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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

British Concentration Camps?


Noyes16

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19 hours ago, TGM said:

 

My understanding is that people, including ministers at the time viewed the use of camps of detention as 'barbarous'. IMHO, blaming the inhabitants/internees, or comparing death rates with x, y or z, or extremes such as that practiced by German National Socialists of the 1940s seems, well, facile!.

I'm sure people did regard them as barbarous. I know that when the Germans started putting British civilians into interment camps (Ruhleben et al), the people concerned were utterly amazed. There was one British couple here who had arranged to move to Holland - via Germany, at the end of 1915, and couldn't understand why they kept on being delayed. Then they were swept up into Ruhleben. They were horrified. After all, wars between nations had not until then or not long before, been regarded as something that didn't concern ordinary civilians.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Does anyone know what percentage of German POWs died in captivity?  Because if, and I agree it is indeed somewhat facile to do so, that number with the % mortality in Boer War concentration camps, we might see whether there was a harsh regime in place?  Ish...

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Lots of info

 

here

 

"Both military and civilians prisoners experienced relatively low death rates. The most common cause of death consisted of injuries sustained on the battlefield. In addition, hundreds of prisoners died as a result of Influenza outbreaks which affected a series of camps during 1918 and 1919.The German military cemetery at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire is the final resting place of some 2,140 prisoners who died in Britain during the Great War, approximately 800 of whom were civilian internees, most of them victims of Spanish Flu."

 

"An overall assessment of the life of internees in Britain between 1914 and 1919 would describe it as relatively comfortable. Instances of deliberate mistreatment were rare."

 

Pedants may wish to consider any difference between PoWs and (civilian) internees. Personally I like to try to differentiate between the two.

 

 

Moonraker

 

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