French prisoner tied to a stake at Zwickau prison camp is given a drink by a fellow POW, Germany, 1917

French prisoner tied to a stake at Zwickau prison camp is given a drink by a fellow POW, Germany, 1917.

A French prisoner of war, tied to the stake for breaking one of the camp rules at Zwickau, receives a glass of water from a compassionate Romanian POW to help alleviate the French soldier's suffering.

What is it about people in the past?

They can be taken prisoner and tied to a stake and still look more dapper and composed than I ever do.

Most clothing that was common then is now considered "formal."  People don't often where a jacket and long pants today where that may be all most men had, especially on active military duty. For every day life most had their everyday set and a nice "Sunday" set if they were lucky. There was no such thing as cheap tshirts and jeans, so durable coats and pants that would be functional all year round were the most valuable/useful. Also most had hats(less showering > unkempt hair).

The thing about the hair is actually untrue. People washed their hair with water and soap less often, but people combed their hair much more extensively than we do today. We just comb our hair to style it mostly, its already clean. Combing your hair for 100+ strokes performs the same function or removing bits and grease (Like brushing a dog). That's part of the tradition of girls/women receiving ornate beautiful combs as gifts or precious items, it would be this sort of intimate item used extensively and remind them of who gave it to them. And depictions of vain girls often depicted them brushing their hair, usually for an extensive amount of time.

There's a really good segment on the BBC's Edwardian Farm talking about personal grooming habits. Like you wouldn't often have a soaker bath in a tub, but you'd still wash yourself with a wet cloth and bowl of water probably everyday (Of course some people would be slobby like now). You can do the same with your hair too if you wet it and comb it really well. Also there is powder shampoo that was much more common than it is now, which uses the same principle of sprinkling it on your hair and then combing it all out again. It's a lot of work, obviously, which is why we prefer hot showers these days. Unkempt hair was often a bigger deal than it is now in the lot of ways, because it would indicate you were of significant destitution or emotional disturbance. Like when you see a stock character of a woman so distraught or crazy her hair is a mess.

Hats performed a hole other set of functions including: Protection from the elements, especially when you are outdoors more often, even just performing daily tasks like washing, gathering water, or tending your animals.There's a huge amount of modesty or religious symbolism involved even in the christian tradition, indication of status or class, and of course fashion.

If anything wigs are the cheater option because they allowed the owner to have immaculately coifed elaborate hair dos every day without doing any of the work, and you just take it off at the end of the day. Or like the edwardian buns, they had large hair peices to work into their hair. Sort of like those foam donuts girls use today.

Falling afoul of camp rules exposed a prisoner to sanctions, which could come about for various reasons: refusal to salute, refusal to answer during roll call, insubordination, possession of banned objects like paper, wearing civilian clothes, escape or attempted escape.

First, the Gelinder Arrest (“mild detention”) of up to nine weeks simply involved locking up the prisoner, but theoretically with no further deprivation. Second was the Mittelarrest, lasting up to three weeks. The prisoner could receive nothing from the outside except 10000 g of potato bread and a supplement on the fourth day of captivity. Finally, the Strenger Arrest, lasting two weeks, was similar to the Mittelarrest but included light deprivation. If no detention cell was available in the camp, standing at a post was used as punishment

Post punishment would become the symbol of this detention. The principle was simple: the prisoner was attached to a post, a tree or against a wall, hands behind his back, and had to remain in this position, which prevented him from moving, for a certain amount of time, without eating or drinking. Several variations on this punishment were invented, such as one where the prisoner was raised onto bricks while being attached and once he was solidly attached, the bricks were removed, rendering the punishment even more painful. The Hague Convention specified that “Prisoners of war shall be subject to the laws, regulations, and orders in force in the army of the State in whose power they are. Any act of insubordination justifies the adoption towards them of such measures of severity as may be considered necessary”. Post punishment was applied in the German Army until its abolition on 18 May 1917; for prisoners, abolition came at the end of 1916 after a complaint by France (Wikipedia)

World War One wasn't an ideological war, like World War Two, but a completely political one so soldiers on different sides had no reason to hate each other unlike, for example, the Soviets and the Germans thirty years later. In fact, I would say they had a sort of camraderie with each other because they were all stuck in a completely pointless meatgrinder that was costing millions of lives every year - unprecedented scale for the time and bloodiest war before World War Two.

Add to that that World War One was a "world" war because the world came to Europe to fight instead of fighting happening world-wide and the collapse of any romanticism that was present early on in the face of horrors of all out industrialised warfare. Because all wars between Napoleonic wars (1804 - 1815) and World war One (1914 - 1918) that were fought in Europe were either revolutions or relatively minor wars that failed to show the full scale of destruction that a war between industrial powerhouses can bring.

All What's You Should Know— where you'll discover the most interesting things that you Should know