‘I am Just a Walking Letterbox in Which They Deposit Their Complaints’: Being a Spanish Delegate for the Inspection of German Prisoner of War Camps During the First World War (1917–1919)

Abstract

Delegates from neutral countries, who, especially in the case of Spain, were active in the protection of prisoners of war during the First World War, remain a group requiring further analysis. This article will consider the experience of the Spanish delegates, who were particularly important between 1917 and 1919 for the inspection and protection of a wide range of Allied prisoners of war, in their role as intermediaries and brokers, but also as observers of German society and the increasing effect of problems of resources on that society. While showing how these individuals conveyed their impressions and understanding of wartime Germany in their correspondence, the article, which is based on abundant and newly discovered archival holdings, demonstrates the degrees to which humanitarian efforts intersected with clear hopes for symbolic and also material rewards. These considerations had an important impact on the delegates’ strategies and worries.

In autumn 1917, Carlos Requena, a military engineer, commented on one of his missions as delegate of the Spanish Military Commission for the protection of prisoners of war in German custody, which concerned in particular French prisoners of war. On 10 October, he addressed his superior, Juan González Gelpi, in a very annoyed tone. Requena wrote that he had recently visited the fortress of the city of Allenstein (modern-day Olsztyn in Poland) and its camp of officers in detention. His words illustrate the complexity of inspection missions which were to control the implementation of international treaties on war prisoners, but especially how sensitive the delegates were regarding respect or disrespect shown to their role:

One of these imprisoned officials, whose name, shall we say, I do not remember, talked to me in a manner that I found strange enough, allowing himself to remind me of what he called ‘our obligations’. I would have wished to respond and to remind him that our mission is exclusively of a humanitarian character, and that Spain offers a ‘service’ and is not a ‘servant’. That we offer, or believe that we offer, a great favour, but in no way would we be servants or in the service of anybody. […] I contented myself with reminding him, in the politest manner, although with some severity, that he was talking to a ‘comrade’, to an officer of the Spanish army, who had just passed various nights without sleep and eating bad food in order to visit them. In reaction, he entirely changed his tone, shook my hand as a comrade and spontaneously offered praise of Spain […]. ¹

The delegates’ mission was without precedent, and it was difficult for others to understand their role. ² Frequently, their position was erroneously interpreted – as in the example above, prisoners sometimes believed the delegates were in a position to openly take sides and offer services. This dual role, i.e., being military personnel and acting under a diplomatic mission, was present in the work of the Military Commission and presented them with problems. And as I will discuss in this article, they had their own priorities and objectives in their role as brokers and intermediaries and their own visions as travellers on German territory under conditions of war.

The Spanish delegates’ activity during the First World War constituted an exceptional mission and generated a huge documentation on forced labour of prisoners of war, but there has been practically no analysis of it. ³ So far there has been no systematic research on its organization, its internal mode of operation, and the results and effects of the nearly 1400 inspections of military and civil prison camps, most of which were visited between 1917 and January 1919. The last two decades have seen the publication of important studies on prisoners during the First World War, but these rarely if ever allude to the role of the Spanish delegates. ⁴ However, in my view, the delegates’ experiences are an essential example of brokerage and of experiences as intermediaries, operating between three groups: the German authorities, the prisoners, and, equally important, the civilians they had to deal with. The delegates’ detailed observations are thus a vital source for research on prisoners of war, but also on various other groups, such as camp guards and families of prisoners, on which, as Matthew Stibbe claims, analysis is principally missing. ⁵ Travelling through wartime Germany and visiting hundreds of camps and labour sites, Spanish delegates produced ample correspondence, which, formerly unknown, I have analysed in my research after becoming acquainted with the thousands of boxes of dossiers on their mission kept at the Archives of the Royal Palace in Madrid: in my view, this documentation will help to enlarge our knowledge of the forced labour of prisoners of war between 1914 and 1918, a task for which Odon Abbal has notably called. ⁶

However, this article has a different objective. It will focus on the role of the Spanish delegates as brokers and as intermediaries, and their everyday experience of war-torn Germany. So far, Spanish neutrality has mainly been discussed in its effects on internal opinion and high politics. ⁷ In terms of political goals, Spanish authorities officially advocated for the principle of humanitarianism, and they were ready to offer a role as mediators for the post-war future, for example as participants at a future peace conference. ⁸

Conversely, the experience of the delegates has not appeared in debate at the political level and the level of political mobilization in Spain. There have also been no attempts so far at understanding the impressions of Spanish nationals residing or travelling in wartime Germany between 1914 and 1918; this is very different from recent progress in the analysis of Spanish nationals living in Germany during the Second World War. David Brydan has shown the potential of such analysis for Spanish doctors working for the División Azul in eastern Germany and in occupied eastern territories. ⁹ For the period from 1933, Xosé Manuel Núñez Seixas offers a milestone article on Spanish visitors to Nazi Germany. ¹⁰ Both studies operate in a logic of transnational Spain, showing how expectations and visions coming from the Spanish context then overlay perceptions and actions in wartime Germany, in contact with Germans and other nationals. This approach is unheard of for the First World War, and I hope that my analysis will be pioneering in this regard. I intend to give it a particular spin towards understanding the motivations and ideas of the Spanish delegates regarding their own position and actions as humanitarian agents.

I will focus here on the period between April 1917 and January 1919. In this phase, the delegates were integrated into a new, larger and generally more efficient, structure, the Comisión Militar para la protección de prisioneros (which I will henceforth call ‘the Military Commission’). ¹¹ I will first explain the inner workings of the Commission and its protagonists, before conducting an analysis that is important for three connected issues. First, it shows the priorities and goals of brokers who represented at the same time a logic of transnational Spain, because they introduced the concerns and visions of a Spanish military elite to the scrutiny of both forced labour of prisoners of war and on German society and wartime social conditions. Second, it provides insight into daily life in wartime Germany during the hunger blockade and during the complications of the last 18 months of the war. Third, it hopes to open paths towards future comparison with the efforts of other neutral delegates. While there are no comparable studies on other representatives of neutral powers – the United States before 1917, Denmark, and the Red Cross members of Switzerland – taking roles in wartime Germany and comparative perspectives, my analysis will demonstrate the conditions under which such delegates operated in the German context. ¹²

Spanish Neutrality During the First World War – from the First Inspections to the Creation of the Military Commission (September 1914 to April 1917)

Before the start of the conflict in Summer 1914, the conservative Spanish government of Eduardo Dato set the country on a neutral course, a decision maintained by subsequent governments, in spite of some criticism, and which remained intact until the November 1918 Armistice. ¹³ This led the French government to petition the Spanish state to act as protective power for French soldiers captured in action and imprisoned in camps on German and Austrian-Hungarian territory. ¹⁴ Spanish delegates were sent to examine the German captors’ compliance with the rules stipulated by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 concerning the treatment of prisoners of war. ¹⁵ Neville Wylie holds that process of assuming humanitarian responsibilities to have been hesitant and sometimes complicated on the part of the protecting powers, and argues that the benefit of assuming this role was primarily political. ¹⁶

Initially, the early prisoner camps were visited by the Spanish Ambassador in Berlin, Luis Polo de Bernabé, and diplomatic staff posted in various German cities. ¹⁷ Other neutral governments received the same assignment with respect to other nationalities, for example, the Americans, among others, were assigned to protect German prisoners in France. According to Wylie, the American diplomats were more successful than their Spanish counterparts because they relied more on diplomatic political pressure. However, Wylie's comment refers to the first months of the war, and the Spanish, as protecting power, subsequently increased their staff to be better able to inspect the camps through their civilian, and later military, agents in Germany. The Spanish and American experiences were similar in the beginning, but given their neutrality, maintained until the end of the war, Spanish agents remained active when the Americans were no longer a factor. ¹⁸ In view of the steady expansion of their mission's activity from the early weeks of the war onwards, the Spanish had to rely on contracts made with new civil and military personnel. ¹⁹ In terms of coordination, a newly created Chancellor's Office, the Cancillería de protección de prisioneros de guerra e internados civiles, based in Berlin and separate from the Spanish embassy, assumed the task. It maintained a vigorous correspondence with, principally, the Spanish embassies in Paris and Berne. ²⁰ The initiative was one of the various investments of King Alfonso XIII in humanitarian policies, which Spanish political elites presented as logical outcomes of Spain's neutral position. ²¹

In time, the scale of the task became obvious, and the number of delegates increased. In the course of 1917, the commission grew from a staff of nine to twenty-two. ²² Gradually, the Spanish government, representing a neutral country, became responsible for ever more war (and civil) prisoners, from the French to the Russians, Serbs, Belgians, and Japanese, and, with the entry of their countries into the war, imprisoned Portuguese, Romanians, and Americans. ²³ The Spanish delegates’ competences were defined during the first war year, often in view of the obstacles encountered. ²⁴ The Spanish personnel used were initially both civilian and military, and they started to carry out systematic inspections of the principal and secondary camps, and of labour sites. However, the development of the war made the task ever more arduous, and 1917 saw a professionalization of the efforts on the Spanish side, sharpening the delegates' position as intermediaries and strengthening their importance as observers of both war captivity and German wartime society.

Inspections Under the Military Commission (April 1917 to January 1919)

The war year 1917 was full of massive ruptures, including the Russian Revolution, some of which also had a direct effect on the Spanish delegates’ work as intermediaries and brokers, such as the entry of the United States into the war. ²⁵ In April of that year, the group of Spanish delegates carrying out inspections was reorganized into a Military Commission as part of the embassy, under the control of Polo de Bernabé and headed by Brigade General Juan González Gelpi. ²⁶ Delegates were now supposed to operate in pairs, although this idea was subject to modification in the wake of increasing burdens and sometimes in light of personal dislike. At least one of the delegates of each pair was required to be a medical doctor. Diplomats at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin argued that the German authorities were much more forthcoming in accepting ranked Spanish military as intermediaries and inspectors. ²⁷

Some of the delegates now forming the Commission, like Carlos Requena, had already accumulated experience as inspectors. The new structure excluded civilians from active inspection work, but the administrative tasks in the offices also expanded. The military delegates in the field had to have some fluency in French and German, and also in English, which were qualifications already required for the earlier group of delegates. This was supposed to allow for enquiries with prisoners and the camps's authorities. In their reports, the delegates used the field notes taken during the inspection. Civilian camps, those for ordinary soldiers and those for officers were all on the list of their visits, as were secondary camps and labour sites, hospitals, and prisons; delegates would even attend summary judgments of prisoners. The delegates had a regular order of visits defined by zones of inspection assigned to them, but they also reacted to petitions coming from the governments or to complaints communicated by the prisoners. ²⁸ In many cases, the delegates produced their notes on sheets of paper received in hotels, given the lack of materials, transforming them into reports. These were translated into French and the copies sent to the different governments and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In many cases, the reports represented only a summary or abridged version of the original observations – and the original reports were often difficult to read for the staff the embassy hired to copy them. ²⁹

The humanitarian character of the mission created many problems for the delegates: their functions were misinterpreted, and they had to find a balance between the objectives of their tasks, the reluctance of the camps's commandants, and the prisoners' demands, as illustrated by Requena's complaint. The fine line between humanitarian objectives and neutral observation created frequent headaches. ³⁰ As intermediaries at various levels, the delegates's goals frequently did not correspond to the local realities of the camps, and their neutral role was questioned. ³¹ Specifically, the delegates who were military doctors were able to assess the sanitary conditions within the camps, but they had no right to offer medical assistance to prisoners, even if the latter asked for such help. The case of Captain Ricardo Murillo, who had treated a prisoner and thereby roused German protest pointing to the risk of indiscipline, led to clarification at the level of the Commission. The decision to prohibit medical interventions of that kind created widespread frustration. ³²

Each warring party for which the Commission was responsible had different criteria and expectations; this complicated the administrative tasks. In attempting to cope with different challenges, for example, when taking over the protection of American prisoners, the Commission suffered constantly from a shortage of personnel: they had to replace members on temporary leave in Spain; they struggled with lack of linguistic proficiency in German and French among some of their members, contrary to the promises given; and there was also an insufficient number of office staff available to produce the necessary records. ³³

The Delegates Challenged: Authorities and Prisoners Approaching Spanish Intermediaries in the War Context

Interactions with German Authorities and the Civilian Population

The differences between German military regions presented a particular challenge for the work of the delegates. They divided the German territories into nine zones of inspection. The delegates would reside in the principal city of the region in question to seek out the different bodies of the German army. ³⁴ A remainder of members of the Commission were flexible in their geographic position, able to produce special reports reacting to particular complaints, or to help out in regions with a large number of camps. ³⁵ The delegates were very aware of the structural differences of German military hierarchies and rules at the regional level. ³⁶ Each German state had its own war ministry and its proper norms defined by that structure, although the head office of the Commission naturally had its most intense communication with the Prussian Ministry of War. The delegates shared their experiences in long personal letters accompanying their reports: thus, delegate Gonzalo de Aguilera pointed to what he saw as a hostile reception by a part of the population in the region of Bavaria, which belonged to his inspection zone, especially when dealing with the authorities in prisoner camps. He complained that

it is common practice in many places that although I called and asked for the convenient time for the visit and arrived on time, the authorities did not pay any attention and did not make the effort to inform the sentries; thus, one was held for ages at the gates amongst the bands of soldiers […]. ³⁷

The frustration that is obvious from the descriptions of the more difficult regions appears frequently in thoughts on the military and civilian contacts of the delegates. ³⁸

The rules of access and the priorities of visits for the delegates continually changed, and new interpretations and rules, for example on modalities of prisoner exchanges, appeared during the war. This constantly threatened the delegates’ authority, and they usually had to act with caution, so as not to risk their difficult relationship with both the German military authorities and the prisoners; indeed, the role of inspections was far from being simply technical and went beyond the contact with prisoners and German camp authorities. ³⁹

Relations between the individual delegates could also be strained, which occasionally added additional complexity to the tasks. Internal conflict could endanger the success of the missions, as was suggested by delegate Enrique Jiménez Porras:

All this, my Colonel, is only for your appreciation; as much as I have desired visits in pairs to be the rule, it is quite sad that I have been met with a person who instead of helping is a constant concern; and given that prisoners and guards are already enough of a problem, it must be drastic circumstances in which the colleague is the principal worry. ⁴⁰

German military authorities tended to dislike the delegates of the neutral countries. ⁴¹ As the Spanish delegates’ correspondence demonstrates, German officials disregarded the former's protests handed in after inspections, and they treated them with contempt during the control missions. The disdain of the German military authorities could transform itself into long-lasting personal conflicts. In March 1918 delegate José de Ordovás described the visit to the camp of common prisoners in Eichstätt in which the authorities refused him access to the camp as the local command claimed to have changed the access procedure. According to Ordovás, this was open revenge for critical remarks in some of his earlier reports:

As the ascent to the camp was painful and unpleasant enough, in stormy weather and snow and a march of half an hour climbing a very steep hill, we desisted from repeating this nice climb, limiting ourselves to visiting the lazaret […] Afterwards I went to the command to make them understand that they had not responded to my effort of sending them a telegram to announce my visit, since in the camp, the director or some representative of his could have waited for us, […] but when I saw the commandant and adjunct-lieutenant, what had happened no longer surprised me, as I noted that they were the very same as at the abandoned barrack camp of Ingolstadt, who, as I had already pointed out to you, had been impertinent enough with me […]. They might well be annoyed with me because on the earlier occasion I formulated my complaint with the inspector-general (a very good person) who disapproved of their conduct and promised to give them a telling-off […]. ⁴²

The resistance of the German authorities grew over the length of the war, as, like in the above example, they complained about the excessive zeal of the Spanish delegates at their task. The delegates perceiving their position as intermediaries as an exercise in firmness complicated matters. It was not only the officials directing a camp who were inclined to create difficulties. Interestingly, civilian authorities, such as mayors in particular, also had the means and made the effort to create obstacles. Thus, again in Bavaria, José de Ordovás commented on the problems experienced by his colleague, Luis de Amallo, in November 1917. De Amallo attempted to organize a visit to the work sites at Hanfeld and Furstenried, inspections for which he had solicited authorization beforehand with the German General Command. Upon arrival at the nearest train station, he found neither the German military staff that would have been the usual escort nor any means of transport. He started his journey on foot,

losing direction because he did not know the way, and because the great quantity of snow made orientation more difficult; he managed to get to the command thanks only to some prisoners he encountered in the fields. Once arrived in Hanfeld, he did not find any soldier or other person who would have given him information on the prisoners […] and a child of three or four years of age accompanied him to the mayor's house. ⁴³

The ample correspondence thus helps in understanding the structural challenges at various levels: they continued for the civilian authority involved. Although the delegate brought documentation for the visit, the mayor did not allow him to talk to the prisoners. ⁴⁴ The mechanisms that German authorities used to make inspections more difficult included prohibition of entry for alleged lack of the necessary authorizations, sudden changes in the rules for the visits, or refusals to provide transport. Resistance on the part of the German authorities also expressed itself by a feeble response to the criticism formulated by the delegates during the inspections. When visiting again, the delegates often remarked with notable frustration that the requested improvements had not been implemented. ⁴⁵ Frustration with inspection results was not exclusive to the Spanish delegates: Wylie points out that the view given by the American diplomats who were in charge of prisoner protection until the United States entered the war was that of frequent exasperation, which explains why after the war, the Americans pushed for a new, more concise definition of the role of the protecting powers. ⁴⁶ This resulted in continuous reproaches from many prisoners, who complained about the ineffectiveness of the delegates’ visits – something frequently acknowledged by the delegates themselves, as I will show below.

Everyday Difficulties

The delegates expected to gain more respect, both from the prisoners and from the German authorities, by presenting a solid image. They claimed that whenever their role was recognized, this facilitated access to certain resources, especially access to transport:

In the delegates’ opinion […] only a single means exists to tackle these difficulties: that the delegates have at their disposal at all times an automobile […]; thereby, they could triple their efforts and achievements, at the same time increasing the prestige of the delegation both before the prisoners and before the German authorities, as this prestige is in many cases effectively lowered, if they present themselves at a work site covered in dust and having to beg at each moment for help to be transported, which practically always fails. ⁴⁷

The delegates’ argument was that they would only manage to improve the prisoners’ situation if they could benefit from the respectability of their uniforms – and that they could not use this source of prestige if they arrived in a dirty state from their travels. The use of a car as a vehicle was supposed to make the visits more imposing, and the Spanish delegates held that other representatives of neutral countries, who had such means, were more successful in their tasks. ⁴⁸

In fact, food and transport were two key issues in the delegates’ complaints:

thereby, the trip from Darmstadt to Stuttgart, took from 8 o’clock in the night to 3 in the morning as the train was three hours late and during all that time, despite our first-class ticket, we had to remain in the corridor of the wagon in the dark and with a temperature that we found out to be between −2 and 0 degrees Celsius. ⁴⁹

Aware of their role as intermediaries, the delegates called for a positive image to portray, in order to have more success in their interventions. Given the criticism received for their poor levels of success in terms of improving prisoners’ situations through their reports, the delegates tried to obtain better recognition for their work, with regard to the material difficulties characterizing their mission. The presidency of the Commission called for the delegates to discuss these conditions in their reports, in an effort to gain more appreciation from the French government. ⁵⁰ This shows how far the idea of both political and material recognition, by France above all, motivated the individual efforts of Spanish delegates in the inspection of camps, and those of their authorities.

If access to road transport was the most repeatedly formulated request, second was that for food ration cards. Antonio Ferratges communicated in September 1917 that he would finish his assigned tasks in the Lübeck region with the greatest speed, stating that ‘the food situation in this region is the best incentive to visit it quickly and to finish work as soon as possible’, to get back to Berlin and ‘eat […] something decent in one's own house’. ⁵¹ The problem of access to food remained a constant issue during the entire period of the delegates’ activity. ⁵² The Spanish Embassy dealt with that issue by obtaining food cards for its officials, diplomats, and employees. Other embassies, like the American legation, asked for food provisions to be shipped in from their country's territory. In this line, the delegate Antonio Adrados suggested the dispatch from Spain of food packages for the members of the mission. If the French were to show opposition to the transit of such merchandise through their territory, the Spanish embassies in Copenhagen or Berne were called upon to directly send these rations. ⁵³ However, this idea was never implemented and the delegates continued to depend on provisions from the local, regulated markets.

Given the policy of food rationing, possible tensions with the wider German population and avoiding such tensions, was high on the agenda. As Richard Bessel has shown, popular anger with the lack of provisions increased over the period of the war. ⁵⁴ In Berlin, for instance, tensions mounted and there was a growing risk of privileged individuals becoming the target of local fury. ⁵⁵ The delegates were worried that the locals could become hostile to their presence due to their privileges. In a letter sent in June 1917, Jiménez Porras warned that it was dangerous on the part of the embassy to request the city administration of Zossen, close to Berlin, where he was posted, to provide the delegates with the same amount of provisions they received in the embassy. Jiménez Porras argued that the place was too small, making such a demand problematic because too many German civilians would know; a monthly ration of 90 eggs was a dangerous display of privileges that remained far above normal quotas. ⁵⁶ These observations exemplify the decreasing tolerance of the population with the presence of privileged foreigners, as in the delegates’ case, and the delegates as intermediaries were very worried about the matter. ⁵⁷

On the list of problems, lack of food was joined by incidents of food poisoning from consuming items that had gone bad. This happened on various occasions while travelling to Jiménez Porras, who reported in July 1917 from Frankfurt ‘food poisoning from having eaten fish which had gone off, while it had been impossible to find any alternative food. […]’. ⁵⁸ Under the circumstances, the delegate asked to return to Heidelberg, as in Frankfurt he was unable to obtain the necessary provisions because, unlike in Berlin, the administration in Stuttgart did not provide them. ⁵⁹

Food, clothes, cars … the delegates claimed that the responses they were able to achieve depended on their respectability, but equally they had to avoid being rejected by the German public because of their privileges of access, notably to provisions. ⁶⁰ This included, on the one hand, accepting certain everyday difficulties that made their missions more complicated, and sometimes presented themselves as real obstacles. On the other hand, they also had to cope with a frequently tense relationship with the prisoners of war, who evaluated the success of the delegates’ inspections in comparison to the expected outcomes. I will analyse that tension in the following section.

Delegates and Prisoners: Scrutinizing Successes and Looking for Recognition

The doubts about the results of their reports expressed in the delegates’ correspondence are another relevant element of their group identity as brokers and intermediaries. ⁶¹ The delegates used the argument of already insufficient impact in the field when responding to external pressures to increase the number of their inspections; they were always opposed to such demands, pointing out that they were unrealistic given the difficulties linked to travel and inspection tours, and that this would reduce the opportunity to have more rigid and detailed examinations, and to solve at least some of the problems the prisoners complained about. ⁶² A document dispatched from the Spanish Embassy in Berlin to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Manuel García Prieto, in November 1917, explained this problem:

it is not always the greater number of visits that means a bigger effort, as in the same town or its environs might exist various camps, deposits, lazarettes and work sites, and all those can be visited in a relatively short time frame, but there are districts where a long and painful trip is necessary to see only one of the said places. ⁶³

Administrative issues constituted one part of the difficulties of the delegates’ world. To increase the number of visits meant problems in finding personnel to translate reports and to copy documents. Moreover, some delegates struggled with work in German or French, so that only missions in pairs were actually feasible. Delegate Gonzalo de Aguilera communicated in August 1917, in a secret letter, that his colleague on mission, Luis de Amallo, was unable to carry out visits alone, given his constant problems with the prisoners who complained about his poor level of French, but also difficulties with the authorities. Clearly frustrated, De Aguilera held that under such conditions, the inspection reports were worthless, as the more problematic conditions identified were unlikely to be resolved. Indeed, he claimed that some of the improvements obtained in the everyday life of the prisoners had only been possible thanks to his direct discussion with the general command and not because of the reports. ⁶⁴ The lack of efficiency in the system of reporting was also aggravated by the fact that, given difficulties of communication, the delegates sometimes lacked up-to-date information on the treaties regarding the prisoners, making their inspections obsolete:

The absolute ineffectiveness of our reports, because it would still be the first time that one of my reports would have led to an improvement or changes as a result. This explains why up to a point it leaves me abashed to present myself in the camps, where neither the prisoners nor the German authorities would have accorded me any importance at all. […] Moreover, no one ever communicates to us the agreements concerning the prisoners formulated between the warring nations, and as a consequence of that ignorance, the prisoners ask themselves what kind of delegates we might be, if we do not even know either of the agreements or of the rights they obtain through these treaties. ⁶⁵

This sense of ineffectiveness of their role as mediators was even more obvious if, for example, the delegates were delayed in repeating a visit to a camp to check on the response to criticisms formulated. Given the lack of staff within the Commission, the delegate Sánchez Ocaña had a delay of several months in returning to the camp of Neisse, despite its negative report formulated during an earlier mission. Even to carry out his task, he needed two and a half days of inspection, and he challenged the head of the Commission's insistence on accelerating the visits, because:

as since October there had not been any visit to this camp, the quantity of complaints – many of importance – and desires, is enormous. It will be sufficient to tell you that to write the report I needed many days, because the notes they gave me alone […] are around a hundred. ⁶⁶

These situations increased the tensions with the prisoners.

In May 1917, delegate Antonio Adrados had already insisted on the necessity of increasing the visits to work sites, as they would be the places with the worst conditions, and which also were less visible. As Adrados pointed out, the large camps had visits of ‘all kinds of commissions’; of which the most desired by the prisoners were the commissions of Swiss doctors who offered the possibility for sick inmates to be sent to Switzerland for treatment. ⁶⁷ Given the fact that the work sites remained in the shadow of such activity, the French and Belgian governments insisted that those were the places where inspections needed to exert real pressure. ⁶⁸ Some delegates held a similar opinion, but reinterpreted these goals to give them more prestige. Manuel de la Cámara affirmed in December 1917 that inspections should focus less on the camps and more on the larger work sites as inspection efforts there yielded greater results and received better recognition. In fact, he held that in the camps there was little appreciation for the delegates’ activity, and therefore

the visits to the large work sites are to my judgment more beneficial for our reputation with the prisoners than those to the camps, because in the latter we are already too well known, while in the mines they have never seen us, and that is even more regrettable as negative reports often lead to the removal of the commandant of the work site […]. ⁶⁹

In those cases, reports could indeed have an effect.

However, in general, the feeling of frustration in regard to a lack of tangible improvements was very present in the internal correspondence. Those who complained about a lack of results also held the idea that the nations whose citizens they represented did not recognize the effort employed. A purely humanitarian element of the mission clearly was not the only motive for taking part in inspections – the delegates called for adequate recognition and rewards. ⁷⁰

To achieve recognition and prestige for their work, delegates tried to ‘quantify’ their effort. In February 1918, a circular message explained the system of calculating the delegates’ services. ⁷¹ The inspection missions had clear regulations, defining a necessary minimum of visits, which explains the frequent insistence of the delegates whenever they had to travel to more work sites and camps than those selected for checking, that they already did much more than the stipulated minimum. Initially, the Commission established a plan of regular visits per region, which was subsequently adapted to give priority to camps and work sites that had been the source of repeated complaints. On some occasions, the delegates were sent twice to the same camp as the inspection could be scheduled both as a regular visit and as an extraordinary mission requested and set up by the government of the state the imprisoned citizens of which the Spanish represented. This occurred especially in the last months of the war. Repeating tasks provoked widespread frustration amongst the delegates, as such a lack of coordination led to more difficulties with the camp authorities, and it further reduced the delegates’ prestige with the prisoners. Behind the effort to signal their contribution lay yet another hope: the delegates especially wished to satisfy the French requests as the number of French prisoners was particularly high, and the French government was very active regarding requests for a greater number of inspections. ⁷² Many delegates presumed for that reason that their effort would at some point lead to financial or at least symbolic recognition from the French side, and gave priority to the work sites in the interest of French prisoners there. On various occasions, Carlos Requena let it be known that whenever he had free time, he visited smaller work sites, and he held that this activity should be rewarded by the French government:

Visiting the hospital of Hohenselzer, I had some spare time and decided to visit the work sites in this city. The greater number of them […] are small; but, nevertheless, I inspected them thinking that Your Excellency perhaps shares my opinion about the importance to use one's time, to avoid idle half-days. […] Will it perhaps not leave a good impression in France when they see that we visit even the work sites where there is only a handful of French prisoners? ⁷³

Similarly motivated, in December 1917, the delegate Benito Sardá, responsible for the zone of Bremen, insisted on the need to visit even the smallest camps and labour sites, which were always more difficult to reach due to lack of transport. Sardá held that those places thus were ‘camps with more or less hidden repression, in my opinion, as the labour tasks in them tend to be harsh and painful, such as for the drainage of marshlands’. ⁷⁴ Sardá's idea was to visit all the camps, both ill-reputed places and those evoking a better image, because, and this was important, ‘I do not wish that tomorrow in the French chambers someone might say of our handling of the tasks here that we only inspected the camps of good reputation, therefore, I strove to visit them all’. ⁷⁵

Even as late as December 1918, Benitó Sardá, replacing Juan González Gelpi as head of the Military Commission a short time before its dissolution, distributed a circular letter including various urgent orders concerning the last inspections to be carried out, in which he underlined the importance of overcoming a general fatigue, as

the French observe it, and if they are satisfied with our efforts during the last days, they will give positive feedback to their government, and that will reach our government. This is the last card we need to play, and we need to play for maximum impact. ⁷⁶

Hope for individual and collective compensation thus remained a principal motivation for the delegates as intermediaries until the very end of their mission.

The delegates of the Commission retained their role until January 1919. Only then did their mission end – which provides historians with their perspective as observers on the first weeks after the Armistice and on the fate of the war prisoners. ⁷⁷ Already in Summer 1918, they had often pointed to chaotic conditions. Delegate Federico Deleito complained about the disorganization in the prisoner camps he visited in the zone of Hanover to create a list of prisoners requesting repatriation, in accordance with the latest agreements between the French and the German authorities,

[those prisoners] are disseminated in pockets of isolated labour sites and workhouses, which makes it near impossible to gather them together, and even to see them individually, as from one end of the region to the other is a good 12 kilometres, and the means of travelling for the accredited delegate is to walk (zu fuss gehen) […] Seeing things from Spain, you might think that in Germany everything is marvellously organized and that one would not encounter such responses and instances of passive resistance. In the labour sites, they plainly did not draft the lists […]. ⁷⁸

The delegates detailed the problems in the camps in this final phase of the war, pointing to a lack of guards, and passing via the scarcity of food to condemning the increasing lack of interest on the part of the authorities in the prisoners’ conditions. Such demoralization did not only affect the organization of the camps, it also created new conflicts with German authorities beyond that sector. Generally, the treatment experienced by the delegates was made worse by a decline in conditions. Delegate Antonio Ferratges aired his complaints in August 1918 after having been arrested at the station in Munich, when local authorities did not accept the authorizations shown. He was most indignant that the detention was ordered by an army colonel: ‘no one could excuse this episode like on earlier occasions, when we attributed them to the ignorance of police agents or the lack of knowledge of the peasants’. ⁷⁹ Ferratges implored his superiors to mobilize Spanish diplomacy to support them, because he feared that these clashes would become more frequent. Generally, he held the atmosphere to be tense, because ‘the state of mind here in Bavaria is quite different from that in Prussia, as the recent defeats weigh on the people's mood, creating great apprehensiveness and animosity towards foreigners’. ⁸⁰ Again, the growing problems of food scarcity, becoming ever more obvious, brought jealousy with regard to certain groups, such as the delegates, who were seen as a privileged group, while the general population suffered the consequences of the situation. For the delegates, a principal objective remained to get through this complicated final phase, demonstrating that their effort merited the compensations imagined for a long time already.

Conclusion

Transnational Spanish humanitarian work of mediation carried out by the delegates constantly remained connected to the idea of compensation. This led to a twofold perception the delegates had of their own mission. On the one hand, they were keen to obtain results that would improve the prisoners’ situation, and they called for answers to the existing complaints. On the other hand, the delegates insisted on the very usefulness of external recognition of their work that would lead to material rewards after the end of the war. Two elements were linked to that perception of their task. A first issue was the difficult relationship with the prisoners, in view of the limits of their interventions and subsequent ways in which those prisoners questioned the delegates’ authority. Second, the delegates constantly used as a basis for claims their complicated task of seeking a balance with German military authorities to be effective on behalf of imprisoned enemies, and the even more complicated manoeuvring to reach an understanding with ordinary German citizens, with whom they had to share material constraints while they were sometimes accused of having undue privileges. Thus, in reports on visits to camps and labour sites, and in their internal correspondence, the Spanish delegates were constantly active in the production of claims, which they justified by their experience of particular difficulties and hardships.

Analysis of the Military Commission's activity between April 1917 and January 1919, relying on testimony given by the delegates during their different missions, thus goes widely beyond interpreting an alternative (and important) source to understand the living conditions of prisoners of war. The Spanish delegates were brokers who had to interact with German society in a process of material and socioeconomic degradation by the end of the war, during a process of totalization of the war in the society that these delegates described. ⁸¹

While engaging in humanitarian work, ⁸² the Spanish delegates discussed their own uneasiness, sensitivities about lack of respect, and hopes for material recognition and social prestige as a result of their activity. Although initially very fond of German society and its forms of organization, they were exasperated by the hostilities and local challenges experienced. The delegates partly blamed that on regional radicalization (namely, they held Bavarians to be particularly problematic in that regard), but also understood that being a protected corps with certain material privileges in terms of access to food, due to their role, increasingly made them a target for local jealousies and anger. The delegates thus described their activity as hugely difficult – and they wished to receive not only symbolic but also material and career recognition for their activity. They would not get those rewards. Some of them would re-encounter German society or become ‘experts’ on ‘German issues’ in the interwar period, thus turning their brokerage experience into a different form of social prestige.