Atrocities

Jun 16, 2024 ∞

Reading Aryeh Neier on Israel, International Humanitarian Law, and Justice

Aryeh Neier, “Is Israel Committing Genocide?”, The New York Review of Books, June 6, 2024.

The author, who has seen much as one of the founders of Human Rights Watch, has long been “sparing” in his application of the term “genocide” to state-committed atrocities over the past several decades. Initially he did not think of Israel’s indiscriminate, even criminal violence against civilians as genocide, because Israel had a clear right to defend itself against the barbarous acts of Hamas.

I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory."

Continue reading →

Aug 11, 2022 ∞

More than a Euphemism

Perhaps Putin’s phrase “special military operation” should be seen as something more insidious than a euphemism for war. At the very least, it is consistent with Russia’s genocidal aims and practices in Ukraine.

If we take the Clausewitzian metaphor of war as a duel somewhat literally, the Russian invasion of Ukraine becomes a struggle between two equals, two entities with the same dignity, the same right to exist. After all, duels have traditionally been fought between two parties capable of giving satisfaction for a perceived injury by one to the other’s honor. An officer could duel another officer, but not a sergeant, a lowly conscript, or a civilian occupying a more modest social position.

By calling its invasion a “special military operation,” Russia denies Ukraine’s worthiness and sovereignty. It casts Ukraine and Ukrainians as other, fundamentally inferior, or devoid of honor, so to speak. Rejecting Ukrainian statehood outright, the term “special military operation” facilitates what the talking heads in Russia discuss openly on state TV: genocide, the elimination of Ukrainian culture, ethnicity, and language.

At the same time, the term “special military operation” renders Ukrainian resistance illegitimate in Russian eyes. Thus, Russia brands the soldiers who defended Mariupol to the end “terrorists.” And its leaders become apoplectic when Ukraine dares to fire on targets inside Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.

Given the logic of Russia’s rhetoric and violence, the problem with “special military operation” becomes one not only of euphemism hiding war from Russians. The euphemism also creates space for, even favors, genocidal rhetoric and policy.

Jun 23, 2017 ∞

War, Gender, and Nation in 19th-Century Europe: A Preliminary Sketch

Detail from “Combat at the military station: Of Chateau d’ Eau, 24th February 1848 / combat au poste: Du Château d’ Eau, 24 Févr. 1848

I wrote this preliminary introduction for a thematic handbook article that was not to be (see "Historiographical Impasse"). Looking back at this 2015 draft, I think it contains enough ideas to make it worth sharing.

If military service had become a rite of passage for young men in much of Europe well before the mutual slaughter began in the summer of 1914, neither its ubiquity nor its meaning to those it embraced were foregone conclusions. To be sure, the fundamental challenge offered by the declaration of the levée en masse in revolutionary France in 1793 represented an important first step, as did monarchical Prussia’s turn in 1813 to the near-general conscription of those men considered young and fit enough to join the fight. Indeed, Prussia’s response to the Napoleonic challenge intertwined military service, citizenship, and manhood in the gendered construction of a nation at war that bore a striking resemblance to those ideals manifest in the mobilizations of 1914.¹ Nonetheless, near-universal manhood conscription took many more decades to predominate on the continent (never mind the United Kingdom, which did not resort to it until 1916).²

Moreover, the path was not at all direct, not from the state’s and army’s side nor from the general population’s. For the state and its military leadership, big citizens’ armies could be desirable for fighting a foreign enemy, but they could also present a threat to the domestic-political status quo because they might not allow themselves to be used to suppress protest or insurrection at home. A further decisive factor was technology and how military leaders came to use it. Especially important were the railroads and the development of strategic thought and organizational structures that placed a premium on mobilizing large numbers of men at once for a decisive blow of the kind Helmuth von Moltke pulled off for Prussia at Königgrätz (aka Sadowa) in 1866 and at Sedan in 1870 during the wars that produced a German nation-state.³

Of course, an approach to war of this kind also required large numbers of trained conscripts and experienced reservists. But first things first. The men targeted by conscription (and then the reserves) and the families and communities in which they had been raised first needed to learn to see the state’s call to the colors as legitimate and inescapable, let alone perceive value in the prospect.

Nineteenth-century discourses and attitudes regarding conscription were informed by normative assumptions about manhood in connection with a wide range of topics—civic or national duty and martial sacrifice, forbearance and manliness, masculinity and bravery, willpower and human flesh versus modern weaponry (especially later in the century), the impact of length of service on soldiers’ relationship to civilian society, civilian upbringings and soldiers’ political reliability, the reputational impact of military service on veterans returning to civilian life, and so on. The gendered matrix of military service and citizenship was integral to warfare and its sociopolitical effects in Europe. This matrix is the subject of the first of three thematic sections comprising this [unrealized] chapter. Ordinary men in uniform occupy the center of this analysis, but other men and women who joined or supported the armed struggles—interstate and intrastate—are also considered.

The importance and meaning of conscription in this period was also affected by the increasing cachet of nationality as an organizing principle for the European state system, or at least as a cultural manifestation that states could leverage.⁴ Whether in the ranks as conscripts, as substitutes for conscripts, as wartime volunteers, or by vocation, soldiers were beginning to be identified—and even identify themselves, at least in wartime—with the nation-state or the national cause that they served. Many fought in conflicts that had national resonance among the general population, such as the Crimean War (1853–56), and many others fought in wars that led to the creation of the Italian and German nation-states (achieved in 1861 and 1871, respectively). The last case also entailed the national humiliation of France—widely felt in that country—in a series of disastrous defeats (1870–71).

These conflicts did not just involve soldiers in the service of the state, however. The rise of nationality and “the people” as relevant factors saw men (and even women) join irregular formations to attain their national goals or, in the case of Italy, at least redeem their nation’s honor, whether that meant overturning a foreign or particularistic ruler (especially during the European revolutions of 1848) or defending their nation against a foreign invader or dying in the attempt. Or so the nationalist narratives went, even if some probably took up arms to defend their home and locality against the privations of requisitioning and marauding.

These decades also saw men and women (and youth) in cities resort to violence in order to change constitutional structures or protest economic and social conditions.⁵ Whether or not any military experience was involved in the barricade building of 1848, memories of earlier revolts had certainly been passed down to the frequently subaltern generations of that time, a legacy that was also evident during the Paris Commune’s struggle in 1871.⁶ Intertwined with implicit and explicit discourses about citizenship and belonging—and thus about manhood and womanhood, too—these episodes also belonged to the complex, often violent process of nation formation and consolidation. At the same time, in this context of nation-making wars and insurrections, the seemingly contradictory phenomenon of international volunteers serving a national cause must also be considered.⁷

The circles of social actors and norms to potentially include in a gendered analysis of the above mentioned wars and insurrections could be expanded a great deal further, if space constraints and available research permitted it. Whenever gender played a role in constructing or understanding the motivation and practices of those fighting, that role conceptually comprised both masculinity and femininity because gender, like class and race, is a relational concept. If the military world had become almost exclusively male and masculine in the nineteenth century, that manhood still presupposed relationships with women and femininity.

Normative femininity might be embodied in the appearance and comportment of women accompanying the army (in France, holdovers like the cantinère) or nursing the wounded (in the Crimea, Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale). There were also the women at home for whom one fought, or the girl one intended to marry after completing active duty. Normative images of women in the minds of soldiers could affect those soldiers’ reactions to encounters with women in wartime, in the course of requisitioning food from civilians or sleeping in civilians’ homes or outbuildings—or when fighting irregulars or taking a town street by street. Finally, a siege army could not make distinctions between soldiers and civilians, men and woman, adults and children in a besieged city (as in the Prussian-German siege of Paris in 1870–71). On the other hand, policy decisions reached in the besieged city itself (or policy lacunae) could create great differences—between rich and poor, soldiers and civilians (and therefore also between men and women), and so on.

No matter how powerful memories of the levée en masse continued to be in the middle decades of nineteenth century France, to take the most famous example of a nation in arms, patriotism and élan were not enough to win wars. One also needed professional expertise to train and lead men in war or in the suppression of an insurrection. With different educational levels and frequently a more elevated social background, officers might well embody masculinity differently than the men in their charge, especially if they were noblemen. Furthermore, as military technologies grew and military organizations became more complex, the knowledge required by at least some of the officers expanded. As the job changed, so too could the men doing it.

These developments were accompanied by public and internal debates about military leadership. What qualities did officers require? From which stock was recruitment most desirable? What training did they require? What was their relationship to their men supposed to look like? How did they treat their subordinates? And what about their relationship to acknowledged social equals and supposed inferiors—especially men—outside the military? How did their expertise and comportment figure into their practice of masculinity and its reception? What did military service and sacrifice mean to these men? How did social background and family history shape that meaning? Finally, what about their private lives? How did marriage and family fit into their military careers? To what extent did the bourgeois ideal of a separate domestic sphere obtain in this context? Of course, each of these questions could lead to more than one answer because officer corps were by no means homogeneous.⁸ Furthermore, some important military leaders did not fit within this framework at all, most prominently Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose biography, relationship to his fighters, and influential public image form an instructive counterpoint.⁹

Moreover, if soldiers were citizens acting on behalf of the nation, their actions might be expected to bear a closer relationship to the values and norms that guided their behavior in civilian life. Actual or alleged practices in wartime that appeared contrary to the predominant normative conception of war—still largely informed by the metaphor of a dual between two equal and honorable parties—exposed the perpetrator to charges of acting in an unmanly or unwomanly way and, by extension, his or her nation to charges of dishonorable, uncivilized behavior. Purported atrocities and other perceived wrongdoings also created opportunities for soldiers to exact revenge with drastic countermeasures that could contradict taboos on destroying property and even those on killing women.

Of course, such measures were never just about the attitudes of soldiers, but also the command climate, discipline, and policy goals. Furthermore, gendered contemporary reports and commentaries on the violence could be more about demonizing the enemy than about actual events or understanding what happened. The main examples explored in this section involve face-to-face encounters between German soldiers and French civilians in 1870–71 and the extreme use of violence by Thiers’s forces against the Commune in 1871.¹⁰

All three sections [so was my plan] proceed from the fundamental premise that practices and experiences of manhood and womanhood are historically contingent, that men and women change over time, that normative masculinities and femininities change with them. The seemingly natural in their attitudes and behaviors is cultural and therefore a product of history. The second corollary premise is that war and warriors are creatures of their times, influenced by—and influencing—them. Contrary to many narrowly conceived histories, not to mention widespread ahistorical elements of popular culture, there is no universal soldier or military leader.¹¹ Here, too, biology need not be destiny, whereas culture, if not properly analyzed in historical context, very well could be.¹²

The third premise is that although the dual political and technological revolutions of the nineteenth century match up chronologically with the emergence of “total war” in the twentieth century, the journey never involved only a single plot line that led inexorably to 1914. Focusing on the role of gender—a fundamental component of human culture—can help to make other formative strands of the story visible. It then becomes possible to complicate Stig Förster’s powerful typology of warfare’s development in the modern era—cabinet war, people’s war, industrialized people’s war, and total war—whose emphasis on parallel developments in war and politics can resemble a teleology, one subverted by events after 1945 and hard to reconcile with developments in warfare in other eras and cultures.¹³

See Karen Hagemann, Männlicher Muth und teutsche Ehre: Nation, Militär und Geschlecht in der Zeit der Antinapoleonischen Kriege Preussens (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2001). ↩︎
See esp. Christian Jansen, ed., Der Bürger als Soldat: Die Militarisierung europäischer Gesellschaften im langen 19. Jahrhundert: Ein internationaler Vergleich (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2004); David M. Hopkin, Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture, 1766–1870 (2002; London: The Royal Historical Society/The Boydell Press, 2013); Ute Frevert, Die kasernierte Nation: Militärdienst und Zivilgesellschaft in Deutschland (Munich: Beck, 2001); and Dierk Walter, Preußische Heeresreformen 1807–1870: Militärische Innovation und der Mythos der “Roonschen Reform” (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003). The history of military service still requires much more research, especially if one wishes to talk about Europe as a whole. ↩︎
On the implementation of this technology in this era, see Dennis E. Showalter, Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1975); and Arden Bucholz, Moltke and the German Wars, 1864–1871 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001). ↩︎
The literature on nationalism in nineteenth–century Europe is vast. Some good starting points: E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1789: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd ed. (1992; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann, and Catherine Hall, eds., Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism in Europe and America: Politics, Culture, and Identity since 1775 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). ↩︎
The image accompanying this post was published by Nathaniel Currier in 1848. It is a detail from “Combat at the military station: Of Chateau d’ Eau, 24th February 1848 / combat au poste: Du Château d’ Eau, 24 Févr. 1848,” available uncut with bilingual captions at Library of Congress PPOC, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90716191/. ↩︎
See Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2009); Jill Harsin, Barricades: The War of the Streets in Revolutionary Paris, 1830–1848 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Mark Traugott, The Insurgent Barricade (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010); Robert Tombs, The War against Paris, 1871 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and John Merriman, Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune (New York: Basic Books, 2014). ↩︎
Gilles Pécout, ed., International Volunteers and the Risorgiment, special issue of Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, no. 4. (2009): 413–90. ↩︎
For these issues in Germany with a focus on the period after the German nation–state was forged, see Mark R. Stoneman, “Bürgerliche und adlige Krieger: Zum Verhältnis von sozialer Herkunft und Berufskultur im whilhelminischen Armee–Offizierkorps,” in Heinz Reif, ed., Adel und Bürgertum in Deutschand II: Entwicklungslinien und Wendepunkte im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 25–63; Stoneman, “Wilhelm Groener, Officering, and the Schlieffen Plan” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2006), chaps. 1–2. ↩︎
See Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). ↩︎
On the first example, see Mark R. Stoneman, “The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–1871: A Cultural Interpretation,” War in History 8, no. 3 (2001): 271–93; and Stoneman, “Die deutschen Greueltaten im Kriege 1870/71 am Beispiel der Bayern,” in Sönke Neitzel and Daniel Hohrath, eds., Kriegsgreuel: Die Entgrenzung der Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008), 223–39. On the second example, see Tombs, War against Paris; and Merriman, Massacre. ↩︎
See John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture from Ancient Greece to Modern America, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2008), Kindle edition, preface (entitled “Requiem for the Universal Soldier”). ↩︎
Consider, for example, the powerful myth of the fallen soldier; George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). ↩︎
By way of introduction to these issues, see the earliest and the latest volumes to arise from a series of international conferences whose subject matter extended from the mid–nineteenth–century nation–making wars to the twentieth–century total wars and then back to the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars: Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler, eds., On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (New York: German Historical Institute/Cambridge University Press, 1997); Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, eds. War in the Age of Revolution, 1775–1815 (New York: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2013). The latter cites other volumes and debates arising from the conference series. ↩︎

Nov 29, 2014 ∞

Why Study Atrocities?

I study European history, so why did I post about Sand Creek earlier today? And why excerpt seemingly gratuitous violence? I have no expertise in U.S. history, but I am interested in the history of violence per se, which can reveal a lot about peoples and cultures at a given point in history. Further, the U.S. Civil War has some important structural similarities to the Franco-Prussian War, and perhaps to other European wars in the mid nineteenth century.¹ Given the causal relationship between the U.S. Civil War and the expansion of violence against Native Americans out west, there might be a case, for example, to include France’s nineteenth-century colonial conflicts in such a comparison. However, my main interest relates to cultural taboos---or lack thereof---about specific kinds of violence against specific categories of people, assuming those people have not been perceived to violate any important taboos themselves.

In this particular case, the willingness to kill women and children indiscriminately underlines how little value these people’s lives had in the eyes of their butchers. Further, it suggests how utterly alien these Indians were in the eyes of their attackers, how far outside the attackers’ own ethnos or kin-culture community.² Indeed, in Michael Fellman's account of the guerrilla conflict in Missouri during the Civil War, white fighting men broke more cultural taboos in their fight against Indians than they did when committing violence against free and enslaved black people.³

At the same time, Congressional testimony points to other attitudes towards the slaughtered Native Americans. We hear of white men with native partners and sons, for instance, although the latter were called “half breed.” The paternalistic congressmen investigating the atrocity were also humane, in a certain sense, but a question about how long the witness-cum-translator had lived with the Indians suggests how different that congressman perceived him to be. At the same time, commentators who sided with the Colorado troops responsible for the massacre portrayed their opponents as brave. Of course, it was safer to make the women and children seem like incidental casualties of a battle, but the self-respect of fighting men also requires a worthy opponent. Without one, the act of killing brings no honor and---we are learning in recent conflicts---can leave deep scars in the soldier who pulls the trigger.⁴

Given the tiny source base behind this post, it only represents an approach to such violence, nothing more, especially since such an approach must also consider the specific historical context of this awful American story.

See Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler, eds., On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (Washington, DC: Cambridge Universtiy Press, 1997). ↩
On kin-culture communities, see Azar Gat with Alexsander Yakobson, Nations: The Long and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). ↩
Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). ↩
See Sharon E. French, "The Code of the Warrior," The Harmon Memorial Lectures in Military History 47 (United States Airforce Academy: Colorado, 2004). French has published a book by the same title. ↩

Apr 26, 2009 ∞

Downgrading 'Torture' to 'Harsh Questioning'

On the front page of today’s Washington Post, one can read the following headline:

Effectiveness Of Harsh Questioning Is Unclear
Detainee May Have Faced Few Traditional Tactics

This language bothers me. We are talking about torture here, so why not use the term? Why downgrade it to “harsh questioning” and even make it sound innovative, which comes to mind as the opposite of “traditional”? A story broadcast by On the Media this week shows that the Washington Post is not alone in this. Apparently the media is following the Obama administration’s lead.

I understand the administration’s position, because it is hoping this dark cloud will go away and not overshadow its policy agenda. Nonetheless, I do not understand how the administration could possibly believe that it will go away. The administration needs to get ahead of the story, even if it feels it can’t prejudice any possible criminal cases by calling it torture.

Meanwhile, there is no reason why newspapers have to toe the line on what language to use. The mere existence of definitions of what could and could not be done does not mean that the interrogation techniques used by the CIA were any less torture.

Dec 22, 2008 ∞

Atrocities in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870–71

Illustration of peasants in the Vosges shooting at German soldiers, titled “Paysans des Vosges faisant le coup de feu.” Source: L’Illustration Européenne 1870, p. xvii, via Wikimedia Commons.

An essay on the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) that I wrote last year appeared in print this fall in a book about war atrocities from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.¹ The essay focuses on German soldiers and French civilians using the example of the Bavarians. It examines why soldiers sometimes departed from generally accepted standards in Europe about sparing civilians the effects of war as much as possible.

The war began as a "cabinet war" that the German leadership hoped to win quickly through a series of decisive battles of annihilation. In this way the state, led by the king and his cabinet, would maintain control over the war effort and not face any undue influence from civilians, whether its own or those of the enemy. After destroying the Second Empire's army at Sedan, however, France refused to capitulate. Its people toppled the empire and vowed to fight on. The German leadership had a "people's war" on its hands that it took five more months to win. While the French and Germans fought most of this war with conventional means between armed forces organized by the state, the war also saw substantial civilian involvement that had the potential to lead to an ever deepening spiral of violence.

The most extensive contact between soldiers and civilians occurred as a result of the German military policy of living off the land, which made German forces more mobile. To maintain discipline, officers were supposed to take small details of soldiers to requisition what animals, fodder, and food their units required. Requisitioning resembled theft in that those whose property the German officers took had no choice in the matter, but it differed insofar as the German officers issued receipts for what they took. These would be paid off by whichever side lost. German forces were also quartered on civilian households. These circumstances enabled soldiers to pursue their own private initiatives. If their "hosts" would not give them what they needed, the soldiers often took it.

More famous, however, were reports of armed French civilians called francs-tireurs. While their number was not great enough to present a strategic threat, the German forces did have to devote some 120,000 soldiers to their lines of communication. Armed incidents led the invading soldiers to shoot suspected partisans summarily, burn down houses and even villages where such incidents occurred, and use hostages, most famously on locomotives. While some reactions had an ad hoc quality to them, the common thread was the notion of "military necessity." The German forces found the actions regrettable but necessary, in order to prevent the war from lasting longer than necessary. The idea was to counter French "terror" with measures so harsh that the French would see the error of their ways and refrain from any further resistance.

References for these incidents and the historiography of the Franco-Prussian War are available in this new essay as well as the following related one, in which I devote a lot of space to the events in Bazailles, which the Bavarians infamously burned down during the Battle of Sedan: "The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–1871: A Cultural Interpretation," War in History 8.3 (2001): 271–93.

My source base for this research was published personal narratives, that is, letters, diaries, and memoirs. Most of them came from Bavarian soldiers and officers, though I drew on other German narratives by way of comparison. It is in some ways surprising how freely the fighting men wrote about these events, but what they were describing was either acceptable in their minds or told in relation to what lines they believed the French had crossed.

One phenomenon I found little mention of was the hostage-taking. This might be because the Bavarian veterans felt they had crossed a line, although it is also worth noting that their units were not as heavily involved in maintaining lines of communication in the rear, which is where the hostage-taking occurred. Recently I learned more about this subject from Heidi Mehrkens' new book, which includes a section on the German military using hostages on locomotives. Mehrkens' book is also helpful, because it uses archival sources that confirm the impressions I gained about relations between soldiers and civilians from the published primary sources.

Mark R. Stoneman, "Die deutschen Greueltaten im Krieg 1870/71 am Beispiel der Bayern"; in Sönke Neitzel and Daniel Hohrath, eds., Kriegsgreuel: Die Entgrenzung der Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008), 223–39. ↩

Jul 6, 2008 ∞

Authors of Interrogation Handbook Abuse Their Sources

In a piece called "Mind Games: Remembering Brainwashing" from today's New York Times, Tim Wiener points to one of the more irresponsible uses of historical documents that I have seen this summer. Apparently "American military and intelligence officers" (he is not more specific) decided in 2002 to examine Cold War CIA studies of Chinese interrogation methods during the Korean War. After all, these Communists were the supposed masters who fed the kinds of fears that later gave rise to a movie like "The Manchurian Candidate." In one major study the officers found examples of what are now often called "harsh interrogation techniques" when the more negatively valued term "torture" is being deliberately avoided. "They reprinted a 1957 chart describing death threats, degradation, sleep deprivation—and worse—inflicted by Chinese captors. And they made it part of a new handbook for interrogators at Guantánamo."

The provenance of these techniques might give pause, but here's the real bombshell:

The irony is that the original author of that chart, Albert D. Biderman, a social scientist who had distilled interviews with 235 Air Force P.O.W.’s, wrote that the Communists’ techniques mainly served to “extort false confessions.” And they were the same methods that “inquisitors had employed for centuries.” They had done nothing that “was not common practice to police and intelligence interrogators of other times and nations.”

This story reminds me of the student who hurriedly pulls a bunch of quotes from a book without actually reading or studying the book as a whole, let alone thinking about its historical context. The student then slaps the material together in a paper that might confirm his own beliefs, but whose conclusions bear no tangible relationship to the source that he supposedly read and analyzed. Is that what happened here? Or was the document perhaps too complex for them? Perhaps they needed to invest in some historians who were not afraid to dig through this kind of thing in an honest manner, no matter what conclusions the documents might suggest.

Oct 8, 2007 ∞

Outsourcing Military Tasks

Originally posted on Clio and Me on this date.

There has been much scrutiny in the press recently about the U.S. outsourcing military missions to private companies like Blackwater. P. W. Singer pointed out many problems with this trend in yesterday's Washington Post. The most important from my point of view is the weak link between the American people and warmaking:

Since the end of the Vietnam War, the United States has sought to ensure that there's a link between the public and the costs of war, so that good decisions will be made and an ethos of responsibility fostered. With about half our operation in Iraq in private hands, that link has been jeopardized.

Perhaps we live in a new world that I do not understand, but it seems to me that the past several hundred years of Western history have shown that a people at war can create a far more powerful political and military force than anything a cabinet can muster on its own. If the war in Iraq is so important, this country's citizens should be more directly involved, for they are the real basis of American power. But they are also a brake on the reckless use of military force. They will only mobilize for compelling reasons. One of President Bush's mistakes was to go to war with only enough public support to begin it. There is no such thing as war on the cheap. Private contractors are expensive in mere dollars, but they have helped the administration to avoid seeking a more solid domestic political foundation for the war—or accepting the consequences if it is unable to do so.

Framing his piece as an open memorandum to the secretaries of defense and state, Singer devotes most of his attention to how counterproductive private military forces are on the ground. This line of thought is more likely to gain an audience than the more immediate focus in the media on the accountability of men working for outfits like Blackwater. Yes, Congress needs to implement a legal framework for these men who stand outside both Iraqi law and the United States' own Uniform Code of Military Justice, but a strong concern for the rule of law and human rights has not been this administrations' strong suit.

We also need to hear more about the organizational culture of Blackwater. Since it hires men with prior military experience, this requirement includes learning more about the military cultures whence they came, especially since Blackwater hires people of diverse national backgrounds, including people with experience in outfits with less than stellar human rights records. The question of military culture brings me back to the initial point about the weak link between the American people and the violence being done in its name in Iraq. The U.S. Army and Marines have their own organizational cultures, but these include a strong link to values in American civilian society. Can we say the same thing about our hired guns?

Of course, the abuses at Abu Ghraib show that our own military culture has some problems, though I suspect that the atrocities committed there had much to do with the inexperience of National Guard troops, a different culture in the CIA, the use of civilian defense contractors, and some troubling signals being sent from the highest levels of our civilian government, not to mention unclear lines of command and accountability.

Sep 11, 2007 ∞

Six Years Ago

Georgetown University in Washington, DC, did not cancel classes on September 12th, so I went into a class packed with mainly freshman at 9:15 a.m. By that point teaching early modern European history was out of the question, so we talked. After I got home, I sent the following message to everyone.

Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 12:56
Subject: reflections

Hi everyone,

Frankly, I was surprised by the rather large turnout in class this morning. Yesterday's news was disturbing, and many of us feel worse as the details and reality of the terrorist attacks sink in. The class discussion was heartening for me, because I saw a large group of curious, thinking, politically astute and morally aware students, who will one day help to lead this country. There is still much to learn (for your professors too), but your remarks show that you want to learn. This desire to learn about and engage in the world might help give a little meaning to the tragedy.

Those of you who did not come to class leave me worried. Was it because of the general sad and bewildered atmosphere that has enveloped this city? Or have you lost family members or friends? I do not expect an answer to these questions, but I do want to point out two things to all students. First, those of you who feel despondent, in shock, depressed, angry, or confused should know that this is normal. You should also know that such feelings can be extremely debilitating if you cannot address them in some way. Make sure you seek out counselors, chaplains, advisors, professors, friends or family members for assistance. Some of you will find your academic work a good diversion--or way of understanding what happened. If, however, your personal situation makes such work impossible, because of depression or family obligations, please also visit your dean, who can run interference for you with your instructors.

Student reactions in class covered a wide spectrum of opinion and emotions, which I would like to summarize. Some of you appeared numbed or angered by the attack and could not yet put it into some sort of abstract moral or political framework. Others were outraged at the apparent insensitivity some people showed towards this great loss. These are normal reactions, and I imagine most of you have felt or will feel similarly, at least for a time. Many of you pondered what the U.S. reaction should be. While some expressed concerns about the morality and justice of retribution, others worried about what application of force might actually work. Who was behind these atrocities and what would be the most efficacious manner of dealing with them? One of you pointed out that any political or military reactions must consider the mindset of the terrorists, their cultural assumptions and psychological make-up. We cannot assume that they think as we do. Some of you talked about what yesterday's event meant for your sense of security in the U.S. This concern appeared to waver between two poles: our own physical security and the impact that this violence will have on our own humanity. I underscored the latter concern. Finally, Anton [my TA that semester] pointed out that coming to terms with many of the big conflicts in our day entails learning how to ask the right questions. Besides learning about what happened in the past, our course provides an opportunity for you to learn how to ask trenchant questions.

Finally, some personal notes: A friend of ours in Augsburg, Germany (north of Munich) called this morning to find out how we are doing. She says no one in Augsburg is talking about anything else. They are horrified. My mother-in-law in Munich spoke of a minute of silence being observed today in the textile industry (probably elsewhere too). As far as my friends in New York go, well, it is impossible to get through on the phone. One can only hope and, if one is so inclined, pray.

I encourage you to participate in the university's various forums for dialog today, and to listen to or read some quality news, such as NPR radio, The Washington Post, and so on. Some of you might also read the foreign press online. Participating in the country's and world's dialog is good not only for your intellectual development, but also for your mental health.

Take care of yourselves.

Best wishes,

Mark Stoneman

Jul 21, 2007 ∞

Paradoxes

I was looking through Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists, a play I have used a few times in a survey course on modern Europe. In the back of the English translation by James Kirkup are “21 Points to The Physicists,” one of which reads, “The more human beings proceed by plan the more effectively they may be hit by accident.” This quote sums up my recently completed dissertation on three levels that I would like to consider: the content of my research from the point of view of its historical subjects, the path my research takes from my point of view, and the shape of the narrative that eventually emerges. I plan to look at these paradoxes in future posts at irregular intervals. For now I will mention a different one that is not as difficult to resolve.

I spent four years in the U.S. Army during peacetime, and I disliked being a soldier. I also rarely found military history interesting. Nonetheless, my research has focused on war. My M.A. thesis is about Bavarian soldiers and French civilians in the Franco-Prussian War, and my Ph.D. thesis is about the Imperial German officer corps and war planning. How did a former soldier who hated his experience in the military come to enjoy studying military history?

At least part of the answer lies in my military experience. A kid from the woods of New Hampshire had a lot of learning to do in a unit in which most everyone else came from the inner city or rural south. Add class, race, and educational levels to this mix, and I got a first-rate education. You see, I was not just in the army, but combat arms, specifically, the field artillery. When I enlisted I made the naive assumption that the army was the army no matter what one did, and it was offering a substantial bonus for four years in the artillery. So why not? Without going into a longer story, let me say that I left the army in 1987 with an insight of which at the time I was unaware: studying the army can teach a person a lot about that army’s country.

Not until I was doing my M.A. in Augsburg, Germany did I realize that I knew this. I think it was late 1992 or early 1993 when I met Professor Stig Förster, who had just returned to Europe from a stint at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. Stig was editing On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871, and I, as an American there, was recruited as one of his student helpers. I found the topics interesting, because in a seminar I had recently taken with another historian, we had learned about the lead-up to the war and the postwar settlement, but the war just kind of happened. I remarked on this circumstance to Stig. One thing led to another and he suggested I could explore the Bavarians' treatment of civilians in 1870–71 for my master’s thesis. The topic sounded interesting, but also vaguely pornographic. Was it even decent to probe into such suffering? At the same time, scenes from Bosnia on TV suggested to me that such topics mattered. Before making up my mind, I asked if there was an historical treatment of these kinds of issues that might show me the historical value of examining atrocities. That led to Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict In Missouri During The American Civil War, as well as James M. McPherson, Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Of course, I also dug into Michael Howard’s perennial The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870-71. These books showed me that the study of war was integral to mainstream history and vice versa. With war being fought once again on European soil (the Balkans), I not only was hooked, but I thought such studies were a moral imperative.

Having completed a PhD program and many years of teaching, I no longer see my research in such grandiose terms. Still, I try to integrate at least one lecture on broad trends in war and society into each survey course I teach. I think students need to know that human behavior in war is historically contingent. They need to know, for instance, that humanity and atrocities in warfare have a history. The list is much longer, of course, but I can revisit the topic another time.

Photo of an 8-inch howitzer under a camouflage net taken in Germany, probably in Grafenwöhr in the fall of 1983