Konsten att få alla med på tåget : En studie av Svenska Röda Korsets samarbete med internationella aktörer för transport och utväxling av krigsfångar 1915–1918

Sammanfattning: Between 1915 and 1918, the Swedish Red Cross organised transportation and exchanges of prisoners of war between Russia, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During 1917, some particularly sick prisoners were sent to Norway and Denmark to be hospitalised. This paper studies the aid effort to prisoners of war by the Swedish Red Cross during World War One by studying their work with these prisoner exchanges. By doing this, the study aims to answer the question of how the Swedish Red Cross cooperated with states to conduct exchanges of prisoners of war. This is done through a qualitative method of analysis of the material, during which Nye’s theory of interdependence is employed as a tool for the analysis. The four dimensions of interdependence (sources, benefits, relative costs, and symmetries) are used to generate operationalized research questions and to analyse the results. These transportations were a massive administrative undertaking for the Swedish Red Cross and required cooperation from all involved states to run smoothly. The Russian revolution and subsequent civil war, lack of coal and oil, and animosity between the belligerent nations created problems repeatedly threatening the cooperations. The study concludes that the cooperation was based on administrational work by the Swedish Red Cross together with material, financial and medical contributions from the states. The study also concludes that the main sources of interdependence were the mutual need to exchange prisoners between the belligerent states. For them the main benefit was getting their compatriots back; for the Red Cross and neutral states, it was recognized as a humanitarian actor. The Swedish Red Cross and the neutral states were the more sensitive actors, while the belligerent states were the more vulnerable actors. The cooperation was relatively symmetrical but slightly skewed in the favour of the belligerent states