ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the numbers of internees and the places of confinement. It examines internment practices after 1914. The chapter presents an example of the internment camp at Traunstein in Upper Bavaria, which will reveal a snapshot of the complexities and inconsistencies of internment in Germany during the First World War. Then, the case of the Belgian forced labourers is presented because labour played a far more important role in the experience of civilian internment than hitherto acknowledged. Internment camps are also places where history condenses into space, as the example of Traunstein clearly illustrates. The internment camp at Traunstein displays the multifaceted reality of internment in First World War Germany. After the deportation fiasco, the German authorities in the General-Government oriented their labour policies towards an aggressive recruitment drive, which was pursued on an even larger scale. By mid-1918, approximately 130,000 Belgian civilian workers – who were not forced labourers by definition – were working in Germany.
