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

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 on these German prisoners, almost a century after the conflict. The book covers the three different types of internees in Britain in the form of: civilians already present in the country in August 1914; civilians brought to Britain from all over the world; and combatants. Using a vast range of contemporary British and German sources the volume traces life experiences through initial arrest and capture to life behind barbed wire to return to Germany or to the remnants of the ethnically cleansed German community in Britain. The book 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 twentieth-century Europe and the human consequences of war. PRISONERS OF BRITAIN: German civilian and combatant internees during the First World War 1 Hlaf Title Page 2 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Tables 7 Illustrations 8 Preface 10 Acknowledgements 16 Abbreviations 18 1. Forgetting, remembering and the beginnings of a history 20 2. Arrest, transportation and capture 58 3. The camp system 97 4. Barbed wire disease and the grim realities of internment 142 5. Prison camp societies 185 6. Employment 219 7. Public opinion 250 8. Escape, release and return 282 9. The meaning of internment in Britain during the First World War 315 Bibliography 329 Index 350 During WWI hundreds of thousands of Germans faced incarceration in hundreds of camps on the British mainland. This is the first book on these German prisoners, and covers 3 different types of internees in Britain: civilians already present in the country in August 1914; civilians brought to Britain from all over the world; and combatants. -- .