International or transnational? Humanitarian action during the First World War

Abstract

To what extent was a nascent international humanitarian sphere challenged by the rise of nationalist aid efforts during the First World War? How did wartime nationalisms influence humanitarian mobilisation? Taking the aid effort to prisoners of war as its central case study, this article contends that the similar evolution of national wartime charities in the different belligerent states was due to a transnational learning process, based on nationalism and reciprocity dynamics, rather than simply a manifestation of a shared culture of international humanitarianism. Comparing similar national aid actors in different countries highlights the fact that the national aid response did not develop solely as a result of ‘international’ norms, but often on the basis of other motivations, predominantly the desire to help the war effort. This transnational learning process has been identified in some historiographical analysis as evidence for the existence of shared international humanitarian norms within belligerent countries; in fact it is also evidence that certain welfare sectors – for example, registration of the missing and dead, military aid bureaucracies or local scouting or Red Cross associations – evolved similarly in response to the logistical challenges created by total war. This paper contends that the nationalist-orientated evolution of charity at the local level during the war created increasing tensions between the national and international humanitarian spheres and it argues that it is necessary to explore this contested evolution of wartime charity in order to understand the complex nature of wartime mobilisation.

Keywords:

• 1914–1918
• prisoners of war
• First World War
• World War One
• humanitarian aid
• International Red Cross
• transnational history
• gender
• neutrality
• nursing
• wartime mobilisation

Notes

 1. Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre; Hinz, “Humanität im Krieg?”

 2. Gerade die Geschichte der Kriegsgefangenenhilfe im Umfeld des Ersten Weltkriegs zeigt aber, dass es immerhin Versuche gab, die Dynamik und Brutalisierung moderner Kriegführung einzudämmen.' Hinz, op. cit., 217.

 3. Becker, op. cit.

 4. Hankel, Die Leipziger Prozesse; Willis, Prologue to Nuremburg.

 5. In their introduction to their edited book Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York; London, 2004) Cohen and O'Connor refer to the ‘international’ as a ‘purely descriptive term’ in history when compared with the term ‘transnational’, which defines a ‘realm of interdependence or relation that by definition supercedes national sovereignty and boundaries’. Cohen and O'Connor, xiii. Yet in First World War Studies the term ‘international’ designates both a representationally and a politically loaded space – it is far from purely descriptive. I wish to argue in this article that it is a constructed realm of meaning, which interacts with transnational historical processes. Cohen and O'Connor, xiii.

 6. Hutchinson, Champions of Charity.

 7. For a history of the work of the ICRC prisoners of war agency in Geneva see: Djurović, L'Agence Centrale de Recherches du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge: Activité du CICR en vue du soulagement des souffrances morales des victimes de guerre.

 8. Donner, “Under the Cross.”

 9. Hutchinson, Champions of Charity, 355 and also: S.P. Mackenzie's excellent review of same in the Journal of Modern History.

10. Anderson, Imagined Communities; Day and Thompson, Theorizing Nationalism, 87–9.

11. Here this article draws on both the ‘transnational’ and ‘comparative’ historical methods, looking at both the transnational movement of cultural understandings and humanitarian practices, but also at comparative state policy. On definitions of ‘transnational’ and ‘comparative’ history methods please see: Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond.” On the long debate about a “learning curve” within the British army during the war see: Sheffield, Forgotten Victory.

12. Espagne, “Sur les limites du comparatisme en histoire culturelle.”

13. On Italy see: Procacci, Soldati e Prigionieri Italiani nella Grande Guerra, con una Raccolta di Lettere Inedite.

14. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies and Prisoners of War in Russia, 1914–1918,” 32; Caroline Moorehead, Dunant's Dream, 202.

15. On the cultural life in camps see: Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt.

16. On the limitations of neutral inspection in the German case see: Hinz, Gefangen im Großen Krieg, 78–9.

17. Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War, 6–7.

18. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies,” 34.

19. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies,” 35.

20. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies,” 32.

21. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies,” 43.

22. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies,” 43.

23. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies,” 43

24. Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin Dahlem, A, Abteilung I, rep. 76, VIII B, 1685, Angelegenheiten des Roten Kreuzes. Bd 5. Jan 1913–Dez 1925.

25. For the denial see: Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva [ACICR], 445.IV, Envoi des anglais sur la frontière russe en représailles de l'emploi dans les ports français des prisonniers allemands faits par les anglais, letter 30.6.1917, Nr vii 16848, to CICR. On the real mistreatment during the reprisals see: Jones, “The German Spring Reprisals of 1917.”

26. American Journal of Nursing 8, no. 2 (Nov. 1907), 123.

27. Bowser, The Story of British VAD Work in the Great War, iii.

28. Moorehead, Dunant's Dream, 212.

29. See the comments by Rees, head of the British Prisoner of War Information Bureau, in The National Archives, Kew [TNA, formerly PRO] WO 162/341 Report on the work of the Prisoners of War Information Bureau: includes examples of administrative papers, hospital and internment reports, 1 Aug 1914–Dec 31 1920. See also ACICR, 419.VIII.c.26, Mission chenevière, Crosnier en Angleterre.

30. Davis, “National Red Cross Societies,” 44.

31. Moorehead, Dunant's Dream, 202.

32. TNA (PRO), Report of the Directorate of Prisoners of War, 1920. I am grateful to Neville Wylie for bringing this source to my attention.

33. Gender roles were also used in British propaganda to mobilise men to fight to protect Belgium's women and children: Gullace, “Sexual Violence and Family Honor.”

34. Donner, “Under the Cross,” 688.

35. For further reading on different historical comparative approaches to this phenomenon see: Grayzel, “Across Battle Fronts.”

36. Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, Vincennes [SHAT], 5 N 556, Prisonniers de Guerre Allemands. Diaries taken from captured prisoners, Carnet de campagne de Fusilier M. de la 12e Cie du II Régiment de la Garde à Pied; AN, F 7 12937, Dossier Haute-Savoie, Prefect of Châlon-sur-Seine to Ministre de l'Intérieur, 19.8.1914.

37. Jo Mihaly (pseudonym for Piete Kuhr),da gibt's ein Wiedersehn!'.

38. M. Morokvasic cited in Day and Thompson, Theorizing Nationalism, 115.

39. See Stibbe, “Elisabeth Rotten and the ‘Auskunfts- und Hilfsstelle für Deutsche im Ausland und Ausländer in Deutschland’, 1914–1919.”

40. Daniel, The War from Within, 23–4. This debate continued into the postwar period in Germany. See: Kempf, “Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen und die deutschen Frauen.”

41. Daniel, War from Within, 23–4.

42. For further examples and a more detailed discussion of the reaction in Britain, France and Germany to arriving prisoners of war, please see: Jones, “Encountering the ‘Enemy’.”

43. The report quotes faithfully from the original interviews and provides a substantial selection of extracts. It also matches evidence from other sources. For example, an Irish prisoner, P. Aylward, exchanged to Holland in 1918, described in a private letter how he was transported in 1914: ‘We left Louvain packed in trucks with just standing room, wounded and all … jolting along we had occasional stops when the doors were opened and a crowd of civilians gathered round jeering the “Engländer.”’ National Archives of Ireland, M 6808 Shelf 2/478/9, Letter from P. Aylward, v. Boetzerlaerlaan 187, The Hague, Holland to the Rev. Jackson, 3.3.1918.

44. As one prisoner wrote ‘At all the large stations [there] were German Red Cross Aid Posts. The German wounded were taken out, their wounds dressed and they were given food and drink in abundance. When I asked the Red Cross authorities for food and drink for the British and French wounded it was refused…. At Hanover the Red Cross official I addressed spat on the platform and walked away.’ RTBP, Captain G. H. Rees, Cambrai-Döberitz, 3–8 September 1914, 12.

45. RTBP, Private A. Harvey, Journey to Friedrichsfeld, October 1914, 49.

46. TNA, WO 161/99, Interview no. 890, Private Daniel Collins.

47. RTBP, Private P. Connolly, Journey to Kassel, November 1914, 50.

48. RTBP, Sergeant R. Gilling, Mons-Osnabrück, September 1914, 42.

49. RTBP, Private J. Dodd, Mons-Sennelager, August 1914, 32.

50. Archives Nationales, Paris [AN], F7 12937, Prefect of Corrèze Département to the Ministre de l'Intérieur, 24.8.1914. For further analysis and details of the scale of such incidents in France see: Jones, “Encountering the Enemy.”

51. De Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 26–7.

52. On British reaction to the Lusitania sinking see: Gullace, “Friends, Aliens and Enemies.”

53. American Journal of Nursing 19, no. 3 (Dec. 1918), 185.

54. Bowser, The Story of British VAD Work in the Great War, xi.

55. Moorehead, Dunant's Dream, 204.

56. Segesser, “The Punishment of War Crimes Committed against Prisoners of War, Deportees and Refugees during and after the First World War,” 149.

57. Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg [BA-MA], PH2 / 33, f. 138, Heinrich Nutzhorn.

58. ACICR, FAW 140/3, [140/1], 1.5.18, Red Cross, Berlin to CICR, Otto Westerkamp aus Recklinghausen [1/3 Garde Regt z.f.].

59. Segesser “The Punishment of War Crimes Committed against Prisoners of War, Deportees and Refugees during and after the First World War,” 142.

60. Brittain, Testament of Youth, 375.

61. This statement is based on extensive reading of the TNA WO 161/99 and WO 161/100 files as well as readings of numerous interviews with repatriated prisoners in Germany and France.

62. All the historiography concurs on the importance of parcels: see Procacci, Soldati e Prigionieri italiani; Hinz, Gefangen im Großen Krieg; Jones, “The Enemy Disarmed,” 316–20.

63. Rawe, “Wir werden sie schon zur Arbeit bringen!,” 105–6. For contemporary evidence of the importance of parcels in German camps, see: Rapports des Délégués du gouvernement espagnol sur leurs visites dans les camps de prisonniers français en Allemagne , 1914–1917 (Paris, 1917).

64. Procacci, Soldati e Prigionieri italiani, 174–5.

65. Abbal, Soldats Oubliés, 88–9.

66. Djurović, L'Agence Centrale de Recherches du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, 58.