Soldaten

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, social duties can intervene in established, unambiguous decision-making structures and make group ties or even chains of command more permeable. For instance, the commandant of the Dautmergen concentration camp, Erwin Dold, disobeyed orders and organized food for “his” inmates, in a unique attempt to improve their chances of survival. 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 of a wife actually encouraged soldiers to kill because they felt they were acting in harmony with the wishes and choices of their spouses.

Social duties emerge clearly in the recorded conversations of tank commander Heinrich Eberbach. In October 1944, while interned in the British POW camp Trent 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 in Stanley 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 history, this element rarely comes into focus since, as a rule, sources rarely contain information about a person behaving in a specific way because he felt a sense of duty toward someone else. Further complicating the matter is the fact that social duties are not necessarily conscious. Sometimes they are so deeply internalized that they serve as points of orientation without an individual being aware of them. Psychologists call this phenomenon delegation.