Bayley’s book mentioned above as well as Conrad’s Globalgeschichte, Reid’s Medicine in First World War Europe, Rupp’s Worlds of Women and Tooze’s The Deluge.

  3. 3.

    See, for instance, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, ‘1914—Vom Versagen und Nutzen der Diplomatie’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 January 2014, who writes: ‘Der Kriegsausbruch 1914 beendete die erste Globalisierung’ (‘the outbreak of war in 1914 ended the first [wave of] globalisation’). On-line version available at https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Namensbeitrag/2014/01/2014-01-25-steinmeier-faz.html

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Gatrell and Zhvanko (eds.), Europe on the Move; Huber, Fremdsein im Krieg; Schrover, ‘Migration and Mobility’.

  5. 5.

    Important exceptions include Haupt and Kocka, ‘Comparison and Beyond’; Leonhard, ‘Comparison, Transfer and Entanglement’.

  6. 6.

    See, among others, Daniel Marc Segesser, Der Erste Weltkrieg in globaler Perspektive (Wiesbaden, 2010). Also Anja Huber, ‘Migration im Krieg: Ausländerinnen und Ausländer in der Schweiz—Schweizerinnen und Schweizer im Ausland 1914–1918’, D.Phil dissertation, University of Bern, 2017.

  7. 7.

    In addition to works cited in chapter 2, see Egor Lykov, ‘Opfernarrative der “russophilen” Ruthenen und ihr nachhaltiger Einfluss auf gesellschaftspolitische Diskurse’, Studi Slavistici, 15.2 (2018), pp. 105–24.

  8. 8.

    ‘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). The issue was not raised at the thirteenth conference at The Hague in October 1928 or the fourteenth conference in Brussels in October 1930. See ‘Résolutions et voeux adoptés par la XIIIe Conférence internationale de la Croix-Rouge’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 119 (November 1928), pp. 1015–30; ‘Résolutions et voeux adoptés par la XIVe Conférence internationale de la Croix-Rouge’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 142 (October 1930), pp. 837–69 (here esp. pp. 861–2).

  9. 9.

    See http://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1919.pdf

  10. 10.

    See Alan Kramer, ‘Kriegsrecht und Kriegsverbrechen’, in Hirschfeld, Krumeich and Renz (eds.), Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg, pp. 282–91 (here p. 290). Also Helen McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, c. 1918–45 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 28–35.

  11. 11.

    See ‘Protection des populations civiles contre la guerre chimique; IIe réunion de la Commission internationale des experts (Rome 1929)’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 121 (January 1929), pp. 21–8.

  12. 12.

    ‘Congrès international de Francfort contre l’emploi des gaz asphyxiants’, in ibid., pp. 28–9. Between 1925 and 1930 virtually none of the monthly editions of the Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge appeared without containing a lengthy discussion of ‘la protection des populations civiles contre la guerre chimique’.

  13. 13.

    Wylie, ‘The 1929 Prisoner of War Convention’, pp. 102–3.

  14. 14.

    Georges Werner, ‘Rapport présenté à la Conférence diplomatique de la IIme Commission, chargées de l’élaboration du code des prisonniers de guerre’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 127 (July 1929), pp. 523–41 (here pp. 529–30).

  15. 15.

    See, for instance, K. de Drachenfels, ‘Le Comité International et le problème des “Heimatlosen”’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 95 (November 1926) pp. 870–7; ‘Comité consultative pour les réfugiés’, Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 105 (September 1927), pp. 636–40.

  16. 16.

    Jochen Thies, Evian 1938: Als die Welt die Juden verriet (Essen, 2017).

  17. 17.

    Pope John Paul II, speech in 2003, cited in Paweł Machcewicz, Der umkämpfte Krieg: Das Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Danzig, Entstehung und Streit, trans. from the Polish by Peter Oliver Loew (Wiesbaden, 2018) [2017], p. 164.

  18. 18.

    Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (London, 2016), pp. 178–9.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., p. 377.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., pp. 143–4. See also Steven L. Jacobs, ‘Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide’, in Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick, NJ, 2003), pp. 125–35; Diane F. Orentlicher, ‘Genocide’, in Roy Gutman, David Rieff and Anthony Dworkin (eds.), Crimes of War, 2nd ed. (New York and London, 2007) [1999], pp. 191–5; Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, ‘Introduction’, in Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer (eds.), The Origins of Genocide: Raphael Lemkin as a Historian of Mass Violence (London, 2009), pp. 1–8.

  21. 21.

    Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951); Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA, 1956).

  22. 22.

    See, for example, George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (London, 1978); Tim Mason, ‘Open Questions on Nazism’, in Raphael Samuel (ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory (London, 1981), pp. 205–10 (here esp. pp. 207–8); Gisela Bock, ‘Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany’, in Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann and Marion Kaplan (eds.), When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York, 1984), pp. 271–96; Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge, 1989).

  23. 23.

    See, for instance, Zygmont Baumann, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1989); and idem., ‘Das Jahrhundert der Lager?’, in Daban and Platt (eds.), Genozid und Moderne. Band 1, pp. 81–99. Also Detlev J. K. Peukert, ‘Die Genesis der “Endlösung” aus dem Geist der Wissenschaft’, in Peukert, Max Webers Diagnose der Moderne (Göttingen, 1989), pp. 102–21. For a critical examination of both the ‘biopolitical’ and ‘modernity’ paradigms, see Edward Ross Dickinson, ‘Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on our Discourse About “Modernity”’, Central European History, 37.1 (2004), pp. 1–48.

  24. 24.

    Josep. L. Barona, The Problem of Nutrition: Experimental Science, Public Health and Economy in Europe, 1914–1945 (Brussels, 2010), pp. 125–37.

  25. 25.

    See, for instance, Verband der Heimkehrer (ed.), Extreme Lebensverhältnisse und ihre Folgen: Berichte über die Ärztekongresse für Pathologie, Therapie und Begutachtung der Heimkehrerkrankheiten (Cologne, 1959), here in particular the address given by Dr Gauger at a conference in Bonn in October 1953 under the title ‘Die Dystrophie als Gesamterkrankung’, pp. 12–21. The one attempt to revive the notion of ‘barbed-wire disease’, stemming from Vischer’s Basel colleague Hans Christoffel, proves the point, as Christoffel tried and failed to get a five-page manuscript on this subject published in the Basler Nachrichten in 1944. The manuscript survives in Christoffel’s papers, but never saw the light of day. See here Willi Kaiser, Leben und Werk des Basler Psychiaters und Psychoanalytikers Hans Christoffel (1888–1959) (Zurich, 1982), pp. 57–8 and 230.

  26. 26.

    See also Frank Biess, ‘Men of Reconstruction—the Reconstruction of Men: Returning POWs in East and West Germany, 1945–1955’, in Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (eds.), Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford, 2002), pp. 335–58 (here p. 338).

  27. 27.

    Dr. H. Kilian, ‘Die seelische und soziale Situation des Heimkehrers’, in Verband der Heimkehrer (ed.), Extreme Lebensverhältnisse, pp. 274–88 (here pp. 275–7).

  28. 28.

    Biess, ‘Men of Reconstruction’, pp. 338–9.

  29. 29.

    James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, NC and London, 1993), p. 70.

  30. 30.

    For recent attempts to correct the historical record in this respect, see, for example, Bernice Archer, The Internment of Western Civilians under the Japanese: A Patchwork of Internment (London, 2004); Charmian Brinson, ‘“Loyal to the Reich”: National Socialists and others in the Rushen Women’s Internment Camp’, in Richard Dove (ed.), ‘Totally Un-English’? Britain’s Internment of ‘Enemy Aliens’ in Two World Wars (Amsterdam and New York, 2005), pp. 101–19; Christina Twomey, Australia’s Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War Two (Cambridge, 2007); Precious Yamaguchi, Experiences of Japanese American Women during and after World War II: Living in Internment Camps and Building Life Afterwards (Lanham, MD, 2014); and various entries in Jonathan F. Vance (ed.), Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, 2nd ed. (New York, 2006).

  31. 31.

    Kilian, ‘Die seelische und soziale Situation des Heimkehrers’, p. 288. See also Barona, The Problem of Nutrition, p. 130.

  32. 32.

    Prof. Dr. Kirchhoff, ‘Körperliche und seelische Störungen bei der Frau durch spezielle Schäden der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit’, in Verband der Heimkehrer (ed.), Extreme Lebensverhältnisse, pp. 46–63 (here pp. 46–7).

  33. 33.

    H.M.S.O., Final Act of the Conference, Geneva, 21st April to 12th August 1949, with Resolutions, Conventions and Annexes (London, 1950).

  34. 34.

    See Miriam Bradley, Protecting Civilians in War: The ICRC, UNHCR, and their Limitations in Internal Armed Conflicts (Oxford, 2016), pp. 70–1.

  35. 35.

    ICRC, Basic Rules of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols (Geneva, n.d.), p. 50.

  36. 36.

    Horne, ‘Introduction: Wartime Imprisonment in the Twentieth Century’, p. 23.

  37. 37.

    Jonathan F. Vance, ‘India-Pakistan Wars’, in Vance (ed.), Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, pp. 192–3 (here p. 193).

  38. 38.

    Gideon Levy, ‘Due Process’, in Gutman, Rieff and Dworkin (eds.), Crimes of War, pp. 167–70 (here p. 169).

  39. 39.

    ICRC, Basic Rules of the Geneva Conventions, p. 47. For an up-to-date investigation of the difficulties of enforcement, including in the case of Myanmar’s recent violent onslaught on the Rohingya Muslims, see Bradley, Protecting Civilians, esp. pp. 48–9, 147–8 and 161–2. Further examples can also be found in Vance (ed.), Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, including, among others, entries on the ‘Biafran War’, pp. 39–41; the ‘Chechen Wars’, pp. 70–1; the ‘Guatemalan Civil War’, pp. 164–5; the ‘Mozambican Civil War’, pp. 270–2; the ‘Rwandan Civil War’, pp. 347–50; the ‘Uganda-Tanzania War’, pp. 415–16; and the ‘Vietnam War’, pp. 421–3.

  40. 40.

    Horne, ‘Introduction: Wartime Imprisonment in the Twentieth Century’, p. 17.

  41. 41.

    Florence Hartmann, ‘Bosnia’, in Gutman, Rieff and Dworkin (eds.), Crimes of War, pp. 66–72 (here p. 69).

  42. 42.

    All the above quotes taken from http://www.icty.org/en/features/crimes-sexual-violence

  43. 43.

    ‘Unlawful combatants who seek to destroy our country and our way of life’ was the phrase used by George W. Bush in early 2002 to describe the ‘non-US citizens’ now assigned by the Department of Justice, acting on his executive order, to Guantánamo, without first having entered US soil and thus the jurisdiction of US courts—see Ronald Dworkin, ‘The threat to patriotism’, New York Review of Books, 28 February 2002, on-line version available at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2002/02/28/the-threat-to-patriotism/

  44. 44.

    Andrew Young, ‘Guantánamo Bay Detention Center’, in Vance (ed.), Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, pp. 162–4; Jess Bravin, ‘Guantanamo’, in Gutman, Rieff and Dworkin (eds.), Crimes of War, pp. 198–204. The figure of ‘nearly 800’ comes from Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law (London, 2010), p. 146, who also points out that ‘[t]he number of people rounded up and detained in Afghanistan, Iraq and other unidentified “black sites” around the world is not known’—although it is likely to be many times higher.

  45. 45.

    Jonathan Hafetz, ‘Introduction’, in Hafetz (ed.), Obama’s Guantánamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison (New York, 2016), pp. 1–9 (figures on p. 1).

  46. 46.

    See ‘U.S. Transfers First Guantánamo Detainee under Trump, Who Vowed to fill it’, New York Times, 2 May 2018, on-line version available at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/us/politics/guantanamo-detainee-transferred-trump-al-darbi.html

  47. 47.

    Gabor Rona (legal adviser at the ICRC’s law division), ‘“War” doesn’t justify Guántanamo’, originally published in the Financial Times, 1 March 2004, reproduced on the ICRC’s official website at https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/article/other/5wvfb4.htm. See also the verdict offered by Bingham, The Rule of Law, p. 127.

  48. 48.

    See ‘China’s Muslim Detention Camps’, The Guardian, 14 January 2019, reproduced as podcast at https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2019/jan/14/china-muslim-uighur-detention-camps-podcast. For more detailed background and context on China’s persecution of the Uighur minority, see Nick Holdstock, China’s Forgotten People: Xinjiang, Terror and the Chinese State (London, 2015).

  49. 49.

    See Murithi Mutiga, ‘Kenya urged to rethink camp closure plan that would lead to “mass death sentences”’, The Guardian, 13 May 2016, on-line version available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/may/13/refugees-urge-kenyan-leaders-to-rethink-closure-of-dadaab-camp. Also Ben Rawlence, City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp (London, 2016).

  50. 50.

    James Kirkup and Robert Winnett, ‘Theresa May interview: “We’re going to give illegal migrants a really hostile reception”’, Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2012, on-line version available at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9291483/Theresa-May-interview-Were-going-to-give-illegal-migrants-a-really-hostile-reception.html

  51. 51.

    House of Commons, Home Affairs Committee, ‘Immigration Detention: Fourteenth Report of Session 2017–19’, at https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmhaff/913/913.pdf, published 21 March 2019, p. 12.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., pp. 13–14.

  53. 53.

    Helena Kennedy, Eve was Shamed: How British Justice is Failing Women (London, 2018), pp. 218–23.

  54. 54.

    Brianna Rennix and Nathan Robinson, ‘It’s not migrant conditions that are wrong—it’s detention itself’, The Guardian, 4 July 2019, on-line version available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/03/migrant-dentention-centres-us-border-patrol

  55. 55.

    Hobsbawm, Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism, esp. pp. 35–8, 88 and 93–4.

  56. 56.

    Michael Cunningham, British Government Policy in Northern Ireland, 1969–2000 (Manchester, 2001), pp. 9–10 and 20–22.

  57. 57.

    The above quotes are taken from the British Nationality Act, 1981, available at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/61/pdfs/ukpga_19810061_en.pdf. On this act, see also Bosworth, Inside Immigration Detention, pp. 31–2.

  58. 58.

    Becker, ‘Captive Civilians’, p. 281.

  59. 59.

    Helmut Walser Smith, ‘The Vanishing Point of German History: An Essay on Perspective’, History and Memory, 17 (2005), pp. 269–95.

  60. 60.

    Jan Kott, introduction to Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans. by Michael Kandel, Penguin Classics edition (London, 1976) [1959], pp. 11–26 (here p. 25).

  61. 61.

    Hobsbawm, Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism, p. 125.

  62. 62.

    This is also the conclusion reached by Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, p. 26.

  63. 63.

    Jones, Violence, p. 307. Cf. Doegen, Kriegsgefangene Völker.

  64. 64.

    The notion of an ‘especially lenient’ Austro-Hungarian policy was first put forward by Garner, ‘Treatment of Enemy Aliens’, p. 52.

  65. 65.

    Cabanes, The Great War, p. 311.

  66. 66.

    Peyman Vahabzadeh, Violence and Nonviolence: Conceptual Excursions into Phantom Opposites (Toronto, ON, 2019), pp. 3 and 6.

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    Matthew Stibbe

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Stibbe, M. (2019). Conclusion and Epilogue. In: Civilian Internment during the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57191-5_7

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