Violence against prisoners of war in the First World War

About this book

"In this groundbreaking new study, Heather Jones provides the first in-depth and comparative examination of violence against First World War prisoners. She shows how the war radicalised captivity treatment in Britain, France, and Germany, dramatically undermined international law protecting prisoners of war, and led to new forms of forced prisoner labour and reprisals, which fuelled wartime propaganda that was often based on accurate prisoner testimony. This book reveals how, during the conflict, increasing numbers of captives were not sent to home front camps but retained in Western Front working units to labour directly for the British, French, and German armies--in the German case, by 1918, prisoners working for the German Army endured widespread malnutrition and constant beatings. Dr. Jones examines the significance of these new, violent trends and their later legacy, arguing that the Great War marked a key turning-point in the twentieth century evolution of the prison camp"-- "The First World War unleashed a paroxysm of violence, both within Europe and overseas. Marking a major radicalisation of warfare, the extent of this violence and its effect on societies has long attracted the attention of scholars. In the interwar period, accounting for how violence was collectively represented and sanctioned through cultural practices was an underlying theme of the work of Marc Bloch, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Norton Cru, among others. Later military historians analysed the brutal nature of trench combat on the Western Front in enormous detail. More recently, there has been a new wave of historical analysis, exploring the cultural context of combatant violence, both on the battlefield and against civilian populations"--