The issues of casualties and presumed casualty aversion in democratic societies were of marginal importance in the German debate about civil-military relations in the 1990s. Although these issues were ever present, they were never studied in detail. This article analyzes the reactions to German casualties by the political and military elites and by the press. It focuses on a number of recent cases of German soldiers who were killed in out-of-area missions. Our findings indicate that German society seems to be less casualty averse than is widely assumed. Two explanations for this are put forward: First, that Germany appears to have undergone a substantial learning process and seems ready to accept casualties for the “right” cause. Second, German society has become indifferent to military matters. Further research is needed to specify the extent to which these two hypotheses apply to different segments of German society.
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References
1.
Throughout this article, whenever a German source is cited and the quotation is in English, the translation is our translation.
2.
David Clark, The Sociology of Death (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
3.
Klaus Feldmann, Tod und Gesellschaft. Sozialwissenschaftliche Thanatologie im Überblick (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004).
4.
Philippe Ariès, Geschichte des Todes,7th edition (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995).
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Armin Nassehi and Georg Weber, “Verdrängung des Todes – Kulturkritisches Vorurteil oder Strukturmerkmal moderner Gesellschaften?”Soziale Welt39, 4 (1988): 377–396.
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Armin Nassehi and Georg Weber, Tod, Modernität und Gesellschaft. Entwurf einer Theorie der Todesverdrängung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989), 274–274.
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Werner Fuchs, Todesbilder in der modernen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1973), 228–228.
8.
Feldmann, Tod und Gesellschaft, 30f–30f., 57f–57f. See also Armin Nassehi, Geschlossenheit und Offenheit. Studien zur Theorie der modernen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 301.
9.
Feldmann, Tod und Gesellschaft, 12–12.
10.
Thanato-sociology distinguishes between physiological death, biological death, mental death (death of the soul), and social death. See Mansell E. Pattison (ed.), The Experience of Dying (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977); Feldmann, Tod und Gesellschaft, 13, 83f.
11.
Edward N. Luttwak, “Toward Post-Heroic Warfare,”Foreign Affairs74, 3 (1995): 109–122; Herfried Münkler, Die neuen Kriege (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2002).
12.
Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, “The Civil-Military Gap and Casualty Aversion.” Paper prepared for the Triangle Institute for Security Studies project Bridging the Gap: Assuring Military Effectiveness When Military Culture Diverges from Civilian Society (1999), 1–1.
13.
Reinhart Koselleck, “Einleitung,” in Der politische Totenkult: Kriegerdenkmäler in der Moderne, ed. Reinhart Koselleck and Michael Jeismann (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994), 9–20.
14.
Ibid., 9.
15.
Klaus Latzel, Vom Sterben im Krieg. Wandlungen in der Einstellung zum Soldatentod vom Siebenjährigen Krieg bis zum II. Weltkrieg (Warendorf: Fahlbusch & Co, 1988).
16.
Sabine Behrenbeck, “Heldenkult oder Friedensmahnung? Kriegerdenkmale nach beiden Weltkriegen” in Lernen aus dem Krieg? Deutsche Nachkriegszeiten 1918 und 1945, ed. Gottfried Niedhart and Dieter Riesenberger (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992), 344–364, here 357f.–357f.; Reinhart Koselleck, “Kriegerdenkmale als Identitätsstiftungen der Überlebenden,” in Identität, ed. Odo Marquard and Karlheinz Stierle (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1979), 255–276.
17.
Michael Jeismann and Rolf Westheider, “Wofür stirbt der Bürger? Nationaler Totenkult und Staatsbürgertum in Deutschland und Frankreich seit der Französischen Revolution,” in Der politische Totenkult. Kriegerdenkmäler in der Moderne, ed. Reinhart Koselleck and Michael Jeismann (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994), 23–50, here 39.
18.
Peter Reichel, “Helden und Opfer. Zwischen Pietät und Politik: Die Toten der Kriege und der Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Der Krieg in der Nachkriegszeit. Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Politik und Gesellschaft der Bundesrepublik, ed. Michael Th. Greven and Oliver von Wrochem (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2000), 167–182, here 174f–174f.
19.
See Peter Wapnewski, “Das Nibelungenlied,” in Deutsche Erinnerungsorte I, ed. Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001), 159–169.
20.
In the German language, there is no difference between the terms sacrifice and victim; the word Opfer contains both meanings and can therefore be interpreted either way.
21.
Manfred Wittig, “‘Der Tod hat alle Unterschiede ausgelöscht.’ Anmerkungen zur Geschichte und Ideologie des Volksbundes Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge nach 1945,” in Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat. Leiden und Sterben in den Kriegsdenkmälern des Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Michael Hütt, Hans-Joachim Kunst, Florian Matzner, and Ingeborg Pabst (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1990), 91–98; Thomas Kühne, “Die Viktimisierungsfalle. Wehrmachtsverbrechen, Geschichtswissenschaft und symbolische Ordnung des Militärs,” in Der Krieg in der Nachkriegszeit, ed. Greven and von Wrochem (see note 18), 183–196.
22.
Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (HIS), Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944. Ausstellungskatalog (Hamburg: HIS Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002); Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999).
23.
Before German reunification, though, this was only partly true in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where the Communist resisters to the National Socialist regime were commemorated as heroes who had sacrificed their lives for the Communist ideals.
24.
Michael Schwab-Trapp, Kriegsdiskurse. Die politische Kultur des Krieges im Wandel 1991–1999 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2002).
25.
Zoltán Juhász, “German Public Opinion and the Use of Force in the Early 1990s,” in Public Opinion and the International Use of Force, ed. Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia (New York: Routledge, 2001), 57–85, here 67f–67f.
26.
For the positions of the different German parties concerning the interpretation of the Basic Law in the early 1990s, see John S. Duffield, World Power Forsaken: Political Culture, International Institutions, and German Security Policy After Unification (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 173–221.
27.
Juhász, “German Public Opinion,”57f–57f.
28.
There have been, and still are, considerable differences between the German population in the Eastern and Western parts of Germany as far as out-of-area missions of the Bundeswehr and Germany’s foreign and security policies are concerned. See Juhász, “German Public Opinion”; and especially Heiko Biehl, Thomas Bulmahn and Nina Leonhard, “Die Bundeswehr als Armee der Einheit: Eine ambivalente Bilanz,” in Soldat –Militär–Politik–Gesellschaft. Facetten militärbezogener sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung. Liber amicorum für Paul Klein, ed. Gerhard Kümmel and Sabine Collmer (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003), 199–228, for more details.
29.
See Duffield, World Power Forsaken.
30.
For example, support of the German public for missions of the Bundeswehr declines the more the use of force is implied; see Biehl, Bulmahn, and Leonhard, “Die Bundeswehr als Armee der Einheit,”208f–208f., 213–213; Thomas Bulmahn,“Die Einstellungen der Bürger zu den Einsätzen der Bundeswehr,” in SOWI News (Newsletter des Sozialwissenschaftlichen Instituts der Bundeswehr) 3 (2004): 5–7.
31.
See the complete list online at http://www.bundeswehr.de/wir/hintergrund/bisherige_einsaetze.php.
32.
See http://www.inidia.de/soldaten_tote_auslandeinsaetze.htm. See also Gesundheitsjahresberichte der Bundeswehr 1990–2000. Beiträge zur Wehrmedizinalstatistik, ed. Bundesministerium der Verteidigung–Inspekteur für den Sanitätsdienst (BMVg-InSan I1) (Bonn: BMVg, 1992–2003).
33.
Studies about the media coverage (press, television) of the Bundeswehr show that in general the German media report about the Bundeswehr rather seldom. When they do, they primarily report about the out-of-area missions (and the reform and transformation of the Bundeswehr). Their attention is focused on the bad news (such as casualties). Therefore, analyzing the press coverage of the six deadly incidents not only informs us about the reactions to German casualties, but also about the general image of the Bundeswehr (and its out-of-area missions) conveyed by the press, thus shaping the German public opinion about the Bundeswehr and the out-of-area missions considerably. See Thomas Bulmahn, “Die Bundeswehr und ihre Einsätze im Spiegel der Medien,” in SOWI News3 (2004): 1–4.
34.
“Kambodscha—Der verdrängte Tod,”Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 15, 1993.
35.
Constanze Stelzenmüller, “Das falsche Sparschwein. Die Politik hat die Bundeswehr verraten,”Die Zeit, March 7, 2002:.
36.
Michael Fröhlingsdorf, “Die überforderte Armee,”Der Spiegel, March 11, 2002.
37.
Jochim Stoltenberg, “Ein tragischer Unfall,”Berliner Morgenpost, March 7, 2002.
38.
Quoted in Die Welt, March 9, 2002, p. 4–4.
39.
Hugh Smith, The Last Casualty? What Costs Can Democracies Bear? Paper presented at the IUS Biennial Conference, October 24–26, 2003, Chicago, IL. See also Smith’s contribution in this issue.
40.
Interestingly, the German helicopters have since been equipped with dust collectors.
41.
General Bertholee’s comments are available at Bundeswehr Intr@net aktuell, June 10, 2003.
42.
Defense Minister Struck’s remarks are available at Bundeswehr Intr@net aktuell, June 10, 2003.
43.
See Thomas Bulmahn, Bevölkerungsbefragung zum sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitischen Meinungsbild der Deutschen. Ergebnisbericht 2004 (Strausberg: Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr, 2004), 21f–21f.
44.
See Bulmahn, “Die Einstellungen der Bürger zu den Einsätzen der Bundeswehr,”5–5.
45.
Charles C. Moskos, “Toward a Postmodern Military: The United States as a Paradigm,” in The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War, ed. Charles C. Moskos, John Allen Williams, and David R. Segal (New York: Oxford University Press2000), 14-31.
46.
See also Duffield, World Power Forsaken, 175–175.
47.
See Hugh Smith’s article elsewhere in this issue.
48.
This is especially true given the fact that internal (economic, social) problems tend to draw the public’s attention away from international problems.
