POWs in Austria(-Hungary) 1914-1918: Forced labour and violence

Until the 1990s historians have not been interested in the issue of captivity during World War One. Even now the relevant historiography concerning Austria-Hungary is still dominated by studies on single POW camps. As a rule, such studies are restricted to a more or less limited focus and stress the importance of POW camps on a local level. Overviews of the situation of POWs in the Habsburg Empire are rare. While there is an obvious gap of research in regard of the fate of POWs in the Habsburg Empire during WWI the large number of soldiers in Austro-Hungarian captivity (nearly two million) emphasizes the significance of the topic. Meanwhile, international scientific research has already raised a lot of questions on captivity during the First World War. The results and ongoing discussions show the importance of the issue for the history of WWI as a whole. It is the aim of the project team to take up these questions and consider new approaches in order to examine the situation of POWs in the Danube Monarchy. Thus, historiography on the situation of POWs in Austria-Hungary will be able to reach international standards of research. The examination of POWs` forced labour in the context of a "total war" and its "propaganda campaigns", the collaboration between civilian and military authorities in regard to POW agenda and the treatment of prisoners of war in consideration of an often supposed "brutalization" of warfare in World War One will help to gain further insights into the history of captivity as a whole. The same is to be said about how civil authorities and diplomatic agencies looked at POW policy, estimated and illustrated it (officially and unofficially). The results will lead to further questions and consider the research on violence in wartime, the commemorative culture of Habsburg postwar societies concerning captivity or the debates on war crimes. Moreover, the project will particularly focus on the situation of POWs who were used as forced labourers by the responsible authorities of the so-called "Armee im Felde". There, that means within the combat zones, hostile soldiers had to work despite the regulations of the Hague convention. This issue has been totally neglected by historiography so far. First of all the research team will address views and perspectives of Austro-Hungarian authorities involved in POW agenda, without ignoring relevant objections. Therefore reports of humanitarian organisations, comments of protecting powers or notions of enemy states addressing the situation of POWs in the Habsburg state will be taken into account. The main focus in this project is put on the reconstruction of an "official" or bureaucratic "POW discourse" of k.u.k. authorities including inofficial examinations and discussions. The project team, consisting of historians who already have been concerned with the history of captivity in WWI, will be able to contribute to an international scientific research on World War One by using a broad basis of sources including permanent evaluation of the theoretic-methodological research design.

No additional funding sources recorded.