5 - Inevitable escalation? British and French treatment of forced prisoner labour, 1917–18

Summary

Introduction

As the previous chapter has shown, violence against prisoners in labour companies was a very significant phenomenon in the German army in 1918. However, if prisoner treatment deteriorated badly in the German army, what of the French and the British cases? Did forced labour systems inevitably escalate violent practices against prisoner workers – were the processes revealed in the previous chapter universal? To investigate this further, this chapter will explore, as far as sources permit, the ways in which forced labour developed in Britain and France in 1918. In the British case, the available sources are limited, which necessitates a focus upon how prisoner labour was monitored both in the UK and in prisoner of war labour companies in France. In the French case, the treatment of German prisoner workers in French prisoner of war labour companies will be explored. The French case thus facilitates an assessment of whether it was inevitable, given the totalised battlefield environment where prisoner labour companies worked, that, by 1918, military violence would spread into the prisoner labour company system and that prisoner treatment would deteriorate. Taken together, the two case studies also allow for an examination of how different contextual factors, such as better military resources and particular cultural attitudes towards prisoners within military and civil institutions, influenced divergent outcomes to the German case.