Review Essays Prisoners of War on the Eastern Front during World War I

PETER GATRELL

Hannes Leidinger and Verena Moritz, Gefangenschaft, Revolution, Heimkehr: Die Bedeutung der Kriegsgefangenenproblematik fr die Geschichte des Kommunismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa 19171920 [Captivity, Revolution, Return: The Signicance of the POW Issue for the History of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, 19171920]. 754 pp., illus. Vienna: Bhlau, 2003. ISBN 3205770684. 85.00. Reinhard Nachtigal, Die Murmanbahn: Die Verkehrsanbindung eines kriegswichtigen Hafens und das Arbeitspotential der Kriegsgefangenen [The Murmansk Railroad: A Strategic Ports Integration into the Transportation Network and the Labor Potential of POWs]. 159 pp., illus. Grunbach: Verlag Bernhard Albert Greiner, 2001. ISBN 3935383053. 13.00. Reinhard Nachtigal, Russland und seine sterreichisch-ungarischen Kriegsgefangenen (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 war on the Eastern Front during World War I put me in mind of the old jest that Londoners wait an hour for a bus only to nd that three arrive at once.1 In this
1 Nachtigal, Leidinger, and Moritz have all previously published several articles on this subject, most of them available only in German. See Reinhard Nachtigal, Kriegsgefangene der Habsburgermonarchie in Russland, sterreich in Geschichte und Literatur 40, 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 many aspects relating to the imprisonment of combatants, particularly during World War I, have hitherto been ill served by historians.2 It is not clear why this should be so. Does the neglect imply that imprisonment has been regarded as a calamitous exception rather than the rule? This explanation is not convincing, because so many millions were taken captive during the Great War, particularly on the Eastern Front. Is it because of a shortage of source material? Hardly: these books demonstrate that there is a rich archival and memoir literature at the historians disposal (Leidinger and Moritz, 88108). Is it, perhaps, because the subject draws attention to a human condition that appears to be the shameful antithesis of heroic military endeavor?3 The relatively large literature on the Czech Legion seems to be the exception that proves the rule. That is, where POWs demonstrated traditional military qualities of collective ghting spirit, their behavior could safely be incorporated into the narrative of state-building in the interwar years.4 By contrast, it seemed best to draw a veil over more troubling examples of incarceration. Witness the furor that surrounded the appearance of La Grande Illusion (1937), with its evocation of the unexpected human bonds that could be forged in captivity between men of the same class.5 Alon Rachamimov suggests, in addition, that those POW memoirs that dwelled on routine existence rather than escape attempts held only limited appeal among the postwar reading public in Central and Western Europe, which was fed a diet of riveting battle narratives (226). It was much less interesting to read about people for whom time stood still. A much broader consideration is that prisoners of war, like other displaced persons, are difcult 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 Kriegsgefangenenwesen 1914 bis 1920, sterreichische Osthefte 41, 1 (1999): 83106; and Hannes Leidinger, Gefangenschaft und Heimkehr: Gedanken zu Voraussetzungen und Perspektiven eines neuen Forschungsbereiches, Zeitgeschichte 25, 1112 (1998): 33342. 2 Jonathan Vance, ed., Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment (Santa Barbara, CA: ABCClio, 2000). Vance is also the author of Objects of Concern: Canadian Prisoners of War through the Twentieth Century (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994). See also Rdiger Overmans, ed., In der Hand des Feindes: Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Cologne: Bhlau, 1999). 3 The complex issues at stake are sometimes revealed in popular cinematic representations of conditions and behavior in prisoner-of-war camps. The genre of POW movies covers a broad spectrum 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 Illusion when they entered Paris in 1940. It was then captured by the Soviet army and taken to Moscow. Renoir himself believed that it had 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 reecting on hidden aspects of combatants experiences, such as solidarity, personal and group identity, and the psychological consequences of connement. Important issues of this kind, as well as problems relating to humanitarian intervention, repatriation, and reintegration into civilian society, are only just beginning to receive the attention they deserve. The history of World War I offers an opportunity to reect on wartime experiences of incarceration, on the process of repatriation and on the politicization of POWs, themes that are explicitly brought together in the work of Leidinger and Moritz.7 To be sure, historians have paid some attention to issues relating to prisoners and politics during the Great War.8 Gerald H. Davis is the author of several informative articles.9 He has tapped a rich vein of memoir literature, including the famous work by Elsa Brndstrm as well as POW memoirs and semi-ctional accounts such as those by Erich Dwinger.10 These books
7 It is disappointing that Nachtigal, Russland, is the only book to include any maps to guide the 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 stran Tsentralnoi 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 gody pervoi mirovoi voiny, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 4 (1996): 6578; and Inge Pardon and Waleri Shurawljow, eds., Lager, Front oder Heimat: Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in Sowjetrussland 1917 bis 1920, 2 vols. (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1994). See Leidingers historiographical survey in Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 6988. 9 Gerald H. Davis, Prisoners of War as Social Communities in Russia: Krasnoiarsk, 1914 1921, East European Quarterly 21, 2 (1987): 14763; Davis, Deutsche Kriegsgefangene im Ersten Weltkrieg in Russland, Militrgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 31, 1 (1982): 3749; Davis, National Red Cross Societies and Prisoners of War in Russia, 19141918, Journal of Contemporary History 28, 1 (1993): 3152; and Davis, The Life of Prisoners of War in Russia, 19141921, in Essays on World War I: Origins and Prisoners of War, ed. Samuel R.Williamson and Peter Pastor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 16396. Nor were soldiers alone liable to be incarcerated. The forced incarceration of around 14,000 German civilians, including women and children captured during the Russian campaign in East 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 The Deportation of East-Prussian Civilians to Russia. 10 Elsa Brndstrm, Among Prisoners of War in Russia and Siberia (London: Hutchinson, 1929). This book was rst published in German in 1920, with a Swedish edition in 1921. Brndstrm was the daughter of the Swedish ambassador to Russia and worked on behalf of the Swedish Red Cross until 1920. Edwin Erich Dwinger, Die Armee hinter Stacheldraht: Das sibirische Tagebuch (Jena: E. Diedrich, 1929). Other memoirs include Magdalene von Steincker, Die deutsche Schwester in Sibirien: Aufzeichnungen von einer Reise durch die sibirischen Gefangenschaftlager vom Ural bis Wladiwostok von Schwester Magdalene von Walsleben (Berlin: n.p., 1919); AnneMarie Wenzel, Deutsche Kraft in Fesseln: Fnf Jahre deutscher Schwesterdienst in Sibirien, 1916 1921 (Potsdam: n.p., 1931); Gustav Krist, Prisoner in the Forbidden Land (London: Faber and Faber, 1938; rst pub. Vienna, 1936); and Alexandrine Uexkll, Aus einem Schwesternleben

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and articles demonstrate that there is no shortage of material, albeit largely emanating from ofcers and well-placed relief workers.11 Publication of documentary evidence in German began in earnest with the works by Hahn and Brndstrm, as well as memoirs by former prisoners of war.12 The Viennabased Bundesvereinigung ehemaliger sterreichischer Kriegsgefangener (B.e..K.) published Der Plenny (sic) from 1924 through 1937surely worth a separate study in its own rightand created an archive of captivity in 1927.13 Nor is there a dearth of material on the management of relief efforts. Although Elsa Brndstrms papers were destroyed during World War II, rich source material exists in Russian, German, and Austrian archives, as well as in the National Archives of the United States.14 During World War I, around 2.5 million soldiers from the AustroHungarian army, as well as some 200,000 German soldiers, entered Russian captivity.15 It hardly needs stating that becoming a prisoner took on enormous signicance in personal and professional terms.16 In the case of the soldiers who 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, 683 92, 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 Press of Florida, 1995). See also Ycel Yanikdag, Ottoman Prisoners of War in Russia, 19141922, Journal of Contemporary History 34, 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 russischen Ketten: Einige Erlebnisse (Munich: n.p., 1921); and Rudolf Stenzel, Kriegsgefangenschaft in Sibirien (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 bonds that 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 has consulted reports by State Department ofcials who represented the interests of POWs in Russia. 15 Some sources suggest a gure of two million; the higher gure takes account of those who were 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 surrender made sense only when soldiers felt it safer to lay down their weapons than to continue to ght. He suggests that POWs were useful to their captors as a source of intelligence, as a source of labor, as hostages, and as an inducement to others to give themselves up. But he does not discuss the nature of imprisonment, its psychological impact, or the process of repatriation. Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1999), chap. 13, The Captors Dilemma.

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sentiment; desertion and disloyalty went hand in hand. Rachamimov disputes this view, arguing instead that most prisoners were captured during largescale Russian military actions. He notes that Czech, Slovak, Croat, Serbian, Ukrainian, and other soldiers continued to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army. Nachtigal conrms that few Austro-Hungarian troops gave themselves up at an early opportunity. Although some Serbian troops quickly went over to the enemy and enlisted in the Serbian Volunteers, this was a relatively isolated instance (Nachtigal, Russland, 3843; Rachamimov, 11518). All the same, the threat of disaffection was taken seriously by ofcials in the Austrian War Ministry, who hurriedly established a special political section (Section 10) to monitor the political opinions of prisoners in Russian hands, particularly those of Czech and Polish origin. Having taken thousands of Austrian prisoners during the 1914 campaign, the Russian authorities made emergency provision for holding them in Kiev (Darnitsa), Penza, Kazan, and later Turkestan. Although the registration of prisoners according to nationality was often haphazard, ethnicity began to be part of the equation. Thus Slav POWs were to be interned no farther east than Omsk, while Germans and Magyars could expect to be sent to Siberia. Once installed in camps, POWs may have been incarcerated in barracks according to ethnicity, but according to Nachtigal, this was for pragmatic reasons rather than a matter of principle; that is, tsarist ofcials regarded POWs as potential workers, whom it was easier to manage if they espoused a common culture. Nachtigal nds little support for the view that the tsarist army planned to deploy Austro-Hungarian prisoners in national units against the Habsburg empire (Russland, 26, 51). Rachamimov agrees that the tsarist military considered enlisting POWs gingerly and half-heartedly (116; see also Leidinger and Moritz, 21728). According to Nachtigal, the tsarist state saw the growing number of rank-and-le POWs as a valuable resource to be deployed in the war economy.17 Some prisoners worked as farm laborers and to a lesser extent as miners in the Donbas and Krivoi Rog, but most were put to work as forced laborers on construction of canals and particularly on the frenetic railway building program. Here Nachtigals short but thorough study of the construction of the Murmansk railway paints a bleak picture. Designed in 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 and Kazakhs from the punitive battalions created in 1916, following the uprising in Central Asia. Chinese, Karelian, and Russian laborers were also employed. The Russian military picked out German and Hungarian prisoners and tended to exempt Slav prisoners from this backbreaking and dangerous
It should be remembered that ofcers enjoyed privileges laid down in the Hague Convention of 1907. See Rachamimov, POWs, 7374.
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work.18 Nachtigal draws attention to the grueling conditions under which these men labored, with a dearth of appropriate accommodation, drinking water, food, and medical care. Scurvy and (in the summer months) malaria were recurring problems.19 Despite 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 of war died while working on this massive project. The tsarist authorities at rst rejected complaints made by the German and Habsburg governments, citing the fact that Russian POWs were concurrently employed on railway construction in Serbia, but they belatedly agreed to abandon the use of prison labor. The line was nally completed a year after schedule, on the very eve of the February Revolution, too late to alleviate Russias supply problems.20 Nachtigal recounts the visits made by the German, Austrian, Danish, and Swedish Red Cross and other delegations to POW camps in the Russian interior.21 Among the remorseless detail of itineraries and contacts, he makes the valid point that such visits need to be understood in the context of reciprocal visits made by Russian representatives to German and Austrian camps, as a result of which basic principles of mutual humanitarian care were established. These principles were, however, difcult to implement. The tsarist government struggled to cope with the vast numbers of men who needed food, fuel, and medical attention to minimize the spread of infectious disease. This was largely a function of inadequate resources, but it also reected bureaucratic rivalries. Nachtigal notes the turf war between Prince Aleksandr Oldenburgskii, head of the Evacuation-Sanitation Service, and the new public organizations in the shape of the Union of Towns and the Union of Zemstvos, a conict replicated in the emerging refugee crisis.22 Important issues emerge in these histories, sometimes obliquely, relating to the representation of experience in POW narratives. These narratives suggest that POWs were much more intent on creating a story of capture that enabled them to hold on to their honor and minimize their sense of
See the remarks of General Alekseev in a letter to General Beliaev, 13 June 1916, cited in Nachtigal, Die Murmanbahn, 47. 19 An important source on conditions on the Murmansk railway is a report prepared in July 1916 by 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 Russian POWs 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 fortunes. Where shame intruded in their narratives, it drew attention to unavoidable constraints over matters of personal hygiene, exposing prisoners to the risk of typhus. Outside observers were interested in POW psychology. Thus Elsa Brndstrm depicts prisoners both as victims of despair and as possessed of indomitable energy inherent in highly developed and educated races. Their long journey east provided them with fragments [that] created a feeling of something alien and unintelligible. In captivity they fell victim to that curse of captivityenforced idleness. On the other hand, work was undertaken with an eye to the future in the homeland. In Brndstrms powerful account, educated prisoners were able to draw on greater reserves of mental strength than those who lacked intellectual hunger.23 Other sources conrm that imprisonment could be portrayed as adventure rather than torment. Hans Kohn, an ofcer, read avidly, learned new languages, and made ethnographic observations.24 Edwin Dwinger adopted a romantic tone in describing his experiences in the company of Siberian peasants on the shores of Lake Baikal. So, too, did the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer, for whom wartime captivity was a voyage of self-discovery (Rachamimov, 109; Leidinger and Moritz, 92). Some POWs married Russian women.25 Others dismissed Russia as a barren and uncivilized land. Not surprisingly, then, the experience of incarceration produced very different outcomes at an individual level. The POW camps in Russia brought together people as different as the humanist scholar Hans Kohn and the odious Roland Freisler, who subsequently achieved notoriety as Hitlers hanging judge but initially joined the German Communist Party. Wartime captivity also radicalized the Hungarian doctor Emil Sebestyn, better known as Bla Kun. In general, according to Brndstrm, all men faced inward conicts seldom experienced in the ordinary routine of daily life. The conventions of civilian society had given way to the excitement of battle, but this in turn yielded to boredom and hopelessness. 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 circumstances. This made imprisonment a test of human endurance, particularly as material conditions progressively deteriorated. But Murmansk was not typical of the conditions in which most POWs labored. Nachtigal shows how conditions for other POWsfor example, in the southern provinces of the empirewere relatively benign. In one of the most interesting sections of his book on Austro-Hungarian POWs, Nachtigal shows how during 1916 and
Brndstrm, Among Prisoners of War, 38, 42, 61, 11719. Hans Kohn, Living in a World Revolution: My Encounters with History (New York: Simon and 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 arrangements to escape from factories where they were employed. One soldier found that he could buy civilian clothes with the extra earnings he obtained following 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 sufcient to account for the readiness of Magyar prisoners to espouse radical political beliefs. Alon Rachamimov follows Ivan Vlgyes, Peter Pastor, and Ivo Banac in minimizing the signicance of Russian attempts to subvert the loyalty of Austro-Hungarian prisoners.27 He argues that they were much more likely to have been disillusioned by the lack of support they were offered by their own state during their incarceration in Russia. The same radicalization occurred among Russian POWs in German captivity.28 This theme is pursued with great vigor by Leidinger and Moritz. Of particular interest in their work is the issue of return (Heimkehr), which they relate to the Bolshevik project to forge a pan-European revolutionary movement. They paint a picture of administrative chaos in Russia during 191718 as the existing agencies for POW relief and repatriation struggled to survive and cope with displaced persons scattered across the disintegrating tsarist empire. Leidinger and Moritz examine the careers of Comintern functionaries such as Arnot Kolman as well as better-known Communists including Bla Kun, Tibor Szamuely, and Ferenc Mnnich, who found themselves together in a POW camp in Tomsk.29 They describe the factional inghting among POW radicals, some of whom threw in their lot with the Bolshevik Red Guards while others were committed to non-class militias (271). The discussion of individual experiences of captivity is closely interwoven with a
Ivan Vlgyes, Hungarian Prisoners of War in Russia, 19161919, Cahiers du monde russe et sovitique 14 (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. Pastor suggested 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 Habsburg empire. 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 Role of 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 be made of the subsequent careers of two other major gures in East European communism: Imre Nagy also spent time in a Siberian POW camp, as did Josep Broz (Tito). Szamuely was an uncle of the migr historian, also named Tibor Szamuely (192572), whose father worked as a clandestine agent for the Comintern in London before returning to Moscow, where he was arrested and killed.
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careful consideration of often confusing political and military developments, as well as of competing claims for POW afliation. Leidinger and Moritz provide an excellent account of the formation of international units from among Magyar and German prisoners, without exaggerating their overall historical signicance. The hard-pressed Habsburg authorities understandably came under pressure to repatriate POWs without excessive delay. (Around 670,000 were repatriated during the rst nine months of 1918 [Leidinger and Moritz, 463].) At the same time, ofcials were convinced that POWs who had witnessed the Bolshevik revolution would import the new bacillus to the homeland. (No less widespread were assumptions about the danger posed by Russian POWs of Jewish origin on Austrian soil [ibid., 67].) General Max Ronge, the head of the Intelligence Bureau for the Austrian General Staff, took charge of the arrangements for identifying Bolshevik sympathizers among the returning prisoners. He spoke of the need for a moral and sanitary quarantine. In a chilling remark, Ronge called for a thorough examination of [their] heart and conscience, although he also complained that he lacked sufcient personnel to carry out this exercise as thoroughly as he would have wished.30 His measures, which included systematic monitoring of soldiers correspondence, took place against the background of difcult material conditions during 1918, in particular 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 unrest among units of returning POWs; it also troubled progressive public opinion in Austria. The examination of these prevalent attitudes and difculties is among the most valuable and original sections of the superb monograph that Leidinger and Moritz have authored.31 Their emphasis on the political signicance of Heimkehr conrms the ndings of a recent study of the return and repatriation of refugees from Russian territory to the newly independent states of Eastern Europe.32 Important issues await further examination. On the internal world of the POW camp in World War I there is still much that might be said, for example, about survival tactics and about the personal relationships forged in captivity.33 More systematic comparisons might also be fruitful. Some
Leidinger and Moritz, Gefangenschaft, 465, 467. The photograph of Ronge in their book gives him the appearance of an inoffensive clerk. 31 Ibid., 35760, 45657, 47386; Rachamimov, POWs, 8, 13839, 15253. See also KaiUwe Merz, Das Schreckbild: Deutschland und der Bolschewismus 19171921 (Berlin: Propylen, 1995). 32 Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, eds., Homelands: War, Population, and Statehood in Eastern Europe 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, Economica 12 (December 1945):
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attempts at comparison with other regimes are made in the works under consideration, but only briey. Pastor and Nachtigal have both suggested that, to some extent at least, the prison camps of World War I were a prototype for later carceral regimes, such as the GULAG during World War II. Rachamimov points out that relatively few POWs were housed in large camps, such as those in Krasnoiarsk and Berezovka in Siberia, and that most POWs 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 spatial organization but of the systemic arrangements for deploying prisoners in the pursuit of economic objectives, without concern for their well-being. From that point of view, the Murmansk railway project belongs to the same universe as the White Sea Canal.34 None of the works under review engages with broader theoretical issues relating to institutionalization, governmentality, or population politics. There is no mention anywhere of Erving Goffman, nor does Giorgio Agamben make an appearance.35 Yet, as each of these impressive specialized studies makes clear in its own way, the history of incarceration in Eastern Europe during World War I was closely connected with ideas about managing displaced populations, issues that continued to reverberate throughout the 20th century.36 School of Arts, Histories, and Cultures University of Manchester Manchester, M13 9PL United Kingdom peter.gatrell@manchester.ac.uk

190210. On personal relations between POWs and Russian women, see Rachamimov, POWs, 151, who suggests that they embodied a kind of Vaterlandsucht or ight from the fatherland. Unfortunately, he does not elaborate. Rachamimov also has tantalizing remarks about sexual identities in POW camps, mentioning all too briey the memoirs of the Jewish writer 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 systematically compare 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 Bare Life (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).