Page - 830 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

830 Camps were to receive better quarters according to the Hague Convention. This was at the ex- pense of the subalterns. The conditions of the barracks for the enlisted men frequently defied description. There were no longer any plank beds, nothing with which to heat, nothing to eat, no straw mattresses and no blankets. The barracks  – in which around 400 men were housed  – often had only three ovens, in winter ! The sick barracks were bursting at the seams. Of the approximately 140,000 additional Italian prisoners of war who had to be accommodated in the winter of 1917/18, around 35,000 were wounded, sick or at least not capable of working. The mortality rate among the captive Italians shot up. They wrote home, seeking to give expression to their misery. The censors, how- ever, intercepted most of the letters and did not forward them. Italy furthermore dis- played an attitude that was not dissimilar to that of Austro-Hungarian authorities to- wards the Czechs in the first year of the war (and subsequently) : they doubted that the soldiers had surrendered in hopeless situations and regarded them instead as deserters or agitators, who had gone on strike against the war and were not, therefore, entitled to any aid.1974 At this point the Apostolic Nunciature in Vienna stepped in with the in- tention of determining to which camps Italian prisoners of war had been sent, but they were often only able to send the message to Rome that someone had succumbed to his wounds or had died in captivity. Nuncio Valfrè di Bonzo, who represented the Holy See in Austria from the end of 1916 until 1920, also visited the prison camps but was unable to detect any abuses and  – to the satisfaction of the Austrian authorities  – sent positive reports to Italy. The Nuncio was also unable to do anything about the starva- tion. Finally, captive Italian generals took action. However, the Imperial and Royal War Ministry reacted to the complaints of the highest-ranking Italian officers with the ob- servation that the food shortages were a consequence of the Allied blockade measures, whilst the lack of clothing and equipment was down to the vandalism of the prisoners themselves. Nonetheless, there was no way to counter the alarming increase in mortal- ity and diseases.1975 The fact that the Italian prisoners had been veritably robbed before they even reached the predetermined camps and that they had been divested not only of their valuables but, above all, also their overcoats, capes and items of warm clothing was a scandal, which then became the subject of an army order issued by the Command of the 11th Army in February 1918, the clarity of which left nothing to be desired : it could be established, the order read, ‘that a not inconsiderable percentage of the newly accrued Italian prisoners of war has arrived in the prisoner of war camps without these items of clothing, so that the War Ministry felt compelled to contribute uniforms and underwear from its own stores even to the officers. […] In regard to the captive Italian enlisted men, the circumstance was added that they often have to be left behind in the camp and cannot be sent out to work due to inadequate clothing, as a result of which vital economic and military interests appear to be endangered. […] Without exception, the troops are to be strictly prohibited from removing items of clothing of any kind.’1976