The Ruhleben Prison Camp


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British Civilian Internees in Germany


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Explores the forgotten story of civilian internment during the First World War through a case study of the British prisoners held at Ruhleben in Germany.




The Ruhleben Prison Camp


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Excerpt from The Ruhleben Prison Camp: A Record of Nineteen Months' Internment The Ruhleben Camp is. Only one of about a hundred and fifty prisoners of war camps in Germany, but its name is probably the most widely known on this side of the North Sea, owing to its being the camp in which all British civilians of military age in the German Empire are concentrated, and to the frequency with which its affairs have engaged the attention of both Houses of Parliament in this country. I was interned there for nineteen months, from November 6, 1914, unto June 6, 1916. Previous to my internment I was imprisoned for a few days in September, 1914, solely on the ground of my being a British subject, in the Stadtvogtei Gefangnis, Berlin. On the day of my removal to Ruhleben I was again locked up for a few hours in that same jail, which served as a collecting-station, and five months later I was lodged within its walls for the third and longest period. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.




Ruhleben


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This is an unusual book in that it is an important contribution to social psychology and also an absorbing story of four strange years in a German prison camp of World War I. Four thousand men and boys from the most varied walks of life—professors, seamen, jockeys, schoolboys, bank directors, musicians, clerks, scientists—were taken from civilian life and placed in Ruhleben on the outbreak of war; no activities were prescribed for them, no direction was given to their communal life. In the event, this miscellaneous group of people, closed off from the world, create d their own society. This book is the story of how they did it and what the society they made was like; much more than this, the camp provides a gifted and sympathetic social psychologist with a rare opportunity for study and analysis of an important if inadvertent social experiment. The time elapsed between the event itself and the completion of the book may in one way be regretted; it did, however, allow the author, who was himself and inmate of Ruhleben, the opportunity for mature reflection on its meaning. The book is a contribution to the history of World War I; it is also a basic and timeless study of the dynamics of individual and group behaviour.




My Four Years in Germany


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1917. The author was the late Ambassador to the German Imperial Court. Illustrated. From the Foreword: I am writing what should have been the last chapter of this book as a foreword because I want to bring home to our people the gravity of the situation; because I want to tell them that the military and naval power of the German Empire is unbroken; that of the twelve million men whom the Kaiser has called to the colors but one million, five hundred thousand have been killed, five hundred thousand permanently disabled, not more than five hundred thousand are prisoners of war, and about five hundred thousand constitute the number of wounded or those on the sick list of each day, leaving at all times about nine million effectives under arms. I state these figures because Americans do not grasp either the magnitude or the importance of this war. Perhaps the statement that over five million prisoners of war are held in the various countries will bring home to Americans the enormous mass of men engaged. Contents: My First Year in Germany; Political and Geographical; Diplomatic Work of First Winter in Berlin; Militarism in Germany and the Zabern Affair; Psychology and Causes Which Prepared the Nation for War; At Kiel Just Before the War; The System; The Days Before the War; The Americans at the Outbreak of Hostilities; Prisoners of War; First Days of the War: Political and Diplomatic; Diplomatic Negotiations; Mainly Commercial; Work for the Germans; War Charities; Hate; Diplomatic Negotiations; Liberals and Reasonable Men; The German People in War; and Last. Due to the age and scarcity of the original we reproduced, some pages may be spotty or faded.




Defiant Gardens


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A history of wartime gardens documents how they humanize landscapes and experience, even under the direst conditions




Barbed Wire Disease


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Oldcastle Camp 1914-1918


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The German Defense Of Berlin


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Often written during imprisonment in Allied War camps by former German officers, with their memories of the World War fresh in their minds, The Foreign Military Studies series offers rare glimpses into the Third Reich. In this study Oberst a.D. Wilhem Willemar discusses his recollections of the climatic battle for Berlin from within the Wehrmacht. “No cohesive, over-all plan for the defense of Berlin was ever actually prepared. All that existed was the stubborn determination of Hitler to defend the capital of the Reich. Circumstances were such that he gave no thought to defending the city until it was much too late for any kind of advance planning. Thus the city’s defense was characterized only by a mass of improvisations. These reveal a state of total confusion in which the pressure of the enemy, the organizational chaos on the German side, and the catastrophic shortage of human and material resources for the defense combined with disastrous effect. “The author describes these conditions in a clear, accurate report which I rate very highly. He goes beyond the more narrow concept of planning and offers the first German account of the defense of Berlin to be based upon thorough research. I attach great importance to this study from the standpoint of military history and concur with the military opinions expressed by the author.”-Foreword by Generaloberst a.D. Franz Halder.




The History of Ruhleben


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