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(Not) Ending Internment: The Years 1918–20

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Civilian Internment during the First World War

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on internment policies in the period 1918–20, when a new world order was starting to emerge in the wake of the US and Chinese interventions in the war, the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, the defeat of the Central Powers in autumn 1918 and the outbreak of fresh conflicts in the former Tsarist, Habsburg and Ottoman empires. It begins at the turn of the year 1917–18, a point of both rupture and continuities in the practice of civilian captivity—especially in the inter-twined regions of western Europe, eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and North and South America. It covers various attempts to end internment by diplomatic means, and the implications of Allied victory in the west and ‘Red’ victory in the east not only for the pace of release and repatriation of different types of civilian captive but also for the reinforcement of class, gender and racial hierarchies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/g/the-greater-war-tgw/?cc=gb&lang=en&. Also Gerwarth and Manela (eds.), Empires at War.

  2. 2.

    Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London, 2016); Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (eds.), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War (Oxford, 2012); Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (eds.), Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 2013).

  3. 3.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, p. 37; Monticone, La croce e il filo spinato, pp. 253–4.

  4. 4.

    For French-language versions of the texts of the agreements, see ACICR, C G1, A 09-23–A 09-28.

  5. 5.

    Cited from the German-language version of the Austro-Serbian accord on prisoners, Bern, 1 June 1918, in ÖStA-HHStA, Karton 571, 28 1/a, Zl. 114 articles 2, 10 and 11.

  6. 6.

    Prussian War Ministry to all acting military commands and the supreme commander in the marches, 3 November 1918, in GLA, Bestand 456, No. 269. See also the relevant documents and newspaper cuttings in ACICR, C G1, A 09-26.

  7. 7.

    See, for instance, Frédéric Ferrière to Baron Slatin of the Austrian Red Cross, 15 May 1918, forwarded to Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 May 1918, in ÖStA-HHStA, Karton 556, 26/2a, Zl. 75.

  8. 8.

    Giuseppi, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in France’, p. 121. See also Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 122.

  9. 9.

    ‘Le repatriement des prisonniers’, in Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 11 (November 1919), pp. 1323–34 (here p. 1326).

  10. 10.

    See Conférence Etats-Unis-Allemagne, Berne, Sept. to Nov. 1918, in ACICR, C G1, A 09-29. Also WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, pp. 757–8 and 822; and Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, p. 629.

  11. 11.

    On the agreement reached at Stockholm in September 1917, and the difficulties in implementing it, see Jahresbericht der Auskunftsstelle für Kriegsgefangene des Gemeinsamen Zentralnachweisbureaus sowie des österreichischen Fürsorgekomitees für Kriegsgefangene für das Jahr 1917 (Vienna, 1918), p. 2. Copy in ACICR, C G1, A 15–10.

  12. 12.

    Gustav Miller, Leiter der Abschubsstation Smolensk, ‘Bericht über Evakuationsverhältnisse’, 14 July 1919, in ÖStA-AdR, Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt (henceforth KGF), Karton 15, Zl. 13125, pp. 1–6 (here p. 6).

  13. 13.

    ‘Le repatriement des prisonniers’ (as note 9 above), p. 1331.

  14. 14.

    Croix-Rouge suédoise to the President of the ICRC, 27 January 1919, in ACICR, C G1, A 15–33. According to Miller, ‘Bericht über Evakuationsverhältnisse’, p. 2, the Austrian Red Cross had taken over from the Danish Red Cross in Kiev at some point in the first half of 1919.

  15. 15.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 177; Mai, Die Marokko-Deutschen, pp. 686–7.

  16. 16.

    WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, p. 822.

  17. 17.

    ‘Kriegsgefangenenstand’, in Mitteilungen der Staatskommission für Kriegsgefangenen und Zivilinterniertenangelegenheiten, No. 17–18, Vienna, 11 October 1919, p. 7.

  18. 18.

    Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, p. 204.

  19. 19.

    Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, pp. 125–7.

  20. 20.

    See, for instance, Ruth Leiserowitz, ‘Population Displacement in East Prussia during the First World War’, in Gatrell and Zhvanko (eds.), Europe on the Move, pp. 23–44 (here esp. p. 29).

  21. 21.

    ICRC, Rapport général, pp. 48 and 138.

  22. 22.

    Croix-Rouge Russe, Bureau de Renseignements sur les prisonniers de guerre (Petrograd, 1915), p. 12. Copy in ACICR, C G1, A 15–33.

  23. 23.

    Egger, ‘Gekämpft, gefangen und vergessen?’, p. 17.

  24. 24.

    Croix-Rouge Russe, Bureau de Renseignements, p. 10. The pamphlet also gave the following figures for combatant prisoners of war: 3968 Turks, 103,173 Germans and 805,983 Austro-Hungarians.

  25. 25.

    See Deutsches Komitee der Kriegsgefangenenhilfe der Christlichen Vereine junger Männer. Report dated 30 March 1917, in ACICR, C G1, A 15–06. Also ‘War Prisoners’ Aid’ of the International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations, New York, to Robert Vansittart, 5 March 1919, in TNA, FO 383/517.

  26. 26.

    Alon Rachamimov, ‘“Female Generals” and “Siberian Angels”: Aristocratic Nurses and the Austro-Hungarian POW Relief’, in Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur (eds.), Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 2006), pp. 23–46.

  27. 27.

    See Russian Legation in Bern to the Swiss Political Department and the ICRC, 5/18 August 1917, passing on Note Verbale from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Copy in ACICR, C G1, A 15–33.

  28. 28.

    Miller, ‘Bericht über Evakuationsverhältnisse’, p. 2.

  29. 29.

    Reinhard Nachtigal, ‘Die Repatriierung der Mittelmächte-Kriegsgefangenen aus dem revolutionären Rußland: Heimkehr zwischen Agitation, Bürgerkrieg und Intervention 1918–1922’, in Jochen Oltmer (ed.), Kriegsgefangene im Europa des Ersten Weltkriegs (Paderborn, 2006), pp. 239–66 (here esp. pp. 242–8).

  30. 30.

    See Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr: Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenpolitik für die Geschichte des Kommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 1917–1920 (Vienna, 2003), esp. pp. 453–86.

  31. 31.

    See Ministry of Interior to the Zentralstelle der Fürsorge für Kriegsflüchtlinge, 28 April 1919, in ÖStA-AdR, KFL, I/49. On Heimkehrlager for military returnees, see also Judson, The Habsburg Empire, pp. 425–6.

  32. 32.

    Ministry for Military Affairs, Operations Department, to General Commander of the second Bavarian Army Corps (and copied to the Bavarian Ministry of Interior), 23 July 1919. Copy in Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich, Abt. II: Neuere Bestände (henceforth BayHStA-NB), MInn 66273.

  33. 33.

    Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, p. 13.

  34. 34.

    Karl Kautsky, Terror and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution, trans. by W. H. Kerridge (London, 1920) [1919], p. 209.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 210.

  36. 36.

    Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (London, 2004), p. 31.

  37. 37.

    Michel Heller, Stacheldraht der Revolution: Die Welt der Konzentrationslager in der sowjetischen Literatur, trans. from the French by Joachim Nehring (Stuttgart, 1975) [1974], p. 50.

  38. 38.

    Nicolas Werth, ‘A State Against its People: Violence, Repression and Terror in the Soviet Union’, in Stéphane Courtois et al. (eds.), The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA and London, 1999) [1997], pp. 33–268 (here p. 80); Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, p. 133.

  39. 39.

    Wladislaw Hedeler, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte des sowjetischen Gulag-Systems: Die Kadarschmiede Solowki’, in Jahr and Thiel (eds.), Lager vor Auschwitz, pp. 215–33 (here p. 222).

  40. 40.

    Heller, Stacheldraht der Revolution, p. 53.

  41. 41.

    Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London, 1996), p. 643.

  42. 42.

    Werth, ‘A State Against its People’, p. 73.

  43. 43.

    Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, pp. 132–3.

  44. 44.

    Applebaum, Gulag, p. 37.

  45. 45.

    Heller, Stacheldraht der Revolution, p. 59.

  46. 46.

    Felix Schnell, ‘Der Gulag als Systemstelle sowjetischer Herrschaft’, in Greiner and Kramer (eds.), Welt der Lager, pp. 134–65 (here p. 139).

  47. 47.

    Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, p. 14.

  48. 48.

    See Figes, A People’s Tragedy, esp. pp. 649 and 723.

  49. 49.

    Gerhard Armanski, Maschinen des Terrors: Das Lager (KZ und GULAG) in der Moderne (Münster, 1993).

  50. 50.

    Applebaum, Gulag, pp. 21 and 36; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 524; Kotek and Rigoulot, Das Jahrhundert der Lager, p. 132; Werth, ‘A State Against its People’, p. 90; Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, NJ, 2000), pp. 283–4.

  51. 51.

    Hedeler, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte des sowjetischen Gulag-Systems’, p. 222.

  52. 52.

    Mayer, The Furies, p. 240.

  53. 53.

    Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 643.

  54. 54.

    Geoffrey Swain, Trotsky and the Russian Revolution (London and New York, 2014), pp. 67–8.

  55. 55.

    Heller, Stacheldraht der Revolution, p. 51; Mayer, The Furies, p. 296.

  56. 56.

    Armanski, Maschinen des Terrors, pp. 19–20.

  57. 57.

    Heller, Stacheldraht der Revolution, p. 55.

  58. 58.

    Applebaum, Gulag, p. 4.

  59. 59.

    See Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime and the Fate of Reform after Stalin (Ithaca, NY and London, 2009).

  60. 60.

    Huber, ‘The Internment of Prisoners of War and Civilians’, p. 264.

  61. 61.

    See paragraph 13 of the Anglo-German accord on prisoners of war, The Hague, 2 July 1917, in ACICR, C G1, A 09–08.

  62. 62.

    This was also the case after the war. See, for instance, the Mayor of Graz to the Zentralstelle der Fürsorge für Kriegsflüchtlinge in Vienna, 7 July 1919, in ÖStA-AdR, KGF, Karton 15, Zl. 13173.

  63. 63.

    Rosen to the Unterkunftsdepartement, 19 March 1918, in BArch, R 901/83978.

  64. 64.

    Rosen to Hertling, 26 April 1918, in ibid.

  65. 65.

    Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, p. 61.

  66. 66.

    See the records of 185 escapees from Katzenau camp and related work placements between February and September 1918, in Oberösterreichisches Staatsarchiv Linz (henceforth OÖStA), Bestand BH Freistadt, Schachtel 256, J 567–1918. This can be compared with only thirty-eight escapees between May 1916 and September 1917—see the records in ibid., Bestand BH Freistadt, Schachtel 236, J 4977–1917. Also the further evidence of escapes and escape attempts provided in a file containing complaints from employers between June and October 1918, in ÖStA-KA, MK-KM, Karton 281, Zl. 40128.

  67. 67.

    Stibbe, ‘(Dis)entangling’, forthcoming.

  68. 68.

    Hull, Scrap of Paper, p. 140; Jones, Violence, p. 185.

  69. 69.

    Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 385.

  70. 70.

    Schweizerisches Gesundheitsamt, Rapport über die sanitarische Inspektion eines Repatriiertenzuges in Buchs am 7. September 1918, in SBA, E27#1000/721#13969.

  71. 71.

    These concerns were recorded in detail in Bulletin International des sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, no. 196, October 1918. For an example of German propaganda accusing the British in particular of continuing to deliberately mistreat and under-feed German civilians in its hands—as well as in camps in its overseas dominions and colonies—see the article ‘Staatssekretär Erzberger über die deutschen Zivilgefangenen in England’, Germania, 5 November 1918. Copy in BArch, R 8034 II 7664.

  72. 72.

    See, for instance, the Austrian report, ‘Unsere Kriegsgefangenen und Internierten in Frankreich, England und den neutralen Staaten’, April-Bericht, 4 May 1918, in ÖStA-KA, GZNB, Karton 3758, Zl. 5084. Also an undated note [Aufzeichnung] written up by the legal department of the AA in response to a request for information from the German Consul-General in Bern dated 1 March 1918, and approved for despatch by the Prussian War Ministry on 5 June 1918. Copy in BArch, R 901/82918.

  73. 73.

    On refugees as well as internees in Switzerland and the Netherlands, see Huber, Fremdsein; and de Roodt, Oorlogsgasten.

  74. 74.

    See Director of Poor Relief to the Finance Department of the canton of Zurich, 12 December 1918, in Staatsarchiv Zurich, M 26.16. I would like to thank the Staatsarchiv Zurich for sending me a copy of this document.

  75. 75.

    Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats and the Great War, pp. 174–5.

  76. 76.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, p. 156.

  77. 77.

    Unterkunftsdepartement to the acting general commands, the chiefs and deputy chiefs of the army general staff and admiralty and the AA, 6 December 1918, in WHStA, Bestand M 77/1, No. 880, Bl. 18.

  78. 78.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, pp. 156–7.

  79. 79.

    Prussian Ministry of War to all acting general commands, 29 November 1918, in WHStA, Bestand M 77/1, No. 880, Bl. 58,

  80. 80.

    Office for Transport to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 January 1919, in ÖStA-HHStA, Karton 556, 26/2a, Zl. 93.

  81. 81.

    See, for instance, Austrian Ministry of Interior to the Zentralstelle der Fürsorge für Kriegsflüchtlinge, 28 April 1919, in ÖStA-AdR, Kriegsflüchtlingsfürsorge (KFL), Karton 15, I/49; and German-Austrian Foreign Office to the Kriegsgefangenen- und Zivilinterniertenamt, 3 July 1919, in ibid., KGF, Karton 15, Zl. 12536.

  82. 82.

    Mentzel, ‘Kriegsflüchtlinge in Cisleithanien’.

  83. 83.

    Beatrix Hoffmann-Holter ‘Abreisendmachung’: Jüdische Kriegsflüchtlinge in Wien 1914 bis 1923 (Vienna, 1995); Marsha L. Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (Oxford, 2001).

  84. 84.

    Alexander Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity, and anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2005); Christoph Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, and L’viv 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City (West Lafayette, IN, 2016), pp. 137–207; William W. Hagen, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 123–72.

  85. 85.

    Austrian Ministry of Interior to the state governor of Vienna, 4 November 1918. Copy in OÖStA, Statthalterei 1850–1926, Schachtel 40.

  86. 86.

    Ibid.

  87. 87.

    Interior Office of German-Austria to the state government of Upper Austria, 25 November 1918, in OÖStA, Statthalterei 1850–1926, Schachtel 41.

  88. 88.

    Mentzel, ‘Weltkriegsflüchtlinge’, p. 39.

  89. 89.

    Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity, pp. 66–7 and 135.

  90. 90.

    Joseph Roth, Die Flucht ohne Ende: Ein Bericht (Munich, 1927).

  91. 91.

    Hoffmann-Holter, ‘Abreisendmachung’, p. 166.

  92. 92.

    Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity, pp. 163–5; Hoffmann-Holter ‘Abreisendmachung’, pp. 242 and 276–7.

  93. 93.

    Mentzel, ‘Weltkriegsflüchtlinge’, p. 39.

  94. 94.

    Carlo Moos, Habsburg Post-Mortem: Betrachtungen zum Weiterleben der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna, 2016), pp. 33–4.

  95. 95.

    Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire, p. 311.

  96. 96.

    Kristina Heizmann, ‘Fremd in der Fremde: Die Geschichte des Flüchtlings in Großbritannien und Deutschland, 1880–1925’, Ph.D dissertation, University of Konstanz, 2012, pp. 110–12.

  97. 97.

    Grady, A Deadly Legacy, p. 94.

  98. 98.

    Heizmann, ‘Fremd in der Fremde’, p. 114.

  99. 99.

    Ibid., p. 115.

  100. 100.

    Jochen Oltmer, Migration und Politik in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 2005), p. 66.

  101. 101.

    Ibid., pp. 253–4.

  102. 102.

    Bericht über den Besuch im Lager für posensche Gefangene zu Havelberg, 26 April 1919, von Major Léderry, Delegierter des Internationalen Komitees des Roten Kreuzes, in BArch, R 901/84319.

  103. 103.

    Ibid.

  104. 104.

    Oltmer, Migration und Politik, p. 115, n. 84.

  105. 105.

    See the records in BayHStA-KA, Kriegsministerium 15489. This file concerns the unsuccessful attempt by a former army paramedic working at Erlangen, Hermann Danzer, to sue the Bavarian War Ministry for wrongful dismissal. Danzer had been made redundant in August 1920, and was angered that the War Ministry, instead of rehiring him, had recruited a new team of paramedics to cater for the 3000 Red Army personnel who had unexpectedly arrived at the former camp on 7 September.

  106. 106.

    Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, p. 142.

  107. 107.

    Jörn Leonhard, Der überforderte Frieden: Versailles und die Welt, 1918–1923 (Munich, 2018), p. 126.

  108. 108.

    Manz and Panayi, ‘The Internment of Civilian “Enemy Aliens”’, p. 23.

  109. 109.

    On the Germans from Siam, see SBA, E2020-1000-130, Bd. 63, DE 95 005; and on the China-Deutschen see SBA, E2020-1000-130, Bd. 63, DE 96 004.

  110. 110.

    As testified by the article ‘Erlebnisse in Angola: Von einem Internierten’, Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 July 1918. Copy in BArch, R 8034 II, No. 7663, Bl. 142–4.

  111. 111.

    Manz and Panayi, ‘The Internment of Civilian “Enemy Aliens”’, pp. 24–5.

  112. 112.

    Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, p. 156. On use of Ripon as a ‘reception centre’ for repatriated British military POWs (indeed, it had a capacity to hold 21,000 returnees at any one time), see also Wilkinson, British Prisoners of War, p. 276.

  113. 113.

    See, for instance, the record interview conducted by Lord Robert Cecil (Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) with released prisoners Mr. L.G. Beaumont, Vice-Captain of the Camp, and Mr. H. J. N. Hawkins, an official of the South African Union Government, on 7 April 1916, in TNA, FO 383/140; and Cecil’s notes on a meeting with Messrs Boss, Cohen and Cailleau, all of them released from Ruhleben on 6 June 1916, at the FO on 10 June 1916, in TNA, FO 383/141.

  114. 114.

    See, for example, the ‘Memorandum on Dr. Pohlman’, written by an unnamed repatriated civilian from Ruhleben, n.d. [March/April 1919], in TNA, FO 383/517.

  115. 115.

    See, for example, Minute by Lord Robert Cecil, 30 October 1915, in TNA, FO 383/69; and Metropolitan Police, Special Branch to Lord Robert Cecil, 14 October 1918, in TNA, FO 383/425.

  116. 116.

    Dr Eric Higgins, ‘Connection of Dr Rotten with Ruhleben’, six-page record of interview, 10 March 1919, in TNA, FO 383/524.

  117. 117.

    See Secretary, Prisoners of War Department to Sir Edward Goschen, 29 March 1919, in TNA, FO 383/517.

  118. 118.

    See Bosworth, Inside Immigration Detention, p. 29.

  119. 119.

    Laura Tabili, ‘We Ask for Justice’: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, NY and London, 1994), pp. 31–5; Smith, Jamaican Volunteers, p. 117.

  120. 120.

    Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act, 23 December 1919, section 15, at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1919/92/pdfs/ukpga_19190092_en.pdf

  121. 121.

    Stibbe, ‘Ein globales Phänomen’, p. 172; Hempenstall and Mochida, The Lost Man, p. 134.

  122. 122.

    See the relevant documents in TNA, FO 383/539 and 541.

  123. 123.

    Daniel J. Walter, Creating Germans Abroad: Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia (Athens, OH 2002), p. 155; Martin Eberhardt, Zwischen Nationalsozialismus und Apartheid: Die deutsche Bevölkerungsgruppe Südwestafrikas 1915–1965 (Berlin, 2007), pp. 99–116. See also Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 188.

  124. 124.

    Under-Secretary of State, Home Office, to Secretary of Prisoners of War Department, 10 January 1919, in FO 383/478.

  125. 125.

    Fischer, Enemy Aliens, pp. 301–2.

  126. 126.

    Paterson, ‘Aspects of internment in Australia’, p. 81.

  127. 127.

    Francis, ‘To be Truly British’, p. 255.

  128. 128.

    Minister of Shipping to Under Secretary of State, Foreign Office, 3 July 1919, in TNA, FO 383/541.

  129. 129.

    Manz and Dedering, ‘“Enemy Aliens”’, p. 555.

  130. 130.

    See Foreign Office minute, 10 June 1919, in TNA, FO 383/502.

  131. 131.

    War Office to Secretary, Prisoners of War Department, 17 June 1919, in TNA, FO 383/478.

  132. 132.

    Acting Administrator, Government House, Dar-es-Salaam, to Secretary of State to the Colonies, 12 June 1919, in TNA, FO 383/541.

  133. 133.

    AA to Swiss consulate in Berlin, 13 June 1919, in SBA, E2020-1000-130, Bd. 63, DE 96 004.

  134. 134.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 95; WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, p. 759.

  135. 135.

    See also Murphy, ‘Brücken, Beethoven and Bumkuchen’, p. 125.

  136. 136.

    Tooze, The Deluge, pp. 321–9. See also Leonhard, Der überforderte Frieden, p. 1178.

  137. 137.

    Panayi, The Germans in India, p. 218.

  138. 138.

    Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, p. 97. See also German consulate in Rotterdam to AA, 23 April 1919, in BArch, R 901/83959, and Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office to Secretary of Prisoners of War Department, 8 April 1919, in TNA, FO 383/501, who noted that there were only roughly 5000 internees left in British camps by that date. This had fallen to below 4000 by 12 May (see Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office to Secretary of Prisoners of War Department, 12 May 1919, in TNA, FO 383/517). Even so, as documents in the same file show, small groups of internees were still being deported throughout the summer of 1919, some as late as the beginning of August.

  139. 139.

    Under-Secretary of State, Home Office, to Secretary of Prisoners of War Department, 20 May 1919, in FO 383/478.

  140. 140.

    See the complaints from German internees in TNA, FO 383/501-2. Also the evidence of similar complaints from Austro-Hungarian subjects likewise repatriated via Rotterdam, in TNA, 383/478, esp. Swedish Legation, London, Austro-Hungarian Division to the Secretary of the Prisoners of War Department, 22 March 1919, and various appendices.

  141. 141.

    Jenkinson, Black 1919, pp. 159–60; Smith, Jamaican Volunteers, p. 116. According to Smith, a number of Jamaican sailors were repatriated between August and October 1919 in the wake of the riots—see ibid., pp. 143–4.

  142. 142.

    Jenkinson, Black 1919, p. 5.

  143. 143.

    Tabili, ‘We Ask for British Justice’, p. 32.

  144. 144.

    Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘The Portuguese Empire’, p. 190.

  145. 145.

    Maria Fernanda Rollo, Anna Paula Pires and Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘Portugal’, in 1914–1918 online, edited by Daniel et al., https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-portugal-2017-08-30.pdf

  146. 146.

    Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘The Portuguese Empire’, p. 192.

  147. 147.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, pp. 154–6.

  148. 148.

    All of the above figures come from the statistical information provided by the Lisbon-based Comissão Central de Informacões sobre Prisioneiros de Guerra, in AHM, PT/AHM/DIV/1/35/0436/01.

  149. 149.

    See the petition sent to the Spanish embassy in Lisbon, 3 October 1919, and forwarded from there to the AA in Berlin, in BArch, R 901/83531.

  150. 150.

    See the statistical information on Caldas da Rainha provided by the Lisbon-based Comissão Central de Informacões sobre Prisioneiros de Guerra, in AHM, PT/AHM/DIV/1/35/0436/01, Bl. 3.

  151. 151.

    Murphy, Colonial Captivity, p. 197.

  152. 152.

    Giuseppi, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in France’, pp. 93–4.

  153. 153.

    Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre, p. 263, n. 180.

  154. 154.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, pp. 337–41.

  155. 155.

    Ibid, p. 122; Giuseppi, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in France’, p. 121.

  156. 156.

    Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 1 (January 1919), p. 50.

  157. 157.

    ‘Le repatriement des prisonniers’ (as note 9 above), pp. 1333–4.

  158. 158.

    Farcy, Les camps de concentration, p. 122.

  159. 159.

    ‘Le repatriement des prisonniers’ (as note 9 above), p. 1333.

  160. 160.

    Ibid.

  161. 161.

    Giuseppi, ‘The Internment of Enemy Aliens in France’, p. 121.

  162. 162.

    Leonhard, Der überforderte Frieden, pp. 1160 and 1208–9.

  163. 163.

    Ibid., pp. 738–9.

  164. 164.

    Şiperco, ‘Internment in Neutral and Belligerent Romania’, p. 245.

  165. 165.

    ‘Prisonniers de guerre hongrois en Roumanie’, Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge, no. 9 (September 1919), pp. 1119–20 (here p. 1120).

  166. 166.

    Ibid., p. 1119.

  167. 167.

    Şiperco, ‘Internment in Neutral and Belligerent Romania’, p. 246.

  168. 168.

    Todd Huebner, ‘The Internment Camp at Terezín, 1919’, Austrian History Year Book, 27 (1996), pp. 199–211.

  169. 169.

    Ibid., p. 210.

  170. 170.

    Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York, 2002), p. 268.

  171. 171.

    Ibid., pp. 128–9.

  172. 172.

    Telegram, Ministry of Interior to Ministry of War, 26 July 1920. Copy in AST, Reale Commissariato Generale Civile per la Venezia Guilia, Atti Generali (1919–1922), 2039/116.

  173. 173.

    Svoljšak, ‘The Sacrificed Slovenian Memory’, p. 227.

  174. 174.

    See Ministry of Interior to the R. Commissariato Generale Civile per la Venezia Guilia, 1 August 1920; and Commissario Generale Civile to the Commando Generale RR. Truppe della Venezia Guilia in Udine, 13 August 1920, both in AST, Reale Commissariato Generale Civile per la Venezia Guilia, Atti Generali (1919–1922), 2039/116.

  175. 175.

    Relazioni della reale commissione, Vol. 3.

  176. 176.

    See the files on individuals in AST, Reale Commissariato Generale Civile per la Venezia Guilia, Atti di Gabinetto (1919–1922), No. 29, Cat. 15/2 (Internati—Rimpatrio)

  177. 177.

    Svoljšak, ‘The Sacrificed Slovenian Memory’, pp. 227–8.

  178. 178.

    Macmillan, Paris 1919, p. 289.

  179. 179.

    Stéphane Auodin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 1914–1918: Understanding the Great War, trans. by Catherine Temerson (London, 2002) [2000], p. 116.

  180. 180.

    Prussian Ministry of War to all acting general commands, 29 November 1918, in WHStA, Bestand M 77/1, No. 880, Bl. 58.

  181. 181.

    Stefan Rinke and Karina Kriegesmann, ‘Latin America’, in 1914–1918 online, edited by Daniel et al., https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-latin_america-2015-11-05.pdf

  182. 182.

    WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, p. 757.

  183. 183.

    Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, p. 665.

  184. 184.

    See German envoy in The Hague to AA, 1 October 1919; Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft to AA, 6 October 1919; and Swiss envoy in Berlin to AA, 29 October 1919, all in BArch, R 901/83616.

  185. 185.

    See Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft to AA, 7 August 1919; and German envoy in The Hague to AA, 19 September 1919, both in ibid.

  186. 186.

    Swiss Legation, Port-au-Prince, to Political Department, Bern, 24 July 1919. Copy in BArch, R 901/83614.

  187. 187.

    WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, pp. 757–8.

  188. 188.

    Grew to Dresel, 23 September 1917, in HL, b MS Am 1549 (160).

  189. 189.

    Hagedorn, Savage Peace, p. 421.

  190. 190.

    Ibid., p. 422.

  191. 191.

    Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (Minneapolis, MN, 1955).

  192. 192.

    Nagler, ‘Victims of the Home Front’, p. 214.

  193. 193.

    Wüstenbecker, ‘Politik gegenüber ethnischen Minoritäten’, pp. 276–81; Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, pp. 509–28; Luebke, Germans in Brazil, pp. 175–201.

  194. 194.

    Nagler, Nationale Minoritäten, p. 664.

  195. 195.

    Hagedorn, Savage Peace, pp. 421–2.

  196. 196.

    Post to L. L. Thompson, Attorney General, Washington State, n.d. [May 1920?], in NARA, RG 174, Box 177, 167/255.

  197. 197.

    Ibid.

  198. 198.

    See, for instance, Jonathan F. Vance, Death so Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War (Vancouver, BC, 1997).

  199. 199.

    Bohdan S. Kordan, No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience (Montreal, QC, 2016), pp. 264–6.

  200. 200.

    Ibid., pp. 255–6.

  201. 201.

    WUA, Reihe 3, Bd. III/2, p. 822; Kordan, ‘Internment in Canada’, pp. 175–6.

  202. 202.

    Lubomyr Y. Luciuk, A Time for Atonement: Canada’s First National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians, 1914–1920 (Kingston, ON, 1988), p. 27.

  203. 203.

    Ibid., pp. 22–3.

  204. 204.

    Swain, Trotsky, p. 38.

  205. 205.

    Luciuk, A Time for Atonement, p. 27.

  206. 206.

    Murray, Red Scare, pp. 112–14 and 211–12. On the 1919 Winnipeg general strike, see also Vance, Death so Noble, pp. 230–2.

  207. 207.

    Kordan, No Free Man, p. 256.

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    Matthew Stibbe

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Stibbe, M. (2019). (Not) Ending Internment: The Years 1918–20. In: Civilian Internment during the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57191-5_6

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