Civilian Internees Research Articles

‘Stacheldrahtpoesie’ – German poetry in British internment camp newspapers during the First World War

ABSTRACT In general, poems are a well-researched source of the First World War. This paper analyses the previously unresearched nature and purposes of German poems found in civilian internment camp newspapers in Britain and the Isle of Man between 1915 and 1918. It looks at the specific themes of national and other identities, namely heroism, victimhood, and informal communities. Through an in-depth textual analysis, it argues that the poems functioned as a therapeutic tool to vent extreme emotions, defuse problems, and comment on discourses present in the camps themselves. They helped to reassure the internees in their identity as inmates as well as to voice and combat their struggles.

Civilian Internment During the First World War: A European and Global History, 1914–1920

Civilian Internment During the First World War: A European and Global History, 1914–1920

The ‘Normality’ of civilian internment in Germany during the First World War: camps as sealed or entangled spaces?

ABSTRACT This article examines internment camps in Germany during the First World War and their entanglements with society. In particular, it discusses whether the internment sites were closed or semi-permeable spaces that were interwoven with their nearby environment. Based on this, the question of what kind of integration existed and what form it took will be answered. Furthermore, the article investigates the consequences and aftermaths of these experiences in post-war Germany. The conclusion raises some further questions for future studies.

The legal contexts of civilian internment in China under Japanese occupation: the case of Allied nationals, 1941–45

ABSTRACT This article firstly introduces the international system for protecting civilian internees during the Second World War era, with a focus on the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Prisoners of War. It goes on to examine how the different stipulations in this convention were implemented by Japan in occupied China. The author argues that Japan intended to comply with the measures agreed at Geneva and did so to some extent, motivated by its desire for a positive international image and by the principle of reciprocity. However, there were minor and serious issues with Japan’s adherence to certain parts of the Convention, stemming from differences in living standards between belligerents, uncontrollable changes in circumstance, overlapping administrative competencies, and Japan’s insistence on applying the different clauses mutatis mutandis. Nonetheless, thanks to the logic of reciprocity, the Japanese authorities were compelled to demonstrate that they were making sincere efforts to comply with the Convention throughout the war.

Victims of Nationality: German Civilian Internment in British West Africa during the Second World War

Victims of Nationality: German Civilian Internment in British West Africa during the Second World War

Oral histories of Italians in the North-East of England: the sinking of the Arandora Star

AbstractWithin British-Italian history of the Second World War, there are several questions surrounding the sinking of the SS Arandora Star, on 2 July 1940, which still remain problematic. Nevertheless, this tragedy continues to play a prominent role in the heritage and memories of the Anglo-Italian communities in the UK. This article focuses on the experiences and memories of the Arandora Star from the perspective of members of the Italian community in the North-East of England. Oral histories of Italian civilian internees who were embarked onto the ocean liner were collected via qualitative interviews with descendants of victims and survivors. This article contributes to raising awareness of Arandora scholarship by articulating how memories were interpreted retrospectively and transmitted down generations. Informing the debate on the purpose of misremembering in oral history, this article sheds light on the events and their imaginary reconstruction.

Hunters and hunted: the sinking of SS Arandora Star within the wider context of the Battle of the Atlantic 1939–1940

AbstractOn 2 July 1940, the ocean liner SS Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-47, with the loss of around 805 lives; over half of these were British-Italian civilian internees. This article approaches the event from the arena of Second World War military history, contextualising the sinking within the early Battle of the Atlantic. In so doing, it shifts the customary focus away from government internment policy and discussions of cultural legacy towards examining British and German naval strategies and realities. Tactical and logistical considerations of the conflict are investigated, the explication of which allows more detailed discussion of the sinking controversies and enables delivery of ‘answers’ to the persistent ‘questions’ of why Arandora Star was sailing unescorted and without Red Cross insignia. The broad perspective offered engages with transgression and culpability, and overall the article seeks to advance Arandora Star scholarship with its distinctive maritime focus.

German ‘enemy aliens’ in internment camps in South Africa in the Second World War

ABSTRACT After the Union of South Africa declared war on Germany in September 1939 approximately 5000 German men were interned as ‘enemy aliens'. Fears of a destabilisation of South Africa by German ‘fifth columnists’ were nurtured by the fractured social and political environment of the Union. The attempts made by Afrikaner nationalists to undermine the war effort of the Union reverberated with anti-Semitic and anti-British Nazi propaganda. Apprehensions about the disruptive effects of Nazi activities among Afrikaners and German residents also blended with the perpetual fears of the white minority about losing control of the black population. These challenges to domestic security convinced the Smuts government that the internment of German men suspected of subversion was urgent and justified. The internment of German civilian internees in South Africa has been briefly mentioned in some studies, but this article seeks to provide a more detailed analysis of their internment against the background of wartime South Africa. Based on South African and German archival and secondary sources, this article also constitutes a first attempt at exploring important aspects of the conditions inside the internment camps.

Southern Rhodesia’s Adherence to the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Italian and German Internees, 1939–1945

Abstract The article looks at the Southern Rhodesian government’s efforts to implement the 1929 Geneva Convention’s provisions in establishing and administering internment camps during Second World War, despite the fact that the convention did not apply to civilian internees. The article contends that, although the Southern Rhodesian government was committed to the Geneva Convention of 1929, which specified the guidelines and norms for the treatment of prisoners of war, this was fraught with ambiguities. This was partially due to the fact that internees were not initially considered prisoners of war and also because the pro-British Southern Rhodesia white community had conflicting feelings towards Germans and Italians. Hence, although the Geneva Convention obliged capturing states to adhere to certain norms, there was a limit to how far Southern Rhodesia could go in terms of executing these stipulations. This article is based on archival documents from the National Archives of Zimbabwe.

Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi. Enemies in the Empire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War.

Journal Article Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi. Enemies in the Empire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War. Get access Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi. Enemies in the Empire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. x, 360. Cloth $105.00. Anna Maguire Anna Maguire University College London, England Email: anna.maguire@ucl.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9867-1122 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 2, June 2023, Pages 985–986, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad178 Published: 22 June 2023

Waiting out the War on the Shore of Lake Superior

More than 2,000 combatant POWs, EMS, and Civilian Internees were interned at Camp 100 in Neys Ontario during the Second World War. Camp 100 evolved as the war progressed and as the Department of National Defence adapted its internment operations. The camp was established to simply hold POWs until the end of the war, but over the years, continued to improve its facilities and, eventually, provided prisoners with an array of recreational and educational opportunities to both keep themselves occupied and help prepare themselves for post-war life. The camp was one of the few to hold combatant POWs, EMS, civilian internees, and Japanese-Canadian internees. It therefore provides an excellent case study for Canada’s attempt to treat POWs humanely. The camp’s final wartime stage as a “Black” camp reveals how Canada attempted to solve the problem of what to do with its thousands of pro-Nazi POWs. Although re-education measures were met with varied success, they were the beginnings of converting former enemies into future allies.

Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans during the Second World War by John E. Schmitz

Reviewed by: Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans during the Second World War by John E. Schmitz Steph Hinnershitz Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans during the Second World War. By John E. Schmitz. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. Pp. 386. Notes, bibliography, index.) John E. Schmitz’s Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans during the Second World War is an ambitious work that sets out to expand and complicate the story of wartime detention in the United States. Using a variety of records on the forced removal of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans, Schmitz “examines the causes, conditions, and consequences of America’s selective relocation and internment of its own citizens and enemy aliens” (2). Schmitz argues that historians have largely focused on the “relocation and internment” of Japanese Americans and suggests that broadening this approach to include German and Italian Americans also globalizes this moment by connecting it to the repatriation of enemy aliens in exchange for American civilian internees abroad. Enemies Among Us also posits that scholars should question the argument that race fueled Japanese American internment. Schmitz provides the first full-length monograph on the policies behind and experiences of detention for all three groups while also highlighting challenges in comparing their internment. Schmitz organizes the book into nine chapters. Chapter 1 provides a useful discussion of the precedent World War I set for World War II internment, while chapters 2 through 4 explain how fears of fifth-column threats from Germans, Italians, and Japanese Americans from the late 1930s through 1940 set the stage for another round of wartime internment. Long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Immigration and Naturalization Services, conducted investigations on potentially subversive Germans, Italians, and Japanese Americans. But, as Schmitz explains in chapter 5, Pearl Harbor appeared to validate the fears of political leaders and military officials that fifth columnists were responsible for the attack. Chapters 6 and 7 detail [End Page 408] how rumors and propaganda contributed to relocation and internment policies nationwide and on both the East and West Coasts. Chapter 8 provides a fascinating discussion of the connections between the internment and repatriation of enemy aliens in exchange for American civilian internees abroad, and chapter 9 concludes the book with a disappointingly short yet useful description of internment experiences, particularly the psychological impact of detention in the Crystal City family internment camp in Texas. Schmitz’s in-depth study is a useful and much-needed beginning for a new direction in this period of America’s wartime history: taking a broad view of detention across ethnic and racial groups. His linkage to repatriation and internment policies in the Western Hemisphere will be valuable to many scholars, but his decision to include Japanese American incarceration in his study detracts from his overall goals and undermines his argument in key places. His introduction could provide a more thorough discussion of his choice of terminology for the forced removal and imprisonment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans (most of them second-generation, American-born Nisei) to clarify for the reader when he is discussing foreign-born Issei and Nisei. This muddies his argument that including Japanese American incarceration within the study of enemy alien internment is useful. Schmitz explains that key figures found it difficult to differentiate between loyal and disloyal Japanese Americans regardless of their citizenship status, which supports other historians’ claims that racism—while perhaps not as key for the internment of enemy aliens—was in fact a crucial factor in the unique set of circumstances faced by Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Schmitz does, however, provide food for thought in interrogating how detention and surveillance across ethnic and racial minority groups created a policy with broad implications. His work will be important for shaping future studies about wartime internment. Steph Hinnershitz National WWII Museum Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

Prison experiences and scales in history, between global paradigms and national contexts. Recent trends in historiography

The publications examined in this article form the basis of a discussion on the extent to which the most recent historiography on prison experiences - civilian internment, in particular - has engaged with the so-called global turn and, at the same time, with the theme of scales in history. Through an analysis of a number of indicators that are present in the three selected works, I argue that the most important progress in historiographical terms depends not so much on the choice between traditional binomial pairs (e.g. micro/macro, local/global), but on the recourse to a micro-sociological approach aimed at avoiding the reification of both categories of analysis and periodisations, thus adopting a perspective that is never static.

Enemies in the Empire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War, by Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi

Enemies in the Empire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War, by Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi

Enemies in the Empire: Civilian internment in the British Empire during the First World War

Enemies in the Empire: Civilian internment in the British Empire during the First World War

Review: Rhonda L. Hinther and Jim Mochoruk, eds. Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories and Legacies

The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies encourages research on the Canadian Jewish experience through the disciplines of political science, sociology, economics, geography, history, demography, education, religion, linguistics, literature, architecture, performing and fine arts, among others.

‘Enemy Aliens’ and ‘Indian Hostages’: Civilians in Dutch–German Wartime Diplomacy and International Law during the Second World War

Abstract May 1940 marked a turning point in belligerent states’ policies targeting foreign civilians in the Second World War. This study investigates the radicalization of restrictive measures enacted against so-called enemy aliens in the Dutch–German confrontation by linking developments in Europe with those in the colonial sphere. Mass civilian internment in the Dutch East Indies and German reprisals in the form of hostage-taking in the occupied Netherlands affected thousands of men, women and children. Their treatment is analysed in the broader context of the workings of wartime diplomacy and its guiding principle of reciprocity. The article shows that both Germany and the Netherlands made extensive use of the good offices of their respective protecting powers, Switzerland and Sweden. The international laws of war—although underdeveloped when it came to the protection of non-combatants—not only served as a yardstick to assess the treatment of civilians in enemy hands, but also formed a constant point of reference in a propaganda war in which each belligerent sought to justify its own restrictive policies while denouncing its opponent’s. On the one hand, the legal category of nationality was employed by both state authorities and affected individuals in their attempts to define or deny enemy status. On the other hand, nationality proved a fragile concept surrounded by ambiguities and bound up with complex emotions of belonging and alienness—most strikingly at work in the colonial setting, where racial identities determined an individual’s status in a social order vitally dependent on the construction of ‘ethnic’ boundaries.

Forgotten Forced Migrants of War: Civilian Internment of Japanese in British India, 1941–6

The Second World War saw extraordinary movements of people, before, during and afterwards. Civilian internees are rarely considered part of this, and especially not those in South and Southeast Asia. Between December 1941 and May 1946, nearly 2700 Japanese civilians and colonial subjects from across Japan’s empire were interned in camps in British India. Mainly residents of Singapore and Malaya, these civilians were arrested and transferred by ship and train to India, where they were interned for all or part of the war. Their first ‘temporary’ camp was in Purana Qila, the Old Fort in New Delhi, from where some were repatriated to Japan in August 1942 as part of the Anglo-Japanese Civilian Exchange. The remaining civilians were moved to a more permanent camp at Deoli (Ajmer) in 1943. The internees experienced several hardships, including inadequate accommodation and disease. To date, little has been written about these internees and their journeys, especially in English. Weaving together archival sources, internee memoirs and non-English publications, this article seeks to reveal the experience of incarceration on internees in British India as forced migrants of war, and to consider reasons why the history of these internees remains largely invisible.

Making History Visible

While interned by the Nazis in Belgium and Bavaria during World War II, the little-known Surinamese artist Josef Nassy (1904–76) created a series of paintings and drawings documenting his experiences and those of other black prisoners. Nassy’s artworks uniquely register the presence of Caribbean, African, and African American prisoners in the Nazi camp system. While the Nassy Collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cannot render transparent a wartime experience that has gone largely unrecorded, it illustrates how shifting from a textual to a visual lens can enable an unremembered history to enter our field of vision, thereby generating an alternative wartime narrative. After tracing Nassy’s family history in Suriname and the conditions of his European incarceration, this essay discusses two paintings that demonstrate the significance of visual art in the context of black civilian internment—for both the artist-prisoner and the researcher.

Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps by Sarah Kovner

Reviewed by: Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps by Sarah Kovner Mahon Murphy Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps. By Sarah Kovner. Harvard University Press, 2020. 336 pages. ISBN: 9780674737617 (hardcover, also available as e-book). Japan's treatment of prisoners of war is possibly one of the most often-discussed aspects of the Pacific War in popular historical accounts that tend to emphasize the exceptional character of the Japanese soldier—which was shaped in part by brutality among military peers. In Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps, Sarah Kovner argues that there was nothing inherent in the Japanese character or culture that led to the inhumane treatment of POWs by Japan during the Pacific War. While taking great pains not to deny the suffering of those held captive, Kovner explains that it was inattention to the challenges of managing POWs and a general lack of interest in their care that led to many of these cruel and inhuman conditions. She describes the Japanese military's failures in the management of POWs as "unwitting cruelty" (p. 3). Official Japanese policy throughout the war was to adhere to the Geneva Convention of 1929, but this was never backed up with any real logistical support, imperial planners were too preoccupied with the expansion of territory, and the government never created a coherent internment system with a clear chain of command. This is a thoroughly researched book. The author makes fine use of international archives spanning nine different countries, as well as interviews with various witnesses. This multiarchival approach effectively serves to include a variety of voices and to give us an understanding of the administration of the POW camps and the management of prisoners. The book also provides enough background about Japan's [End Page 411] treatment of POWs captured in conflicts prior to the Pacific War and its engagement with internationalism to orient a nonexpert reader. Indeed, one of the book's main strengths is its analysis of the role of Swiss diplomats and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Japan during the war. The use of Swiss archives helps to paint a complex picture of the ICRC and Swiss diplomats and their role in POW management. During the war, the Swiss government acted as the protecting power, and the (Swiss-led) ICRC provided relief to POWs. While these were distinct organizations, there were overlaps in personnel. The Swiss were in a difficult position, as their reports on conditions for captives in Japan were responsible for determining whether the US would retaliate against Japanese and Japanese American civilians. The Swiss legation also had to think about the welfare of its own citizens in the expanding Japanese empire, with reports that eighteen Swiss men and women had been murdered by Japanese troops in Manila (p. 117). As Kovner notes, the Swiss diplomats were "less-than-innocent bystanders" (p. 118). The United States used Swiss reports to threaten reprisals against Japanese POWs and civilian internees, and the Swiss were caught between the Americans and the Japanese constantly accusing each other of war crimes—Japan's treatment of POWs and US treatment of Japanese civilians on the US West Coast, respectively. The Swiss government and the ICRC overestimated their capacity to carry out the roles assigned to them. It was only in July 1945 that the Swiss obtained permission to visit camps in occupied territories, although just how Swiss and ICRC officials were to access these isolated facilities as the Japanese empire collapsed was another question. The book highlights the problems facing neutral countries in acting as protecting powers during wartime. In addition, Kovner gives us clear insight into how the Japanese government attempted to administer its POW camps. Here we see the War Ministry issuing constant rebuffs to the Japanese Prisoner of War Information Bureau (POWIB), even preventing it in certain cases from giving information to the Allies. Kovner takes pains to acknowledge that much of the information on the POWIB came from postwar testimony by those with an interest in absolving themselves from any wrongdoing. However, as much of the POWIB archive survived the war, Kovner is able to prove that...