Matthew Stibbe

The Internment of Civilians by Belligerent States during the First World War and the Response of the International Committee of the Red Cross

Between 1914 and 1918 several hundred thousand ‘enemy aliens’ were interned by the belligerent nations of the first world war, and many more civilians were trapped behind enemy lines in their own countries. This article looks at the efforts made by the International Committee of the Red Cross and other relief agencies to alleviate the plight of non-combatants held in internment camps. It also examines the dilemmas faced by neutral inspection teams, and asks why the ICRC in particular failed in its attempts to secure equal and humane treatment for civilian prisoners. The conclusion briefly considers the longer-term impact of these developments in the light of the even greater challenges facing the ICRC in the 1920s and beyond.

Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe, 1914–20

I humbly beg to ask for your assistance. I followed my husband into war and was taken prisoner in July 1915. In December 1915 I gave birth to a baby girl at the camp at Havelberg, where I still am now. My husband is also in captivity. Unfortunately I have no means of support and therefore ask your committee to have the goodness to send my daughter and I a few items of clothing. . ..I also humbly request that you send me a small sum of money Havelberg camp, Germany, 1 March 1916.

Introduction: Captivity, Forced Labour and Forced Migration during the First World War

The citizens of Nı̂mes were proud of themselves for having done their duty, and more, towards the refugees. They had welcomed them with open arms, pressed them against their bosoms. There was not a single family who had not offered hospitality to these poor people. It was just a shame that this state of affairs was dragging on so unreasonably long. There was also the matter of provisions, and you can’t forget either, said the townspeople, that all these poor refugees, exhausted by their journey, would be susceptible to the most terrible epidemics. There were veiled hints in the press and more open, brutal demands from other quarters, urging the refugees to leave as soon as possible. But as yet, circumstances had prevented anyone from going anywhere.

Elisabeth Rotten and the ‘Auskunfts- und Hilfsstelle für Deutsche im Ausland und Ausländer in Deutschland’, 1914–1919

On 27 April 1918 the London Daily Herald, a newspaper with close ties to the Labour Party, published the following article in defence of the Quaker-led ‘Friends Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in Distress’ (FEC): In our own country the efforts of the ‘Friends Emergency Committee’ on behalf of enemy aliens in Great Britain has received much abuse in the columns of a section of the press. ‘Are there any Germans’ it is asked ‘who would do the same for our folks over there?’ The answer is that there is an exactly similar organisation which has been working in Berlin since the earliest days of the war. The two committees are each mainly concerned with the very hard cases of the wives and families of ‘alien enemies’, but each has a section that also gives advice and help to the interned civilians; and to a smaller extent to the military prisoners also. When one committee works out some new plan of assistance, it usually finds that the other is already active on the same lines. In December 1915 the Berlin Committee published a general appeal for assistance in its work, quoting the amount of support already received by the British Committee. This appeal was signed by nineteen societies and ninety-eight prominent men and women. Later, when more support was needed, Prince Lichnowsky Matthew Stibbe 195 held a meeting at his house ... and a collection of 800 marks was taken. (Daily Herald 27 April 1918)

A Question of Retaliation? The Internment of British Civilians in Germany in November 1914

In early November 1914 the German military authorities ordered the internment of all British male civilians aged between 17 and 55 then still resident in Germany. Over four thousand British subjects were affected by this measure. This article examines the domestic political background to the decision in favour of internment, focusing on the role of public opinion and of competing voices within the German war leadership. It also looks at attempts to negotiate the release and exchange of civilian prisoners after 1914. Internment was supported by the military and by most sections of the middle-class press. While partly a reaction to similar measures against Germans in Britain, it also reflected the governments growing frustration at the failure to achieve victory in the opening months of the war.

Women's International Activism during the Inter-War Period, 1919–1939

This article explains why women’s international activism in the inter-war period should be a subject of scholarly interest, and also discusses the myriad and vibrant forms it could take. For some women campaigners, international work—whether through established national women’s movements or via separate, radical pacifist organisations—was crucial for the prevention of war and the maintenance of world peace. However, this was not the only motivation. Others were interested in the scientific or professional advantages of combining knowledge at international or transnational level. Others still were keen to exploit international links in order to further political objectives closer to home, such as the achievement of women’s suffrage, the encouragement of inter-cultural understanding between women from different ethnic, religious or linguistic backgrounds, or the promotion of conservative values, anti-communism or physical fitness within particular national or multi-national settings. Examples of all of these kinds of activism can be found in the individual contributions to this special issue.

Enemy aliens, deportees, refugees: internment practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914-1918

Enemy Aliens, Deportees, Refugees: Internment Practices in the Habsburg Empire, 1914–1918 This article explores both the historiography and history of civilian internment in the Habsburg Monarchy between 1914 and 1918, with particular emphasis on the Austrian half of the empire (Cisleithania). It is often assumed that Austro-Hungarian policies towards enemy civilians and «enemies within» were simply a milder variant of a common pattern of intolerant behaviour by belligerent states towards aliens, national outsiders and other minority groups during modern wars. But this assumption is misleading, and Habsburg policies have much to tell us both about the collapse of the Monarchy in 1917/1918 and about the relationship between empirebuilding, ethnic nationalism and the pursuit of military security in border regions more generally.

In and Beyond the Racial State: Gender and National Socialism, 1933–1955

This article provides a comprehensive overview and critical discussion of recent scholarship on gender issues in Nazi Germany. In particular it examines how gendered approaches have both contributed to, and been shaped by, new research in three key areas: the formation of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (national or peoples community); Nazi understandings of ‘space’ and empire; and memory and the legacy of the National Socialist regime. The article argues that there are some limits to what gender can explain, especially as the Third Reich prioritised race over gender when it came to reordering German and European society. Nonetheless, gender is a crucial category for analysing the everyday lives and experiences of real German men and women in the period 1933 to 1955, most notably in conjunction with ideas around ‘comradeship’, ‘honour’, individual and collective ‘performance’, and mobilisation for war. It also raises important questions about the process of coming to terms with the aftermath of total war and total defeat, and about the strength and validity of past and current theories of generic fascism.

Jürgen Kuczynski and the Search for a (Non-Existent) Western Spy Ring in the East German Communist Party in 1953

Jurgen Kuczynski, the East German Marxist intellectual and economic historian, is best known for his numerous publications on labour history. Far less has been written about his role as a leading figure in the German Communist Party in Britain between 1936 and 1944, and his work for the US Strategic Bombing Survey in 1944–5, activities which later came back to haunt him when he was the subject of a major inquiry launched by the Central Party Control Commission in 1953. Using newly available documents in London and Berlin, this article examines the investigation into Kuczynski as a case study for the inter-relationship between party purges, spy scares and the manipulation of individual biographies during one of the most volatile periods of the cold war.

THE FISCHER CONTROVERSY OVER GERMAN WAR AIMS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND ITS RECEPTION BY EAST GERMAN HISTORIANS, 1961–1989

The Fischer controversy of the 1960s was a major landmark in post-war West German historiography. Surprisingly few historians to date have devoted their attention to the East German reception of Fischers work, however. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at some of the critical reviews published in East German academic journals and also at internal records from the Socialist Unity Party archive. Particular emphasis is placed on the period after 1965 when East German scholars began to explore the historiographical and national implications of the Fischer controversy with a greater degree of sensitivity but also with a greater degree of caution (for strategic political reasons). A mutually beneficial exchange of ideas between Fischer and German Democratic Republic scholars working on the First World War continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, although ironically this was at a time when both sides were moving ever further away from the idea of a possible reunification of the two Germanies in the future.