World War I Prisoners of War in Germany - Memoirs

Memoirs

There were prisoners who, from the beginning of the war, began writing down the events they witnessed, usually in diary form. Soldiers could write on the front, but in the camps they were forbidden not only to write but even to possess paper. All writings found during searches were systematically confiscated and their authors punished. Thus attempts began to hide the notes from the enemy, which gave rise to some ingenious discoveries on the prisoners’ part. Diaries were most often used, first of all, because they were the simplest format. Thus the journal acquired historic value because the events recorded there had a vivid immediacy to them. The fact that many of them were written every day removed some critical distance, which one must account for when examining these writings.

Memoirs written after the period of captivity are of an entirely different sort. These later writings became the place where a profound reflection on the situation could be made, something less suitable for the daily diaries. Following the example of Gaston Riou in France, some prisoners became writers or resumed their occupation as writers. In 1924, Thierry Sandre won the Prix Goncourt for three volumes, one of which was his captivity narrative, Le Purgatoire. Some of these authors entered the literary tradition: in Le Purgatoire, for instance, Sandre dedicates each chapter to influential members of the era’s literary society such as Claude Farrère or Christian-Frogé, secretary of the Association des écrivains combattants. Robert d'Harcourt, who had also been a prisoner, published a memoir that was reprinted several times. Jacques Rivière is one of the authors who thought seriously about the meaning of captivity. In his book L’Allemand (“The German”), reprinted in 1924, the reader finds a thorough psychological and philosophical analysis of the former enemy.

In France, intellectuals, because they had a chance of being published and could call on their “audience” to purchase their books, were able to express themselves on the subject of captivity. Their message, which naturally was not representative of all prisoners’ experiences, took several forms. Gaston Riou developed European themes in 1928 in his best-known work, Europe, ma patrie. The rapprochement with Germany that he outlined remained solely cultural, indeed superficial. Jacques Rivière, a prisoner since 24 August 1914, took an entirely different approach, developed in L’Allemand: “I must confess frankly: a relationship is described here, rather than an objective, rather than an appearance The subject of my book is Franco-German antagonism”. Rivière developed a theory of economic rapprochement that would find fruition after the next world war: “Forgetfulness will develop, in Germany and here, if we know to organise industrial unity in the Rhine basin, if we know to harmoniously regulate trade there There is all the same, in our current occupation of the Ruhr, with whatever intensity it has borne the Franco-German crisis, the foreshadowing of an equilibrium and a possible harmony between the two countries”.

Robert d'Harcourt fought against prejudice in order to render the most objective image of Germany he could, whether positive or negative. Former prisoner Charles de Gaulle firmly believed that the countries’ populations lay at the base of Franco-German relations. These former prisoners allowed themselves to transcend their captivity and all it had engendered. However, such men were never designated as former prisoners of war per se. Prisoners appeared as men who should indirectly use their experiences in order to be recognised as a result. The status of prisoner was not one that was proclaimed proudly. It forced its owner to leave behind a part of his own story in order to allow another part of history to develop: the history of reconciliation.