Editing Piła (section)

====First World War and Imperial German military aviation technology====
[[File:Schneidemuehl Fliegerkaserne.jpg|thumb|Barracks in Piła in 1915]]
On 1 April 1914 Schneidemühl was disentangled from the [[Kreis Kolmar in Posen|Kolmar District]] and became an [[Independent city#Germany|independent city]] (or urban district; Stadtkreis) within the Bromberg Region. In the months before the outbreak of [[World War I]], in April 1914 the [[Albatros Flugzeugwerke]] established the so-called ''Ostdeutsche Albatros-Werke'' (East German Albatros Works, abbreviated "O.A.W.") in Schneidemühl for construction of military aircraft for the [[Luftstreitkräfte|Fliegertruppe]] air service of the [[German Army (German Empire)|German Army]] throughout the war — it later undertook license production of Fokker's famous [[Fokker D.VII]] fighter during the last year of World War I.

During the First World War, the Germans operated a [[German prisoner-of-war camps in World War I|prisoner-of-war camp]] in the city, initially taking mainly Russian POWs (including Poles and Latvians conscripted into the Russian Army) but later including prisoners from most [[Allies of World War I|Allied]] nations including Britain and Australia. A telling account of life in the town during that period survives in the form of the diary of [[Jo Mihaly|Piete Kuhr]], then a young girl whose grandmother worked at the Red Cross canteen at the railway station.