The Face of the Finished Foe: German POWs, 1918

JF Ptak Science Books      Post 1809

I've written a number of times on this blog about WWI images, many of which are in my own collection of News Service Photo Group images, like the one just below, which can be found here. Many of them are remarkable, astonishing even--especially those relating to soldiers whose war has ended, finding them as prisoners of war.  At least they weren't dead, like the dozens of millions of other soldiers.

 

(Original photograph available at our blog bookstore here.)

I uncovered another of these images, tonight, long misplaced.

[Image available from our blog bookstore, here.]

There were over 8 million soldiers taken prisoner during WWI, that in addition to the 21 million who were wounded and the 9.7 million killed:  38 million.  Plus 6.8 million civilians who were killed: 45 million.  And the numbers for civilians wounded are just, well, not reliable, as they were not really collected, or collectible.  At the end of it all, there were probably between 50 to 75 million soldiers and civilians killed or wounded or taken captive during the war...not including civilians who were killed by the hardships or starvation caused by the conflict.  Big, big numbers.

Some of these soldiers were taken in entire armies, surrenders of hundreds of thousands; and some came in pairs, or singles, as in the photo above.  There are two captured Germans here, the two men in the middle, who are flanked by a British soldier and (I think) a Canadian officer, with two locals in the background.  The short man front-and-center was paraded no doubt for his propaganda value--certainly not five feet tall, slender, with a tiny, not-average face.  The Tommy is certainly enjoying the situation, while the officer maintains composure. 

I'm sure the photo could've been made by any photographer for any army at any time.

The photograph was made in 1918, a few months before the end of the war, but there was still fighting to be done, and the value of showing the the British and Allied publics the "face" of a now-wilting enemy must have been considerable.  There was considerable control and tightness over the sort of images allowed to be produced and published coming from the front line, photographs being made by a "pool" of news photographers the contents of which were closely evaluated by military censors before being allowed to circulate to newspapers and magazines.