For my Transnational History project, I would like to focus on a specific aspect of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ activities during World War II – specifically, their interactions with prisoners of war and non-combatants in concentration camps across Europe and Asia. This will allow me to explore transnational elements in several ways. Firstly, this will give me an opportunity to examine international law in action – how well are belligerent nations allowing for ICRC inspections and visits and what this might reveal about adherence to international law – as well as a lens through which the actions of the ICRC in the war might be explored.
The ICRC had several responsibilities throughout World War II, as set out in the Geneva conventions – it was responsible for tracing refugees, assembling aid parcels to those in camps, and, crucially for this project, ensuring that belligerent parties were treating both captured soldiers and civilians in accordance with international law. Now, given what we know about the treatment of those held in internment camps during the war – the Japanese and Germans performed gruesome biological experiments on prisoners and civilians in territories it conquered, Soviet camps were had such poor conditions that fewer than 6000 German POWs were repatriated at the end of the war, and the devastating consequences of the German camp system are well known. How could such a sudden breakdown of the international system occur just twenty years after World War I, where international mechanisms were put in place to avoid a conflict on a global scale from erupting and to ensure the good treatment of captured soldiers and noncombatants. After decades of new international treaties, specifically the Geneva Conventions of 1929, which guaranteed both the authority of the ICRC as an agency able to inspect the conditions of prisoners of war and that POWs should be treated with respect? By examining the ICRC’s ability to inspect prisoner of war and concentration camps, I can examine both a difficult period in the history of a storied international organization, as well as examine adherence to international law and sovereignty. The history of international organizations such as the ICRC has the potential to include the interactions not just between state and non-state actors, such as the relationship between the ICRC and the Swiss government, as well as the relationship of national Red Cross societies with both their governments and the ICRC in how they chose to adhere to or ignore international law, but also to illuminate important transnational networks of individuals in charge of and making decisions on whether or not to intervene in these moments of international crisis.
I will look at the obstacles that the ICRC faced in accessing POW and concentration camps in Europe as well as Asia, and compare the approaches and challenges faced in both areas. While I would like to look at the larger battle theatre, I may be limited by the sources available, as my initial research has revealed more about ICRC actions in Europe. I may need to focus on either the European or of the Pacific theatre to maintain an appropriately narrow scope for a five thousand-word essay, though a comparative approach would be quite interesting. The bulk of my secondary reading will come from a report written by the ICRC in 1948 about its wartime actions. Many of the ICRC sources are written in French or English, which makes them accessible, and I will hopefully be able to access archival sources from the British Red Cross about the role it played during the war. Some secondary accounts, both in the form of scholarly articles and books about the ICRC have been published, and I may also need to extend the scope of my research to more general histories of World War II to obtain the breadth of secondary literature required for the project.