Warfare: Loss as Victory

Carry On: Letters in War Time

Paperback:
136 pages
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC (1917/April 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1417986611
ISBN-13: 978-1417986613For information on purchasing this book through Amazon, click here.The complete text can be read online here for free.

Writing about his experience as a British Soldier in the First World War, Coningsby Dawson in Carry On: Letters in War Time (1917) stated that it is the “bigness of soul” that makes nations great. The war, he said, was a “prolonged moment of exultation for most of us.”

“These men, in the noble indignation of a great ideal, face a worse hell than the most ingenious of fanatics ever planned or plotted. Men die scorched like moths in a furnace, blown to atoms, gassed, tortured. And again other men step forward to take their places well knowing what will be their fate. Bodies may die, but the spirit of England grows greater as each new soul speeds upon its way.” (from Letter XLIX, February 6th, 1917)

The greatness of England, according to Dawson, was measured in terms of the number of casualties it could afford and would endure. Dawson sees a direct correlation between the number of casualties and the spirit of England. Each time a soldier dies, the soul of the nation grows.

British General Douglas Haig planned the Battle of the Somme (July 1-November 18, 1916) and many other disastrous campaigns during the First World War. He was responsible for the deaths of well over a million British soldiers. Although he was criticized for persisting in futile battle strategies, Haig retained the title of commander-in-chief until the end of the war in 1918.

In spite of the enormous casualties and costs of the battles he initiated, he received encouragement and support from the King and a substantial part of the British populace. The following letter to Haig was found among his papers (De Groot, 1988):

“Illustrious General, the expectation of mankind is upon you—the ‘Hungry Haig’ as we call you here at home. You shall report 500,000 casualties, but the Soul of the empire will afford them. Drive on, Illustrious General!”

Haig probably preserved this anonymous note because it echoed his own feelings. This letter and similar messages that he received reinforced his belief that there existed a great mass of people who shared his willingness and determination to fight on even at the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands of men. The letter writer—like Coningsby Dawson—claims that the Soul of the empire can “afford casualties.” As “the Hungry Haig” consumed the bodies of soldiers, England grew greater.

British political leader David Lloyd George stated (Haste, 1977) that every nation during the First World War conducted its military activities as if there were no limit to the number of young men who could be “thrown into the furnace to feed the flames of war.” The First World War was a perpetual, driving force that “shoveled warm human hearts and bodies by the millions into the furnace” (Gilbert, 2004).

Waging war constitutes a vehicle for “giving away” men and resources. Waging war is a gift to the god—one’s society or nation. One throws away men and material objects—wealth—in order to prove the greatness of one’s nation, which is measured in terms of its capacity and willingness to tolerate loss.

In our hearts, the dream remains the same. Today, the “greatest nation on earth” throws away or squanders billions upon billions of dollars. To what end? To demonstrate one’s capacity and willingness to throw away billions and billions of dollars. Loss is victory.

Call for Reviewer: US War-culture, Sacrifice, and Salvation

Kelly Denton-Borhaug’s US War-culture, Sacrifice and Salvation is one of the most insightful books ever written on the dynamics of warfare. Excerpts from the book appear below. We seek an author to write a review essay on this exciting study. Please respond directly to this email or write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com

Library of Social Science Book Reviews is the premier website publishing and promoting substantial review essays of scholarly books.

Parameters for an LSS review essay are directly below.

WAR-CULTURE, CHRISTIANITY AND THE CULT OF THE FALLEN SOLDIER

During the period of the First World War, with the experience of literally hundreds of thousands sacrificing themselves for the nation, the cognitive connection between war and Christianity grew even stronger. As one scholar writes: “Christian symbols, indeed, the very figure of Christ, were present in the cult of the fallen soldier—and in Germany, Italy and France, familiar Christian symbols represented nation sacrifice. The First World War was a climax in the evolution of modern nationalism, and in its quest for totality, the nation sought to co-opt Christianity.”

Nationalism has frequently been described and analyzed as a religion, yet with insufficient attention to the dominant theme of sacrifice that binds the experiences of nationalism and Christian religion, forming a sacred canopy encompassing both religious and national self-identity and representation.

The extensiveness of human resort to sacrifice makes it so ubiquitous as to reside largely ‘off the radar screen,’ of overt awareness and consciousness. As a result, analysis of sacrifice is simultaneously all the more difficult and all the more important. But the infusion of the sacred tone that justifies such sacrifice makes this construction impervious to moral analysis and criticism.

Thus, even while sacrificial practices lubricate patriarchal exchanges of power, this dynamic is mystified through its connection to religious understandings and practices. Blood sacrifice is at the heart of war-culture’s and the warrior’s ‘religiosity.’ Because of this, to question the cognitive framework of sacrifice, residing as a deep and largely unexamined anchor for warriors’ identity, is tantamount to a kind of heresy.

Christian proclamation that portrays the work of Christ as a sacrifice cements the architecture of this social structure in Western cultures such as the United States. To cast doubt on the soldier’s mission as sacrifice is as unsettling, challenging and frankly, jarring to common sensibility, as to question the sacrality of Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross.

CHRIST AND THE MYTH OF THE WAR EXPERIENCE

In Germany, Greek ideals melded with Christian frameworks to create a grounding from which the actual experience of war would be confronted and transcended. In ‘the cult of the fallen soldier,’ Greek values of harmony, balanced proportions and controlled strength—celebrated as aspects of youth—meshed with popular Christian piety. The deaths of young soldiers were justified as a sign of military commitment, and glorified as a type of idealized inner control. At the same time, popular exclamations, such as ‘Now we are made sacred,’ juxtaposed the sacrifice of soldiers with the death and resurrection of Christ.

In this way, the passion of Christ became an analogy for the experience of the nation as a whole: through these sacrificial deaths of the most worthy citizens, Christ was understood to illuminate the very world, such that war itself was interpreted as a strategy for Christological revelation. Suffering as a purifying force was recommended to the troops in the trenches; more widely, suffering was advised to the nation as a whole, to lead to a stronger and purified Germany, ‘encased in armor.’

This popular piety grew into an important resource that could be manipulated to overcome fear of death itself. Eternal life, assured to those who had sacrificed themselves for the nation, now outweighed any value of the importance of living in the here and now. The expectation of an eternal and meaningful life—the continuation of a patriotic mission – not only seemed to transcend death itself, but also inspired life before death.

The corresponding growth of war memorials and cemeteries for the war-dead cemented and extended these same frameworks. These sites became popular destinations and shrines of public worship and pilgrimage in Europe following the war, and the development of commercial measures, such as cheap tours for mourners, enabled increasing numbers of civilians to participate in the growing cult.

The actual experience and dread of war thereby was ‘cleansed,’ or we might say, thrust into the distance. And once this took place, it was all too easy for the ‘Myth of the War Experience’ successfully to refocus the memory of war. Not long after, the Nazis reinvigorated this cult and made their own martyred dead central in its observance of the ‘Myth of the War Experience’.

PEELING BACK THE SACRIFICIAL LOGIC

If the search for greater honesty about ourselves requires peeling back the layers of sacrificial logic, memorials have the effect of tying our hands behind our backs. We are invited to honor those who participated in the war and especially, to mourn and honor those U.S. military who died, but we are not invited to question or ponder further. Ultimately, this memorial continues the process of reification of a particular national identity, an identity that comes from war, and from a deep cognitive framework regarding belief in the redemptive nature of violence and the necessity of sacrifice to achieve freedom and justice.

But such questioning leads to serious consequences, for once we begin to understand and interrogate these destructive connections, the cognitive ‘transcendentalization’ of war and war-culture begins to dismantle in our minds. A new kind of consciousness or awareness about our reality begins to dawn upon us. This is not necessarily a comfortable awareness or consciousness, because it is attended by many new questions.

‘Detranscendentalizing’ war and war-culture unsettles formerly unquestioned assumptions and values. How then should we think about what soldiers do? How will we describe their deaths if not as sacred sacrifice? Moreover, how will we understand the nation, its purpose, and our connection to it? What will we do differently with respect to decision-making regarding conflict and the use of armed force?

Finally, the exploration of these links also forces the question about the relationship of Christian following to American civil religion. What will it mean to uncouple Jesus’ death on the cross from the powerful national narrative of Christ’s sacrificial death as the archetype for the necessary sacrifices made in war to preserve ‘the American way of life’?
Detranscendentalizing war-culture means taking up these important questions, destabilizing some dominant frames of understanding, and reemphasizing others.

Parameters of a Library of Social Science Book Review Essay

  • Essays will be written in the spirit of the LSS Mission Statement.
  • Essays should be approximately 3,000 words in length (for a sample essay, click here).
  • Essays are to be completed no later than three months after receipt of the book.
  • Beginning with the text, reviewers may focus on important issues in order to present and develop their own views and theories on the topics treated.
  • Reviews will be edited by the staff of Library of Social Science.
  • Reviews will be announced through the Library of Social Science Newsletter, which reaches over 60,481 people in the U.S. and around the world.
  • With each review, LSS will promote a book authored by the reviewer (and/or will publicize an author event).
  • LSS reserves the right to decline publication of any review.

The Psychology of Totalitarianism

Walter A. Skya. Japan’s Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism
(Duke University Press)

Japan's Holy War
Japan’s Holy War reveals how a radical religious ideology drove the Japanese to imperial expansion and global war. Bringing to light a wealth of new information, Walter A. Skya demonstrates that whatever other motives the Japanese had for waging war in Asia and the Pacific, for many the war was the fulfillment of a religious mandate.Publisher: Duke U. Press
Author: Walter A. SkyaFormat: Paperback
Published: 2009
ISBN-10: 0822344238
Language: English
Pages: 400“Japan’s Holy War is an absolutely outstanding and necessary work, a major contribution to international scholarly debate.”
—Klaus Antoni, University of Tübingen

Walter Skya is Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Japan’s Holy War is available directly from Duke University Press, or through Amazon at discounted rates.

Click here for information on how to purchase from Amazon.com

Click here for information on how to purchase directly from Duke University Pres

Totalitarianism seeks fusion of self and society, declaring there shall be no such thing as separation. The totalitarian fantasy is that individual and society are one—that human beings are bound inseparably to their nation.

In totalitarianism, the body of the individual is imagined to merge with an actual body politic that can live forever. Human beings embrace totalitarianism—abandon their separate selves—in order to partake of the “immortality” of the body politic. Unlike humans, the nation is conceived as an organism that can “live on.”

What is totalitarianism? Why did the Axis powers stick together? What did Japan have in common with Germany? This essential book articulates the ideology and psychology underlying Japanese ultra-nationalism.

Skya explicates the thinking of Japanese social theorist, Hozumi Yatsuka (1860-1912). According to Hozumi, the individual exists in society—and society within the individual. The clash between individualism and socialism is resolved through the concept of g­odo seizon (literally, fused or amalgamated existence), meaning the merging of the individual into society. Human beings fuse together to create “society.”

The ideal person, Hozumi explained, is one who desires assimilation into the “higher organic totality” of society. The purpose of ethics and morality is to direct the individual toward kodoshin: submergence of the self into the social totality.

For Hozumi and many other Japanese thinkers, Skya says, Enlightenment thought was a threat to the Japanese ethnic state. The struggle against Western liberalism focused on the idea of “the individual” as an entity separate from society. Hozumi stated that “the individual does not exist in isolation. It is a mistake to think that society is made up of isolated, self-supporting individuals.”

Hozumi sought to wage war against Western civilization. This, essentially, was a war against the idea that it is possible for human beings to exist in a condition of separation from society. The bond between the individual and society had to be rock-solid and eternal.

Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948) was one of the hundreds of Japanese students who flocked to German universities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and absorbed German thought. These students were influenced by theories pioneered by G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), who asserted that the state was not a contractual relationship between individuals, but was “itself an individuality, independent of and superior to all other individuals.”

Sovereignty, according to Hegel, was not the right or power of the individual or individuals, but stemmed from the state itself, an “organic unity with a personality of its own.” From a Japanese perspective, the state was conceived as a person or “individual organism,” and the emperor as an “organ of the state.”

Hegel’s theory easily transferred to Japanese society. Uesugi Shinkichi (1878-1929), a constitutional law scholar, also conceived of the state as an organism. In Japan, the emperor was the ultimate source of the nation’s organizational will, representing the ideal embodiment of the state organism.

Obeying the emperor was not only a moral action that contributed to this “collective being as a totality,” but also to the highest realization of the self—of one’s “essential being.” To absorb the self into the emperor, Skya says—to become part of the emperor—was to “accomplish man’s essential being.”

An important thinker shaping religious nationalism in Japan was Kakehi Katsuhiko (1872-1961), who developed the theory of “one heart, same body,” which advocated abandoning the self and offering one’s entire body and soul to the emperor. A true Japanese does not think of self-interest, but rather “forgets one’s own concerns and completely offers oneself to the emperor.” This was especially true for soldiers.

When one enlisted in the military, one “died and was reborn again to the armed forces under the command of the emperor.” According to Kakehi, “You give up your life, and do not think for a moment that you are what you are.” One abandoned one’s personal will in order to fulfill the will of the emperor.

To achieve the state of “one heart, same body,” the individual had to discard or annihilate the self. According to Kakehi, any consideration of one’s own personal needs was wrong: one had to totally submerge the self into the collectivity. When Kakehi spoke of the bad aspects of Western culture that had entered Japan, Skya explains, he was referring to the evils of Western secularism and individualism. Kakehi believed that the Western focus on the value of the individual was the “greatest threat to the Japanese nation.”

What is the nature and meaning of this threat of “individualism” that pervaded Japanese political theory? I have found this same idea—that the nation is threatened by individualism—at the heart of Nazi ideology. Why should the idea of individual freedom be conceived as a threat to the existence of one’s nation? Here we encounter a fundamental dynamic revolving around the idea of separation or separateness.

Individualism” for the radical nationalist is equated with the idea of separation from the nation, thus disrupting the idea of “one heart, same body.” Totalitarianism revolves around the nation as an actual organism or body politic. Individualism or separateness, therefore, implies the idea of a human being (a body or organism) that is not merged or fused with the national body. What terrifies is the idea that the human body might become separated from—no longer united with—the body politic.

The totalitarian dream or fantasy, common to both Japanese ultra-nationalism and Nazism, is that all human bodies must unite to constitute one body: the omnipotent body politic. In totalitarianism, each and every human being is expected to abandon the “will to separation” (individualism), and to subordinate the self to the “national will.”

But what becomes of the self after individual consciousness is denied? In Kakehi’s political theology, according to Skya, the individual “enters into the mystical body of the emperor once one’s own individuality is abandoned.”

Kakehi claims that subjects “cast aside their individual selves and enter into the emperor.” He asserts that all Japanese living at the present time exist inside the emperor, indeed that all Japanese who have ever lived—from the origin of the state onward—exist within the emperor. The emperor, in other words, symbolizes an immortal body in which all Japanese bodies are contained.

Skya concludes that the “total assimilation of the individual into a collective body is the goal of all totalitarian movements,” of which Shinto ultra-nationalism was “only one variety.” I agree with this assessment. What’s more, the assimilation of the individual into the collective body is conceived as a moral imperative. The fundamental dictum of totalitarianism is: “There shall be nothing separate from the collective body.” Taking this a step further, one is justified to take measures to kill or destroy those individuals who embrace the heretical view that separation from society is possible.

Those who embrace totalitarian ideals, I hypothesize, react with panic and rage to the possibility that anything could exist in a condition of separation from the national body. Ultra-nationalism builds upon a symbiotic fantasy: people and nation are one, the leader and nation are one, the leader and the people are one, the people are merged with one another.

The idea of separation or separateness acts to shatter the fantasy of perfect union with an omnipotent body (politic). Perfect union is achieved when the individual abandons his will in order to internalize the will of the nation and its leaders. Hitler informed the German people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” The advantage of becoming “nothing” is that one can incorporate the nation into the self—thus becoming “everything.”

Soldiers occupy a special role in this totalitarian ideology of fusion. Kakehi singled out the armed forces, which he thought occupied a special position among the emperor’s subjects in the Japanese state. In his “One Spirit, Same Body” address, he quoted a passage from the Gunjin Chokuyu (Imperial Rescript to the Armed Forces):

Soldiers and Sailors, We are your supreme commander-in-chief. Our relations with you will be the most intimate when We rely upon you as Our limbs and you look up to Us as your head. If the majesty and power of Our Empire be impaired, you share with Us the sorrow; if the glory of Our arms shine resplendent, we will share with you the honor.

This passage, Skya observes, emphasizes the “direct and intimate ties between the Emperor and the soldier.”

However, the relationship between leaders and led is more than “direct and intimate.” The soldiers and sailors are relied upon as “limbs,” and should look up to their commanders as their “head.” In short, soldiers are conceived as if part of the same body. When a soldier carries out the will of his superior, he is not simply “obeying.” He can no more resist the order of his superior than an arm can resist the brain’s command.

In his The Waffen SS (1990), Bernd Wegner observed that the SS saw the individual as an “integrated element of a social organism.” The value of the SS-man—justification for his very existence—“depended solely on the advantages he furnished the national community.” The individual was, in the eyes of the SS, only a “fragment of the body politic to which he owed his allegiance.”

As a “fragment of the body politic,” the SS-man had no alternative but to obey the body politic. Like the Japanese soldier in his relationship to the emperor, the SS-man was expected to abandon his subjective will, and to execute the “will of the Reich,” that is, Hitler’s will. Himmler informed his SS that “everyone should be fully aware that our lives do not belong to us, but to the Fuehrer and Reich.”

The body of the SS-man belonged to the Reich because his own body was not separate from the body politic. This is the meaning of “obedience.” The nation was an enormous body politic existing within the body of the SS-man, and thus could not be resisted. Thus, the “organic theory of the state” that political theorists write about—seemingly an obscure, mystical ideology—has very real, practical consequences.

The goal of the ideal self in Japan prior to the Second World War was to “absorb the self into the emperor:” to become “a part of the emperor.” Similarly, the Nazis’ ideal German citizen sought to absorb Germany into himself: to identify with Hitler. “National identification,” for the soldier, meant giving over one’s body to the body politic. When the body politic exists within the self, this larger body overwhelms the smaller body, compelling the smaller body to do the bidding of the larger body.

The aspiration of totalitarian ideology is to destroy the boundaries between self and society; between one’s own body and the body politic. Totalitarian ideologies seek to actualize a symbiotic fantasy of no separation.

Totalitarianism glorifies the ideal of “the community” at the expense of individuals, building upon the fantasy of a “national organism,” the survival of which is given priority over the survival of individual human beings.

Hitler asserted that “the individual is transitory, the People is permanent.” When he spoke of “the People,” Hitler was referring to an abstract idea or ideal—his “national organism”—not to concrete human beings. The German nation was conceived as an actual body that could live forever.

Japanese and German totalitarianism grew out of a mystical theory: the idea of nations or bodies politic as real entities that have the capacity to live forever. Nations are conceived as omnipotent bodies that embrace and contain everything. Political violence seeks to assert the reality of these mystical entities: to kill off those human beings who do not acknowledge or agree that this entity is omnipotent.

Call for a Reviewer: This Republic of Suffering

Library of Social Science seeks an author to write a review essay on This Republic of Suffering. To read an excerpt, please click here. A review appears in the New York Times.

The parameters for writing an LSS review essay are directly below. Please send an abstract of approximately 200 words to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com, telling us how you will approach writing your essay.

When I presented my plenary talk at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion on June 4, 1999 (with Rene Girard sitting in the front row), the concept of “sacrifice” was barely on the radar. It seemed that John Lennon’s dream of “nothing to kill or die for” was coming true. I myself felt I was providing a “wrap up:” explaining the sources and meanings of the massive political violence that had characterized the Twentieth Century.

It seemed, however, that the end of history was not to be. September 11, 2001 reminded us that some human beings still believed in and were willing to die for an idea. George Bush’s rejoinder was that Americans too possessed sacred ideals for which we were willing to sacrifice our lives.

Since 9/11—and particularly in the last four years—books have regularly appeared on the sacrificial meaning of political violence. The idea that war, genocide and terrorism reflect a sacrificial dynamic has been a central theme of the Library of Social Science Newsletter, as well as of our Ideologies of War website.

Drew Gilpin Faust states that the “work of death was the Civil War America’s most fundamental and demanding undertaking.” In the soldier’s emotional and moral universe, dying “assumed clear preeminence over killing.” The Civil war produced destruction, suffering and death that seemed meaningless. However, the war also “created the modern American union,” not just by shaping enduring national survival, but by putting in place “enduring national structures and commitments.”

Paul Kahn argues (in Sacred Violence, 2008) that the “sacrifice of the self is the creative act of destruction that is the realization of the presence of the sacred.” A nation with neglible external enemies created in the Civil War a “frenzy of killing and being killed.” This violence, Kahn says, may be understood as the practice of sacrifice for the sake of “maintaining the material reality of a transcendent idea.” In the Civil War, Americans died in order to preserve their “sacred union”—and to validate the idea that all men are created equal.

Library of Social Science Book Reviews is recognized as the premier website publishing substantial, thoughtful review essays of scholarly books. Please read our Mission Statement, and a sample Review Essay. For details on writing a review essay for Library of Social Science, please click here or see directly below.

We seek an author to write a review essay on This Republic of Suffering. To read an excerpt, please click here. A review appears in the New York Times.

Please an abstract of approximately 200 words to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com, telling us how you will approach writing your essay. We look forward to hearing from you.

With regards,

Richard Koenigsberg

Parameters of a Library of Social Science Book Review Essay

  • Essays will be written in the spirit of the LSS Mission Statement that appears here.
  • Essays should be approximately 3,000 words in length (for a sample essay, click here).
  • Essays are to be completed no later than three months after receipt of the book.
  • Beginning with the text, reviewers may focus on important issues in order to present and develop their own views and theories on the topics treated.
  • Reviews will be edited by the staff of Library of Social Science.
  • Reviews will be announced through the Library of Social Science Newsletter, which reaches over 60,481 people in the U.S. and around the world.
  • With each review, LSS will promote a book authored by the reviewer (and/or will publicize an author event).

LSS reserves the right to decline publication of any review.

Suffering

In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi (1986) suggests that the concentration camps were structured in the spirit of the drill or barracks code. In many of its painful and absurd aspects, the concentration world was “only a version, an adaptation of German military procedure.” The army of prisoners in camps was an “inglorious copy of the army proper or, more accurately, its caricature.” One may hypothesize that Jews in the concentration camps enacted an extreme version of basic training.

GERMAN SOLDIERS AT BASIC TRAINING

The passages below are excerpts from Stephen Fritz’s Frontsoldaten (1995), in which he conveys the experience of “basic training” for young Germans who participated in organizations such as Hitler Youth, the Labor Service, and the Wehrmacht (German army) after the Nazis came to power in the 1930s.

  • “Early in the morning at 4:00 a.m., out of our beds. In half an hour, I have to be washed and have my area cleaned up. It is very difficult for me to make my straw bed in accordance with military regulations. If the bed is not made properly, the supervising officer simply throws the whole thing into the floor, and you have to start over again. Already at 4:00 a.m., we are marching to the labor site.”
  • “The normal routine was followed by the first night drill. It was miserable. Just as we were thinking we would be able to sleep when we got up in the morning, they announced that we had only 45 minutes before resuming our normal schedule. We expected we would sleep much better that night, but that evening they announced that we had to assemble in one hour to repeat the night drill. At sunrise the next morning, we stood there again, covered in dust, filthy, and wanting nothing more than to hit the hay. But two hours later, weapon and gun roll call.”
  • “One sweated blood. One was either hospitalized after a week of almost insane effort or incorporated into the division & marched off to the war. The word ‘exhaustion” has nothing to do with the ‘exhaustion’ I’ve encountered since the war. At that time & place, it meant a power which could strip a strong man of fifteen pounds of weight in a few days.”
  • “We were put on thirty-six hour shifts, which were broken by only three half-hour periods. There were false alarms, which tore us from our leaden sleep and forced us into the courtyard fully dressed and equipped. Sometimes a fellow would drop from exhaustion, obliging his comrades to get the fellow onto his feet again, slapping him and spraying him with water. Nothing ever affected the routine. Captain Fink simply carried on, in total disregard of our bleeding gums and pinched faces, until the stabbing pains in our heads made us forget the bleeding blisters on our feet.”

JEWISH PRISONERS IN THE CAMPS

The following quotations take you through the day of a concentration camp prisoner. These descriptions are taken from various accounts, including Just a Normal Day in the Camps by Vincent Châtel, and Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved.

  • Reveille: You are awakened at 4:00 a.m. by the kapo barking at you. Hurry up! Prisoners have to share toilet facilities. No privacy or sanitation is provided. Having woken up and “washed”, the day begins.
  • Bed-making (Der Bettenbau): Bed-making is a barracks ritual and preoccupation. If your straw mattress was not fluffed up enough and covered with a horse blanket to make a perfect flat surface without a dent, you could fetch quite a few well-placed strokes. The beds had to be made immediately after reveille, and put in order within a minute or two.
  • Roll call: Prisoners are lined up in rows of ten. Everyone must be at the roll call. Under control of the SS guards and officers, the kapos count the prisoners. One mistake during the counting and everything must start again. During roll call, you must stand at attention for hours, even if it is raining or snowing.
  • Off to work: You run to join your work team, leaving the camp under the heavy guard of SS and kapos, always barking at you. You reach the yard on foot. Maybe you’ll have to march off to the beat of the music played by the camp orchestra. Or maybe the SS will order your work team to sing during the march. Just at the gate of the camp, there is a row of SS waiting for your work team. Beatings, insults, barking again and again.
  • The “Business of the Caps”: Remembered with loathing by many survivors, this parody of military élan kept scarecrows drilling and drilling until at ‘Caps off!’ these ramshackle recruits would snatch caps from heads and slap them against hollow sides with an audible crack. Punishment for “slackness” was immediate. Men who performed the maneuver with inadequate crispness were plucked out of the ranks.
  • Evening Roll Call: The prisoners are lined up by rows of ten. The kapos are counting the prisoners. If a prisoner tried to escape, all the prisoners will stand at attention at their roll-call place until he is retrieved. The evening roll call takes hours, sometimes even 10 hours, before it is over.