Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying Read Online Free PDF Page B

thearmy, rank and function unambiguously determine how much leeway individuals have. The lower down one is in the hierarchy, the moredependent one will be on others’ commands and decisions. Yet even withintotal institutions like a military boot camp, a prison, or a closed psychiatric clinic, everyone enjoys at least a small measure of freedom of action. In his book
Asylums,
sociologistErving Goffman has convincingly described how people can exploit rules in total institutions for their own purposes. According to Goffman, when people in such institutions use jobs in the kitchen or the library to get organized or smuggle desired goods, they are engaged in “secondaryadjustments,” pretending to follow the rules but actually advancing their own interests. Occupying troops enjoy numerous opportunities for secondary adjustment. In June 1944, for example, a certainLieutenant Pölert related: “I sent home a tremendous amount of butter and three or four pigs from France. It may have been three to four cwt of butter.” 24 Soldiers welcomed such sides ofwar from which they couldpersonally profit. The leeway afforded by secondary adaptation, however, drastically declines in actual battle and can only be exploited if one enjoys violence. In any case, as the situation grows more confined and drastic, theframe of reference becomes less differentiated.
S OCIAL D UTIES
    In cases like total institutions with a limited frame of reference, freedom of choice is minimized while security of orientation grows. At the same time,socialduties can intervene in established, unambiguous decision-making structures and make group ties or even chains of command more permeable. For instance, the commandant of theDautmergen concentration camp, ErwinDold, disobeyed orders and organizedfood for “his” inmates, in a unique attempt to improve their chances ofsurvival. He did this in the secure knowledge that his wife supported and even expected such behavior. 25 Another example of the impact of social duties was soldiers who suddenly felt moral scruples when carrying out mass executions, after noticing resemblances between children they murdered and their own kids. 26 Nonetheless, we should be under no illusions about the effect of social duties. We know of a great number of cases in which the real or imaginary presence ofa wife actually encouraged soldiers to kill because they felt they were acting in harmony with the wishes and choices of their spouses.
    Socialduties emerge clearly in the recorded conversations of tank commanderHeinrich Eberbach. In October 1944, while interned in the British POW campTrent Park, he talked about whether he should voluntarily assist Allied propaganda efforts:
    I am fairly well known in tank circles in which I have given many addresses and lectures etc. I am convinced that if I were to make such a proclamation, which would be heard and read by the people—leaflets dropped over the front and so on—it would certainly have a certain effect on the troops. But first I should consider it as an utterly dirty thing to do in every way, it would go against my feelings so much that I could never do it. Then quite apart from that—there are my wife and my children. I wouldn’t dream of doing it. I should be ashamed to face my wife if I did. My wife is so patriotic, I could never do it. 27
    The profound influence of social ties results from the fact, contrary to popular assumption, that people behave within social relationships and not for causal reasons or according to rational calculation. Social ties are thus a crucial variable in determining what people decide—all the more so when decisions are made under stress, as inStanley Milgram’s famous simulation. In that experiment, social constellations were decisive in how obediently the subjects behaved toward the authority figure. 28
    Social proximity, perceived or actual, and the duties bound up with it constitute a central element in frames of reference. In the discipline of