Read Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying for Free Online

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 phenomenondelegation.
    When we pause to consider the one-dimensional reference frame of soldiers faced with military situations and the restriction of soldiers’ social environment to their comrades, we begin to see the significance of a sense of social duty. Whereas in civilian life, family, friends,schoolmates, and fellow students or workers represent a pluralistic corpus of diverse figures of reference, soldiers at the front essentially have only their brothers-in-arms. And they are all working within the same reference frame toward the same goal of fulfilling their military tasks while ensuring their ownsurvival.Solidarity and cooperation are decisive factors in battle. Thus, the group always represents the strongest element of the frame of reference. Yet even when they are not engaged in active fighting, individual soldiers are highly dependent on the group. A soldier does not know for how long the war will go on or when he will get his next home leave or transfer, situations in which he will distance himself from thetotal group and rejoin a pluralistic community. Much has been written about the force ofcamaraderie. Along with its socializing functions, camaraderie also reveals antisocial elements when it is directed externally. The internal norms of the group determine standards of behavior, while the standards of the nonmilitary world are considered subordinate and insignificant.
    In his role as comrade, an individual soldier does not just become a voluntary or involuntary part of a group, forfeiting autonomy in the process. He also receives something in return:security, dependability, support, and recognition. From this perspective, camaraderie entails not only a maximum concentration of social duty, but also the
relief
from duties vis-à-vis all other normally significant aspects of the world. The soldier’s frame of reference and, in particular, the soldier’s practical everyday existence are highly determined by this give-and-take. In the practical situation of war, camaraderie is no longer a tool of socialization that brings some duties while relieving others. A group of comrades becomes a literal unit of survival, creating binding forces that would never have such power under normal circumstances. This is not a feature unique to National Socialism. In their wide-ranging study of Wehrmacht soldiers,Edward A. Shils andMorris Janowitz also emphasized the central importance of camaraderie as the primary unit of individual orientation and interpretation in wartime. 29 Camaraderie is less about a specific view of the world or ideology, than orientation. Many individuals feel emotionally more at home with their comrades than withfamily members, who do not share their experience as soldiers and thus cannot understand them. Camaraderie is by no means a romanticized military myth. It is a social environment whose importance outstrips all rival environments.
S ITUATIONS
    In 1973, scholars atPrinceton University carried out a remarkable experiment. A group oftheology students were told to compose a short essay on the parable of the Good Samaritan and then take it, upon command, to a specific campus building, where it would be recorded forradio. The students waited around for that specific instruction, but suddenly anauthority figure would appear and say: “Are you still here? You should have been over at the building a long time ago. Maybe the assistant is still waiting! You better hurry!” Each of the students duly hastened off to turn in his essay. In front of the entrance to the building