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The dilemmas of protecting civilians in occupied territory: the precursory example of World War I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2012

Annette Becker
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Abstract

Advances in the law of Geneva and the law of The Hague did not remain a dead letter during the World War I, but this was essentially with regard to the wounded and prisoners of war. Those categories of persons were better protected than civilians by treaty-based humanitarian law, which was still in its infancy. Although the ideal of humanity was realized on a large scale thanks to the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and myriad other charitable, denominational, or non-denominational organizations, none of the belligerents hesitated to infringe and violate the law whenever they could. The various occupied populations, on the Western and Eastern fronts and in the Balkans, served as their guinea pigs and were their perfect victims.

Keywords

occupationoccupied territoriesWorld War Itotal warICRCciviliansreprisalshostagescivilian internment
Type
Articles
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 94 , Issue 885: Occupation , March 2012 , pp. 117 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2012 

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Footnotes

*

The author sincerely thanks Vincent Bernard and Daniel Palmieri, who read a previous version of this article and made highly pertinent suggestions.

This article draws in particular on the author's previous works: Oubliés de la Grande Guerre: Humanitaire et culture de guerre, populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre, Noêsis Pluriel/Hachette, Paris, 1998 and 2003; and Les cicatrices rouges, 14–18: France et Belgique occupées, Fayard, Paris, 2010. The following major sources were also consulted: Philippe Nivet, La France occupée, 1914–1918, Armand-Colin, Paris, 2011; numerous works by Sophie de Schaepdrijver, Laurence van Ypersel, and Emmanuel Debruyne on Belgium; Olga Pichon-Bobrinskoy, ‘Action publique, action humanitaire: les zemstvos et les municipalités’, in Cahiers du Monde russe, Vol. 46, No. 4 (L'invention d'une politique humanitaire: les réfugiés russes et le Zemgor), October–December 2005, pp. 673–698.

References

1 The first ‘modern’ concentration camps were set up by the Spanish in Cuba in 1896, followed by the British during the Boer War. They were first used worldwide – for foreign civilians deemed by the belligerents to pose a threat on their home territory and for occupied civilians – between 1914 and 1918. Becker, Annette, ‘La genèse des camps de concentration: Cuba, Guerre des Boers, Grande Guerre’, in Revue d'Histoire de la Shoah, No. 189, July–December 2008, pp. 101–129Google Scholar.

2 Hassner, Pierre, ‘De guerre et paix à violence et intervention: les contextes politiques et techniques passent, les dilemmes moraux demeurent’, in Moore, Jonathan (ed.), Des choix difficiles: les dilemmes moraux de l'humanitaire, Gallimard, Paris, 1999, p. 23Google Scholar (ICRC translation).

3 ‘L'Agence internationale des prisonniers de guerre’, 15 August, and letter from the president of the ICRC, Gustave Ador, to the German Red Cross, December 1915, in Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, October 1915, pp. 497–498 (ICRC translation).

4 The Hague Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land, 1899, Preamble.

5 Ibid.

6 Ticehurst, Rupert, ‘The Martens Clause and the laws of armed conflict’, in International Review of the Red Cross, No. 317, March–April 1997, p. 133Google Scholar, citing Kalshoven, Frits, Constraints on the Waging of War, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, 1987, p. 14Google Scholar. See also Pustogarov, Vladimir, ‘Fyodor Fyodorovich Martens (1845–1909): a humanist of modern times’, in International Review of the Red Cross, No. 312, 1996, p. 334Google Scholar.

7 Human rights had yet to take shape, but were emerging in parallel. See Marco Sassòli, ‘Le droit international humanitaire, une lex specialis par rapport aux droits humains?’, in Andreas, Auer, Alexandre, Flückiger, and Michel, Hottelier (eds), Les droits de l'homme et la Constitution: Études en l'honneur du Professeur Giorgio Malinverni, Schulthess, Geneva, 2007, pp. 375–395Google Scholar.

8 Campanelli, Danio, ‘The law of military occupation put to the test of human rights law’, in International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 90, No. 871, September 2008, p. 665CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 1907 Hague Regulations, Art. 43.

10 And, in similar fashion, the Vatican. In 1917, Benedict XV made a stirring appeal for peace that was incomprehensible to any of the belligerents, including fervent Catholics.

11 Dr Ferrières, Frédéric, Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, No. 192, October 1917, p. 413Google Scholar.

12 Numerous illustrations on postcards in the collection of the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

13 Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, April 1915, p. 170 (ICRC translation).

14 Ibid., p. 275.

15 The word ‘deportation’, borrowed from the classical Latin deportatio, ‘a carrying’ or ‘conveying away’, ‘a transportation’ ( Lewis, Charlton T. and Short, Charles, A Latin Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879Google Scholar, consulted on www.perseus.tufts.edu), took on the meaning of deportation or exile in Low Latin. The modern meaning combines the two, since it refers to ‘the removal from a country of an alien whose presence is unlawful or prejudicial’ (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, Merriam-Webster Inc., 2008).

16 ICRC Archives, 1917.

17 ICRC Archives, ‘Introduction sommaire à la question concernant les civils’, September 1917, p. 1, cited in Stibbe, Matthew, ‘The internment of civilians by belligerent states during the First World War and the response of the International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC’, in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. l4, No. 1, 2006, p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar (emphasis added).

18 Article signed ‘X’, diary entry pasted into the Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix Rouge, 18 March 1915 (Collections of the ICRC Library, Geneva) (ICRC translation).

19 Desson, G., Souvenirs d'un otage: de Hirson à Rastatt, Bloud et Gay, Paris, 1916, p. 60Google Scholar (ICRC translation).

20 Le Pautremat, Pascal, La politique musulmane de la France au XXe siècle: de l'Hexagone aux terres d'Islam: espoirs, réussites, échecs, Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 2003, p. 81Google Scholar.

21 Letter from Major Hoffman, 20 June 1915, Nord Departmental Archives, 9R515 (ICRC translation).

22 The civilians should not, however, be seen solely as the hapless victims of states and occupation armies. They, too, were broadly self-mobilized by the demonization of the enemy, which, by pushing them to resist, added another loop to the cycle of repression.

23 Clémence Leroy, ‘Historial de la Grande Guerre’, handwritten diary, 28–29 December 1917 (ICRC translation).

24 See, generally, Winter, Jay and Robert, Jean-Louis (eds), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1918, Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 ‘Journal de David Hirsch’, in Becker, Annette (ed.), Journaux de combattants et civils de la France du Nord dans la Grande Guerre, Septentrion, Paris, 1998Google Scholar (ICRC translation).

26 Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix Rouge, No. 192, October 1917, p. 413.

27 La Baïonnette, 1916, drawings by Henriot.

28 Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Samuel Dutton, 24 November 1915, available at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50C17F6385B17738DDDA80894DA415B858DF1D3 (last visited 2 May 2012).

29 Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1969Google Scholar, cited in Fassin, Didier, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, transl. Rachel Gomme, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, and London, 2012, p. 1Google Scholar.

30 D. Fassin, above note 29, p. 3.