Surviving the Great War: Australian Prisoners of War on the Western Front, 1916-18

Abstract

Between 1916 and 1918, 3,848 members of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) surrendered to German forces in the fighting on the Western Front. Their experiences are little known because of their relatively small numbers and because all but 327 survived. Australians captured in France and Flanders did not easily integrate into public narratives of Australia in the First World War and its emerging commemorative rituals. Captivity was a story of surrender and inaction, at odds with the Anzac legend and a triumphant national memory that gave prominence to the AIF’s victories over its defeats.

This thesis challenges the dominant narrative of victimhood and trauma in Australian prisoner of war studies by arguing that Australians captured on the Western Front were active agents in their survival and strove to overcome privations and hardships endured in German captivity. It uses prosopographic analysis to quantify aspects of the prisoner of war experience to show the extremes of their captivity in German hands. It puts the hardships of prisoners in a broader social and military context, comparing the Australian with other national prisoner of war experiences. It demonstrates that the German Army had much to gain by treating prisoners mostly as well as it could. When treated well, captured Australians could be used as intelligence sources, employed as a work force, and guarantee fair treatment of Germans in British and French captivity.

No single Australian narrative emerged from captivity on the Western Front, but the way prisoners of war regarded survival as a personal triumph united their otherwise disparate array of experiences. Australians survived captivity not by virtue of nationality, or because they were fit young men with bush skills as the Anzac legend purports. In this thesis, the first detailed analysis of Australians in German captivity, and based on archival sources, the experience and memory of surrender on the Western Front adds a new dimension to the national wartime experience while challenging popular representations of Australia’s involvement in the First World War.