Barbed Wire Disease

From the Preface...

This study concentrates on British and German prisoners taken on the Western Front, where alleged neglect and ill-treatment became the subject of major propaganda campaigns in both countries. It looks at day-to-day problems as they unfolded and at the more major disputes which were to arise, drawing heavily on published and unpublished official documents, as well as contemporary newspapers and other accounts. This book also identifies many examples of hardship and ill-treatment and some of deliberate physical abuse. But the full story of prisoners in the Great War goes beyond a simple narrative of their experiences and the conditions they faced. That is not to say that these issues are not important, because from the point of view of individual prisoners they are, after all, what really mattered. But such conditions need to be seen against the wider background of the diplomatic, political and military objectives which gave rise to them. This study sets the wider context.