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During the First World War, Irish prisoners of war enjoyed special treatment. A few months after the outbreak of war, the German government separated Irish captives from other British soldiers and housed them together in a single camp. They were given plenty to eat, enviable living conditions, reading material, and tobacco, in striking contrast to the usual treatment of prisoners of war. When the men had a visit from Sir Roger Casement, a former British diplomat, who was sympathetic to the nationalist cause and an ardent supporter of an independent Ireland, the POWs understood that the Germans expected them to reject their British uniform. In their quest to excite historic tensions between Ireland and Great Britain, the Germans imagined a way to raise an Irish force to overcome the British army in Ireland. The ill treatment to which the prisoners were afterwards subjected can be put down to the desire to force them to betray Great Britain. While aggression towards prisoners of war usually aimed to break down individual resistance or put pressure on enemy governments, the punishments and deprivation endured by the Irish captives were exacted in order to incite them to support the German cause. After the failure of the German government’s strategy, which succeeded in mobilizing a mere fifty men, the events that took place in Ireland on the eve of this First World War conflict shaped the way that the enemy looked on Irish troops.