Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
In a book that is at once a major contribution to modern European history and a cautionary tale for today, Isabel V. Hull argues that the routines and practices of the Imperial German Army, unchecked by effective civilian institutions, increasingly sought the absolute destruction of its enemies as the only guarantee of the nation's security. So deeply embedded were the assumptions and procedures of this distinctively German military culture that the Army, in its drive to annihilate the enemy military, did not shrink from the utter destruction of civilian property and lives. Carried to its extreme, the logic of "military necessity" found real security only in extremities of destruction, in the "silence of the graveyard."
Hull begins with a dramatic account, based on fresh archival work, of the German Army's slide from administrative murder to genocide in German Southwest Africa (1904–7). The author then moves back to 1870 and the war that inaugurated the Imperial era in German history, and analyzes the genesis and nature of this specifically German military culture and its operations in colonial warfare. In the First World War the routines perfected in the colonies were visited upon European populations. Hull focuses on one set of cases (Belgium and northern France) in which the transition to total destruction was checked (if barely) and on another (Armenia) in which "military necessity" caused Germany to accept its ally's genocidal policies even after these became militarily counterproductive. She then turns to the Endkampf (1918), the German General Staff's plan to achieve victory in the Great War even if the homeland were destroyed in the process—a seemingly insane campaign that completes the logic of this deeply institutionalized set of military routines and practices. Hull concludes by speculating on the role of this distinctive military culture in National Socialism's military and racial policies.
Absolute Destruction has serious implications for the nature of warmaking in any modern power. At its heart is a warning about the blindness of bureaucratic routines, especially when those bureaucracies command the instruments of mass death.
Related to Absolute Destruction
Related ebooks
Famous Battles and How They Shaped the Modern World, 1588–1943: From the Armada to Stalingrad Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War North Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World within War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5German Observations And Evaluations Of The US Civil War: A Study In Lessons Not Learned Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGerman Soldiers in the Great War: Letters and Eyewitness Accounts Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Countdown to Valkyrie: The July Plot to Assasinate Hitler Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fugitives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStress of War, Conflict and Disaster Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRolling Thunder in a Gentle Land: The Vietnam War Revisited Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lossberg's War: The World War I Memoirs of a German Chief of Staff Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRed Army into the Reich Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDale's War: A Soldier in Patton's Third Army Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Siege that Changed the World: Paris, 1870–1871 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGermany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949-1969 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rorke's Drift By Those Who Were There: Volume II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRays of the Rising Sun: Armed Forces of Japan's Asian Allies 1931-45: China and Manchukuo Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWarsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Little War Of Private Post: An Artist-Soldier’s Memoir Of The Spanish-American War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow Far From Austerlitz?: Napoleon 1805-1815 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll the Kaiser's Men: The Life and Death of the German Soldier on the Western Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Real German War Plan, 1904-14 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July–10 September 1941 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoland Alone: Britain, SOE and the Collapse of the Polish Resistance, 1944 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Retreat & Rearguard: Dunkirk 1940: The Evacuation of the BEF to the Channel Ports Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Johnny: The Legend and Tragedy of General Sir Ian Hamilton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
European History For You
Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mein Kampf: English Translation of Mein Kamphf - Mein Kampt - Mein Kamphf Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Short History of the World: The Story of Mankind From Prehistory to the Modern Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Victorian Lady's Guide to Fashion and Beauty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Celtic Mythology: A Concise Guide to the Gods, Sagas and Beliefs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Violent Abuse of Women: In 17th and 18th Century Britain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Negro Rulers of Scotland and the British Isles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Origins Of Totalitarianism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Celtic Charted Designs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of English Magic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Discovery of Pasta: A History in Ten Dishes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJane Austen: The Complete Novels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Absolute Destruction
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Written by a general historian of Wilhelmine Germany, this work examines the cultural foundations of the German army's tendency to adopt extreme solutions to military problems at the earliest possible moment. Beginning with the notorious campaign in German Southwest Africa, where the drive for a pure military victory led to a near genocidal outcome, Hull downplays the influence of ideology and plays up how standard operating procedures and unexamined cultural values came to substitute for strategy; a matter not helped by the degree to which the German military leadership was insulated from outside criticism. Hull then extends this analysis of German military conduct into the Great War, where the German military high command reached the point where they were prepared to sacrifice the country for the sake of their personal image; an outcome staved off to a large degree because there was finally the political leadership prepared to bring to heel a military machine that can be described as autistic. It might also be noted that Hull is very careful to remind her readers that whatever the excesses of the German armed forces, they were still not outside the pale of contemporary practice; just at the edge of the acceptable. As for the inheritance that was passed on to the Third Reich, the author describes the Nazi "cult of violence" as mostly being the Imperial German Army's military culture turned into an ideology, but decoupled from even those faint limits on "military necessity" that had existed.
1 person found this helpful