POWs and the Great War Captivity on the Eastern Front

by Rachamimov, Alon

• ISBN13: 9781859735787
• ISBN10: 1859735789
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

Joint Winner of Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History 2001, London. Winner of Talmon Prize, Israel, awarded by the Israeli Academy of Sciences. Although it was one of the most common experiences of combatants in World War I, captivity has received only a marginal place in the collective memory of the Great War and has seemed unimportant compared with the experiences of soldiers on the Western Front. Yet this book, focusing on POWs on the Eastern Front, reveals a different picture of the War and the human misery it produced. During four years of fighting, approximately 8.5 million soldiers were taken captive, of whom nearly 2.8 million were Austro-Hungarians. This book is the first to consider in-depth the experiences of these prisoners during their period of incarceration. How were POWs treated in Russia? What was the relationship between prisoners and their home state? How were concepts of patriotism and loyalty employed and understood? Drawing extensively on original letters and diaries, Rachamimov answers these and other searching questions. In the process, major omissions in previous historiography are addressed. Anyone wishing to have a rounded history of the Great War will find this book fills a major gap.

Author Biography

Alon Rachamimov is a Lecturer in Modern European History, at Tel Aviv University, Israel.

Table of Contents

List of Figures, Tables and Charts	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
List of Abbreviations	xii
Introduction	1	(1)
Clio's Veil	1	(3)
Historiographic Contexts	4	(27)
Becoming Prisoners of War	31	(36)
The Creation of the Austro-Hungarian POW Problem	31	(3)
Austro-Hungarian POWs in Russia: A Quantitative Overview	34	(10)
Becoming POWs: The View from Below	44	(23)
The Hague Convention and the Treatment of POWs: Mission and Omissions	67	(20)
Prisoner of War Camps in World War I and the `Barbaric' Twentieth Century	67	(2)
The Legal Framework	69	(9)
The `Prototype' Thesis	78	(9)
The Treatment of POWs in Russia	87	(46)
Prisoner of War Camps and other Places of Internment	88	(9)
Living Conditions in POW Camps	97	(10)
Prisoners of War as Labor	107	(8)
Propaganda and Recruitment Among the Prisoners	115	(7)
The Treatment of POWs and the Perception of World War I	122	(11)
In Search of the `Good and Loyal Prisoner': The Austro-Hungarian Censorship and the POWs	133	(28)
Patriotism in a Multi-National State	133	(2)
The Austro-Hungarian POW Censorship	135	(10)
Austro-Hungarian POWs, the Censorship and the Issue of Loyalty	145	(16)
The Emperor's Clothes: The Austro-Hungarian POW Relief Effort	161	(30)
POW Relief in World War I: The Uniqueness of the Eastern Front	161	(3)
The Austro-Hungarian POW Material Relief	164	(8)
The Austro-Hungarian Nurses	172	(19)
Imperial Identities and Personal Concerns: The Perspective of the Prisoners	191	(30)
Repatriation and the Repatriation System (Heimkehrwesen)	191	(5)
Prisoner of War Letters and their Usefulness as a Historical Source	196	(1)
The Relief Effort: The Prisoners' Perspective	197	(24)
Epilogue: Captivity in the Collective Remembrance of the Great War - The Emergence of a Commemorative Pecking Order	221	(10)
Bibliography	231	(20)
Index	251