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Chapter 4 - Saving lives

Patriotic women, prisoners of war and the Australian Red Cross Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2019

Aaron Pegram
Affiliation:
Australian War Memorial
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Summary

As the military and economic situation deteriorated in Germany, so did the military’s ability to respect the pre-war agreements on the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Shortages worsened throughout 1917 and 1918, causing all social classes to feel the effects of the war in the pits of their stomachs. Tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war in Germany had no option but to rely on whatever their captors could feed them. Conditions were dire, but Germany was able to defray some of the long-term costs of feeding prisoners of war by granting some of them access to humanitarian aid from the Red Cross. The food situation at Karlsruhe had become so desperate in 1917 that British officers imprisoned there were offered 30 pfennigs a day to forgo the German-supplied rations so that they could be used to feed starving civilians.

Type
Chapter
Information
Surviving the Great War
Australian Prisoners of War on the Western Front 1916–18
, pp. 86 - 106
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Saving lives
  • Aaron Pegram, Australian War Memorial
  • Book: Surviving the Great War
  • Online publication: 12 November 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108643559.005
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  • Saving lives
  • Aaron Pegram, Australian War Memorial
  • Book: Surviving the Great War
  • Online publication: 12 November 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108643559.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Saving lives
  • Aaron Pegram, Australian War Memorial
  • Book: Surviving the Great War
  • Online publication: 12 November 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108643559.005
Available formats
×