Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying (54 page)

In our view, the decisive factor in the atrocities discussed in this book was a general realignment from a civilian to a wartime frame of reference. It is more significant than all issues of worldview, disposition, and ideology. These are primarily important in determining what soldiers saw as expected, just, bewildering, or outrageous. They did not dramatically influence how they actually behaved. This conclusion may seem somewhat lapidary in light of the atrocities soldiers committed, but war creates a context for events and actions in which people do things they never would have otherwise. Within this context, soldiers could murder
Jews without being anti-Semites and fight fanatically for the fatherland without being committed National Socialists. It is high time to stop overestimating the effects of ideology. Ideology
may provide reasons for war, but it does not explain why soldiers kill or commit war crimes.

The actions of the workers and artisans of war are banal, indeed just as banal as the behavior of people existing under heteronomous circumstances—in companies, government offices, schools, or universities—always are. Nevertheless, this very banality unleashed the most extreme violence in the history of humanity, leaving behind 50 million casualties and a continent devastated in many respects for decades to follow.

The murder of POWs, the execution of civilians,
massacres,
forced labor,
plunder,
rape, the perfection of deadly
technology, and the mobilization of society were all characteristics of World War II. But they were not new. New were the dimensions and the quality of these phenomena, which went beyond anything previously experienced in human history. In terms of the modern age, new was the revocation of limits on violence, culminating in the industrialized mass murder of European
Jews. But it is not our aim here to offer a retrospective evaluation of the character of World War II. The central questions we would pose are: what was specific to the perceptions and actions of German soldiers at this point in time, and what elements can be found in
other twentieth-century wars?

These two questions form a prism through which we in the present can look back on the past. And that being the case, another question emerges: what aspects of World War II, and in particular Wehrmacht soldiers’ perceptions and deeds, are specifically National Socialist or specific to this particular armed conflict?

On July 12, 2007, two American
helicopter crews opened fire on a group of civilians in the
Iraqi capital of Baghdad. Among them was Reuters news agency photographer
Namir Noor-Eldeen. As a video titled “
Collateral Murder” later published on the WikiLeaks website would show,
⁸⁴⁹
most of those fired on were killed instantly. One person, apparently seriously wounded, tried to crawl his way to safety. When a delivery truck arrived, and two people tried to help
the wounded man, American helicopter crews resumed fire. Not only were the would-be rescuers killed in the barrage. A short time later, it emerged that two children who happened to be in the truck were also seriously wounded. The attack was launched after the helicopter crews believed they saw people in the first group carrying weapons. When the identification was confirmed, they opened fire, and the rest took its course.

The entire event transpired in a matter of minutes, and the protocol of the GIs’ radio conversations is revealing:

The tragic fate of the people on the ground begins at the moment when a helicopter crew member thinks he recognizes a weapon. From this point on, the group, which the helicopter crews watch from a distance via video monitors, becomes a target, and the intention to focus on and destroy this target is preprogrammed. It only takes a few seconds for other crew members to identify further weapons. Almost instantaneously an armed individual becomes a whole armed group. Equally quickly, the weapon becomes an AK-47 and then a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. When the first helicopter receives permission to attack, the group disappears from view behind a building. At that point, from the soldiers’ perspective, the only thing that matters is to get their sights back on their targets, and one of the people deemed to be carrying a weapon is perceived as having fired a shot. Precisely because the group has disappeared behind a building, the U.S. soldiers’ desire to “incapacitate” them as quickly as possible becomes overwhelming. Any remaining doubt about whether these people actually are “insurgents” and whether they really are carrying weapons is rendered moot. The soldiers have defined the situation, and that definition calls for a set procedure.

Group thinking and mutual confirmation of what is perceived replaced the factual situation with an imagined one.
Viewers watching the video now don’t see what the soldiers see. But the viewer doesn’t bear the burden of having to make
decisions. What happens in the video may unfold before his eyes, but it has nothing to do with him. The task of U.S. helicopter crews as well as ground troops, however, is to battle insurgents. Every person on the street is perceived under this condition. Moreover, every suspicion those on the street raise, for whatever reason, carries a fatal tendency to be confirmed by further indications. When a group of people that has seemingly been clearly identified then disappears from view, soldiers perceive extreme danger. From that point on everything is directed toward combating the target:

Within the blink of an eye, eight people are dead, and one seriously wounded. The attack itself has confirmed the definition of the
situation beyond any doubt. A combat situation does in fact exist, whereas before it was simply imagined.

The video caused a sensation when it was illegally made public in 2010, since it depicted American GIs killing a group of defenseless civilians from the air without being in any real danger. Yet upon closer examination it is completely unspectacular. Everything shown happens within the frame of reference “war” and carries a certain degree of inevitability. The
“Collateral Murder” video is a perfect illustration that the consequences are real whenever people define a situation as real. The soldiers have a task, and they are trying to carry it out. In order to do that, they see the world through professional eyes. Everyone down below is suspect. Part of seeing the world professionally is exchanging impressions with others, and the tendency is that observations and comments that have been made once will be confirmed. Thus a single weapon becomes many, and passersby become combatants. One can call this phenomenon a “
dynamic of violence,” an instance of “group thinking,” or a “
path dependency.” In practice, all these elements come together with fatal consequences for eleven people within the space of a few minutes.

But the procedure is by no means over when the targets are destroyed. On the contrary, the soldiers take stock of their work:

What might appear to outsiders, and the media who reported on the video, as sheer cynicism is nothing other than professional acknowledgment after a job well done. The soldiers’ mutual congratulations once
again make it clear that, from their perspective, they have destroyed completely legitimate targets.

The other side’s
casualties are almost always regarded as fighters, partisans, terrorists, or insurgents. We recall here the rule among U.S. troops from the
Vietnam War “If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s
Vietcong,”
⁸⁵⁰
as well as the Wehrmacht soldiers who justified killing women and children by saying they were “partisans.” It is the violent act following the definition that confirms the definition’s accuracy. In this way, violence serves as proof that one has correctly assessed a situation. The “
Collateral Murder” video clearly illustrates how violence transforms a murky situation, in which men suffer from a lack of orientation and don’t know what to do, into something crystal clear. When all the targets are dead, order has been restored. Once the procedure has been set in motion, any further details will be seen in light of the original definition. The delivery truck with the men who are trying to help the wounded
civilians to safety
is
an
enemy vehicle. And as a logical extension, the would-be rescuers
are
further terrorists.

Even the fact that there were children in the vehicle, who were badly wounded by American gunfire, can be made to confirm the original definition of the situation:

We see how enormous the power of definition is. In this case, child casualties are not even considered collateral damage, let alone evidence of a grievous or indeed any mistake made by the U.S. helicopter crews. The wounded children are just one more piece of evidence of how perfidious the “insurgents” are since they don’t even hesitate to take their kids into battle.