Abstract
Neville Wylie, Barbed Wire Diplomacy: Britain, Germany, and the Politics of Prisoners of War, 1939–1945, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2010; 312 pp.; 9780199547593, £75.00 (hbk)
Prisoners of War (POW) were a major topic in the conduct of relations among belligerent states in the Second World War, and this impressive volume devotes itself to the substance and the evolution of that topic over the duration of the war. As its title says, it is primarily a work of diplomatic history, but one which sheds much light on the changing fortunes of the German and British forces who found themselves behind barbed wire.
What might appear at first a simple matter of a negotiation of interests between two adversaries is revealed to be a much more complex, if not fraught, affair. The book is well attuned to the web of agencies and institutions which were allotted some kind of role in POW matters. That applies on both sides of the conduct of relations. On the British side, for instance, the Foreign Office and the War Office had a close interest in how British POWs in German captivity were being treated, but so too did the various Dominion governments, not all of which willingly toed the London line. Particularly illuminating in this regard are the attitudes of the Canadian government, resistant at times to the prospect that Canadian POWs might be being used as pawns in a game being played from London and controlled by Churchill. On the German side the complexity stems in good part from institutional arrangements but also from the tensions that might arise when the views of the dyed-in-the-wool Nazis – not least among them Hitler himself, who frequently turned his attention to POW matters – stood at odds with those of a more traditional-conservative ideological bent.
This depiction of complexity extends beyond the array of interests and stakeholders on both sides to the broader structures within which relations were conducted. That means exploring in particular the roles of the so-called Protecting Powers and the International Committee of the Red Cross, both of which, as the author compellingly shows with the aid of extensive archival material, tellingly influenced the conduct of POW affairs, and overwhelmingly to the benefit of the POWs themselves.
An insightful illustration of how that game worked is the so-called Shackling Crisis, dealt with here in a dedicated chapter but recurring at various points throughout the book. The crisis had its origins in the shackling by British forces of newly captured German forces and the German reciprocal measures of placing manacles on British POWs in a number of POW camps. The study of this crisis is by no means new territory, but the treatment here is notable for the level of detail gathered on all concerned parties, and for the sensitivity to the multiple differences of opinion and divisions as they played out over a prolonged period. True, the interventions from the very top, from Hitler and Churchill, remain crucial to an understanding of the event, but the flurry of efforts to resolve the crisis – and its ultimate ending – offer a highly nuanced picture of how the POW regime worked.
Detail aside, the study is placed within an interpretive framework, the usefulness of which might extend well beyond this study. Realist and neo-liberal approaches are explained and their respective limitations discussed. While a humanitarian agenda persisted to the end – surprising perhaps from a straight realist perspective – dogged pragmatism also informed policy and practice, from the formulation of the Geneva Convention in 1929 through to Britain’s unilateral compliance with it in the dying days of the war. Whatever combination of forces might have motivated it, this compliance was not without beneficial effect. Herein, as the author sagely concludes, lies a valuable lesson for those who might seek in our own times to disavow the rules and norms of warfare.