Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (review)

Isabel V. Hull has written a book that, if it does not re-ignite the old controversy over a German Sonderweg, still will force scholars to think carefully about her thesis. In focusing on military culture—the deeply ingrained set of routines, habits of thinking, and practices in war—Hull tracks German actions from the Franco-Prussian War through various colonial wars to the brutal stalemate of World War I in order to find a unifying theme: that the dogma of military necessity, a distillate of military culture, led the means to overwhelm the ends. The tendency toward extreme violence thus resulted not from ideology but from an institutionalized military culture allowed to run to its logical extreme because of a lack of civilian constraints. In its search for operational efficiency, the German army developed certain peculiar characteristics: risk-taking, the quest for absolute victory, rigid emphasis on offensive action, disregard for diplomacy or logistics, belief in qualitative over quantitative superiority, and acceptance of widespread devastation in the name of military necessity. To Hull, the descent into absolute destruction was conditioned by small steps: a proclivity for extreme violence, the instrumentalization of civilians, and a willingness to persist in violence even to the point of self-destruction.

Hull's work raises a crucial question: Was the tendency to extreme violence rooted in war itself (its very nature, duration, and pressures) or was it institutional (a focus on military necessity deriving from a military culture peculiar to Germany)? Hull makes the latter claim; the key to her thesis is thus the uniqueness of German actions in war. Here she is on shakier ground, for her own evidence suggests that the culture of violence and military necessity was as much a European as a German phenomenon. This contradiction results in a basic ambivalence in her argument, exemplified by her tendency to use the terms "German" and "European" interchangeably.

This uncertainty leads the reader to a "yes, but" type of conclusion. Hull is not wrong; she simply overstates her position. Colonial wars were brutal, but Hull has difficulty in showing that German actions were qualitatively different from those of other European nations. Comparing German actions in Southwest Africa to those of the British during the Boer War, for example, raises questions about German uniqueness. Both German and British army policy emphasized "actionism" on the part of their officers; in both cases personal and local factors seem to have influenced the escalation of violence; both commanders (Trotha and Kitchener) pushed their policies to totality and were allowed considerable leeway; both accepted the idea of military necessity; in both cases destructive measures continued after civilian authorities urged a halt to such practices; and neither commander's career suffered. Similarly, Hull provides an accurate picture of the climate of militarism within Germany during the Wilhelmine period. But a markedly imperial attitude also characterized British society.

In an insightful assessment of the weaknesses of the Schlieffen Plan, Hull notes that German authorities should have explored diplomatic options more thoroughly, but Entente leaders did little by their actions to reassure Germany. Given Germany's history of fragmentation and interference by foreign powers, German fears of encirclement were understandable. Nor were the Germans, given the social Darwinist atmosphere of the times, the only nation willing to countenance war.

Hull takes exception to the standard view that the spiral of violence developed within the pressures of a stalemated war, arguing instead that it began immediately as a consequence of German military culture. Since the failure of the Schlieffen Plan and the imposition of the blockade created an extreme situation for Germany from the start, the atrocities inflicted on Belgian civilians would seem to confirm her interpretation—as would the stubborn effort to achieve a decisive military victory in the brutal fighting around Ypres in autumn 1914. Still, what she condemns as "repetitive actionism" on the part of German leaders does not...