Barbed Wire Diplomacy

This book examines how the British government sought to protect the interests of its prisoners in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It explores the various ways that were used to hold Germany to its obligations under the 1929 Geneva Convention and sheds light on the key role played by neutral intermediaries in this process. It charts British efforts to maintain the flow of Red Cross parcels to German camps, explores some of the tensions created by POW issues with Britain's imperial and wartime partners, and highlights the way in which international norms can, even under conditions of total war, influence state behaviour towards the treatment of enemy combatants.