Oakham School Archives

Prisoners of war

It is estimated that between 8 and 9 million men were taken captive during the First World War, the vast majority of whom survived the war. However, it is true that for some nationalities, the status of prisoner of war was more dangerous than being a soldier on the front.

More prisoners were captured in a mobile warfare than in the trench warfare. On the Eastern front, the moving offensives led to vast-scale prisoner-taking. More than half of the Russian casualties were prisoners of war. In 1914, Germany captured more prisoners than France or Britain. However, as they thought that the war would be short, no camps or housing had been built during the winter of 1914-1915, and overall the Central Powers were overwhelmed with the high numbers of prisoners they had captured in the first months of the war. The prisoners of war in Germany at that time usually slept in fields and many died from exposure. Some prisoners were forced into labour to build the prisoner camps. The camps were segregated from the civilians. They were fenced with barbed wire, guards were placed in sentry towers and the prisoners slept in wooden barracks. By 1915, Germany had captured over 1 million prisoners on the Western and the Eastern fronts. In 1915, the camps in Germany and Austria-Hungary were often unsanitary and epidemics broke out. In 1915, a typhus epidemic spread within the camps and thousands of prisoners of war died. An example of this high death rate was in the Totskoe camp, in Russia, where 10,000 men out of 25,000 died from typhus in the winter 1915-1916. After the typhus epidemic, states established better living and hygiene conditions in the camps. For instance, Germany installed modern latrines and shower houses for their prisoners. Some camps had an exercise yard or a study space and others allowed escorted group walks outside the camp. German prisoners in Britain were able to produced works of literature, music and art.

The mistreatment of prisoners was often carried out as reprisal. In 1916, France had the German prisoners working under shellfire on the Verdun battlefield and sent other prisoners to camps in North Africa where the conditions were very harsh, and Britain forced their German prisoners to work for the army on the front. As a reprisal, Germany sent their French and British prisoners of war to the Eastern front where they worked as forced labourers.

On the home front, Germany started sending the prisoners to work in agriculture or mining and live in small working units. Russia used their German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners to build the Murman railway. As a consequence of the horrific working conditions, 25,000 prisoners out of 70,000 died. By 1916, it is said that most non-officer prisoners of war were working. The conditions of life for those prisoners varied greatly. Some labour prisoners returned to the camp at night. Others were kept near their place of work, under guards’ surveillance. Britain only started to use its prisoners of war as labour on the home front in 1917, because of trade union opposition. The prisoners worked in forestry and quarrying work.

The worst camps were undoubtedly those run by the armies near the front line. For example, the main belligerents’ armies kept permanent working units of prisoners of war at the front. Those forced labourers had to work under shellfire and live in unhygienic conditions. In 1918, Allied prisoners kept in the German army were often beaten and badly fed.

The fate of officer prisoners of war was different than that of non-officers. For instance, officer prisoners were kept in separate camps where the living conditions were better. The captor state paid them a salary on behalf of their home state, prisoners from their own army were assigned to them as their orderlies, and they were exempt all forced labour. This was true for the majority of officers taken prisoner. However, some officer prisoners of war were forced to work and received a very low salary, usually paid in worthless camp coupons.

Some escape stories have become famous. In 1918, 29 British officers dug a tunnel with improvised tools and broke out from Hozminden camp. Ten of them reached the Netherlands.

The treatment of prisoners of war was used by the propaganda. States showed photographs of prisoners well-treated by they own army while at the same time blaming the enemy for mistreating their prisoners. They also painted an image of prisoners of war that they had captured as cowards.

The majority of the prisoners were only released at the end of the war, and it was also the case of the Russian prisoners, even though Russia had left the war in 1917. At the Armistice, the Allies demanded the release of all their prisoners of war held in the Central Power states. However, the German prisoners of war held in Britain and France were only release after the signature of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. France even held its prisoners until 1920. German prisoners were forced to clear the battlefields and many died removing munitions.

Prisoners of war were protected by international laws. The 1964 Geneva Convention stated that medical care should be provided to wounded men who fell into enemy hands. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions protected the prisoners of war from abuses. In theory, all armies granted quarter to surrendering soldiers. The neutral states acted as “protecting powers”, particularly the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland from 1917 and Spain. Spain for instance, protected French prisoners held in Germany and Ottoman prisoners held in Russia. This means that Spain sent diplomats to inspect the prisoners camps ad investigate any complaints. The International Red Cross also inspected prisoner camps. In Sweden, the Stockholm protocol was signed on 1^st December 1915 y Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia to promote better treatment of the prisoners of war.

Casualties:

• a third of all the men mobilized by Austria-Hungary were taken prisoners; 250,000 Italian men were taken prisoners in 1917 at Caporetto, when the front collapsed; 10,000 British and Indian men were captured at the siege of Kut-al-Amara by the Ottoman Empire; 400 British, Australian and New Zealander men were captured by the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli; overall, 192,000 British and Commonwealth men were captured as prisoners of war, including 4,000 Australians; 340,000 German men surrendered to France and Britain between 18^th July 1918 (and the failure of the Spring Offensive) and the Armistice; overall, 1.2 million German men were captured.
• 100,000 of the 600,000 Italian prisoners of war captured by the Central Powers died; the death rate for Romanian prisoners of war in German camps was 29%: the death rate for Serb prisoners of war captured by Austria-Hungary was very high, as was the death rate for British prisoners captured by the Ottoman Empire; the death rate for German prisoners of war captured by Britain was 3%; about 1 in 12 Australian prisoners of war died.