Page - 822 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

822 Camps tually become offenders were ‘terribly beaten’, as a letter to the War Surveillance Office alleged. The allegation was not disputed.1945 The long periods of internment certainly did not result in the development of posi- tive feelings towards the Habsburg Monarchy. In a report by the Ministry of the Inte- rior, Katzenau was described ‘as a veritable academy of irredentism’.1946 It was therefore prohibited to repatriate the internees. As a result, they generally had to remain in their enforced locations until the end of the war or accept massive restrictions. Their fate was not dissimilar to that of the prisoners of war. On Ivans, Serbs and Wops Since the Swiss mill owner Henry Dunant, in search of new sales markets for his flour in 1859, accidentally witnessed the consequences of the Battle of Solferino and then founded the Red Cross on a humanitarian impulse, the prisoner of war problem had also been recognised as something that had to be incorporated into the rules for waging war. This admittedly required time. At the two peace conferences in The Hague in 1899 and, above all, 1907, the terms were then codified. Accordingly, prisoners of war were to be treated humanely, though they were permitted, with the exception of officers, to be put to work. The custodial state was responsible for maintaining the prisoners of war and for treating them like its own troops in respect to food, clothing and shelter. Prisoners of war also had to adhere to the laws, regulations and orders of the state under whose control they were. From August 1914, therefore, the Habsburg Monarchy was obliged to observe these provisions  – in the drafting of which Austrian and Hungarian international law experts and military personnel had participated  – and to apply them. As in practically all other areas of waging war, experience was lacking, and for this reason the principle was repeatedly applied that one had to defer to the normative strength of the facts at hand. It soon became very clear that the provisions of the Hague Convention on Land Warfare were not sufficient to make the situation bearable for hundreds of thousands and millions of prisoners of war who were in the hands of the enemy not only for a short time but rather for a period of years. Here, regulations were not enough. Since Austria-Hungary assumed as a matter of course that a large number of Serbs and probably also Russians would have to be detained, in July 1914 the search began for suitable spaces in which camps could be set up. Then, the first prisoners of war were brought in. Room was initially found for a few hundred, then a thousand and finally 20,000 prisoners of war on military parade grounds such as Kenyérmező near Orăştie (Broos) or in the casemates in the Fortress of Arad. They were left to camp in the open, dig holes in the ground, erect tents and build simple huts. They starved, froze