The taking of prisoners has always formed a significant part of wartime military operations, not only because every man captured was a potential soldier denied to the enemy, but also because, under interrogation, he might divulge invaluable intelligence about troop dispositions and deployments, strengths and weaknesses, strategy and tactics. Head counts¹ of prisoners could be useful in calculating the extent of a battlefield military success and assessing the morale of enemy forces, and a few modest economic benefits might also be accrued by the captors, including the acquisition of weapons, equipment and the personal property of prisoners, and the diversion of any relief supplies sent to them from abroad. However, only in exceptional circumstances were such benefits likely to exceed the costs: holding prisoners required a considerable commitment of often scarce resources, such as foodstuffs, medicines, clothing, bedding and other supplies, facilities to house them and, above all, manpower to guard them.

The number of prisoners captured in the First World War was staggering – hundreds of times higher than in any previous war. Between 7² and 8.5 million men of all nations were captured by the combatants and incarcerated in prisoner-of-war camps. In 1916–17, Austria-Hungary alone held 1.8 million prisoners, the majority Russian, at a cost of 2.5 per cent of its total war expenditure – more, even, than it spent on explosives, motor vehicles or aircraft.

The combatant nations might have hoped to recoup at least part of the cost through ‘some ad hoc transfer³ of funds’ or from reparations in the event that they won the war, but in the short term, all the expense had to be borne by the captors. If that was a problem for all of the combatants in the First World War, it was particularly so for Germany. After four years of war, including fighting on two fronts for the first three years, Germany held 2.5 million prisoners, almost four times as many as Britain and France combined. The majority of German prisoners were Russian – 92,000⁴ Russian soldiers had surrendered at the battle of Tannenberg alone – but by the end of the war, the total of British Empire servicemen who were or had been prisoners of war in German hands had reached 191,652.⁵ Of those, around 177,000 were still held captive at the Armistice, the remainder having died, been released on medical grounds, escaped or been transferred to internment in the Netherlands or Switzerland, as a result of an agreement between the warring powers.

Even in the middle of the most bloody and ferocious wars, combatant nations had almost always maintained some form of diplomatic contact, albeit often through a third party, and even when ‘practically all⁶ human and material resources were being directed by both sides towards the war effort, and restraint in the conduct of war was progressively abandoned, there remained a national interest in the heart of enemy territory which, in most cases, seemed to necessitate some form of contact and negotiation: civilian internees and prisoners of war’.

That also held true for the First World War, and one of its more bizarre paradoxes was that, at the same time as the various national political leaders and generals were committing themselves to the disruption and destruction of not just the enemy’s forces but the infrastructure of its state and the starvation of its population, they were simultaneously forced to dispatch money and supplies to feed their own soldiers being held captive. They continued to do so even though they knew that much of what they sent would be seized and diverted to other uses. It defied all logic: it would have been far more efficient and far less expensive for both sides to arrange the rapid exchange of prisoners so that, instead of being held captive at a prodigious cost in food, facilities and manpower, they could be returned to their own nation. Of course, returned prisoners would then have been free to take up arms once more, but the relative numbers would have been unchanged on both sides. However, no general or politician on either side was willing even to entertain such a radical notion and, as a result, captive soldiers in their hundreds of thousands continued to languish in PoW camps.

Two distinguished jurists lamented the woeful inefficiency and injustice of such a situation: ‘In view of⁷ the cumbersomeness and expense of the whole machinery of prisons [for PoWs] and the cost of maintaining prisoners and providing them with the treatment they have a right to expect, is it impracticable to suggest that on capture, they should definitely lose their combatant status and be either sent home on parole or interned in a neutral country?’ Evidently it was, for no such arrangement was made until the closing stages of the war. Even then it was restricted to those so badly wounded or ill that they were no longer fit for active service, and the very long-term prisoners who formed a tiny proportion of the whole.

Other than the fact that every PoW was one less enemy soldier to face on the battlefield, the only significant advantage that the warring nations could derive from holding prisoners was by using them as forced labour, and most authorities acknowledged that such labour could confer considerable financial and other benefits on the captors. The scale of recruitment into the armed forces had caused labour crises in all the belligerent nations. Sixty million⁸ men of all nations had taken up arms – between one-third and two-thirds of the entire labour force of each combatant country.

Yet while stripping the manufacturing industry of much of its labour, the belligerent governments were also demanding huge increases of production in all kinds of war matériel: munitions, tanks, trucks, aircraft, barbed wire, steel helmets, uniforms and boots, and myriad other manufactured goods. The resultant void was only partly filled by recruiting previously unemployed men, women, old and unfit men, relatively young boys and girls, and foreign workers, where they were available. Prisoners of war provided another substantial and ever-growing pool of labour on which to draw.

In the early stages of the war, prisoners of all sides had been largely either left idle in their camps or put to work on land-improvement schemes that had little direct impact on agricultural or industrial production. However, as the hopes of an early victory nurtured by both sides were seen to be chimerical, and the numbers of prisoners steadily increased in parallel with the shortages of labour caused by mass conscription, PoWs on both sides were put to productive work. By 1916,⁹ 80 per cent of enlisted men and NCOs held in Germany were at work, though officers remained idle.

All authorities acknowledged that ‘purposeful and regular¹⁰ employment’ was beneficial to the prisoners’ morale and physical health, ‘and labour, whether voluntary or coerced’, was also permitted under the Hague Rules – The Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War – that had been agreed by all the combatants at The Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes in 1899, and confirmed with some further amendments in 1907. The Hague Rules allowed the captors of prisoners of war to ‘utilize their labour,¹¹ except in the case of officers, according to their ranks and capacities’, with NCOs filling supervisory roles over the enlisted men who were required to perform manual work. Under the Hague Rules, PoWs were not supposed to be employed within thirty kilometres of the front line, and their work was not to be humiliating, or excessive, or have anything to do with ‘the operations of the war’. Interpretations of¹² the latter prohibition varied greatly – some prisoners were employed in digging trenches, clearing minefields, loading ammunition and doing other war work – but even where they were used in industry or agriculture, which had no direct impact on the war effort, they were freeing others to fight or carry out war work.

Trade unions and civilian workers were often bitterly opposed to the employment of PoWs, suspecting that they were being used to depress wages and ‘de-skill’ previously specialized occupations. Some even believed that the use of PoW labour would foster the growth of ‘vested interests¹³ dependent on the continuation of the war’. In theory, any work carried out by prisoners was required to be paid at rates commensurate with ‘the tariff¹⁴ in force for soldiers of the national army employed on similar tasks … or at rates proportional to the work to be executed’. Some labour organizations actually demanded that PoWs be rewarded at above the standard local rate, in order to ensure that they were only taken on if no civilians were available. The balance of what prisoners had earned, less the cost of their board and lodging, was supposed to be held in escrow for them and paid to them on release.

Unions had reason to be concerned: the scale of PoW employment was staggering. In 1917–18, nine hundred thousand¹⁵ Russian captives were employed in Germany and another million in Austria-Hungary, the majority working in agriculture in an attempt to alleviate food shortages. Britain and France also made use of German PoWs in this way, with a few thousand prisoners in Britain set to work to bring marginal lands into production, and another fifty thousand employed on the farms of France, where 1.5 million boys and old men and at least 3 million women were already at work: they were filling the void left by the recruitment of more than 5 million agricultural workers into the army. The economic value of the employment of prisoners varied greatly from nation to nation, but Germany’s de facto leader in the latter years of the war, General Erich Ludendorff, was in no doubt about their crucial role in the German war effort, claiming that prisoners of war were ‘of the utmost importance¹⁶ in all fields of war activity’.

The principle governing the act of taking prisoners and sparing the lives of antagonists had evolved over the centuries from ‘an act of grace’¹⁷ to a recognition of the rights of ‘the helpless’. In earlier conflicts, what was deemed to be hopeless resistance was held to justify a refusal to give quarter. On several occasions during the Napoleonic Wars, while laying siege to fortified towns like Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, the Duke of Wellington declared ‘the strict rule’ that if the defenders declined the opportunity to surrender when offered the chance to do so, ‘their lives were forfeited on the place being taken by storm’. Even as late as 1898, a US commander in the Spanish–American War was permitted to give no quarter if in dire straits and when his own position ‘made it impossible for him to cumber himself with prisoners’. This dispensation applied not merely to ‘men falling into the hands of the captor, either fighting or wounded on the field’ but also to those ‘in hospital, by individual surrender or capitulation, all disabled men or officers in the field or elsewhere, if captured, and all enemies who have thrown away their arms and ask for quarter’.

However, in the following year, 1899, the US became a signatory to the Hague Rules governing the conduct of war. They stipulated that prisoners were ‘in the power¹⁸ of the hostile Government, but not of the individuals or corps who capture[d] them’, and imposed a blanket prohibition on the killing or wounding of enemies who had ‘surrendered at discretion, having thrown down their arms, or possessing no longer the means of defending themselves, and also against the declaration that no quarter will be given’. In all, nine of the articles in the Rules were relevant to the treatment of a prisoner of war:

Article 4¹⁹

Prisoners of war are in the power of the hostile Government, but not of the individuals or corps who capture them. They must be humanely treated. All their personal belongings, except arms, horses, and military papers, remain their property.

Article 5

Prisoners of war may be interned in a town, fortress, camp, or other place, and bound not to go beyond certain fixed limits, but they cannot be confined except as an indispensable measure of safety and only while the circumstances which necessitate the measure continue to exist.

Article 6

The State may utilize the labour of prisoners of war according to their rank and aptitude, officers excepted. The tasks shall not be excessive and shall have no connection with the operations of the war. Prisoners may be authorized to work for the public service, for private persons, or on their own account. Work done for the State is paid for at the rates in force for work of a similar kind done by soldiers of the national army, or, if there are none in force, at a rate according to the work executed. When the work is for other branches of the public service or for private persons the conditions are settled in agreement with the military authorities. The wages of the prisoners shall go towards improving their position, and the balance shall be paid them on their release, after deducting the cost of their maintenance.

Article 7

The Government into whose hands prisoners of war have fallen is charged with their maintenance. In the absence of a special agreement between the belligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated as regards board, lodging, and clothing on the same footing as the troops of the Government who captured them.

Article 8

Prisoners of war shall be subject to the laws, regulations, and orders in force in the army of the State in whose power they are. Any act of insubordination justifies the adoption towards them of such measures of severity as may be considered necessary. Escaped prisoners who are retaken before being able to rejoin their own army or before leaving the territory occupied by the army which captured them are liable to disciplinary punishment. Prisoners who, after succeeding in escaping, are again taken prisoners, are not liable to any punishment on account of the previous flight.

Article 9

Every prisoner of war is bound to give, if he is questioned on the subject, his true name and rank, and if he infringes this rule, he is liable to have the advantages given to prisoners of his class curtailed.

Article 10

Prisoners of war may be set at liberty on parole if the laws of their country allow, and, in such cases, they are bound, on their personal honour, scrupulously to fulfil, both towards their own Government and the Government by whom they were made prisoners, the engagements they have contracted. In such cases their own Government is bound neither to require of nor accept from them any service incompatible with the parole given.

Article 11

A prisoner of war cannot be compelled to accept his liberty on parole; similarly the hostile Government is not obliged to accede to the request of the prisoner to be set at liberty on parole.

Article 12

Prisoners of war liberated on parole and recaptured bearing arms against the Government to whom they had pledged their honour, or against the allies of that Government, forfeit their right to be treated as prisoners of war, and can be brought before the courts.

At the start of the war, the Hague Rules had been written into The British Manual of Military Law and the German equivalent, the Kriegsbrauch²⁰ (Customs of War). The War Book of the German General Staff acknowledged that the

complete change in the conception of war introduced in recent times has in consequence changed all previous ideas as to the position and treatment of prisoners of war. Starting from the principle that only States and not private persons are in the position of enemies in time of war, and that an enemy who is disarmed and taken prisoner is no longer an object of attack, the doctrine of war captivity is entirely altered and the position of prisoners has become assimilated to that of the sick and wounded … they are the captives not of private individuals, that is to say of Commanders, Soldiers or Detachments of Troops, but … the captives of the State. But the State regards them as persons who have simply done their duty and obeyed the commands of their superiors, and in consequence regards their captivity not as penal but merely as precautionary. It therefore follows that the object of war captivity is simply to prevent the captives from taking any further part in the war, and that the State can, in fact, do everything which appears necessary for securing the captives, but nothing beyond that.

Whatever the Hague Rules and The War Book of the German General Staff might say, the Kaiser had articulated a very different policy in relation to prisoners of war when addressing troops embarking at Bremerhaven for the German colonies in China: ‘As soon as²¹ you come to blows with the enemy, he will be beaten. No mercy will be shown. No prisoners will be taken.’ That statement was later repudiated, and claims by the British government in October 1917 that the Kaiser had been forced to issue a special order requiring British prisoners of war in Germany to be properly treated led to a furious denial: ‘The German Government²² repudiate most emphatically the insinuation … that a special order by the Emperor was needed before British prisoners could be assured of proper treatment. Enemy prisoners in German hands have always been treated humanely and in a proper manner.’

However strenuously such allegations were denied, British propagandists continued to make claims about brutality to Allied prisoners in German PoW camps and German atrocities against civilians. They were brilliantly successful in swinging international opinion against Germany – so much so that Dr Josef Goebbels²³ used the campaign as a model for Nazi propaganda during the Second World War. Allegations about ill-treatment of prisoners of war had to be rather more accurate after 1915, when the prison camps of all combatants in the war were opened to inspection, first by American representatives and then, after the US declaration of war in March 1917, by the Dutch or Swiss, who, in theory at least, could expose any demonstrable falsehoods. Nonetheless, both sides continued to issue propaganda claiming that their prisoners of war were being maltreated by the enemy, not merely in an attempt to influence international opinion but also to encourage their own soldiers to fight to the death rather than risk being captured.

While it was a simple matter to agree in principle the Laws of War on Land, governing inter alia the fair treatment of prisoners of war, in actual battlefield conditions it was a rather more complex task to decide the point at which fighting should be deemed to have ceased and the right to surrender commenced. Wounded men were often still capable of bearing arms, and during the First World War there were reported cases on both sides of men who signalled their surrender only to draw their enemies out of cover, then took up their arms and attacked them again.

All the combatant nations in the First World War had committed themselves to adhere to the Hague Rules, but in the event, the regulations proved inadequate in some circumstances and were further modified in 1917 and again in 1918, after negotiations between the British and German governments, presided over by representatives of the Dutch government.

The moment of greatest²⁴ danger for any prisoner was the actual moment of surrender, and many men on both sides were undoubtedly killed in the act of attempting it. Whatever the Hague Rules might say, soldiers on the battlefield who had seen their comrades blown apart or gunned down were not always disposed to feel merciful towards those enemies they captured, an attitude summed up by the cynical aside of one senior officer that ‘No man in this²⁵ war has ever been killed with the bayonet unless he had his hands up first.’

Two prominent international jurists even gave apparent endorsement to the right of soldiers to carry out what amounted to executions of unarmed men, when they argued that ‘It is not reasonable²⁶ to expect men who are attacking a fortified position held by the enemy and who suffer inevitably far heavier casualties than the defenders, from avenging their losses … merely because [the enemy] cease to resist when they are on terms of equality with the assailant.’

If they survived the moment of capture, prisoners remained in lesser, but still significant, jeopardy and often suffered harsh treatment as they were moved back through the lines: ‘Between the place²⁷ of capture and the prison, especially in early days, the conditions were barbarous and abominable, the civilian population showing greater brutality than the military guards.’ Many wounded prisoners died within a few days of being taken captive and many British soldiers believed that medical care was deliberately withheld from their comrades to reduce the number of prisoners that the Germans had to house and feed: ‘It was not an uncommon²⁸ sight to see an English soldier looking like death, holding up an arm which was a mass of blood, straw, dirt and raw flesh. I heard that the reason given for this was that all minor wounds were left for three days, because at the end of that time, they (the Hun doctors) would know whether the wound was a dirty one or not!’

There were some glaring exceptions, but conditions for prisoners of war usually improved once they reached the prison camp where they were to be incarcerated. Once there, the overall survival rate of British prisoners of war was much better than that of the soldiers in the trenches, though mortality was shockingly high²⁹ in comparison to that of interned civilians. The annual mortality rate of Belgian civilians held in captivity by the Germans and used as forced labourers was twenty-two per thousand, whereas among the British prisoners of war held in Germany, even excluding those who died from wounds sustained on the battlefield, the annual death rate was more than 5 per cent – fifty-two per thousand.³⁰ Given that the UK civilian death rate³¹ for men aged twenty to forty in the years immediately preceding the First World War had only been five per thousand, and that the belligerents had instituted a programme of exchange for prisoners who fell seriously ill, the death rate of British soldiers in German captivity was appalling. Malnutrition and maltreatment must have been significant factors in that. The figures concealed even higher death rates for enlisted men than for officers. Almost one in fourteen – 11,978³² out of 177,553 – of the British and Commonwealth other-ranks prisoners held in German prisoner-of-war camps died during the course of the war.

The conditions under which prisoners were held and their survival rates varied greatly from country to country. The chaos and anarchy into which Russia descended during the war, the revolution and civil war that followed, resulted in the death of around 40 per cent of PoWs held there. Such statistics³³ masked even more shocking losses: three-quarters of the half million Austro-Hungarian prisoners held in Siberia died of malnutrition, exposure and disease.

The death toll among prisoners held by the combatants on the Western Front was far less extreme, though PoWs of all sides suffered privations and a high mortality rate during the first year of the war, because none of the warring nations had devoted any significant resources to preparing facilities to house the tens and then hundreds of thousands of men they had captured. There were inevitable problems – shortages of food and outbreaks of disease, including typhus and dysentery – which claimed many lives. The German High Command in particular had been so confident of sweeping through to Paris and claiming victory in short order that very few arrangements had been put in place to deal with prisoners. They were also taken aback by the sheer numbers of enemy soldiers surrendering to them, and the alacrity with which many did so. As one German officer later remarked, ‘We were surprised³⁴ that the Allies had so many troops to surrender and that they surrendered so readily.’

At least a thousand³⁵ British prisoners of war were in German hands before August 1914 – the month in which the war began – was out and by the end of 1916, forty thousand Britons were held captive. The numbers increased throughout the remainder of the war, with an avalanche of almost a hundred thousand British soldiers taken prisoner during the last great German offensive, beginning on 21 March 1918.

The fatality rates among British PoWs would probably have been even worse, had it not been for the regime of inspection established in 1915 by the Red Cross and representatives of the neutral nations, particularly the Netherlands and Switzerland. By prior appointment, inspectors were able to examine any PoW camp, interview the inmates and report on the conditions under which they were being held. Nonetheless, soldiers on both sides and their relatives waiting at home were far from sanguine about the likely fate of men captured by the enemy. As one German woman wrote in August 1914, after being informed that her husband had been taken prisoner, ‘Should I consider³⁶ myself a widow?’

Yet, with some significant exceptions, both Britain and Germany ‘played by the rules’ to an astonishing degree in the care of prisoners – at least where officers were concerned. Officers, whether British or German, prided themselves on being gentlemen and, even in the midst of the most ferocious and brutal conflict in human history – in which the techniques of mass production were directed towards mass slaughter on an industrial scale – they still sometimes conducted themselves as if war were merely an extension of team sports on public-school playing fields or ritual combat from the golden age of chivalry.

There were elaborate courtesies, like the old-fashioned gentlemen’s agreements that allowed officers of both sides to give their ‘parole’ – their word – to their captors that, if allowed to leave their prison camp on country walks, they would not try to escape, or in any way facilitate a future escape, or damage any property. Officers simply handed in a signed card agreeing to these conditions and were allowed out of camp, in batches of up to forty. ‘No guard is sent³⁷ with them but only one man as a guide.’ No one ever availed himself of the chance to escape, for a gentleman’s word really was his bond. Some prisoners refused to give their parole on principle, and others because they were convinced that were they to escape and be recaptured, the Germans would accuse them of ‘having gleaned³⁸ information while outside the camp on parole’ and use it as an excuse to increase the term of solitary confinement they imposed for the escape attempt.

Even those British prisoners who refused to give their parole were allowed to correspond with their tailors in London to order replacement uniforms, since German Army regulations required every prisoner of war to salute the German officers in charge of him and to be correctly dressed when doing so. In this way would-be escapees were able to order from various British regiments military coats and hats that were not the standard khaki, or exotic dress uniforms. They could then be cut down and modified to resemble German Army uniforms or civilian suits and Homburg hats, which became part of escape kits. One British officer wrote to his tailor saying that he had been transferred from his former regiment to the Grenadier Guards, and ordered a blue-grey regimental greatcoat and two of the Grenadiers’ blue and red ‘undress caps’, which, ‘with a little cardboard³⁹ stuffing, could be made to look exactly like the German home-service cap’. Civilian clothes were also sent to them, but the Germans either confiscated these or, if the British officer preferred, broad yellow-brown stripes would be sewn into them to identify the wearer as a PoW. However, what one tailor could do, another could undo, and such remodelled civilian clothes also formed part of some men’s escape kits.

The Hague Rules did not specify precisely what should constitute the humane treatment of prisoners, but it was implicit in their provisions that the government into whose hands prisoners had fallen was bound to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter, and not subject them to prolonged solitary confinement, excessive punishment or brutality. Yet, despite the Hague Rules and the regime of neutral inspection of PoW camps, atrocities were undoubtedly perpetrated, particularly against enlisted men.

Among five hundred ex-prisoners reaching London at the end of November 1918 there was a soldier who claimed that a third of the 1,500 men imprisoned at his last PoW camp had ‘died from starvation⁴⁰ and exhaustion’. Another eyewitness testified that he had seen an English prisoner, suffering from dysentery, buried alive by German soldiers. They ‘afterwards informed me that they had nailed the coffin lid down with four- and six-inch nails’. An Irish soldier who collapsed from exhaustion and malnutrition in a German stone quarry was immediately stabbed with bayonets by the guards. ‘The German soldiers then placed the unconscious Irish soldier on the railway line and allowed a train to run over him.’ An RAMC captain at a German camp hospital spoke of prisoners used as forced labour behind German lines, who had only torn cotton shirts to wear and were so emaciated that they could scarcely walk without aid. The thighs of men five feet ten inches tall were ‘as thick as⁴¹ a normal man’s wrist. They usually died within five days of arrival. Some had been stabbed, all had been starved.’

There were instances of brutality and maltreatment of officers as well, though on nothing like the scale inflicted on common soldiers, and it was certainly true – as the voluntary post-war statements of some inmates attested – that certain German prisoner-of-war camps were models of humane treatment. One officer, who spent time in three different camps, noted that ‘When I got back home,⁴² I heard about all these frightful things going on in German camps [but] I never saw a single rotten incident.’ At other camps, though, whether at the whim of their commandants or as part of a deliberate policy imposed by the officer commanding a particular army district, treatment of captives was anything but humane. The four camps operated by General Kommandierende (Commanding General) von Hanisch’s Tenth Army Corps – Holzminden, Clausthal, Ströhen and Schwarmstedt – were exemplars of the latter approach, and among them, Holzminden soon became the most notorious. General von Hanisch, described by one British prisoner as ‘a Prussian of⁴³ the old school’, gave the commandants ‘a free hand to do as they liked with us. They did.’

CHAPTER 2

THE GERMAN BLACK HOLE

The Most Escape-proof Prison in Germany

‘Agony!’ – Escaped British prisoners, safe in neutral Holland, were unable to revenge themselves on Holzminden’s hated commandant, Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer.