Our Part in the Great War

Corporal Menge of the Eighth Company of the 74th Reserve Infantry, 10 Reserve Corps, writes in his diary for August 15:

"Wir passieren unter dreimaligen Hurra auf unsern Kaiser u. unter den Klängen d. Liedes Deutschland über alles die Belgische Grenze. Alle Bäume ungefällt als Sperre. Pfarrer u. dessen Schwester aufgehängt, Häuser abgebrannt."

("We passed over the Belgian border under a three times given Hurrah for our Kaiser, and under the Strain of the song Deutschland über alles. All the trees were felled as barricades. A curé and his sister hanged, houses burned.")

This is a neatly written diary, which he wishes to be sent to Fraulein F. Winkel of Hanover.

Penitential days are coming for the German Empire and for the German people. For these acts of horror are the acts of the people: man by man, regiment by regiment, half a million average Germans, peasants and clerks, stamped down through Belgium and Northern France, using the incendiary pellet and the bayonet. In the words of the manifesto, signed by the 93 Wise Men of Germany, referring to the German army, "Sie kennt keine zuchtlose Grausamkeit": it doesn't know such a thing as undisciplined cruelty. No, these are the acts of orderly procedure, planned in advance, carried out systematically. Never for an instant did the beautiful disciplined efficiency of the regiment relax in crushing a child and burning an inhabited house. The people of Germany have bowed their will to the implacable machine. They have lost their soul in its grinding.

Private Sebastian Weishaupt of the Third Bavarian Infantry, First Bavarian Corps:

"10.8.1914 – Parie das erste Dorf verbrannt, dann gings los; Dorf nach dem andern in Flammen; über Feld und Acker mit Rad bis wir dann an Strassengraben kamen, wo wir dann Kirschen assen."

("Octobre 8, 1914. Parux is the first village burned, then things break loose: 1 village after another to the flames; over field and meadow with cycle we then come to the roadside ditches, where we ate cherries.")

It is all in the day's work: the burning of villages, the murder of peasants, the eating of cherries. Travelers among savage tribes have told of living among them for years, and then suddenly in a flash the inmost soul of the tribe has revealed itself in some sudden mystical debauch of blood. There is an immense unbridled cruelty in certain of these German soldiers expressing itself in strange, abnormal ways. This is the explanation of some of the outrages, some of the mutilations. But, for the most part, the cruelty is not perversion, nor a fierce, jealous hate. It is merely the blind, brutal expression of imperfectly developed natures, acting under orders.

Göttsche, now commissioned officer of the 85 Infantry Regiment, 9 Army Corps, writes:

"The captain summoned us together and said: 'In the fort which is to be taken there are apparently Englishmen. I wish to see no Englishmen taken prisoner by the company.' A universal Bravo of agreement was the answer."

("'Ich wünsche aber Keinen gefangenen Engländer bei: der Kompagnie zu sehen.' Ein allgemeines Bravo der Zustimmung war die Antwort.")

Forty-three years of preparedness on every detail of treachery and manslaughter, but not one hour of thought on what responses organized murder would call out from the conscience of the world, nor what resistances such cruelty would create. It is curious the way they set down their own infamy. There is all the naïveté of a primitive people. Once a black man from an African colony came to where a friend of mine was sitting. He was happily chopping away with his knife at a human skull which he wore suspended from his neck. He was as innocent in the act as a child jabbing a pumpkin with his jack-knife. So it has been with the Germans. They burn, plunder, murder, with a light heart.

There are noble souls among them who look on with sad and wondering eyes. What manner of men are these, they ask themselves in that intimacy of the diary, which is like the talk of a soul with its maker. These men, our fellow-countrymen, who behave obscenely, who pour out foulness – what a race is this of ours! That is the burden of the self-communion, which high-minded Germans have written down, unconscious that their sadness would be the one light in the dark affair, unaware that only in such revolt as their own is there any hope at all of a future for their race.

The most important diary of all is that of an officer whose name I have before me as I write, but I shall imitate the chivalry of the French government and not publish that name. It would only subject his family to reprisal by the German military power. He belongs to the 46th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 5 Reserve Corps. He has a knack at homely details. He enters a deserted house where the pendulum of the clock still swings and ticks and sounds the hours. He believes himself under the direct protection and guidance of God. He sees it when a shell explodes, killing his comrades. He speaks of the beauty of the dead French officers, as he sees them lying in a railway station. He is skeptical about the lies told against French and Belgians. He realizes that the officers are whipping up a fury in the men, so that they will obey orders to kill and burn. In his pages you can see the mighty machine at work, manufacturing the hate which will lead to murder. The hand on the lever at Berlin sets grinding the wheels, and each little cog vibrates and moves in unison. He is a simple, pious man, shocked by the wickedness of his soldiers, offended by the cruelty of the officers, hating war, longing for its end. He plans to publish his memoirs of the campaign, with photographs, which he will return to France to make after the war. He is a natural philosopher. Most of all, he loves his quiet smoke, which keeps him good-humored. He has written a page in his diary in praise of tobacco.

"I smoke about ten cigars a day. And if it hadn't been for these cigars my good-humor in these dangers and fatigues would be much less. Smoking gives me to a degree calm and content. With it I have something to occupy my thoughts. It is necessary for one to see these things in order to understand."

Later he writes:

"October 15, 1914. It had been planned at first that we should go into quarters at Billy (Billy sous-Nangiennes), where the whole civil population had been already forced out, and whatever was movable had been taken away or made useless. This method of conducting war is directly barbarous. I am astonished how we can make any complaint over the behavior of the Russians. We conduct ourselves in France much worse, and on every occasion and on every small pretext we have burned and plundered. But God is just and sees everything. His mills grind slowly, but exceedingly small."

("Diese Art kriegführung ist direkt barbarisch … bei jeder Gelegenheit wird unter irgend einem Vorwande gebrannt und geplündert. Aber Gott ist gerecht und sieht alles: seine Mühlen mahlen langsam aber schrecklich klein.")

These extracts which I have given are from diaries of which I have examined the originals, and gone word by word over the German, in the penciling of the writer. The revelation of these diaries is that the Germans have not yet built their moral foundations. They have shot up to some heights. But it is not a deep-centered structure they have reared. It is scaffolding and fresco. We shall send them back home to begin again. Sebastian Weishaupt and Private Hassemer and Corporal Menge must stay at home. They must not come to other countries to try to rule them, nor to any other peoples, to try to teach them. Their hand is somewhat bloody. That is my feeling in reading these diaries of German soldiers – poor lost children of the human race, back in the twilight of time, so far to climb before you will reach civilization. We must be very patient with you through the long years it will take to cast away the slime and winnow out the simple goodness, which is also there.

III

MORE DIARIES

In former European wars foul practices were committed by individual members of armies. But the total army in each country was a small hired band of men, representing only the fractional part of one per cent of the population. It was in no way representative of the mind of the people. Of the present German Army, Professor Dr. Max Planck, of the University of Berlin, a distinguished physicist, has recently written:

"The German Army is nothing but the German people in arms, and the scholars and artists are, like all other classes, inseparably bound up with it."

We must regard the acts of the German Army as the acts of the people. We cannot dodge the problem of their misbehavior by saying they have not committed atrocities. We have the signed statements of a thousand German diaries that they have practiced frightfulness village by village through Belgium and Northern France. We cannot say it was a handful of drunken, undisciplined soldiers who did these things. It was "the German people in arms." It was an army that "knows no such thing as undisciplined cruelty." It was a nation of people that burned and murdered, acting under orders. Now, we have arrived at the heart of the problem. Why did they commit these horrors?

Irritated by an unexpectedly firm resistance from the Belgian and French Armies, fed on lies spread by German officers concerning the cruelty of French and Belgians, they obeyed the commands to burn houses and shoot civilians.

These commands released a primitive quality of brutality.

On August 25th, 1914, Reservist Heinrich Bissinger, of the town of Ingolstadt, of the Second Company, of the First Bavarian Pioneers, writes of the village of Orchies:

"A woman was shot because she did not stop at the word Halt, but kept running away. Thereupon we burn the whole place."

("Sämtliche Civilpersonen werden verhaftet. Eine Frau wurde vershossen, weil sie auf Halt Rufen nicht hielt, sondern ausreissen wollte. Hierauf Verbrennen der ganzen Ortschaft.")

One wonders if Heinrich Bissinger would wish the treatment he and his comrades accorded to Orchies, to be applied to his own home town of Ingolstadt. If some German peasant woman in Ingolstadt failed to understand a word in a foreign tongue, and were killed, and then if Ingolstadt were burned, would Heinrich Bissinger feel that "military necessity" exonerated the soldiers that performed the deed?

Private Philipp, from Kamenz, Saxony, of the First Company, of the first Battalion of the 178th Regiment, writes: "Kriegs Tagebuch-Soldat Philipp, 1 Kompanie (Sachsen)," at the head of his diary. On August 23 he writes of a village that had been burned:

"A spectacle terrible and yet beautiful. Directly at the entrance lay about 50 dead inhabitants who had been shot, because they had traitorously fired on our troops. In the course of the night many more were shot, so that we could count over 200. Women and children, lamp in hand, had to watch the horrible spectacle. Then in the middle of the corpses we ate our rice; since morning we had eaten nothing. By search through the houses we found much wine and liquor, but nothing to eat."

("Im Laufe der Nacht wurden noch viele erschossen, sodass wir über 200 zählen konnten. Frauen und Kinder, die Lampe in der Hand, mussten dem entsetzlichen Schauspiele zusehen. Wir assen dann inmitten der Leichen unsern Reis, seit Morgen hatten wir nichts gegessen.")

German soldiers obey these orders because their military training and their general education have made them docile. They have never learned to exercise independent individual moral judgment on acts ordered by the state. The state to them is an organism functioning in regions that lie outside the intellectual and moral life of the individual. In every German there are separate water-tight compartments: the one for the life he leads as a husband and father, the other for the acts he must commit as a citizen of the Empire and as a soldier of the Army. In his home life he makes choices. In his public life he has no choice. He must obey without compunctions. So he lays aside his conscience. In the moral realm the German is a child, which means that he is by turns cruel, sentimental, forgetful of the evil he has done the moment before, happy in the present moment, eating enormously, pleased with little things, crying over a letter from home, weary of the war, with sore feet and a rebellious stomach, a heavy pack, and no cigars. I am basing every statement I make on the statements written by German soldiers. We do not have to guess at German psychology. They have ripped open their subconsciousness.

The lieutenant of the 5th Battalion of reserves of the Prussian Guard writes on August 24 at Cirey:

"In the night unbelievable things have taken place. Warehouses plundered, money stolen, violations simply hair-raising."

("In der Nacht sind unglaubliche Sachen passiert. Läden ausgeplündert, Geld gestohlen, Vergewaltigungen, Einfach haarsträubend.")

This diary of the lieutenant's has a black cover, a little pocket for papers, a holder for the pencil. It is written partly in black pencil and partly in purple. Thirty-two pages are written, 118 are blank. It covers a space of time from August 1 to September 4, 1914.

Mrs. Wharton has brought to my attention the chronicle of Salimbene, a Franciscan of the thirteenth century, wherein similar light-hearted crimes are recorded.

"On one day he (Ezzelino) caused 11,000 men of Padua to be burnt in the field of Saint George; and when fire had been set to the house in which they were being burnt, he jousted as if in sport around them with his knights.

"The villagers dwelt apart, nor were there any that resisted their enemies or opened the mouth or made the least noise. And that night they (the soldiers) burned 53 houses in the village."

The orders given by the German commanding general to his officers, far from recommending prudence and humanity, impose the obligation of holding the total civil population collectively responsible for the smallest individual infractions, and of acting against every tentative infringement with pitiless severity. These officers are as specialized a class as New York gunmen or Paris apaches. Their career lies in anti-social conduct. "This wild upper-class of the young German imperialistic idea" are implacable destroyers. Their promotion is dependent on the extent of their cruelties.

I have seen an original copy of the order for the day (Korps-Tagesbefehl) issued on August 12, 1914, by General von Fabeck, commanding the 13th Army Corps. He says:

"Lieutenant Haag of the 19th Regiment of Uhlans, acting as chief of patrol, has proceeded energetically against the rioting inhabitants, and as agreed has employed arms. I express to him my recognition for his energy and his decision."

("Ich spreche ihm für seinen Schneid und seine Umsicht meine Anerkennung aus.")

What that gives to Lieutenant Haag is the power of life and death over non-combatants, with praise for him if he deals out death.

Let us hear General von Fabeck speak again. Here are his instructions for his troops on August 15, 1914 (I have held the original in my hands):

"As soon as the territory is entered, the inhabitants are to be held responsible for maintaining the lines of communication. For that purpose the commander of the advance guard will arrange a strong patrol of campaign gendarmes (Feldgendarmerie-Patrouille) to be used for the interior of the locality held by our troops. Against every inhabitant who tries to do us a damage, or who does us a damage, it is necessary to act with pitiless severity."

"Mit rücksichtsloser Strenge."