Ethics, Warfare, & Atrocity: Examining the Actions of the German Army during the Holocaust

1. “In the course of his twelve years of office, Adolf Hitler was to impose upon the army a control more rigid than any in its long existence, and to compel the obedience of its officers even to commands which violated their historical traditions, their political and military judgment, and their code of honour.” Gordon Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army "I swear by almighty God this sacred oath: I will render unconditional obedienceto the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler,Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, and, as a brave soldier, I will be ready at any time to stake my life for this oath." ETHICS, WARFARE, & ATROCITY

2. What can contemporary military professionals learn from the actions of the German army during the Holocaust? Do circumstances and pressures exist in warfare that can threaten the legal, moral, and ethical obligations of contemporary military professionals? THE BIG QUESTIONS

3. Key role of leadership & command climate Maintaining ethics and morality in warfare ROE and the laws of armed conflict Hot blooded versus cold blooded atrocity Individual versus group responsibility COIN versus “Counter Guerrilla” doctrine Words Matter: “Motorcycle gangs,” “Hellraiser” & “dominant predators” What can we learn today?

4. Hitler’s MARCHING ORDERS “The impending campaign. . . entails a struggle between two ideologies. . . The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the oppressor in the past, must be liquidated.” Adolf Hitler, 3 March 1941

5. ROE: “LEGALIZING” murder • “Decree on the Exercise of Military Jurisdiction in the Barbarossa Zone and on Special Measures for the Troops”(May 1941) states: • “guerrillas are to be finished off ruthlessly in battle or while attempting to escape.” • Civilians accused of crimes are to be tried by military courts • Civilians suspected of a crime may be brought to an officer who can authorize summary execution • There is no obligation to prosecute Wehrmacht members for crimes that they commit against civilians • The Commissar Order (June1941) issued by the Wehrmacht describedSoviet political commissars as the “originators of barbaric, Asiatic fighting methods” and called for their summary execution upon capture

6. ESTABLISHING A COMMAND CLIMATE? “The most essential aim of war against the Jewish-bolshevistic system is a complete destruction of their means of power and the elimination of asiatic influence from the European culture. . . The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry.” Field Marshal Walther v. Reichenau (10 Oct 1941)

7. ORDERS & EXPECTATIONS “The Jewish-Bolshevik system must be eradicated once and for all. Never again may it interfere in our European living space. . . The soldier must show understanding for the harsh atonement of Judaism, the spiritual carrier of the Bolshevik terror.” Gen. Erich von Manstein(20 Nov 1941) “[The war against Russia] is the old fight of the Germans against Slavs, the defense of European culture against the Moscovite-Asiatic flood, the repulsion of Jewish Bolshevism. . . . Every combat action, in its conception and conduct, must be governed by the iron will to pitiless and complete annihilation of the enemy. In particular there is no mercy for the carriers of the current Russian-Bolshevik system.”Gen. Erich Hoepner

8. “HOT BLOODED ATROCITY” in War “We arrived and the Oberjäger was shot by the partisans. . . . He [the Lieutenant] said, “Destroy everything!” So we set out through the entire village. The old boy says, “If you fellows leave a single one of them alive, I’ll kill [you] too.” . . . We mowed down everything, everything. We dragged men, women, and children from their beds. He knew no mercy.” German Private First Class Büsing on atrocity in France 1944 “When a booby-trapped artillery round blew two popular soldiers into a hedgerow, men put their fists into the faces of the nearest Vietnamese, two frightened women living in the guilty hamlet, and when the men were through with them, they hacked off chunks of thick black hair. . . . Jet fighters were called in. The hamlet was leveled, and napalm was used. I heard screams in the burning black rubble.” Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone

9. THE ROAD THROUGH HADITHA • On 19 Nov 2005, Company K, 3d Battalion, 1st Marines experienced an IED attack along a convoy route in the city of Haditha. The explosion killed one marine and wounded two others. In the wake of the attack, the unit initiated an operation that resulted in the deaths of 24 Iraqis, including men, women, and children. • MG Eldon Bargewellwas appointed to investigate the “official reporting” after the incident as well as to examine “training” and preparation with respect to Rules of Engagement (ROE).

10. Strength, POWER, & Command CLimate “. . . if we didn't have to kill any of them, that's fine. They will respect strength, they will respect power, and that's how you start bringing security and stability to that AO.” Commander RCT-2 "... it was creating an environment that might allow for the pushing of an envelope. .'.Iguess I just took it as just kind of -- I was concerned but not to the point of action. It was just, kind of, part of the grunt mentality. It was my first time serving with an infantry battalion, or regiment as it was.’’ JAG RCT-2 “Still feeling uneasy about the number ofnoncombatant casualties the Battalion XO appealed to the Battalion and Company Commanderin the days following the engagement and neither felt it necessary to look into the matter further. The Company Commander “was absolutely certain that his Marines had done the right thing,“ and the Battalion Commander stated that the Marines were doing what they were supposed tobe doing.” Bargewell Report

11. Bargewell’s Findings on Haditha “The fact that neither 3 /1, RCT-2, 2d Marine Division or MNF-W deemed the deaths of this number of noncombatants alone, or under the circumstances reported, assignificant enough to warrant more than a cursory inquiry into the facts might suggest that thecommand philosophy and the command climate did not encourage the disciplined application ofROE and LOAC.” “Statements made by the chain of command . . . Suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as US lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes. These comments had the potential to desensitize Marines to concern for the Iraqi populace . . . .”

12. A QUESTION OF LAW AND ETHICS Hague Convention (1907), Article 50: No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they can not be regarded as jointly and severally responsible. “Once we caught thirty terrorists, there were women and children among them. We put them into a cellar . . . . Stood them against the wall and shot them.” German PFC Diekmann on German Army Shootings in France in 1944 “So I went along [with an SS unit]. I had an hour to spare and we went to a kind of barracks and slaughtered 1,500 Jews. . . . Only Jews and a few partisans. . . . There were women and children there, too!” Luftwaffe First Lieutenant Fried on mass shootings in Poland

13. On May 9, 2006, US units of the 101st Airborne Division conducted combined operations with Iraqi forces on a small island near Samarra in an attempt to locate suspected insurgent fighters One operational planner stated that the ROE from the Brigade Commander was “Shoot all males on Objective Murray [a landing zone consisting of two mud huts].” On Day 1 of Operation Iron Triangle the unit reported 8 Iraqi males KIA Operation Iron Triangle

14. LEADERSHIP & COMMAND CLIMATE “Any kill would wind up on the Kill Board, and when you do that you aren’t putting enough emphasis on the remorse that makes you go above and beyond to insure that civilians are protected.” Unidentified Charlie Company Officer “A sniper who worked closely with Charlie Company told military investigators that some people in the unit had been “brainwashed throughout the deployment to kill.”” “We will never cross the line, but we might get chalk all over our feet.” Quote attributed to Col M. Steele

15. POWs & THE Geneva Convention (1949) 1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) Taking of hostages; (c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

16. “Shot while trying to escape” “I was going to make it quick, and as painless as possible for him. . . . So I took careful aim and shot the first one through the heart and the back, and shot him in the head. . . . Clagett opened up fire, and just sprayed bullets eventually fatally wounding the third, before I could shoot him.” Testimony of William Hunsaker

17. “The Kill Company” & A QUESTION OF ROE “. . . [Colonel Steele] improperly led his soldiers to believe that distinguishing combatants from noncombatants — a main tenet of the military’s standing rules of engagement — was not necessary during the May 9 mission, according to a classified report in June by Brig. Gen. Thomas Maffey, . . . . “A person cannot be targeted on status simply by being present on an objective deemed hostile by an on-scene commander,” General Maffey wrote in his June 16 report.” “Several soldiers have said in sworn statements that Colonel Steele told them to kill all military-age males.” “Your acts, omissions, and personal example have created a command climate where irresponsible behavior appears to have been allowed to go unchecked.” Lt Gen Peter Chiarelli to Col Michael Steele

18. The other side of the IRON TRIANGLE “’Kill him!’ [Lieutenant] Horne yelled. ‘Shoot that man!’ The soldiers looked back to their team leaders. ‘Kill him!’ Horne repeated. Horne’s men refused. “I remember him distinctly, vividly, telling me to shoot,” one told me. “The guy was about fifty yards away from me, sitting on the curb, hands in his lap. I am not in danger from him, he is not posing any danger to me. And for somebody to look at me and say, ‘Kill that motherf****er right there!’” A squad leader shouted, ‘No.’” Quoted from R. Khatchadourian, “The Kill Company, The New Yorker

19. CIVILIANS & THE Geneva Convention (1949) The High Contracting Parties, conscious of their obligation to come to an agreement in order to protect civilian populations from the horrors of war, undertake to respect the principles of human rights which constitute the safeguard of civilization and, in particular, to apply, at any time and in all places, the rules given hereunder : (1) Individuals shall be protected against any violence to their life and limb. (2) The taking of hostages is prohibited. (3) Executions may be carried out only if prior judgment has been passed by a regularly constituted court, furnished with the judicial safeguards that civilized peoples recognize to be indispensable. (4) Torture of any kind is strictly prohibited.

20. ETHICAL CHOICES IN AFGHANISTAN On 28 June 2005, a SEAL team was conducting operations aimed at a suspected Taliban Leader Ahmad Shah near Asadabad in the Hindu Kush. The team was discovered by three goatherders, including two adult males and one teenager. “The question was, What do we do now? They were obviously goatherds, farmers from the high country. Or , as it states in the pages of the Geneva Convention, unarmed civilians. The strictly correct military decision would be to kill them without further discussion, because we could not know their intentions.” Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor

21. CHOICE & CONSEQUENCES “It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life. I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. I’d turned into a f***ing liberal, a half-assed, no logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit.” Marcus Luttrell Lt Michael Murphy

22. LOSING ONE’S HUMANITY “Our humor was born out of sadism, gallows humor, satire, obscenity, spite, rage, and pranks with corpses, squirted brains, lice, pus, and shit, the spiritual zero. . . The fact that we were soldiers was sufficient basis for criminality and degradation, for an existence in hell.” Willy Peter Reese, A Stranger to Myself

23. “Pranks” with Corpses & THE “KILL TEAM” “[T]he brigade commander set the tone with his ‘Strike and Destroy’ motto and other words and actions which created a toxic social climate, which in turn predisposed the killings.” Mestrovic, Strike and Destroy

24. CASUAL BRUTALITY & THE CAMERA’S EYE

25. Affective versus Instrumental Motivation The role of Leadership & Command Climate Ethics and morality in warfare ROE and the laws of armed conflict Hot blooded versus cold blooded atrocity Individual versus group responsibility COIN versus “Counter Guerrilla” doctrine Words and Images: “Motorcycle gangs,” “Hellraiser” & “dominant predators” Points of comparison

26. What’s the message: “SNIPER SCOUTS”?

27. Bargewell, Eldon A. “The Bargewell Report.” June 15, 2006. Beorn, Waitman. “A Calculus of Complicity.” Central European History 44 (2011): 308-337. Khatchadourian, Raffi. “The Kill Company.” The New Yorker (July 6 & 19 2009): 40-59. Luttrell, Marcus. Lone Survivor. NY: Little, Brown & Company, 2007. Mestrovic, Stjepan. The “Good Soldier” on Trial. NY: Algora Publishing, 2009. _______. Strike and Destroy. NY: Alogora Publishing, 2012. Neitzel, Sönke, and HaraldWelzer. Soldaten. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Reese, Willy Peter. A Stranger to Myself. NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005. Wildermuth, David. “Widening the Circle: General Weikersthal & the War of Annihilation, 1941-42.” Central European History 45 (2012): 306-24. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY