We Don't Know What War Is

WHAT IS WAR?

Germans being shelled in their trenches during the Battle of the Somme.

From: Walter Smoter Frank (2004), Hitler: the Making of a Fuhrer, Chapter 9.

In the preliminary bombardment that opened the battle, the British and French fired over 40,000 shells every hour in hopes of pulverizing German defenses. As the shells came raining down on the German positions, the land itself seemed to burst open and flash. As far as the eye could see, fountains of mud, iron and stone filled the sky.

Gas moved across the land and filled the valleys and meadows. Talk was impossible for one could not be understood. Men huddled in their shelters as exploding shells cleared away the earth protecting them. Trenches disappeared. Dugouts vanished. Screams were heard between the explosions. Where men had sat only lumps of flesh and bits of uniform remained.

In the deeper shelters, old and battle-hardened troops peered through their masks at one another and shook their heads. The new recruits with big eyes and quivering bodies were watched with apprehension. Some turned green and began vomiting. Some began sobbing. Those with haunted protruding eyes attempted to dig deeper into the earth with their bare hands.

Some snuggled up to their stronger comrades and looked out from behind a kindly shoulder like frightened little children peeking out from behind their mother’s hip. As the shells tore apart the upper layers of concrete and began working their way toward them, many lost control of their bowels.

The smell of putrefaction mixed with the stench of exploding powder. No one condemned them for in war it was a common thing. After a hundred continuous hours of bombardment, even old soldiers experienced wet foreheads, damp eyes, trembling hands and panting breath as spasms of fear fought their way to the surface. Men felt they were already in their graves waiting only to be closed in.

Germans in their trenches at the Third Battle of Ypres, July 1917.

From: Frank, Walter Smoter (2004). Hitler: The Making of a Fuhrer, Chapter 11.

The Germans had been forced, by the water soaked soil in the region, to abandon deep dugouts in favor of small concreted pillboxes which held machine gun crews and twenty to thirty men during heavy shelling. As the men huddled in their shelters the bombardment continued and churned the wet soil.

Between the rounds of exploding shells, the British also began hurling their latest inventions—new deadlier forms of gas and “cylinders of liquid fire.” Although the pillboxes could resist the shells of light artillery, many were engulfed by the early form of napalm or torn to shreds by the heavier shells.

For some of the lucky soldiers, death came quickly. Those in the area of an exploding shell simply vanished. For others, all that was left behind were a few body parts. Most men however, did not die so easily. Men who survived saw friends with half their legs missing running to the next shell hole on splintered stumps. Between bursting shells they saw burning men running in circles. They saw men running with their entails dragging twenty feet behind them.

They saw living men without legs, without arms, without jaws, without faces. They saw opened chests, opened stomachs, opened backs and opened skulls. Clumps of flesh that no longer resembled anything human continued to breath. Mercifully, some men never knew how badly they were hit and died in the middle of a sentence.

Others died slowly as they looked on in shock at a large part of their body laying yards away. Some looked at their deadly wounds in bewilderment and their long faces seemed unable to accept the fact that it had happened to them. Others gasped in horror, looking and longing for help they knew would never come.

DEAD BODIES ON THE BATTLEFIELD, the First World War, September 1916

From: Frank, Walter Smoter (2004). Hitler: The Making of a Fuhrer, Chapter 9.

Because of the speed at which the men were fed to the guns, it often became impossible to bring in the dead for burial. Bodies lay scattered upon the field until the exposed flesh became the same color as their gray-green uniforms. Strange distorted, taut, dead faces, all alike, revealed terror, anguish and suffering.

Gases within swollen dead bellies, hissed, belched and made movements. Bodies and parts of bodies were dumped into shell craters or abandoned trenches where huge gloated rats fattened themselves. Huge shells fell upon the graves and lifted the rotting corpses back onto the earth.

Heads, torsos, limbs, and grotesque fragments lay everywhere scattered among the scorched, torn and pitted earth, rotting and stinking. A miasma of chloroform and putrefaction rose from the piles and shifted back and forth over the living. Old cemeteries were not spared, and the stained bones and skulls of those who had perished centuries before were heaved back upon the earth and scattered among the fresher dead as though to inquire about the progress of leaders.

For a hundred and fifty miles, from the Somme to Verdun, the land was a giant lunar-scape with dying men, open grave-yards, and rotting corpses. At Verdun the Germans advanced about five miles, while on the Somme the British advanced about the same. For this trade the leaders of the opposing countries sustained over 600,000 casualties at Verdun and over 1,000,000 on the Somme.

THINGS HIDDEN SINCE
THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD

Most of us don’t know what war is. We haven’t experienced its concrete reality—the actuality of battle. For most people, war is an abstraction, a geopolitical fantasy. Many relish the idea of warfare: the struggle to defeat the enemy, destroy evil, protect and defend one’s nation, etc. However, whether one is “for” or “against” war, most of us don’t know what war is.

Even those who advocate or believe war is a necessary enterprise prefer not to contemplate the reality of the warrior’s dead or maimed body. We don’t want to look closely at the results of battle: blood and gore. When soldiers return from battle, we don’t want to hear too much about what they’ve experienced. We stay away from hospitals. We don’t want to see—or think about—their wrecked bodies.

The title of Rene Girard’s Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1987) refers to the “scapegoat” mechanism: a concealed dynamic which, he believes, has worked to maintain civilization from its beginnings. Girard writes about the scapegoat as an outside group selected because it is weak or unable to defend itself. He is not familiar with the concept of insider violence: how soldiers function as victims and unifiers of society.

According to Girard, the sacrificial mechanism must be disguised or hidden in order to be effective. We avert our eyes from the victim. S. Mark Helms states that the working of mythical sacrifice in society requires that people “know not what they do.” Sacrificial scapegoating is “most virulent when it is most invisible.” The effectiveness of the mechanism of sacrificial killing depends on “blindness to its workings.” To “avert one’s eyes from the sight of the victim,” Helms says, is that “characteristically human act” that lies at the heart of scapegoating.

When it comes to warfare, we know and don’t know. We know, but don’t want to know too much. History books produce statistics on “casualties.” But we don’t like to contemplate what occurred. We prefer not to speak or write about the fact that our own nation kills and maims people. The truth hurts.

We don’t want to think about the dead and maimed bodies of our own soldiers. Certainly, we don’t want to see these bodies. We keep them out of sight. We don’t want to see body bags containing the dead. We don’t even want to see coffins that contain the remains of dead soldiers. In the midst of sound and fury, we like to keep war hidden. It’s our secret.

The institution of warfare and denial of reality go hand and in hand—they are two sides of the same coin. What is most deeply denied is the reality of what happens to the bodies of soldiers in battle. Historians like to write about geopolitical issues, political machinations, and battle strategy—anything to avoid looking at reality.

Denial of the reality of the death and maiming of soldiers is nothing new. Douglas Haig was the British Commander-in-Chief responsible for the disastrous Battle of the Somme. In his report of August 22, 1919, Features of the War, Haig states that total British casualties in all theaters of war—killed, wounded, missing and prisoners (including native troops)—was approximately three million (3,076,388). He claims that these casualties were “no larger than to be expected.” Yet Haig’s son reports that the General felt that it was his duty to refrain from visiting the casualty stations because “these visits made him physically ill.” French Commander Joseph Joffre said to his Staff: “I mustn’t be shown any more spectacles. I would no longer have the courage to give the order to attack.”

How strange and bizarre that men so close to the battlefield—responsible for the deaths of millions of young men—refused to look at the results of the orders they gave. Yet each of us inhabits a psychic space that is not radically different from that of the Generals. Although war may fascinate as a geopolitical enterprise, we don’t want to know or think about what happens to soldiers in and after the battle.

What is the meaning of this “Germany” that compelled Hitler to embrace—refuse to abandon—war? What is the meaning of a “nation” for any human being? Why do we feel that it would be a “sin to complain” about our country, even though we know it has generated death and destruction? Please leave your reflections and insights below.

HITLER AND WAR

Adolf Hitler—unlike most of us—experienced the reality of battle. He’d been there, witnessing and experiencing the horror: death, maiming and the decaying bodies of young men. In the face of Hitler’s experience of the First World War, it’s reasonable to ask: why did he not become a pacifist? That Hitler did not become a pacifist lies at the heart of this inquiry, raising a broader question: Given our knowledge of the massive destruction that war has caused, why do so many continue to embrace and advocate warfare?

Despite the fact that he was still holding Austrian citizenship, Hitler asked for—and was granted permission—to join the Bavarian Army in August 1914 (at age 25). He was present at a number of major battles, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Third Battle of Ypres (The Battle of Passchendaele).

Hitler was a dispatch runner, taking messages back and forth from the command staff in the rear to the fighting units near the battlefield. Based on what we know, Hitler was a highly competent, dedicated and passionate soldier. On December 14, 1914, he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class, in 1915 was promoted to Lance Corporal, and on August 18, 1918, he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st class for service since 1914 as a messenger.

Hitler joined the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment (known as the List Regiment). After its first engagement near Ypres, 2500 of the 3600 men in Hitler’s regiment were killed, wounded or missing. According to Walter Smoter Frank, the chances that a 1914 volunteer of the List Regiment would be killed or maimed was almost guaranteed. Because of replacements, Hitler’s Regiment suffered 3754 killed before the war ended. For most of the war, Hitler led a charmed life. He was nearly killed on numerous occasions. It was miraculous that he survived. However, during the Battle of the Somme on October 7, 1916, he was seriously wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners’ dugout. He spent two months in a hospital, was sent to Munich after being discharged, then returned to his regiment on March 5, 1917.

Hitler was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack on October 15, 1918, and also lost his voice. He was hospitalized in Pasewalk, and learned of the Armistice (November 11, 1918) marking Germany’s defeat in the First World War. Hitler reacted with bitterness and profound sadness.

What was the psychological meaning of “Germany” for Hitler? Why was this word—the simple evocation of “Germany”—so powerful that it prevented Hitler from complaining about the deaths of thousands of his comrades? What is the nature of our attachment to nations that makes it impossible for us to complain? Please leave your reflections and insights below.

THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME

The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. Fought between July 1 and November 1, 1916 near the Somme River in France, it was also one of the bloodiest military battles in history. On the first day alone, the British suffered more than 57,000 casualties, and by the end of the campaign the Allies and Central Powers would lose more than 1.5 million men.

The British planned to attack the German trenches on a 15-mile front on July 1, 1916. To ensure a rapid advance, Allied artillery pounded German lines for a week before the attack. According to Robert Whalen (1984), between June 24 and 29, 1916, some 50,000 French and English gunners (a force the same size as Wellington’s entire army at Waterloo) fired 1,500,000 rounds into German positions near the Somme.

The passages to the right present Walter Smoter Frank’s descriptions of the German experience of trench bombardment, and of a First World War battlefield (1916). It is likely that Adolf Hitler witnessed much of what Frank describes.

A fair amount has been written documenting Hitler’s experience of the First World War. Among the best accounts is an online publication by Walter Smoter Frank, who reconstructs the experience of German troops on the receiving end of a massive artillery barrage—as they waited for the British attack in late June 1916. Hitler was at the Battle of the Somme and experienced first-hand many of the things that Frank describes. Hitler later stated, “I saw men falling around me in thousands. Thus I learned that life is a cruel struggle.”

“IT WOULD BE A SIN TO COMPLAIN”

In Mein Kampf. Hitler relates how he learned about and reacted to Germany’s defeat in the First World War. On November 10, 1918, a pastor came to the hospital in Pasewalk (where Hitler was recovering from his poison gas attack). This “old gentleman,” Hitler reports, told him and his comrades that “we must now end the long war”; that the war had been lost and that Germany was now “throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the victors.”

“Again,” Hitler says, “everything went blank before my eyes. I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow.” Since “the day when I had stood before my mother’s grave,” Hitler says, “I had not wept.” Hitler’s experience at the end of First World War metamorphosed into a trauma from which he never recovered.

I want to focus here, however, on another aspect of Hitler’s response. Upon learning of Germany’s defeat, Hitler says, “I nearly lost heart for a moment.” He has a flicker of doubt and ambivalence, seems tempted to abandon hope. Hitler bolsters himself, however, remembering his earlier struggles on the battlefield and how he developed “merciless hardness and defiance,” then declares:

“When in the long war years Death snatched so many a dear comrade and friend from our ranks, it would have seemed to me almost a sin to complain—after all, were they not dying for Germany?”

In spite of having witnessed the death and maiming of thousands of his comrades during his four years of fighting, Hitler refuses to complain, indeed declares that it would be a “sin” to do so. It is a sin to complain about the death of his dear comrades and friends because they were “dying for Germany.” Hitler’s attachment to his nation transcends everything that he experienced as a soldier.

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT “COUNTRIES” ARE

I’ve suggested that human beings don’t know what war is. More significantly, we don’t know what “nations” are and why they impact upon us so profoundly. “Countries” are in the background of most historical accounts of war. We don’t often analyze the meaning of nations because we take them for granted. They are always there. We identify so deeply. We possess countries, and countries possess us. We barely conceive of who we are apart from our attachment to our nation with its “national life.”

Hitler is unable to abandon warfare—to become a peace activist—because of his attachment to the nation with which he identifies. Actually, there is no separation between Hitler’s attachment to Germany and his attachment to warfare. Because he refuses to consider abandoning Germany, he refuses to consider abandoning war—despite the massive suffering that he witnessed and experienced.

In light of previous LSS Newsletter issues, one might suggest that Hitler doesn’t complain about the death of comrades and friends because he is committed to an ideology of national sacrifice. We’ve noted that Hitler believes civilization could not exist if human beings were unwilling to die for their countries. Still, why does he imagine that nations require sacrifices?

Explaining this requires that we ascertain what “Germany” meant to Hitler. Indeed, to understand the meaning of warfare we need to know what “countries” mean for anyone. We conceive of nations as real entities existing outside our minds. Of course, countries exist as political and social structures. The question, however, is: What do nations mean to us, psychologically? Why do they play such a powerful role in our psyches—to the extent that we are willing to kill and die in their name, and to forgive them for all the suffering they cause.

It is difficult to think of “nations” and not to think of actual entities possessing objective existence. However, whatever reality nations possess, they function as mental representations. Nations exist within our minds and play a profound role in the psychic economy of each and every one of us.

Killing is Sacrificing

VIRTUE = WILLINGNESS
TO SACRIFICE ONE’S LIFE

Willingness to sacrifice — die for one’s country — constituted a philosophy of life for Hitler. Dying for Germany was the supreme virtue — and essence of National Socialism. Beginning with this understanding, it is not difficult to follow the “logic” of everything that happened after.

If virtue or goodness for Hitler was the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s nation, the absence of virtue (or evil) was unwillingness to sacrifice one’s life. Hitler revered, honored and glorified the German soldier who volunteered for military service and risked his life.

WHY DO GOOD MEN DIE,
WHILE THE WORST SURVIVE?

On the other hand, what about those who did not serve in the military — who sought to “shirk” their duty? Hitler became deeply disturbed — obsessed — with the idea that some Germans had avoided fighting in the First World War. Hitler pondered the question: “Why had the best (most courageous and patriotic) men died in the war, whereas the worst (most cowardly, unpatriotic) survived?” Why is virtue punished while lack of virtue is rewarded?

In hundreds of thousands of cases, Hitler explained in Mein Kampf, it was always a matter of “volunteers to the front, voluntary patrols, voluntary dispatch runners, volunteers for telephone detachments, volunteers for bridge passages, volunteers for U-boats, volunteers for airplanes, volunteers for storm battalions, etc.”

During four-and-a-half years, “again and again, again volunteers on a thousand occasions.” It was men who were filled with an “ardent love for their country,” urged by a “lofty sense of duty” who always answered the call for volunteers.

Some, however, sought to avoid military duty. These men, Hitler believed, lacked courage and a sense of duty. Hitler summarized his view in Mein Kampf:

One extreme of the population, which was constituted of the best elements, had given a typical example of its heroism and had sacrificed itself almost to a man. The other extreme, which was constituted of the worst elements of the population, had preserved itself almost intact, throughout taking advantage of absurd laws and also because the authorities failed to enforce certain articles of the military code.

The best, most heroic elements of the population had “sacrificed itself almost to a man.” Whereas the worst elements of the population — taking advantage of “absurd laws” — had “preserved itself almost intact.” The best men had died, whereas the worst had survived: This is what Hitler believed he had learned after four-and-a-half years of fighting in the First World War.

THE BEST MATERIAL IS
BEING “THINNED OUT”

Hitler addresses the issue again:

While for four-and-a-half years our best human material was being thinned to an exceptional degree on the battlefields, our worst people wonderfully succeeded in saving themselves. For each hero who made the supreme sacrifice and ascended the steps of Valhalla, there was a shirker who cunningly dodged death on the pretense of being engaged in business that was more or less useful at home.

Since the best “human material” was being “thinned out,” this kind of human material steadily “grew scarcer and scarcer.” Those soldiers who did not actually die were “maimed in the fight” or gradually had to “join the ranks of the crippled” because of the wounds they received.

The 400 thousand who died or were permanently maimed on the battlefields “could not be replaced,” Hitler explained. Their loss was “far more than merely numerical.” With their death, the scales — already “too lightly weighed at the end which represented the best human qualities” — now became “heavier on the other end with vulgar elements of infamy and cowardice.” In short, there was an “increase in the elements that constituted the worst extreme of the population.”

KILL THOSE WHO DO NOT SACRIFICE THEIR LIVES

It was not possible to do anything about the men who had already died. On the other hand, it would be possible to take measures in the future against elements of the population that had not sacrificed their lives. National Socialism would specialize in killing people who were unwilling (or unable) to sacrifice their lives. Nazism revolved around “thinning out” classes of people defined as the “worst elements.”

The sacrifice of German soldiers went without saying. This was “standard operating procedure.” This is what nations do: sacrifice young men in battle. Hitler initiated the Second World War in order to continue the sacrificial dying that had ceased when the First World War ended.

In the future, Hitler would expand the categories of people that would be required to die. Why should only soldiers be compelled to sacrifice their lives? Once in power, Hitler would require other kinds of people to forfeit their lives: defective children, mental patients, Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and finally German citizens. They too would be compelled to “die for Germany”.

People commonly focus on “aggression” or killing as the essence of political violence. However, what is the purpose of aggression? Is killing a demented form of entertainment? On the contrary, political violence contains a profound psychic and social meaning. Nations kill in order to produce sacrificial victims.

Some people sacrifice their lives voluntarily. These types of people are called “heroes.” Other kinds of people may be compelled to forfeit their lives. These people are involuntary sacrifices. Once the Nazis took power, Hitler sought to make certain that no one would be exempt. Everyone would be required to die for Germany.

Excerpts from TO DIE FOR GERMANY

HEROIC DEATH AS A
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

In November 1917, the youthful idealist Walter Flex wrote, “We died for Germany’s glory. Flower, Germany, as garland of death to us!” His benediction glorified all of the sacrificial dead of the war. During the Great War, propagandists and poets alike joined hands in exalting the blood sacrifice of the youth of Germany, thus transforming carnage into ethereal national revelation. Heroic death in war became a philosophy of life.

BLOOD SACRIFICE
CREATES THE NATION

Eleven thousand young men lie buried in the student cemetery at Langemarck, testifying to the depravity of war. Yet through propaganda and poetry, their graves were rendered sacred shrines. They had not died; instead, their souls had passed the earthly boundaries and had been transfigured. Their blood sacrifice had guaranteed the nation’s future.

THE STREAM OF
GERMAN BLOOD IS ETERNAL

Rudolf Hess:

The stream of blood which for Germany is eternal — the sacrifice of German men for their Volk is eternal — therefore Germany will also be eternal.

INDIVIDUALS DIE,
BUT THE VOLK LIVES ON

Sacrifice for the German people was not to be feared. “Death holds no sting for us,” Himmler affirmed, because individuals die, while the Volk lives on.” Because the men of the Germanic SS were more concerned about the future of the Volk than about their individual destinies, members would “willingly and bravely seek death, wherever that is necessary.”

GERMANY IS SACRIFICE

In his last letter to his mother, written before his death on the western front in 1940, Hitler Youth officer Ernst Nielsen tried to prepare her for the loss of her son. When the news arrived, he warned, she was not to grieve; rather, she was to affirm the nobility of the cause:

If I die, mother, you must bear it, and your pride will conquer your pain, because you have the privilege of offering a sacrifice that is what we mean, when we say Germany.

Civilization and Self-Destruction

OBEDIENCE UNTO DEATH

Although most people condemn state violence (even as we view aggression as a normal dimension of political life), still we are proud of our willingness to die and kill in the name of abstract ideals. By virtue of acts of political violence, we express our devotion to ideas and entities that we consider sacred—greater than the self.

Political aggression conveys power, toughness and masculinity. The sound and fury of battle feels significant and gigantic, as if something very important is at stake. Warfare expresses narcissistic grandiosity.

Yet at the heart of the human experience of political violence lies submission or—as it is called—“sacrifice.” Sacrifice represents the will to subordinate the self to something larger than the self. Throughout history, people have sacrificed their lives for gods and nations. Warfare is intimately tied to the will to sacrifice.

The ideology of the Nazi SS-man revolved around “obedience unto death.” Obedience unto death is the most radical form of political submission. The Nazis glorified—gloried in—their willingness to submit. What is the relationship between the will to become obedient unto death, and political violence? How does willingness to die become converted into the desire to kill?

HITLER’S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE

In Mein Kampf (initially published in 1925 and 1926), Hitler presented a theory of the relationship between the individual and culture. Like Freud, Hitler focused on renunciation as the essence of civilization. Society requires that we give up individual desires in the name—for the sake—of the collective. From the beginning of his political career until its very end, Hitler insisted that the individual must devote his life to the collective. “Sacrifice for Germany” constituted the core of Nazi ideology.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that the capacity for civilization—for “creating and building culture”—arises out of the individual’s willingness to “renounce putting forward his personal opinion and interests” and to “sacrifice both in favor of the large group.” Out of this readiness to subordinate personal interests arises the ability to “establish comprehensive communities.” The state of mind that subordinates the interest of the ego to the conservation of the community, Hitler said, is the “first premise for every truly human community.”

What was special about the “Aryan,” Hitler believed, was the extent of his willingness to sacrifice for the community. The self-sacrificing will to “give one’s personal labor and if necessary one’s own life for others,” Hitler said, was “most strongly developed in the Aryan.” The Aryan was “not greatest in his mental qualities as such,” but in the extent of his willingness to “put all his abilities in the service of the community.”

Hitler sums up his philosophy of culture in the term pflichterfüllung, which means “Not to be self-sufficient but to serve the community.” Hitler distinguishes this posture of service from egoism or selfishness, and says it grows out of idealism, meaning the individual’s capacity to “make sacrifices for the community, his fellow man.” True idealism, Hitler declared in Mein Kampf, is nothing but the “subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community.”

Hitler’s belief-system, then, focused on the requirement that the individual sacrifice for the large group, or community. Hitler never deviated from this ideology. The violence and terror he brought into being grew out of this ideology: Hitler sought to punish those whom, he imagined, were unwilling to devote their lives to the collective—to sacrifice for the community.

GLORIFICATION OF SACRIFICIAL DEATH

Taking the idea of sacrifice a step further, Hitler believed that the individual should be willing to die for the community. He glorified sacrificial death in warfare. According to Nazi ideology, dying for one’s country was the summum bonum: the greatest or supreme good; the principle from which all other moral values were derived.

The Aryan, Hitler said, willingly subordinates his ego to the life of the community and, “if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.” The idea of military service meant consciousness of the duty to fight for the existence of the German people by sacrificing the life of the individual “always and forever, at all times and places.” Nationalism meant acting with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people “and, if necessary, even to die for it.”

After Nazism and the Holocaust, many people tried to believe that Hitler and his ideology were foreign—radically different from anything that previously existed. This is a classic case of “othering.” In actuality, Hitler’s ideology of sacrifice—the foundation of Nazism—lies at the heart of Western political culture.

We valorize and memorialize the death of soldiers—their willingness to “give their lives” for the nation or community. The ultimate hero, finally, is someone who has “died for his country.” The nation for which a soldier dies may be called Germany, or Great Britain, or France, or the United States of America. In our hearts, the dream remains the same. We idealize and idolize those who have made the “supreme sacrifice.”

What was unique about Hitler was his embrace and glorification of the idea of sacrificial death, and the extent to which he promoted this idea. Writing in Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that more than once, thousands upon thousands of young Germans had stepped forward with “self-sacrificing resolve” to sacrifice their young lives “freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland.”

Reflecting on the First World War, Hitler observed that the “young regiments went to their death in Flanders” crying “Deutschland ueber Alles in der Welt” (“Germany above everything in the world”). The most precious blood, Hitler declared, “sacrificed itself joyfully” in the “faith that it was preserving the independence and freedom of the fatherland.” Commenting in Mein Kampf on a memorial for German soldiers that he had visited in 1917, Hitler said: “In the sacred ground the best comrades slumbered, still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming eyes for the one true fatherland.”

Mass-Murder by Government

WHY ARE WE SHOCKED BY THE HOLOCAUST —
BUT NOT BY THE FIRST WORLD WAR?

The Holocaust cannot be understood as an event separate from German history and Western civilization. The Holocaust grew out of the calamitous German experience of the First World War, and how Hitler interpreted and responded to this event.

When people learned of the death camps, they were horrified and appalled. “Incomprehensible” was a common reaction. Indeed, the event called the Holocaust is nearly beyond imagination. It is difficult to believe that human beings could bring something like this into existence. The event is so disturbing that some people deny it occurred.

When I became aware of the First World War, I was shocked, horrified and appalled. This event too is nearly beyond imagination. It’s difficult to believe that the leaders of “civilized” nations could ask men to get out of trenches for four years to be ripped apart — killed and maimed — by machine gun fire and artillery shells.

Here is a summary of the results of the First World War:

65 million men mobilized
8.5 million dead
21 million wounded
7.7 million POWs and missing
37 million total casualties

Although I was bewildered when I first began to read about the First World War, historians are apparently not. Perhaps they have become accustomed to this war. Whatever the reasons, historians — and people in general — rarely express surprise or amazement. The term “incomprehensible” is never used.

We would appreciate your comments on this Newsletter. Please leave your reflections and commentary below.

MASS-MURDER: INTENTIONAL VERSUS ACCIDENTAL

In spite of the monumental carnage, the First World War is viewed as a “normal” dimension of history. We’d prefer not to put the First World War — or any war — in the same category as the Holocaust. Why? Because we view the Holocaust as an instance in which a nation intentionally engaged in mass–murder, whereas the 52-month episode of mass slaughter called the First World War is conceived as an event that occurred accidentally, or at least unintentionally.

It wasn’t that nations actually wanted to destroy large numbers of people. Rather, no one comprehended what they were getting into. The magnitude of killing was not expected. Things got out of control and went far beyond what anyone anticipated. It wasn’t as if anyone wanted what happened to happen. No one was responsible.

Can we truly claim that killing during the First War World — 9 million dead — was unintentional? Please provide your own insights on our blog.

WILLINGNESS TO DIE

Hundreds of books have been written seeking to fathom why some Germans were willing to murder Jews. Controversies have arisen. Were the murderers simply following orders — manifesting a universal human tendency to be “obedient to authority”? Had these people been so thoroughly indoctrinated with the anti-Semitic ideology that they believed that their actions were necessary and virtuous?

Rarely are similar questions asked about participants in the First World War. Soldiers are expected to kill. When they murder, they are simply doing their duty. No explanation is required. Regarding the First World War, we want to know — not only why soldiers were willing to kill — but why were they willing to die. This issue is glossed over. Do we imagine that it is natural for soldiers to go into battle — and to die when leaders ask them to?

One historian has posed the question of why soldiers continued getting out of trenches for four years — running into machine gun fire and artillery shells — when they knew that the results of this behavior were often fatal. In Rites of Spring (2000), Modris Eksteins asks:

What kept them in the trenches? What sustained them on the edge of No Man’s Land, that strip of territory which death ruled with an iron fist? What made them go over the top, in long rows? What sustained them in constant confrontation with death?

The question of what kept men going in this hell of the Western Front, Eksteins says, is “central to an understanding of the war and its significance”:

What deserves emphasis in the context of the war is that, despite the growing dissatisfaction, the war continued, and it continued for one reason: the soldier was willing to keep fighting. Just why he kept going has to be explained, and that matter has often been ignored.

Political scientist Jean Bethke Elshtain (in Women and War, 1995) observes that the First World War was the “nadir of nineteenth-century nationalism.” Mounds of bodies were sacrificed in a “prolonged, dreadful orgy of destruction.” “Trench warfare” meant “mass, anonymous death.” Elshtain observes that we “still have trouble accounting for modern state worship”; the “mounds of combatants and noncombatants alike sacrificed to the conflicts of nation-states.”

I pose three fundamental questions.

Why, during the course of the First World War, did national leaders continually ask young men to engage in battle strategies that caused a great number of men to be wounded or killed?
Why did men in the great majority of cases follow orders — going like sheep to the slaughter?
Why have historians rarely interrogated the suicidal battle strategies of the First World War?

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HOW MAY WE ACCOUNT FOR THE RECURRENCE
OF GOVERNMENTAL MASS-MURDER?

Carolyn Marvin’s theory of warfare, presented in Blood Sacrifice and the Nation (1999), helps us to answer these questions. Marvin hypothesizes that “society depends on the death of its own members at the hands of the group,” claiming that the underlying cost of all society is the “violent death of some of its members.” In short, one’s nation or society “lives” insofar as members of one’s society die.

War is a ritual performed by nations — in order to claim sacrificial victims. Society, Marvin says, “depends on the death of sacrificial victims at the hands of the group itself.” The maintenance of civilization, society and the nation-state, according to Marvin, requires blood sacrifice in war.

What an unpleasant theory. However, is it less pleasant to reflect upon the 200 million plus human beings killed by governments in the 20th century? It is not a question of this instance of war, or that; of this instance of genocide, or that. Rather, the slaughter of citizens by nations is a consistent theme — a prominent feature — of twentieth century history.

Do we have theories to account for these recurring episodes of governmental mass murder? Of course, each historical event is unique. However, do we really wish to claim that each episode of societal killing has a separate cause?

Marvin’s theory arose out of her study of United States history, yet works perfectly to explain the phenomena I have studied. The First World War may be understood as a massive, collective ritual of blood sacrifice. Societies acted to cause the deaths of young men — in order to keep their nations alive. In some instances (for example, Australia and Canada), blood sacrifice gave rise to the nation.

THE DESIRE NOT TO KNOW

Marvin’s theory explains why wars recur — their function for societies and human beings. Just as significantly, her theory seeks to explain the fact that we don’t want to know the truth: that warfare is sacrificial ritual. The occurrence of war — and the denial of warfare’s purpose or function — are part of the same dynamic or complex.

According to Marvin, knowledge that society depends on the death of sacrificial victims at the hands of the group is the “totem secret”; the “collective group taboo.” While we enact warfare as a sacrificial ritual, we simultaneously don’t wish to know that we are enacting this ritual.

Throughout the twentieth century, governments have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of human beings. Did each war and episode of genocide occur because of reasons unique to each given event? Perhaps a more parsimonious hypothesis is that episodes of violence generated by societies and governments represent the fulfillment of a collective desire.

Warfare is not forbidden. Indeed, we take it for granted that nations will wage war. It’s what they do. This is what I mean when I say that people believe that Nations Have the Right to Kill (Koenigsberg, 2009). We are not forbidden to wage war, but up to now we have been forbidden to know why we wage war.

The sacrificial meaning of warfare once was a secret — but no more.

Martyrs

Dear Colleague,

Book reviews soon to be published by Library of Social Science on Mark Schantz’s book, Awaiting the Heavenly Country, will examine the meanings of the “suicidal charges” that characterized the Civil War from start to finish. Why did men slaughter each other so promiscuously—with a “zeal we still grope to understand”?

I’m not an expert on the Civil War. However, I’ve been studying the First World War for 25 years—another conflict characterized by suicidal battle tactics. Having read hundreds of books and written thousands of pages on this topic, the fundamental question—the one I sought to answer when I began this research—remains:

Why did leaders of civilized nations ask young men—for four years—to get out of trenches to be mowed down by machine gun fire and artillery shells? Why did these young men continue to obey orders—for four years—to go “like sheep to the slaughter,” resulting in 37 million casualties?

For a brief period (1992-2000), it seemed that the human race had reached the end of history; that there was nothing to kill and die for. Quite apart from the politics of September 11, 2001, the suicide bombers brought back into consciousness the idea that some human beings are willing to die in the name of a value or ideal considered to be sacred. Since most of us do not worship Allah, the event seemed “incomprehensible.”

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Field Marshall Douglas Haig was a British senior officer during World War I who commanded the British army from 1915 to the end of the war. He directed the Battle of the Somme (July 1 to November 18, 1916), in which more than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The first day of fighting resulted in 60,000 casualties, the worst day in the British army’s history.

Visiting the battlefield on March 31, 1917, Haig reflected that credit had to be paid to the splendid young officers who were able to attack again and again. “To many,” Haig stated, “it meant certain death, and all must have known that before they started.”

Apart from questions of ideology, historical context and tactics, what Haig says about British soldiers could be said by a radical Islamic leader speaking about men he had sent to perform a suicide bombing: “It meant certain death, and they knew it from the beginning.”

What’s more, to my astonishment, Haig justified the fatalities he caused by citing a Muslim military leader, Mughal Emperor Babur (1483-1530) whose views on “heroic death”, he said, are “curiously appropriate now”:

“The most high God has been propitious to us: If we fall in the field, we die the death of martyrs. If we survive, we rise victorious the avengers of the cause of God.”

This statement, Haig said, gets at the “root matter of the present war.”

So there it is: Haig conceptualizes the fatalities of the First World War in a manner identical to how a Muslim warrior conceptualizes death on the battlefield: either one is victorious (with God on one’s side), or one dies a martyr (and presumably rises to paradise or heaven).

In his report of August 22, 1919, Features of the War, Haig states that total British casualties in all theaters of war—killed, wounded, missing and prisoners (including native troops)—were approximately three million (3,076,388). He claims that these casualties were “no larger than to be expected.”

Indeed, according to Haig, British casualties were worth the cost because the issues involved in the stupendous struggle were “far greater than those concerned in any war in recent history.” In the First World War, “Civilization itself was at stake.”

While many of us find the actions of suicide bombers to be incomprehensible, we take for granted the behavior of soldiers in the First World War—who acted like suicide bombers—running into machine gun fire and artillery shelling—martyring themselves for a god given the name of “Great Britain.”

I pose the question: Why do we not find the behavior of leaders and soldiers during the First World War to be incomprehensible? Why are we blasé in our acceptance of the radical behavior that characterized this war? Because it is “written up in history books”? We accept the slaughter as natural, even normal, because the slaughter was undertaken in the name of gods in which we continue to believe.

What would it mean if we could distance—alienate—ourselves from our history: view it from outside the framework of our own belief system? What if we abandoned our faith in the “goodness” of society? What if we no longer worshipped “nations”? What if we allow ourselves to acknowledge—become aware of—the monumental, profound pathology that lies at the heart of civilization?

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Richard A. Koenigsberg, Ph.D
Director, LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
Telephone: 718-393-1081
Fax: 413-832-8145
rak@libraryofsocialscience.com