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The Culture of Captivity: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War, 1914-1920

Feltman, Brian K.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1274323994

Abstract Details

2010, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
For German soldiers of the Great War (1914-1918), falling into enemy hands was an emasculating ordeal that called one’s courage and loyalty into question and physically separated men from the national struggle upon which their identity as soldiers in the service of a higher ideal rested. This dissertation examines the ways that the stigma of captivity affected how approximately 132,000 German military prisoners held in the United Kingdom from 1914-1920 experienced the Great War and life in captivity. An analysis of the German prisoners’ lives in the United Kingdom stands to broaden our understanding of the Great War captivity experience and how idealized visions of appropriate male behavior impacted soldiers’ actions in the frontlines and shaped how they responded to the pressures of life in captivity. The stigma of surrender predated the outbreak of war in 1914, but as German soldiers fell into enemy hands in increasing numbers after 1916, German authorities strengthened the correlation between surrender, cowardice, and disloyalty. Thus, this dissertation argues that the Great War failed to alter popular notions of what it meant to be a man at war and actually reinforced existing mores. By war’s end, more than 8 million soldiers had surrendered to their enemies. Despite the frequency with which soldiers made the transformation to prisoners, they struggled to come to terms with the implications of their surrender. Although the British treated German prisoners in the United Kingdom exceptionally well, prisoners suffered from feelings of detachment, inadequacy and abandonment, and their letters from captivity indicate an urge to reestablish contact with the front and homefront in order to convince themselves that as prisoners they still had a place within the national community. Prisoners in the United Kingdom accordingly devoted themselves to the establishment of vibrant cultural communities that accentuated their nationalism and commitment to the same higher ideal for which they had fought in the trenches or at sea. The prisoners’ activities ranged from academic endeavors to enthusiastic celebrations of the Kaiser’s birthday, but the events were always framed in a broader context that emphasized how the organized activities might benefit the fatherland. Reestablishing bonds with the homeland, after all, helped prisoners rebuild and maintain their sense of manhood. The homefront’s unsuccessful efforts to secure immediate prisoner repatriation following Germany’s defeat demonstrated that prisoners had not been forgotten, but the victorious powers’ decision to delay prisoner release intensified the prisoners’ isolation from their comrades. In spite of the prisoners’ expressions of nationalism in captivity, they returned home to discover that many segments of German society considered former prisoners “second class soldiers.” In the interwar years, former prisoners attempted to change the public’s negative image of captivity by stressing the prisoners’ unique sense of nationalism and camaraderie, which had been evolved in opposition to a foreign captor. Ultimately, it was not until Adolf Hitler’s 1933 recognition of prisoners of war as honorable members of the “community of the front” that many former prisoners found the redemption they had desired for more than a decade.
Alan Beyerchen (Committee Co-Chair)
Robin Judd, E. (Committee Co-Chair)
Jennifer Siegel (Committee Member)
331 p.
History
Prisoners of War; Captivty; Warfare and Manhood; The Great War; First World War; National Socialism; Imperial Germany; Nationalism; Identity

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Feltman, B. K. (2010). The Culture of Captivity: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War, 1914-1920 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1274323994

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Feltman, Brian. The Culture of Captivity: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War, 1914-1920. 2010. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1274323994.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Feltman, Brian. "The Culture of Captivity: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War, 1914-1920." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1274323994

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.