Harald Welzer

Most oral history is tainted by two biases. Firstly, the time elapsed between the retelling and the action told may change the narrative. Secondly, the interviewer subtly influences how and what the interviewee tells. The sources for this book do not suffer from these problems. These are secretly recorded conversations among German WWII POW in Allied prison camps. Some of the conversations were triggered by agents provocateurs, but mostly it is soldiers and officers talking amongst show more themselves. The authors have sifted through 150.000 protocol pages and arranged the material into topical bundles. I wish the authors had included more statistical data about their process, offering some quantitative measures to their qualitative method, It remains unclear to me how typical or atypical some of the topics of discussion were.

Another element of their source deserves to be mentioned: The composition of German POW in Allied camps is highly skewed torwards Luftwaffe and navy personnel. Only in 1943/1944 did the Allies capture German infantry in sizable numbers. The soldier's experience between these groups is very different. The impersonal (almost video game-like) killing done by pilots and submariners is not comparable to the gritty hands-on butcher's work of the infantry.

The authors' main message is that soldiering is a trade like any other, with a bloody twist. Like other tradesmen, the soldiers like to discuss the tools of the trade, boast about their successes and lament about their failures. Like a butcher killing hogs, the soldiers express admiration for a job well done or dismay for a botched action. The casual acceptance and perpetration of war crimes is shocking but well explained by the author's use of different "frames of reference". What I didn't know about was the high level of sexual violence and forced prostitution perpetrated by the Wehrmacht. A topic that seldom reaches the history books but was a favorite topic among the POWs - to the frustration of the note takers interested in military secrets not sexual peccadillos.

One interesting finding is that offering the perpetrators wide leeway in choosing their role facilitates war crimes, as opponents and bystanders can rationalize their guilt by performing tangential jobs. A high level division of labor dilutes overall responsibility - a fact used today by the corporate use of Chinese factories with atrocious working conditions.

Overall, a very interesting book that did not quite live up to its potential. show less

The honest answer to the question in the title of this book is, "for the same reasons as they were in the 20th century." I rather get the feeling that this is the view of Harald Welzer but, when he presented his book for publishing, some whiz-kid of the publishing world decided that it needed spicing up. The climate change aspects of this book feel as if they have been tacked on afterwards: of course, it goes without saying, that, if tensions are high in a certain area and then, climate show more change decimates the living standards of one, or even sides, the result will not be good. This does not mean that changes in temperature, or rainfall, will cause a new World War; indeed, as Mr Welzer is quick to point out, the Western World is likely to come out of climate change rather well. It is the Third World which will suffer, once more.

One may think that, if the main tenet of the book is not proved, then the reading thereof would be a waste of time. In this instance, I would suggest this to be incorrect. I found much to educate myself upon the reasoning of warring factions, and the human mind set in general. I was particularly fascinated by the author's chapter upon the topic of 'shifting baselines'. I will not try to explain same here, but as I read this section, I was struck by that feeling one gets when reading something which one, sort of knew already, but had not formulated into a solid idea

I am not a great reader upon the subject of war and so, perhaps the wiser amongst you will already be more aware of the data concerning American attitudes to civilians in Vietnam: Mr Welzer explains their callous attitude to fellow human beings, and also those of the German people during the Nazi era, in a way which does not excuse, but equally does not simply vilify those whose actions are not acceptable to us. I found that his reasoning provided the best, most understandable, explanation that I have come across. If we do not comprehend, but merely scorn those who do not think in ways that we find acceptable, we leave the door open for such regimes to be re-born. The book would have been worth the read just for this, but I found much more to commend it to me and I now commend it to you. show less

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

“If one were to imagine the ‘go on as usual’ strategy at the level of individuals, one would immediately think of a sociopath who has no problem consuming seventy times more than anyone else while largely relying on their raw materials — or someone who uses fifteen times more energy, water and food than the less well-off and discharges nine times more pollutants into the atmosphere. Such a personality would also be totally unconcerned about the lives of his show more children and grandchildren, accepting that, because of him and his kind, 852 million people worldwide go hungry and more than 20 million are refugees.” from Climate Wars: Why people will be killed in the twenty-first century, Harald Welzer (p165) show less

Very thought-provoking and gruesome read. Almost all of us surrender ourselves to a worldview generated by a job. What is the result?