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Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History6, 3 (Summer 2005): 55766.

Review Essays

Prisoners of War on the Eastern Frontduring World War I

PETERGATRELL

Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr:Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenproblematik fr die Geschichte desKommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 19171920 [Captivity, Revolution,Return: The Significance of the POW Issue for the History of Communismin Central and Eastern Europe, 19171920]. 754 pp., illus. Vienna: Bhlau,2003. ISBN 3205770684. 85.00.

Reinhard Nachtigal, Die Murmanbahn: Die Verkehrsanbindung eines kriegs-

wichtigen Hafens und das Arbeitspotential der Kriegsgefangenen[The MurmanskRailroad: A Strategic Ports Integration into the Transportation Network andthe Labor Potential of POWs]. 159 pp., illus. Grunbach: Verlag Bernhard

Albert Greiner, 2001. ISBN 3935383053. 13.00.

Reinhard Nachtigal, Russland und seine sterreichisch-ungarischenKriegsgefangenen (19141918) [Russia and Its Austro-Hungarian POWs(19141918)]. 391 pp., illus. Remshalden: Verlag Bernhard Albert Greiner,

2003. ISBN 3935383274. 54.00.

Alon Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front.259 pp., illus. New York: Berg, 2002. ISBN 1859735789. $84.95.

The virtually simultaneous publication of these books on prisoners of waron the Eastern Front during World War I put me in mind of the old jest thatLondoners wait an hour for a bus only to find that three arrive at once.1In this

1 Nachtigal, Leidinger, and Moritz have all previously published several articles on thissubject, most of them available only in German. See Reinhard Nachtigal, Kriegsgefangene derHabsburgermonarchie in Russland, sterreich in Geschichte und Literatur40, 45a (1996):24862; Seuchen unter militrischer Aufsicht in Russland: Das Lager Tockoe als Beispiel fr


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instance there is no cause for complaint, merely a sense of surprise that manyaspects relating to the imprisonment of combatants, particularly during World

War I, have hitherto been ill served by historians.2 It is not clear why thisshould be so. Does the neglect imply that imprisonment has been regarded

as a calamitous exception rather than the rule? This explanation is not con-vincing, because so many millions were taken captive during the Great War,particularly on the Eastern Front. Is it because of a shortage of source mate-rial? Hardly: these books demonstrate that there is a rich archival and memoirliterature at the historians disposal (Leidinger and Moritz, 88108). Is it, per-haps, because the subject draws attention to a human condition that appearsto be the shameful antithesis of heroic military endeavor?3The relatively largeliterature on the Czech Legion seems to be the exception that proves the rule.That is, where POWs demonstrated traditional military qualities of collectivefighting spirit, their behavior could safely be incorporated into the narrativeof state-building in the interwar years.4By contrast, it seemed best to drawa veil over more troubling examples of incarceration. Witness the furor thatsurrounded the appearance of La Grande Illusion (1937), with its evocationof the unexpected human bonds that could be forged in captivity betweenmen of the same class.5Alon Rachamimov suggests, in addition, that thosePOW memoirs that dwelled on routine existence rather than escape attemptsheld only limited appeal among the postwar reading public in Central and

Western Europe, which was fed a diet of riveting battle narratives (226). It wasmuch less interesting to read about people for whom time stood still. A muchbroader consideration is that prisoners of war, like other displaced persons, aredifficult to locate within the established categories of social history.6

die Behandlung der Kriegsgefangenen 1915/16? Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas 48, 3(2000): 36387; Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Das russische Kriegsgefangenenwesen1914 bis 1920, sterreichische Osthefte 41, 1 (1999): 83106; and Hannes Leidinger,Gefangenschaft und Heimkehr: Gedanken zu Voraussetzungen und Perspektiven eines neuen

Forschungsbereiches,Zeitgeschichte25, 1112 (1998): 33342. 2 Jonathan Vance, ed., Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2000). Vance is also the author of Objects of Concern: Canadian Prisoners of War through theTwentieth Century(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994). See also Rdiger Overmans, ed., In der Hand desFeindes: Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg(Cologne: Bhlau, 1999). 3 The complex issues at stake are sometimes revealed in popular cinematic representations ofconditions and behavior in prisoner-of-war camps. The genre of POW movies covers a broadspectrum of behavior, as a comparison of The Bridge over the River Kwai(1957) and King Rat(1965) makes clear. See below. 4 See the references provided by Rachamimov (POWs, 1213). 5 Marc Ferro, Cinema and History(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 13236.The Nazis seized the original negative of La Grande Illusionwhen they entered Paris in 1940.It was then captured by the Soviet army and taken to Moscow. Renoir himself believed that ithad been destroyed by an Allied bombing raid in 1942. 6 Peter Gatrell,A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I(Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1999).


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Whatever the explanation, incarceration offers the possibility of reflect-ing on hidden aspects of combatants experiences, such as solidarity, personaland group identity, and the psychological consequences of confinement.Important issues of this kind, as well as problems relating to humanitarian

intervention, repatriation, and reintegration into civilian society, are only justbeginning to receive the attention they deserve. The history of World War Ioffers an opportunity to reflect on wartime experiences of incarceration, onthe process of repatriation and on the politicization of POWs, themes that areexplicitly brought together in the work of Leidinger and Moritz.7

To be sure, historians have paid some attention to issues relating to pris-oners and politics during the Great War.8Gerald H. Davis is the author ofseveral informative articles.9He has tapped a rich vein of memoir literature,including the famous work by Elsa Brndstrm as well as POW memoirsand semi-fictional accounts such as those by Erich Dwinger.10These books

7 It is disappointing that Nachtigal, Russland, is the only book to include any maps to guidethe reader through the complex processes of displacement and repatriation. 8 V. R. Kopylov,Zarubezhnye internatsionalisty v Oktiabrskoi revoliutsii, 19171918 (Moscow:Mysl, 1977); A. Ia. Manusevich, ed., Internatsionalisty: Uchastie trudiashchikhsia stranTsentralnoi i Iugo-Vostochnoi Evropy v borbe za vlast sovetov v Rossii, 19171920 gg. (Moscow:Nauka, 1987); Evgenii Sergeev, Russkie voennoplennye v Germanii i Avstro-Vengrii v godypervoi mirovoi voiny, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 4 (1996): 6578; and Inge Pardon and

Waleri Shurawljow, eds., Lager, Front oder Heimat: Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in Sowjetrussland1917 bis 1920, 2 vols. (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1994). See Leidingers historiographical survey inLeidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 6988. 9 Gerald H. Davis, Prisoners of War as Social Communities in Russia: Krasnoiarsk, 19141921, East European Quarterly 21, 2 (1987): 14763; Davis, Deutsche Kriegsgefangeneim Ersten Weltkrieg in Russland, Militrgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 31, 1 (1982): 3749;Davis, National Red Cross Societies and Prisoners of War in Russia, 19141918, Journalof Contemporary History 28, 1 (1993): 3152; and Davis, The Life of Prisoners of Warin Russia, 19141921, in Essays on World War I: Origins and Prisoners of War, ed. SamuelR.Williamson and Peter Pastor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 16396. Nor

were soldiers alone liable to be incarcerated. The forced incarceration of around 14,000German civilians, including women and children captured during the Russian campaign inEast Prussia in 1914, is discussed by Fritz Gause, Die Russen in Ostpreuen 19141915: Im

Auftrage des Landeshauptmanns der Provinz Ostpreuen(Knigsberg: Grfe und Unzer, 1931).See also an unpublished paper by Serena Tiepolato, Universit C Foscari di Venezia, on TheDeportation of East-Prussian Civilians to Russia.10 Elsa Brndstrm,Among Prisoners of War in Russia and Siberia(London: Hutchinson, 1929).This book was first published in German in 1920, with a Swedish edition in 1921. Brndstrmwas the daughter of the Swedish ambassador to Russia and worked on behalf of the Swedish RedCross until 1920. Edwin Erich Dwinger, Die Armee hinter Stacheldraht: Das sibirische Tagebuch

(Jena: E. Diedrich, 1929). Other memoirs include Magdalene von Steincker, Die deutscheSchwester in Sibirien: Aufzeichnungen von einer Reise durch die sibirischen Gefangenschaftlagervom Ural bis Wladiwostok von Schwester Magdalene von Walsleben(Berlin: n.p., 1919); Anne-Marie Wenzel, Deutsche Kraft in Fesseln: Fnf Jahre deutscher Schwesterdienst in Sibirien, 19161921(Potsdam: n.p., 1931); Gustav Krist, Prisoner in the Forbidden Land(London: Faber andFaber, 1938; first pub. Vienna, 1936); and Alexandrine Uexkll, Aus einem Schwesternleben


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and articles demonstrate that there is no shortage of material, albeit largelyemanating from officers and well-placed relief workers.11Publication of docu-mentary evidence in German began in earnest with the works by Hahn andBrndstrm, as well as memoirs by former prisoners of war.12The Vienna-

based Bundesvereinigung ehemaliger sterreichischer Kriegsgefangener(B.e..K.) published Der Plenny(sic) from 1924 through 1937surely wortha separate study in its own rightand created an archive of captivity in1927.13Nor is there a dearth of material on the management of relief efforts.

Although Elsa Brndstrms papers were destroyed during World War II, richsource material exists in Russian, German, and Austrian archives, as well as inthe National Archives of the United States.14

During World War I, around 2.5 million soldiers from the Austro-

Hungarian army, as well as some 200,000 German soldiers, entered Russiancaptivity.15It hardly needs stating that becoming a prisoner took on enormoussignificance in personal and professional terms.16 In the case of the soldierswho served the Habsburg empire, there was a widespread perception that

Austro-Hungarian prisoners shed their loyalty to the state because of separatist

(Stuttgart: n.p., 1956). A fuller list is provided by Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 68392, as well as by Nachtigal, Russland, 35256. On Dwinger, see Rachamimov, POWs, 1011;and Nachtigal, Russland, 1213.11

The sources include a valuable memoir written by a Turkish POW: Mehmet Arif len,Vetluga Memoir: A Turkish Prisoner of War in Russia, 19161918(Gainesville: University Pressof Florida, 1995). See also Ycel Yanikdag, Ottoman Prisoners of War in Russia, 19141922,

Journal of Contemporary History34, 1 (1999): 6985.12 Georg Hahn, Kriegsgefangenen in Russland 19151920 (Mainz: Verlag der Volkszeitung,1926); Brndstrm, Among Prisoners of War; Helene Hrschelmann, Vier Jahre in russischenKetten: Einige Erlebnisse (Munich: n.p., 1921); and Rudolf Stenzel, Kriegsgefangenschaft inSibirien(Vienna: n.p., 1918).13 Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 26, 9498. Under the general editorship of Hans

Weiland the B.e..K. published a compendium entitled In Feindeshand: Die Gefangenschaft im

Weltkriege in Einzeldarstellungen(Vienna: n.p., 1931), designed in part to emphasize the bondsthat joined POWs from different nations. See the reproduction of the cover in Rachamimov,POWs, 2.14 There is an Elsa Brndstrm-Gedchtnis-Archiv in the Military Archive in Freiburg.Leidinger and Moritz make extremely good use of the Austrian archives. Rachamimov hasconsulted reports by State Department officials who represented the interests of POWs inRussia.15 Some sources suggest a figure of two million; the higher figure takes account of those whowere either repatriated during the war, escaped, or died in captivity. See Leidinger and Moritz,Gefangenschaft, 160 n. 46.16 Niall Ferguson examines the differential proclivity of soldiers to surrender, arguing that surrendermade sense only when soldiers felt it safer to lay down their weapons than to continue to fight. Hesuggests that POWs were useful to their captors as a source of intelligence, as a source of labor, ashostages, and as an inducement to others to give themselves up. But he does not discuss the natureof imprisonment, its psychological impact, or the process of repatriation. Niall Ferguson, The Pity ofWar(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1999), chap. 13, The Captors Dilemma.


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sentiment; desertion and disloyalty went hand in hand. Rachamimov disputesthis view, arguing instead that most prisoners were captured during large-scale Russian military actions. He notes that Czech, Slovak, Croat, Serbian,Ukrainian, and other soldiers continued to serve in the Austro-Hungarian

army. Nachtigal confirms that few Austro-Hungarian troops gave themselvesup at an early opportunity. Although some Serbian troops quickly went overto the enemy and enlisted in the Serbian Volunteers, this was a relativelyisolated instance (Nachtigal, Russland, 3843; Rachamimov, 11518). All thesame, the threat of disaffection was taken seriously by officials in the Austrian

War Ministry, who hurriedly established a special political section (Section10) to monitor the political opinions of prisoners in Russian hands, particu-larly those of Czech and Polish origin.

Having taken thousands of Austrian prisoners during the 1914 cam-paign, the Russian authorities made emergency provision for holding them inKiev (Darnitsa), Penza, Kazan, and later Turkestan. Although the registrationof prisoners according to nationality was often haphazard, ethnicity began tobe part of the equation. Thus Slav POWs were to be interned no farther eastthan Omsk, while Germans and Magyars could expect to be sent to Siberia.Once installed in camps, POWs may have been incarcerated in barracks ac-cording to ethnicity, but according to Nachtigal, this was for pragmatic rea-sons rather than a matter of principle; that is, tsarist officials regarded POWs

as potential workers, whom it was easier to manage if they espoused a com-mon culture. Nachtigal finds little support for the view that the tsarist armyplanned to deploy Austro-Hungarian prisoners in national units againstthe Habsburg empire (Russland, 26, 51). Rachamimov agrees that the tsaristmilitary considered enlisting POWs gingerly and half-heartedly (116; seealso Leidinger and Moritz, 21728).

According to Nachtigal, the tsarist state saw the growing numberof rank-and-file POWs as a valuable resource to be deployed in the war

economy.17

Some prisoners worked as farm laborers and to a lesser extentas miners in the Donbas and Krivoi Rog, but most were put to work asforced laborers on construction of canals and particularly on the freneticrailway building program. Here Nachtigals short but thorough study ofthe construction of the Murmansk railway paints a bleak picture. Designedin 1915 to link the ice-free port on the Kola Peninsula with Petrozavodsk,the project drew upon around 70,000 POW laborers as well as Uzbeks andKazakhs from the punitive battalions created in 1916, following the upris-

ing in Central Asia. Chinese, Karelian, and Russian laborers were also em-ployed. The Russian military picked out German and Hungarian prisonersand tended to exempt Slav prisoners from this backbreaking and dangerous

17 It should be remembered that officers enjoyed privileges laid down in the Hague Conventionof 1907. See Rachamimov, POWs, 7374.


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work.18Nachtigal draws attention to the grueling conditions under whichthese men labored, with a dearth of appropriate accommodation, drinkingwater, food, and medical care. Scurvy and (in the summer months) malariawere recurring problems.19Despite the efforts of German and non-belligerent

powers to ameliorate conditions and to evacuate the most seriously ill POWs(and notwithstanding several organized escapes), some 25,000 prisoners ofwar died while working on this massive project. The tsarist authorities atfirst rejected complaints made by the German and Habsburg governments,citing the fact that Russian POWs were concurrently employed on railwayconstruction in Serbia, but they belatedly agreed to abandon the use ofprison labor. The line was finally completed a year after schedule, on thevery eve of the February Revolution, too late to alleviate Russias supplyproblems.20

Nachtigal recounts the visits made by the German, Austrian, Danish,and Swedish Red Cross and other delegations to POW camps in the Russianinterior.21Among the remorseless detail of itineraries and contacts, he makesthe valid point that such visits need to be understood in the context of recip-rocal visits made by Russian representatives to German and Austrian camps,as a result of which basic principles of mutual humanitarian care were estab-lished. These principles were, however, difficult to implement. The tsaristgovernment struggled to cope with the vast numbers of men who needed

food, fuel, and medical attention to minimize the spread of infectious dis-ease. This was largely a function of inadequate resources, but it also reflectedbureaucratic rivalries. Nachtigal notes the turf war between Prince AleksandrOldenburgskii, head of the Evacuation-Sanitation Service, and the newpublic organizations in the shape of the Union of Towns and the Union ofZemstvos, a conflict replicated in the emerging refugee crisis.22

Important issues emerge in these histories, sometimes obliquely, relat-ing to the representation of experience in POW narratives. These narratives

suggest that POWs were much more intent on creating a story of capturethat enabled them to hold on to their honor and minimize their sense of

18 See the remarks of General Alekseev in a letter to General Beliaev, 13 June 1916, cited inNachtigal, Die Murmanbahn, 47.19 An important source on conditions on the Murmansk railway is a report prepared in July 1916by the governor of Arkhangelsk (Bibikov), which he sent to Prince Aleksandr Oldenburgskii,head of the Evacuation and Sanitary Commission (Nachtigal, Die Murmanbahn, 5862).There is also a brief discussion in Rachamimov, POWs, 11112.20 For those who do not read German, Nachtigal provides a brief summary in his entry on

The Murman Railway, in Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War, ed. Vance, 19495. On RussianPOWs in Serbia, see Nachtigal, Die Murmanbahn, 67. For estimates of casualties, see ibid.,12425.21 This can be read alongside Verena Moritzs informative discussion in Leidinger and Moritz,Gefangenschaft, 16486.22 Gatrell,A Whole Empire Walking, 3440.


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shame. Accordingly they emphasized a lack of control over their own for-tunes. Where shame intruded in their narratives, it drew attention to un-avoidable constraints over matters of personal hygiene, exposing prisonersto the risk of typhus. Outside observers were interested in POW psychology.

Thus Elsa Brndstrm depicts prisoners both as victims of despair and as pos-sessed of indomitable energy inherent in highly developed and educatedraces. Their long journey east provided them with fragments [that] createda feeling of something alien and unintelligible. In captivity they fell victimto that curse of captivityenforced idleness. On the other hand, workwas undertaken with an eye to the future in the homeland. In Brndstrmspowerful account, educated prisoners were able to draw on greater reserves ofmental strength than those who lacked intellectual hunger.23Other sourcesconfirm that imprisonment could be portrayed as adventure rather than tor-ment. Hans Kohn, an officer, read avidly, learned new languages, and madeethnographic observations.24Edwin Dwinger adopted a romantic tone in de-scribing his experiences in the company of Siberian peasants on the shoresof Lake Baikal. So, too, did the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer, forwhom wartime captivity was a voyage of self-discovery (Rachamimov, 109;Leidinger and Moritz, 92). Some POWs married Russian women.25Othersdismissed Russia as a barren and uncivilized land. Not surprisingly, then, theexperience of incarceration produced very different outcomes at an individual

level. The POW camps in Russia brought together people as different as thehumanist scholar Hans Kohn and the odious Roland Freisler, who subse-quently achieved notoriety as Hitlers hanging judge but initially joined theGerman Communist Party. Wartime captivity also radicalized the Hungariandoctor Emil Sebestyn, better known as Bla Kun. In general, according toBrndstrm, all men faced inward conflicts seldom experienced in the ordi-nary routine of daily life. The conventions of civilian society had given wayto the excitement of battle, but this in turn yielded to boredom and hopeless-

ness. Brndstrm spoke movingly of men formerly the best of friends [who]can now scarcely bear the sight of one another.26

Many prisoners of war in Russia were obliged to work in abysmal circum-stances. This made imprisonment a test of human endurance, particularlyas material conditions progressively deteriorated. But Murmansk was nottypical of the conditions in which most POWs labored. Nachtigal shows howconditions for other POWsfor example, in the southern provinces of theempirewere relatively benign. In one of the most interesting sections of his

book on Austro-Hungarian POWs, Nachtigal shows how during 1916 and23 Brndstrm,Among Prisoners of War, 38, 42, 61, 11719.24 Hans Kohn, Living in a World Revolution: My Encounters with History (New York: Simonand Schuster, 1964), 89122. See also Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 49.25 Rachamimov, POWs, 152, reproduces two photographs from the Vienna Kriegsarchiv.26 Brndstrm,Among Prisoners of War, 121.


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1917 several thousand of them took advantage of lax monitoring arrange-ments to escape from factories where they were employed. One soldier foundthat he could buy civilian clothes with the extra earnings he obtained follow-ing the February Revolution and improve his chances of avoiding detection

(Nachtigal, Russland, 305; Die Murmanbahn, 10423).All the same, at least for Hungarian patriots writing between the wars,the atrocious conditions of imprisonment in Russia were sufficient to ac-count for the readiness of Magyar prisoners to espouse radical political be-liefs. Alon Rachamimov follows Ivan Vlgyes, Peter Pastor, and Ivo Banacin minimizing the significance of Russian attempts to subvert the loyalty of

Austro-Hungarian prisoners.27He argues that they were much more likely tohave been disillusioned by the lack of support they were offered by their ownstate during their incarceration in Russia. The same radicalization occurredamong Russian POWs in German captivity.28

This theme is pursued with great vigor by Leidinger and Moritz. Ofparticular interest in their work is the issue of return (Heimkehr), which theyrelate to the Bolshevik project to forge a pan-European revolutionary move-ment. They paint a picture of administrative chaos in Russia during 191718as the existing agencies for POW relief and repatriation struggled to surviveand cope with displaced persons scattered across the disintegrating tsaristempire. Leidinger and Moritz examine the careers of Comintern functionar-

ies such as Arnot Kolman as well as better-known Communists includingBla Kun, Tibor Szamuely, and Ferenc Mnnich, who found themselves to-gether in a POW camp in Tomsk.29They describe the factional infightingamong POW radicals, some of whom threw in their lot with the BolshevikRed Guards while others were committed to non-class militias (271). Thediscussion of individual experiences of captivity is closely interwoven with a

27 Ivan Vlgyes, Hungarian Prisoners of War in Russia, 19161919, Cahiers du monde russeet sovitique14 (JanuaryJune 1973): 5485; Peter Pastor, Hungarian POWs in Russia during

the Revolution and Civil War, in Essays on World War I, ed. Williamson and Pastor, 14962;and Ivo Banac, South Slav Prisoners of War in Revolutionary Russia, in ibid., 11948. Pastorsuggested that there was a hierarchy of camps, with the worst reserved for Germans, Austrians,and Hungarians, for whom there was no prospect of being turned against the Habsburgempire. See also Rachamimov, POWs, 11522.28 V. I. Grinshtein, V germanskom plenu 19141920 gg., Voprosy istorii, no. 9 (1975):11526.29 Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 13334, 141, 28081, 299300, 42223, 65357.See also Rudolf L. Tks, Bla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic: The Origins and Roleof the Communist Party in the Revolutions of 19181919 (New York: Praeger, 1967). Ferenc

Mnnich subsequently became prime minister of Hungary in 1958. Mention might also bemade of the subsequent careers of two other major figures in East European communism:Imre Nagy also spent time in a Siberian POW camp, as did Josep Broz (Tito). Szamuely wasan uncle of the migr historian, also named Tibor Szamuely (192572), whose father workedas a clandestine agent for the Comintern in London before returning to Moscow, where hewas arrested and killed.


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careful consideration of often confusing political and military developments,as well as of competing claims for POW affiliation. Leidinger and Moritzprovide an excellent account of the formation of international units fromamong Magyar and German prisoners, without exaggerating their overall

historical significance.The hard-pressed Habsburg authorities understandably came under pres-sure to repatriate POWs without excessive delay. (Around 670,000 were re-patriated during the first nine months of 1918 [Leidinger and Moritz, 463].)

At the same time, officials were convinced that POWs who had witnessed theBolshevik revolution would import the new bacillus to the homeland. (Noless widespread were assumptions about the danger posed by Russian POWsof Jewish origin on Austrian soil [ibid., 67].) General Max Ronge, the head ofthe Intelligence Bureau for the Austrian General Staff, took charge of the ar-rangements for identifying Bolshevik sympathizers among the returning pris-oners. He spoke of the need for a moral and sanitary quarantine. In a chillingremark, Ronge called for a thorough examination of [their] heart and con-science, although he also complained that he lacked sufficient personnel tocarry out this exercise as thoroughly as he would have wished.30His measures,which included systematic monitoring of soldiers correspondence, took placeagainst the background of difficult material conditions during 1918, in par-ticular the deterioration of food supplies in Austrias towns and cities. Moritz

draws attention to the interrogation of POWs in the interests of Ostforschung.Ultimately, the rigorous examination process contributed to political un-rest among units of returning POWs; it also troubled progressive public opin-ion in Austria. The examination of these prevalent attitudes and difficultiesis among the most valuable and original sections of the superb monographthat Leidinger and Moritz have authored.31Their emphasis on the politicalsignificance of Heimkehrconfirms the findings of a recent study of the returnand repatriation of refugees from Russian territory to the newly independent

states of Eastern Europe.32

Important issues await further examination. On the internal world ofthe POW camp in World War I there is still much that might be said, forexample, about survival tactics and about the personal relationships forgedin captivity.33 More systematic comparisons might also be fruitful. Some30Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 465, 467. The photograph of Ronge in their bookgives him the appearance of an inoffensive clerk.31 Ibid., 35760, 45657, 47386; Rachamimov, POWs, 8, 13839, 15253. See also Kai-

Uwe Merz, Das Schreckbild: Deutschland und der Bolschewismus 19171921(Berlin: Propylen,1995).32 Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, eds., Homelands: War, Population, and Statehood in EasternEurope and Russia, 19181924(London: Anthem, 2004).33 A pioneering contribution on World War II, still cited in economics textbooks, is R. A.Radford, The Economic Organisation of a POW camp, Economica12 (December 1945):


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attempts at comparison with other regimes are made in the works underconsideration, but only briefly. Pastor and Nachtigal have both suggestedthat, to some extent at least, the prison camps of World War I were a pro-totype for later carceral regimes, such as the GULAGduring World War II.

Rachamimov points out that relatively few POWs were housed in largecamps, such as those in Krasnoiarsk and Berezovka in Siberia, and that mostPOWs could expect to be repatriated rather than systematically mistreated.Thus Rachamimov rejects what he terms the prototype hypothesis (7882,12325). For comparative purposes, however, the issue is not just one of spa-tial organization but of the systemic arrangements for deploying prisonersin the pursuit of economic objectives, without concern for their well-being.From that point of view, the Murmansk railway project belongs to the sameuniverse as the White Sea Canal.34

None of the works under review engages with broader theoretical issuesrelating to institutionalization, governmentality, or population politics. Thereis no mention anywhere of Erving Goffman, nor does Giorgio Agambenmake an appearance.35 Yet, as each of these impressive specialized studiesmakes clear in its own way, the history of incarceration in Eastern Europeduring World War I was closely connected with ideas about managing dis-placed populations, issues that continued to reverberate throughout the 20thcentury.36

School of Arts, Histories, and CulturesUniversity of ManchesterManchester, M13 9PLUnited [email protected]

190210. On personal relations between POWs and Russian women, see Rachamimov,POWs, 151, who suggests that they embodied a kind of Vaterlandsfluchtor flight from thefatherland. Unfortunately, he does not elaborate. Rachamimov also has tantalizing remarksabout sexual identities in POW camps, mentioning all too briefly the memoirs of the Jewishwriter Avigdor Hameiri and the little-known study by Hermann Przgen, Theater ohne Frau:Das Bhnenleben der kriegsgefangenen Deutschen 19141920(Knigsberg: Ost-Europa, 1933).Neither Nachtigal nor Leidinger and Moritz mention this body of work.34 Paul Gregory and Valery Lazarev, eds., The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag(Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2003). Nachtigal notes but does not systematicallycompare Russias treatment of German prisoners in the two world wars.35 Erving Goffman,Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates(New York: Doubleday, 1961); and Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and BareLife(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).36 Amir Weiner, ed., Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population

Management in a Comparative Framework(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).

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