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"Prisoners of war History."
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Andersonvilles of the North
Soon after the close of military operations in the American Civil War, another war began over how it would be remembered by future generations. The prisoner-of-war issue has figured prominently in Northern and Southern writing about the conflict. Northerners used tales of Andersonville to demonize the Confederacy, while Southerners vilified Northern prison policies to show the depths to which Yankees had sunk to attain victory. Over the years the postwar Northern portrayal of Andersonville as fiendishly designed to kill prisoners in mass quantities has largely been dismissed. The Lost Cause characterization of Union prison policies as criminally negligent and inhumane, however, has shown remarkable durability. Northern officials have been portrayed as turning their military prisons into concentration camps where Southern prisoners were poorly fed, clothed, and sheltered, resulting in inexcusably high numbers of deaths. Andersonvilles of the North, by James M. Gillispie, represents the first broad study to argue that the image of Union prison officials as negligent and cruel to Confederate prisoners is severely flawed. This study is not an attempt to “whitewash” Union prison policies or make light of Confederate prisoner mortality. But once the careful reader disregards unreliable postwar polemics, and focuses exclusively on the more reliable wartime records and documents from both Northern and Southern sources, then a much different, less negative, picture of Northern prison life emerges. While life in Northern prisons was difficult and potentially deadly, no evidence exists of a conspiracy to neglect or mistreat Southern captives. Confederate prisoners’ suffering and death were due to a number of factors, but it would seem that Yankee apathy and malice were rarely among them. In fact, likely the most significant single factor in Confederate (and all) prisoner mortality during the Civil War was the halting of the prisoner exchange cartel in the late spring of 1863. Though Northern officials have long been condemned for coldly calculating that doing so aided their war effort, the evidence convincingly suggests that the South’s staunch refusal to exchange black Union prisoners was actually the key sticking point in negotiations to resume exchanges from mid-1863 to 1865. Ultimately Gillispie concludes that Northern prisoner-of-war policies were far more humane and reasonable than generally depicted. His careful analysis will be welcomed by historians of the Civil War, the South, and of American history.
eBook
Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy
Discusses an important yet often misunderstood topic in
American History Camp Chase was a major Union POW camp
and also served at various times as a Union military training
facility and as quarters for Union soldiers who had been taken
prisoner by the Confederacy and released on parole or exchanged.
As such, this careful, thorough, and objective examination of the
history and administration of the camp will be of true
significance in the literature on the Civil War.
eBook
The Colditz Myth
Though only one among hundreds of prison camps in which British servicemen were held between 1939 and 1945, Colditz enjoys unparalleled name recognition both in Britain and in other parts of the English-speaking world. Made famous in print, on film, and through television, Colditz remains a potent symbol of key virtues-including ingenuity and perseverance against apparently overwhelming odds-that form part of the popular mythology surrounding the British war effort in World War II. Colditz has played a major role in shaping perceptions of the prisoner-of-war experience in Nazi Germany, an experience in which escaping is assumed to be paramount and ‘Outwitting the Hun’ a universal sport. This book chronicles the development of the Colditz myth and puts what happened inside the castle in the context of British and Commonwealth POW life in Germany as a whole. Being a captive of the Third Reich-from the moment of surrender down to the day of liberation and repatriation-was more complicated and a good deal tougher than the popular myth would suggest. The physical and mental demands of survival far outweighed escaping activity in order of importance in most camps almost all of the time, and even in Colditz the reality was in some respects very different from the almost Boy's Own caricature that developed during the post-war decades. This book seeks to place Colditz-both the camp and the legend-in a wider historical context.
eBook
Libby Prison Breakout
While many books have been inspired by the horrors of Andersonville prison, none have chronicled with any depth or detail the amazing tunnel escape from Libby Prison in Richmond. Now Joseph Wheelan examines what became the most important escape of the Civil War from a Confederate prison, one that ultimately increased the Norths and Souths willingness to use prisoners in waging total war.In a converted tobacco warehouse, Libbys 1,200 Union officers survived on cornbread and bug-infested soup, and slept without blankets on the bare floor. With prisoner exchanges suspended, escape and death were the only ways out.Libby Prison Breakout recounts the largely unknown story of the escape of 109 steel-nerved officers through a 55-foot tunnel, and their flight in winter through the heart of the enemy homeland, amid an all-out Rebel manhunt. The officers later testimony in Washington spurred two far-reaching investigations and a new cycle of retaliation against Rebel captives.
eBook
Violence against prisoners of war in the First World War : Britain, France, and Germany, 1914-1920
\"In this groundbreaking new study, Heather Jones provides the first in-depth and comparative examination of violence against First World War prisoners. She shows how the war radicalised captivity treatment in Britain, France, and Germany, dramatically undermined international law protecting prisoners of war and led to new forms of forced prisoner labour and reprisals, which fuelled wartime propaganda that was often based on accurate prisoner testimony. This book reveals how, during the conflict, increasing numbers of captives were not sent to home front camps but retained in western front working units to labour directly for the British, French, and German armies--in the German case, by 1918, prisoners working for the German Army endured widespread malnutrition and constant beatings. Dr. Jones examines the significance of these new, violent trends and their later legacy, arguing that the Great War marked a key turning-point in the twentieth century evolution of the prison camp\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Johnson's Island
In 1861, Lt.Col.William Hoffman was appointed to the post of commissary general of prisoners and urged to find a suitable site for the construction of what was expected to be the Union's sole military prison.After inspecting four islands in Lake Erie, Hoffman came upon one in Sandusky Bay known as Johnson's Island.
eBook