Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying. The Secret World War II Transcripts of German POWs by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer (review)

In an attempt to gather as much intelligence as possible about their enemy during the Second World War, both the United States and Great Britain secretly recorded conversations held by German prisoners of war in Allied captivity. The some 48,000 pages of the latter’s protocols form the basis of historian Sönke Neitzel and psychologist Harald Welzer’s rich, provocative, and readable study of German soldiers and their views of the war. The authors utilize elements of both the historical and psychological disciplines in “reconstructing a particular mentality and arrive at a revised perspective on soldiers’ behavior” (ix), one that significantly downplays the explanatory value of ideology as the primary motivator of soldiers and their actions.

An examination of the transcripts clearly demonstrates that violence served as the most important cornerstone of the soldiers’ experiences. Neitzel and Welzer focus specifically on “‘autotelic violence’—violence committed for its own sake without any larger purpose” (49). Many of the conversations between German POWs are indeed shocking in their casual and even jovial discussions of violence against civilians. Discussions about pulling Soviet women into armored cars, raping them, and then tossing them out of the vehicle (5) or shooting a Frenchman for his bicycle (151-52) are disturbing in their matter-of-fact tone. For the authors, however, this laconic attitude toward violence is a product of both the men’s roles as soldiers during wartime and their socialization within the Nazi state.

Service in the “total institution” of the Wehrmacht “established[ed] a specific form of socialization, in which group norms and responsibilities ha[d] far more influence on individuals than under normal social conditions” (16). The values inculcated by the military “proved far more important than ideology for soldiers’ perceptions and interpretations, and thus for their concrete decisions and actions” (238). Notions of obedience, duty, and bravery served as the basis for German behavior during the war, motivating U-boat commanders in the Atlantic, pilots over Great Britain, and infantrymen in France, North Africa, and the Soviet Union. Since “significant numbers of people were part of an organization whose very purpose was violent, it is perhaps clearer why many, although not all, German soldiers did not need to get accustomed to violence. Violence was part of their frame of reference, and killing part of their duties” (53).

Once conscripted into the armed forces, the men quickly adjusted to their new jobs. Neitzel and Welzer contend that “Wehrmacht soldiers wanted one thing above all: to be able to do their jobs well, whatever they were” (274). This quest for “professionalism” (276) at all ranks led soldiers to embrace military values and strive for tangible proof of bravery in the form of medals and decorations. This focus on work also served as the catalyst for soldiers’ brutal behavior towards enemy civilians. Whether it be strafing a British mansion filled with people waltzing to an orchestra (65) or destroying a Soviet village and its alleged partisan population (81), German servicemen could neatly fit this into their professional obligations: “they focus[ed] on achieving results, not finding reasons” (80).

This acceptance of violence, however, was not merely a result of the soldiers’ socialization in the Wehrmacht. The cleavage of post-1933 German society into two sections consisting of a cared-for majority and a persecuted minority “fundamentally changed social values” (33) within the state. Before going into action, German soldiers “ordered their perceptions, interpretations and conclusions” (35) against this social reality. In combination, these two frameworks—one established by the military and the other by the Nazi state—led to what Neitzel and Welzer term the German soldiers’ “frame of reference.” This notion “guaranteed economy of action so that most of what happens can be sorted within a familiar matrix” (8); in other words, the amalgamation of the Nazi and military frame...