Labour History

Endnotes

1.Rohan Rivett, Behind Bamboo: An Inside Story of the Japanese Prison Camps,Angus and Robertson,, 1952;Russell Braddon, The Naked Island,Lloyd O’Neil,, 1975;E.E. (Weary) Dunlop, The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop: Java and the Burma-Thailand Railway,Nelson,, 1986;A Town Like Alice,dir. Jack Lee, 1956(also a television mini-series by the same title directed byDavid Stevens in1981);The Bridge on the River Kwai,dir. David Lean, 1957;Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence,dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1983;Paradise Road,dir. Bruce Beresford, 1997. Google Scholar

2.For the scholarly literature on Japanese captivity and the centrality of labour see especiallyHank Nelson, Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon,ABC Enterprises,, 2001;Joan Beaumont, Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity 1941-1945,Allen & Unwin,, 1988;Gavan McCormack andHank Nelson(eds), The Burma-Thailand Railway: Memory and History,Allen & Unwin,, 1993.Gavan Daws examines the experiences of Australian and other POWsinPrisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific,William Morrow,, 1994. For the experience of working Australian nurses in Japanese captivity, seeChristina Twomey, ‘Australian Nurse POWs: Gender, War and Captivity’, Australian Historical Studies, vol.36, no. 124, 2004, pp.255-255. Google Scholar

3.A notable early exception is the section of the official history of Australia’s participation in World War II byA.E. Field, ‘Prisoners of the Germans and the Italians’, inBarton Maughan, Tobruk and El Alamein,Australian War Memorial,, 1966, pp.755-755. Thereafter the POW experience in Europe was generally confined to sections of more general histories, for examplePatsy Adam Smith, Prisoners of War: From Gallipoli to Korea,Penguin,, 1992, andRichard Reidet al., Stolen Years: Australian Prisoners of War,Department of Veterans Affairs and Australian War Memorial,, 2002. A recent attempt to address this deficiency in the Australian historiography isPeter Monteath, POW: Australian Prisoners of War in Hitler’s Reich,Pan Macmillan,, 2011, a work which surveys the POW experiences of both officers and other ranks across all branches of the services. Google Scholar

4.‘General Information about Australian Prisoners of the Japanese’, Australian War Memorial Online Encyclopedia,http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/pow/general_info.asp, accessed August 2012. Google Scholar

5.‘Australian Prisoners of War: Second World War: Prisoners in Europe’, Australian War Memorial Online Encyclopedia,http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/pow/ww2/index.asp, accessed August 2012. Beaumont gives the numbers of death as 265. SeeJoan Beaumont, ‘Prisoners of War’, inPeter Denniset al. (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, 2nded.,Oxford University Press,, 2008, p.429. Google Scholar

6.The most egregious television example is the American productionHogan’s Heroes,CBS Productions, 1965-1971; the theme of escape dominates movies such asThe Colditz Story,dir. Ivan Foxwell, 1955;The Great Escape,dir. John Sturgess, 1963;The Wooden Horse,dir. Jack Lee, 1950;Von Ryan’s Express,dir. Mark Robson, 1965. Google Scholar

7.S.P. Mackenzie, The Colditz Myth: The Real Story of POW Life in Nazi Germany,Oxford University Press,, 2004. Google Scholar

8.A noteworthy but unscholarly attempt to address the issue of work as it affected British POWs – a category which German authorities understood to include Commonwealth POWs such as Australians – isSean Longden, Hitler’s British Slaves: British and Commonwealth POWs in German Industry 1939-1945,Arris,, 2005. Two scholarly works on the British POW experience devote chapters to work; seeMackenzie, The Colditz Myth, pp.193-193, andAdrian Gilbert, POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe, 1939-1945,John Murray,, 2006. The latter heads a chapter with the words ‘Forced Labour‘ and surveys mainly English work experiences, though without integrating German sources or perspectives. Arieh Kochavi in his study of the international diplomatic dimensions of British and American captivity in Germany devotes some sections to the inspection regime inArbeitskommandos(work detachments) and the diplomatic consequences of concerns expressed by the Protecting Power and the Red Cross over alleged breaches of the Geneva Convention; seeArieh J. Kochavi, Confronting Captivity: Britain and the United States and their POWs in Nazi Germany,University of North Carolina Press,, 2005, pp.58-58.Neville Wylie, Barbed Wire Diplomacy: Britain, Germany, and the Politics of Prisoners of War, 1939-1945 Oxford,, 2010. As its title suggests, Wylie’s book is devoted to the international diplomatic dimensions of POWs. This extends only in small part to negotiations over the use of labour, working conditions and alleged breaches of the relevant paragraphs in the Geneva Convention. See, for example, pp.20-20, 174. Vourkoutiosis’s study is similarly focussed on high politics and diplomacy rather than the experiences of POWs themselves; see Vasilis Vourkoutiosis, Prisoners of War and the German High Command: The British and American Experience,Palgrave Macmillan,, 2003. Making extensive use ofOberkommando der Wehrmachtand Red Cross archival material, it devotes a section of a chapter to‘Labour and Finance’pp.109-109. See alsoDavid Rolf, Prisoners of the Reich: Germany’s Captives, 1939-1945,Leo Cooper,, 1988, pp.62-62. Google Scholar

9.Rosalind Hearder, ‘Memory, Methodology, and Myth: Some of the Challenges of Writing Australian Prisoner of War History’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, no. 40, 2007, available online athttp://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j40/hearder.asp, accessed August 2012. Google Scholar

10.Statistics extracted from Beaumont,‘Prisoners of War’, p.429. Google Scholar

11.The full text of the Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, 27 July 1929, with its 97 articles, is available in the collection of international treaties and documents held by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at:http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/305?OpenDocument, accessed August 2012. Google Scholar

12.Ibid.Article 31 specifically stated, ‘Work done by prisoners of war shall have no direct connection with the operations of the war. In particular, it is forbidden to employ prisoners in the manufacture or transport of arms or munitions of any kind, or on the transport of material destined for combatant units’. Google Scholar

13.Rolf, Prisoners of the Reich, p.63. Google Scholar

15.Monteath, POW, p.356. Google Scholar

16.Rüdiger Overmans,‘Die Kriegsgefangenenpolitik des Dritten Reiches 1939 bis 1945’, inJörg Echternkamp(ed.), Das deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Band 9. Zweiter Halbband. Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung,Deutsche Verlagsanstalt,, 2005, p.788. Google Scholar

17.Overmans, ‘Die Kriegsgefangenenpolitik des Dritten Reiches’, p.840. Google Scholar

18.Leslie LeSoeuf, To War Without a Gun,Artlook,, 1980. Google Scholar

19.Order of the 40thCorps Headquarters on the subject of collecting and guarding booty and the concentration of captives 1 May 1941, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (hereafter BA-MA) XLAK, 11652. InYoav Gelber, ‘Paletinian POWs in German Captivity’, Yad Vashem Studies 14(1981), pp.89-89. Available online via Shoah Resource Centre,www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206565.pdf, p.7, accessed August 2012. Google Scholar

20.Gelber, ‘Paletinian POWs’, p.8(online version). Google Scholar

21.Reginald Worthington, video-testimony,Australians at War Video Archive(hereafter AAWFA). Google Scholar

22.Arthur Jilbert Marshall, The Trials and Tribulations of POW Life, diary manuscript,archival collection of former POW Ron Zwar,(hereafter Zwar collection). Google Scholar

23.Roy Douglas Heron, Statutory Declaration, 19July2001,Zwar collection. Google Scholar

24.Arthur Jilbert Marshall, The Trials and Tribulations of POW Life, diary manuscript,Zwar collection. Google Scholar

25.Roy E.L. East, POW Experiences,Zwar collection. Google Scholar

26.Charlie Parrott, Australians at War Video Archive;Charlie Parrott, An Aussie Nobody: The Story of an Ordinary Man in Extraordinary Circumstances,published by the author,, 1997, p.50. Google Scholar

27.Field, ‘Prisoners of the Germans and Italians’, p.761. Google Scholar

28.SX8622 Milbank J. 2/8thField Ambulance, Zwar collection. Google Scholar

29.Edwin N. Broomhead, Barbed Wire in the Sunset,The Book Depot,, 1944, pp.56-56. Google Scholar

30.Ibid., p.56. Google Scholar

31.Ibid., p.58. Google Scholar

32.W.E.H. (Bill) Cousins, A Lot of Fun in My Life! Memories of W.E.H. (Bill) Cousins,POD Centre,, 2002, pp.110-110. Google Scholar

33.SeeMonteath, POW, pp.187-187. Google Scholar

34.On these factors influencing varying treatments of different nationalities among the POW population see especiallyRüdiger Overmans, ‘German Prisoner of War Policy in World War II’, inBernard Mees andSamuel P. Koehne(eds), Terror, War, Tradition: Studies in European History,Australian Humanities Press,, 2007, pp.171-171. Google Scholar

35.Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century,Vintage,, 2000, p.168. Google Scholar

36.Overmans, ‘Die Kriegsgefangenenpolitik des Deutschen Reiches’, p.810. Google Scholar

37.Mazower, Dark Continent, pp.154-154. Google Scholar

38.Gerald H. Davis, ‘Prisoners of War in Twentieth-Century War Economies’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol.12, no. 4, 1977, p.628. Google Scholar

39.Werner Borgsen andKlaus Volland, Stalag X B Sandbostel,Temmen,, 1991, p.56. Google Scholar

41.James Wright,The Lantern of Hope,, 1991, National Archives of Australia AWM MSS 1586. Google Scholar

43.Charles Robinson, Journey into Captivity,Australian War Memorial,, 1991, p.120. Google Scholar

44.Ibid. Google Scholar

45.Ibid., p.121. Google Scholar

46.Ibid., p.123. Google Scholar

47.Charles Raymond Willoughby, I Was There,Brewarrina and District Historical Society,, 1994, p.40. Google Scholar

48.Edith Petschnigg, Von der Front aufs Feld: Britische Kriegsgefangene in der Steiermark 1941-1945,Selbstverlag des Vereins zur Förderung der Forschung von Folgen nach Konfl ikten und Kriegen,, 2003, p.53. Google Scholar

49.Albert Gibb, The War Years1939-1945,Zwar collection. Google Scholar

53.Rolf, Prisoners of the Reich, p.64. Google Scholar

54.Kochavi, Confronting Captivity, p.60. Google Scholar

55.Statutory Declaration byArthur Leslie Leggett, Bassendean, 16August2001,Zwar collection. Google Scholar

56.Unpublished statement byNorman Tuckwell,Zwar collection. Google Scholar

57.Roy E.L. East, POW Experiences,Zwar collection. Google Scholar

58.Kochavi, Confronting Captivity, p.63. Google Scholar

60.Rolf, Prisoners of the Reich, pp.67-67. Google Scholar

62.Alex J.R. Barnett, Hitler’s Digger Slaves: Caught in the Web of Axis Labour Camps,Australian Military History Publications,, 2001, p.132. Google Scholar

63.Monteath, POW, p.356. Google Scholar

65.‘The Foreign Worker in Germany: 18 Supplement 1.5.43’, Conditions of Labour in Prisoners of War Camps 1943, TNA FO 916/520. Google Scholar

67.S. Slodash, Be-Kavley ha-Shevi,, 1946, p.177, cited inYoav Gelber, ‘Palestinian POWs’, p.23(online version). Google Scholar

72.Ron Mackenzie, An Ordinary War 1940-1945,Wangaratta,, 1995, p.65. Google Scholar

73.Parrott, An Aussie Nobody, p.59. Google Scholar

74.Wylie, Barbed Wire Diplomacy, p.174. Google Scholar

75.Minute, Sir Harold Satow, 19 August 1943, TNA FO 916/519, cited inWylie, Barbed Wire Diplomacy, p.174. Google Scholar

78.Hubert Speckner, Kriegsgefangene in der ‘Ostmark’1939-1945:Zur Geschichte der Mannschaftsstammlager und Offizierslager in den Wehrkreisen XVII und XVIII, doctoral dissertation,University of Vienna, 1999, p.214. Google Scholar

80.Davis,‘Prisoners of War’, p.623. Google Scholar

81.Ibid., p.630. Google Scholar

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