Susan Barton - Internment in Switzerland during the First World War

Internment in Switzerland during the First World War

Also available from Bloomsbury

Internment during the Second World War: A Comparative Study of Great Britain and the USA, Rachel Pistol

The Great War: Myth and Memory, Dan Todman

Internment in Switzerland during the First World War

Susan Barton

Contents

I would like to thank Switzerland Tourism in London, Timothy Nelson, Dokumentationsbibliotek Davos; Nicole Eller Risi, Talmuseum Engelberg; Pascale Simond, Muse de Montreux; Patricia and Mark Esling; Guy Girardet.

Studies of tourism history either come to an abrupt end with the outbreak of war in 1914 or skip over the four years of conflict between the belle poque and what is termed the inter-war years. Research into the history of the Swiss tourism industry revealed that visitor numbers had increased steadily since the 1880s in the increasingly fashionable alpine resorts. Communities and hoteliers had invested heavily in capital infrastructure projects, including new hotels and sanatoria, to meet the demands of both health and pleasure seekers. The 1900s saw even greater growth in visitors as winter sports began to attract a wider section of the European elite and hotel owners extended or upgraded their facilities, often with the aid of loans, with the result that the year 1913 to 1914 brought record numbers of visitors to Switzerland, over 2 million annually, about 24 per cent of them British. This raised the question of how the tourism industry survived the war and what did those involved in the business do during the years when there were few or no visitors.

In the Dokumentationsbibliothek in Davos, newspapers produced for visitors who remained there during the war years told of the preparations for and arrival there of wounded German prisoners from France during January 1916. Simultaneously, French prisoners were also arriving in Switzerland from German prisons. Curiosity aroused, the research for this book about the internment of wounded prisoners of war in Switzerland eventually followed. What was discovered was an unusually positive and little-known First World War story, a contrast to the plethora of works focusing on the tragic waste of human life, the causes of the war, its conduct, military history, the home front and individual biographies. Switzerland is an interesting case to study as it demonstrates the impact of the First World War on a neutral state and the humanitarian role such nations can play.

Although Switzerland was a neutral nation and managed to stay out of the fighting, the country was still adversely affected by the war. War meant rationing and inflation causing hardship, particularly to the poorest. Being dependent on imports of food, coal and other necessities, it was essential to keep cross-border transport routes open. At the beginning of the war Swiss men of military age were mobilized to defend the borders and ensure there was no breach of neutrality by foreign armies crossing into Swiss territory. This suited the belligerents who had no wish to open another front. The mens absence left a serious labour shortage. Horses were requisitioned for military use, including farm horses, making agricultural work difficult for the women and older men left behind to manage alone, particularly at ploughing and harvest time. In the tourism resorts, many hotels were heavily mortgaged and the sudden decline in visitor numbers and associated revenue caused cash-flow problems and debt, although some resorts, like Davos, continued scaled-down summer and winter sports seasons. The possibility of interning wounded prisoners of war transferred from prison camps in the belligerent nations offered them a financial lifeline.

Switzerland had some previous experience of interning foreign military personnel and civilian refugees when, following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, around 87,000 French soldiers of General Bourbakis Eastern French Army crossed the border into Switzerland where they were interned for six weeks.

The subject of this book is not one that has been examined in detail in a monograph-length study. There are few, if any publications that investigate internment of wounded prisoners in Switzerland written in English, French or German. There have been some publications in English that look at themes relating to military prisoners of war and civilian internment in both the First and Second World Wars. None look at their transfer to Switzerland and what happened to them while they were there. What these publications have in common with this work is the emphasis placed on the importance of routine and the role of work, sport, entertainment and the development of individual interests as means of discipline and to maintain morale and mental survival. Oliver Wilkinson, for instance, in British Prisoners of War in First World War Germany writes, Inmates in many camps in Germany exercised semi-autonomous government, and structured their captive world in a way which imitated their previous round of life within an organised military regime. These routines and activities were important to the lives of wounded prisoners interned in Switzerland. Because they were not living in a closed homosocial environment those interned in Switzerland could extend their activities to include civilians and females while sport created opportunities to travel to other communities to compete with other nationalities.

In his paper Diluting Displacement, Letters from Captivity Wilkinson emphasizes how keeping in touch with home, through letters and parcels, helped maintain close relationships with family and wives, contacts that were important Realizing that people at home could not understand what conditions were really like could emphasize isolation rather than bring closeness. For Roper, the mother and son relationship was the primary one for most young working-class soldiers. For internees in Switzerland letters and postcards also played an important role. Postage was free during the early stages of the internment scheme and was enthusiastically made use of. The first thing most internees did on arrival in Switzerland was send a postcard home showing their new address. The postcards were then followed up by letters. As prisoners, men formed close relationships with each other and so picture postcards and letters helped maintain friendships with comrades from whom they were separated. For those interned in Switzerland, family links could be maintained by stronger means than a letter as officers wives, mothers and children could come over to stay in the internment centres for the duration of the war. For the ordinary soldiers on low incomes their wives or mothers could visit for a fortnight, supported by public subscription. The fact that these visits were officially sanctioned and encouraged demonstrates how important maintaining family links was judged to be by both governments and the public.