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1914-1918 war: International Prisoners of War Agency

30-05-2014 Photo gallery

The objective of the International Prisoners of War Agency, which was established by the ICRC at the start of the First World War, was to centralize information about prisoners of war so that their loved ones could be informed and contact restored. It was a huge task: during and after the war, Agency volunteers made index cards and lists of nearly two and a half million prisoners of war.

  • International Prisoners of War Agency, incoming post and sorting department. Following the first major offensives in the summer of 1914, many soldiers were taken prisoner and many civilians were trapped in occupied territories. From the very first weeks, between 2,000 and 3,000 requests or letters arrived at the Agency each day.

    • International Prisoners of War Agency.

      Incoming post and sorting department. Following the first major offensives in the summer of 1914, many soldiers were taken prisoner and many civilians were trapped in occupied territories. From the very first weeks, between 2,000 and 3,000 requests or letters arrived at the Agency each day.
      © ICRC Library (DR) / Boissonnas / hist-00580-27
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, tracing department. Preliminary classification. The principles and methods were determined progressively, depending on the problems to be resolved. To make the huge volume of processed data useable, each piece of information was analysed and classified.

    • International Prisoners of War Agency.

      Tracing department. Preliminary classification. The principles and methods were determined progressively, depending on the problems to be resolved. To make the huge volume of processed data useable, each piece of information was analysed and classified.
      © ICRC Library (DR) / Boissonnas / hist-03557-24
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, tracing department. The requests and information were entered onto different coloured index cards. The requests were written on white cards and the information on cards of different colours that indicated the person’s nationality.

    • International Prisoners of War Agency.

      Tracing department. The requests and information were entered onto different coloured index cards. The requests were written on white cards and the information on cards of different colours that indicated the person’s nationality.
      © ICRC Library (DR) / F. Boissonnas / hist-00569-30
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, the filing system. The index cards were classified by nationality and then by alphabetical order of names. Index cards also contained a phonetic transcription of the missing person’s name so as to take account of various possible spellings.

    • International Prisoners of War Agency.

      The filing system. The index cards were classified by nationality and then by alphabetical order of names. Index cards also contained a phonetic transcription of the missing person’s name so as to take account of various possible spellings.
      © ICRC Library (DR) / Boissonnas / hist-01819-28
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, tracing department, Franco-Belgian section. Information was requested from government information offices and the National Societies of the countries in which the person went missing or was taken captive. If no information was found, an enquiry was launched.

    • International Prisoners of War Agency.

      Tracing department, Franco-Belgian section. Information was requested from government information offices and the National Societies of the countries in which the person went missing or was taken captive. If no information was found, an enquiry was launched.
      © ICRC Library (DR) / F. Boissonnas / hist-00581-03
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, tracing department. At that time, mechanical data processing – a method that used perforated cards to process data mechanically – had not been sufficiently developed and the index cards were classified manually. For such a vast volume of data, that required considerable accuracy and great perseverance.
  • International Prisoners of War Agency. The British index. Two major services were set up, one for the Entente and one for the Central Empires. From the early days of the conflict, the issue of reciprocal transmission of lists of prisoners by the governments to the Agency was raised and the ICRC had to negotiate with the various parties.
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, German section. For the Agency to function effectively, it was essential for all information to be centralized in one place. The information could nonetheless be decentralized if a front was clearly identifiable, for example. The information on Germans taken captive on the Russian front and on Russian prisoners in Germany was processed in Copenhagen by the Danish Red Cross, which the Agency entrusted with that task.
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, missing persons department. The tracing methods evolved in the course of the war. In 1915, for example, the Agency began making direct enquiries of some camp commanders. In 1916, in addition to the information obtained from the authorities, the Agency tried to obtain information from comrades of missing people by systematically sending them a questionnaire. The work was vast, but a very large number of replies were received.
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, civilians department, Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine section. At the time of the First World War, civilians, unlike military prisoners, were not yet protected by treaties. However, their situation was often just as dramatic, particularly for civilians living in enemy countries or in occupied territories and fugitives, refugees or evacuated people. The Agency’s civilians department dealt with their cases alongside those of soldiers, using the same techniques and methods.
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, typing and copying department. For the Agency’s departments to function properly, postal relations and transportation had to be operating between the countries. The ICRC took numerous steps to improve postal and telegraphic communications, to obtain special priorities and to ensure that messages crossed the front lines.
  • International Prisoners of War Agency, correspondence forwarding department. The long periods of detention led to serious cases of depression among prisoners; this was referred to at the time as barbed wire psychosis. For prisoners who had been held for more than three months, the Agency created the express message, which contained no more than 20 words and can be considered the forerunner of the present Red Cross message.
  • Transporting parcels forwarded by the International Prisoners of War Agency to prisoners of war. During the war, more than 1,800,000 parcels were delivered to prisoners of war through the Agency.
  • Prussia, Stettin, 1920. Russian prisoners of war being repatriated under the auspices of the ICRC. The November 1918 armistice did not lead to the closure of the International Prisoners of War Agency, which continued its information activities in the context of the major repatriation operations for prisoners. The Agency closed at the end of 1919 but its tasks were taken over by a permanent structure, the ICRC’s Tracing Service.

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