Soldaten

878. Römer, “ ‘Seid hart und unerbittlich …’: Gefangenenerschießungen und Gewalteskalation im deutsch-sowjetischen Krieg 1941/42,” in Sönke Neitzel and Daniel Hohrath, eds., Kriegsgreuel: Die Entgrenzung der Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008), pp. 317–36.

879. On this topic, see Linderman, The World Within War, pp. 90ff., 169.

880. Stouffer et al., The American Soldier, p. 149.

881. Shils and Janowitz, “Cohesion and Disintegration.”

882. See also Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939–1945 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 1982); Welzer, Täter.

883. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Über Techniken der Bewältigung beschädigter Identität (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1974).

884. Lifton, Ärzte, p. 58.

885. Greiner, Krieg ohne Fronten, p. 249.

886. Reese, Mir selber, Schmitz, ed., p. 136ff.

887. The formation of groups also occurs on a more general level in the creation of borders between combat soldiers and the rest of the world. Biehl and Keller have described this phenomenon with reference to modern-day German Bundeswehr soldiers serving abroad: “The dialectic of soldiers’ latent ideology and their anti-ideological reflexes leads them to identify to a high degree with their mission and its aims. At the same time, they maintain a distanced and even negative attitude toward the media, society at large and leading politicians. Soldiers adopt an anti-elitist stance, in which they play the stylized role of people of action who get things done and upon whom the ultimate success of the mission depends. This mechanism helps them to deal with the stress and danger of their situation. In the process, the soldiers establish a black-and-white distinction between ‘us on the front lines’ and ‘them back home.’ These determine categories of belonging and respect.” Heiko Biehl and Jörg Keller, “Hohe Identifikation und nüchterner Blick,” in Auslandseinsätze der Bundeswehr: Sozialwissenschaftliche Analysen, Diagnosen und Perspektiven, Sabine Jaberg, Heiko Biehl, Günter Mohrmann, and Maren Tomforde, eds. (Berlin: Dunker and Humboldt, 2009), pp. 121–41, pp. 134–35. Maren Tomforde has examined the creation of a special identity among Bundeswehr soldiers serving in Afghanistan. For example, their pale pink tropical uniforms serve as a sign of group membership and distinguish them from members of other contingents. This leads to the creation of allegiances beyond their Bundeswehr identity during foreign deployments. Maren Tomforder, “ ‘Meine rosa Uniform zeigt, dass ich dazu gehöre’: Soziokulturelle Dimensionen des Bundeswehr-Einsatzes in Afghanistan,” in Afghanistan—Land ohne Hoffnung? Kriegsfolgen und Perspektiven in einem verwundeten Land, Vol. 30 Horst Schuh and Siegfried Schwan, eds. (Brühl: Die Deutschen Bibliotek, 2007), pp. 134–59.

888. A minority of soldiers, of course, do view their mission in terms of political goals and ideology to which they remain committed. One example are the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a troop of U.S. volunteers for the Spanish Civil War who were motivated by strong antifascist convictions when fighting the Nazis in World War II. See Peter N. Carroll et al., eds., The Good Fight Continues: World War II Letters from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (New York: NYU Press, 2006).

889. Edelman, Dear America, p. 216.

890. Der Spiegel, 16/2010, p. 23.

891. Andrew Carroll, ed., War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars (New York: Scribner, 2002), p. 474.

892. Aly, Volksstaat.

893. Loretana de Libero, Tradition im Zeichen der Transformation: Zum Traditionsverständnis der Bundeswehr im frühen 21. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schoeningh, 2006).

894. See Benjamin Ziemann, Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914–1923 (Essen: Klartext, 1997).

895. Kühne, Kameradschaft, p. 197.

896. See Felix Römer, “Volksgemeinschaft in der Wehrmacht? Milieus, Mentalitäten und militärische Moral in den Streitkräften des NS-Staates,” in Welzer, Neitzel, and Gudehus, eds., “Der Führer.”