This thesis is a socio-military history of the development and use of Belle Isle Military Prison; possibly the most notorious of all Civil War prisons. The prison compound stood on a seventy-five acre island in the James River, approximately one-half mile west of wartime Richmond. The island's use as a prison lasted intermittently from July 18, 1862 to February, 1865. During this period the Confederate authorities confined to Belle Isle over 20,000 Federal prisoners of war. The Confederate authorities were unprepared from the very outset of the Civil War to deal with such a large number of prisoners. Due to lack of planning and foresight, the Confederate authorities improvised in a piecemeal fashion and with "stop-gap" measures a prisoner-of-war system. Confederate prisons came into existence merely to relieve the overcrowding at other prison sites. Belle Isle was such a stop-gap measure. The island prison was used only after the other Richmond prisons were congested. The Federal prisoners at Belle Isle suffered from a number of diseases and illnesses, including pneumonia, pellagra, scurvy and dysentery. Possibly more devastating to the prisoners constitution were the psychological effects of prison confinement. So dismal were the conditions on the island that it became known by many prisoners as the "most infamous bit of land in the national geography." / Master of Arts

The present study is a socio-political and military history of the development, use and demise of Old Capitol Prison. Built to serve the legislative arm of the Republic, Old Capitol stood at the corner of First and A Streets. From the time the federal government assumed control of the building in 1861, it served as a prison for several classes of persons before its ultimate demise in 1865. Federal officials were overwhelmingly unprepared for the task of prisoner control. At no point before the outbreak of hostilities had any official advocated the maintenance of a permanent military prison system. A severe lack of planning and foresight created a veritable void, casting vast numbers of prisoners into hastily assembled prisons. In the District of Columbia, the building called "the Old Capitol" provided a warehouse for such prisoners. Prisoners confined in Old Capitol were of several categories. Confederate prisoners-of-war found residence there. As Lincoln's armies occupied Confederate territories, civilians of "secesh" political leanings were taken into custody. Persons of Southern political leaning in the border states found their way into Old Capitol. They were joined later by persons of similar persuasion from states both north and west. Slaves and white refugees flowing out of the South were also placed in the custody of the federal guard. Northern military men accused of alleged crimes, disloyalty, dissertion, etc., were guests of their own system. Old Capitol served as host for a vast variety of guests. This study attempts to tell their story. / Master of Arts

Libby Prison ranked as one of the most notorious of Civil War compounds. Used as a transitory depot and hospital as well as a permanent place of confinement, over 125,000 Federal prisoners passed through Libby's doors. The Confederate States Military Prison headquarters located in Libby Prison made it the focal point of Richmond's spindly prison system. Prisoners' diaries tell of depravations suffered during captivity. Insufferable living conditions, poor food rations, inadequate hospital facilities and harsh punishment composed a majority of the prisoners' complaints. Daily newspaper accounts reflected the lifestyles of Richmond's population and residents' attitudes toward the presence of Federal captives in their city. A majority of the time, prisoners had access to the daily papers. Yet very few of them attempted to draw a correlation between the type of existence that they endured within Libby Prison versus the civilian population's struggle to sustain itself in likewise unsuitable circumstances. The Official Records of the Civil War round out the picture of the difficulties faced by the Confederate government in trying to maintain large numbers of prisoners with proper shelter and food. Added to this was the continual desire of Confederate authorities to establish an exchange system to alleviate their burden and Federal prisoners' suffering. This thesis attempts to draw these major sources of information together. Prisoners' reminiscences used in this study were critically evaluated for their validity. To establish the diarists' retention in Libby Prison for the period indicated in the diary, Roll Call Books located at the National Archives were consulted. Newspapers and official correspondence balanced out the interpretation of Libby life. Throughout the Civil War, the Confederate government did not attempt intentionally to deprive Federal prisoners of adequate provisions. A majority of the time, circumstances dictated the actions disliked by captor and prisoner alike. / Master of Arts

If the issue of prisoners of war has given rise to numerous studies in recent years, nevertheless, this topic is far from exhausted. Built on a large corpus of archival sources, this study fuels the debate on ransoms and prisoners with new material. Its originality lies in its broad chronological framework, i.e. the duration of the Hundred Years War, as well as its perspective – that of lower ranking as well as higher-ranking prisoners on both side of the Channel. What does it mean for those men to live in the once coined ‘golden age of private ransoms’? My investigations hinge around three different themes: the status of prisoners of war, the ransoming process and the networks of assistance. I argue that the widespread practice of ransoming becomes increasingly systematic in the late Middle Ages. More importantly, I show how this evolution comes ‘from below’; from the individual masters and prisoners who faced the multiple obstacles raised by the lack of official structure. Indeed, the ransoming of prisoners remained the preserve of private individuals throughout the war and no sovereign could afford that this became otherwise. It is specifically the non-interventionism of the crown and the large freedom of action of individuals which shaped the ransom system.

No description available.

During World War II, 106 Australian medical officers were taken prisoner of war by the Japanese, along with 22,000 Australian troops and many thousands more British and Dutch. Over three and a half years, they accompanied work parties of Allied prisoners sent to camps all over southeast Asia and Japan, living in a variety of harsh and dangerous conditions. Despite the doctors’ efforts, one in three Australian POWs died in captivity. Of those who survived, most attributed this not to inner strength or to luck, but to the care of their medical personnel. Yet apart from the attention recently accorded to Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop, who was only one of these doctors, the experiences and work of all Australian POW medical officers in World War II has been largely overlooked. / Medical officers were crucial for the survival of Australian prisoners, both physically and psychologically. Doctors attempted to keep men of all nationalities alive with little medication, tools or diagnostic equipment, and battled a variety or medical conditions, starvation and systematic physical brutality from their captors. As survival became more difficult, the increased status and responsibilities of the doctors had significant ramifications for the military chain of command and for the burdens on the doctors themselves. / This thesis explores many aspects of Australian POW doctors’ experience of captivity: the complexities of practising modern medicine without any of its tools; the development of unique strategies to combat a wide variety of environmental limitations and life-threatening medical conditions; the unique relationship between medical personnel and their captors; the relationships between Australian POW medical officers and combatant officers and a comparison with relationships in the British military in captivity; the daily dilemmas faced by doctors trying to reconcile their professional ethics with their military obligations, and how they coped with these responsibilities. Doctors’ continuing roles in the postwar lives of ex-POWs, and the influence captivity had on their own lives and careers after the war are also analysed. / While examination of the influence of medical officers on other prisoners’ lives is important, studying their experience as a group in their own right is equally valuable. In this thesis, both these areas are investigated to bring a variety of perspectives to understanding the complexity and importance of Australian POW doctors’ captivity experience.

The cruelty of Military Police guards at Abu Ghraib prison contributed to American shame and questions regarding how such cruelty emerges. The accepted approach of "situational attribution theory" - based upon Zimbardo's (1973, 2007) social psychological perceptions and results of the Stanford Prison Experiment - proposed that personality or "disposition" has little role in the emergence of such cruelty. Termed "institutional cruelty," this manuscript presents the possibility that understandings and preventive measures afforded by situational attribution theory can be extended via acknowledgement of a greater role played by disposition. Psychoanalytic and object relations approaches are presented to this end. The manuscript addresses the most puzzling characteristics of institutional cruelty: 1) rapidity of onset, taking days or, at most, weeks for initial expression, 2) emergence in ordinary, normal individuals, and 3) emergence in the "mock" situation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Criminological, organizational culture, and social psychological theories are explored for their application to institutional cruelty. / by Paul Hofacker. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography and footnotes. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

During World War II, the Japanese earned the reputation for cruelty toward their prisoners which surpassed the treatment accorded to POWs held by Germany and Italy. The conduct exhibited by the Japanese soldier was the result of a combination of ancient social and religious traditions made manifest by twentieth century documents. Through constant inculcation of ancient myths nurtured by a national religion, the Japanese believed that their holy mission was world domination. Believing themselves to be of divine origin, they treated all other races as inferior; therefore, the POWs suffered cruelties as sub-humans. The Japanese inflicted punishment and torture in the name of their emperor, believing that they did so through divine instruction. This study reveals how they arrived at this conviction.

Bibliography: leaves 336-351 / viii, 352, [25] leaves : ill., maps ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of History, 1994

Despite the plethora of material written on the history of prisoners-of-war in the Second World War, surprisingly few works treat the issue analytically, at least from the perspective of German military policy toward, and treatment of, British and American prisoners-of-war. The handful of dissertations written on the subject have examined tightly focused aspects within this subject, or did not make thorough use of the German federal military archives. Most published works, indeed, have tended to examine the issue from the perspective of the prisoners themselves. While these were valid and valuable approaches to the subject, they also left a significant gap in the historiography: what precisely was German policy towards British and American prisoners-of-war, how did it evolve over the course of the war years, and how was it ultimately put into practice? / The largest portions of this dissertation consist of distilling, from the thousands of pages of German military orders and documents which survived the war, the essence of the German Armed Forces Supreme Command (the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) directives to the lower levels of command, ultimately reaching the level of the camp Commandants, with regard to the many facets of prisoner-of-war life, from shelter, clothing, and food, to labour policy and security measures. Every report by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Protecting Power delegates of their visits to most of the British or American prisoners-of-war in German-run camps for non-commissioned soldiers (Stalags) and camps for commissioned officers (Oflags) which could be found in the national archives of Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, was then examined, with the aim of providing a standard by which to measure German policy. / Given the sensitivities of each of the belligerents to the plight of their own soldiers held captive in enemy hands, the final results of the investigation are then presented in conclusion with a brief comparison of how German prisoners-of-war fared while in British or American captivity. Though necessarily relying on the scholarship of other historians in this regard, it allows for the original findings of this dissertation to be placed in a wider context for the reader. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)