Clare Makepeace: Going ‘round the bend'

Clare Makepeace
Department of History, Classics and Archeology, Birkbeck College, University of London

Vortrag im Rahmen der Gisela Eisenreich-Ringvorlesung

Going ‘round the bend’: The mental disturbances suffered by British prisoners of war held in Germany and Italy during the Second World War

Zum Vortrag: Over 142,000 men serving in the British armed forces were captured and held in Europe at some point during the war; the majority spent over three years in captivity. Among the many challenges of incarceration was, as one prisoner referred to it, the fear of ‘stalag happiness’, of ‘going round the bend’, which can never be alleviated ‘till release comes’. This paper draws upon the writings of prisoners of war (POWs) and the medical professionals who came into contact with them to examine the causes and symptoms, then the prognosis and finally the treatment of those who experienced either mild or acute mental disturbances. It argues that, although these mental effects of captivity were given little recognition in Britain, they were experienced by at least a significant minority of POWs. Yet, by experiencing them from the isolation of a central POW camp and without recognition from the outside world, this paper also shows how little clarity and how much ambiguity surrounded what form these mental effects actually took.

Zur Vortragenden: Clare Makepeace is a doctoral student at the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has just submitted her thesis on the subjectivities of British prisoners of war held in Germany and Italy during the Second World War, which was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has previously published on eugenics and feminism in the interwar years, prostitution and masculinity in the First World War and, most recently, on the familial ties of British prisoners of war held in Europe during the Second World War. She is also a sessional lecturer at Birkbeck College, where she teaches British history since 1750. For further information, please visit her website.