Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees During the First World War Hardcover - 2013

From the publisher

During the First World War hundreds of thousands of Germans faced incarceration in hundreds of camps on the British mainland. This is the first book to be published on these German prisoners, almost a century after the conflict. This account concentrates both upon the bureaucratic decision to introduce internment and the consequences of this government policy for individual lives.

The book covers the three different types of male internees who found themselves behind barbed wire in Britain between 1914 and 1919 in the form of: civilians already present in the country in August 1914; civilians brought to Britain from all over the world; and combatants, primarily soldiers from the Western Front, but also naval personnel and a few members of zeppelin crews, whose vessels fell to earth. Using a vast range of contemporary British and German sources, including both the official record and the accounts of numerous internees, the volume traces life experiences through initial arrest and capture to life behind barbed wire to return to a defeated Germany or the remnants of the ethnically cleansed German community in Britain. The study questions the necessity of incarcerating hundreds of thousands of men but places this decision into wider developments in British and European society, bureaucracy and minority persecution.

This fascinating volume will prove essential reading for anyone interested in the history of prisoners of war or the First World War and will also appeal to scholars and students of early twentieth century Europe and the human consequences of war.

About the author