Reflections on Civilians in Warfare

My essay explores the experience of civilians in war and its implications for them and society. It is also about the effects of war on my family, my friends, and me. Though I have never fought in war, I have always lived with its effects. Upon reflection, it is apparent to me that, even in the U.S., few people have avoided its influence.

My own experiences with war placed me at the periphery of the “Italian Theatre” during WWII. A unit of the German army (the Wehrmacht) was stationed in our village, Afers (Eores), in northern Italy. We children enjoyed the fun of playing with the soldiers, including sitting on their laps as they shot their cannons at American and British planes droning overhead on their mission to bomb Austria and Germany. The FLAK (anti-aircraft artillery) hit some of the planes, sending them crashing into our mountains and forests. As soon as we deemed the situation safe, we children ran to investigate what was left of these unusual “things.” I remember one plane in particular that had gone down in a forest near our farm in the spring of 1945. It remained relatively intact and we crawled all over it for hours; the cockpit was especially intriguing. The modern machinery fascinated us, and we debated for weeks about the functions of parts of what

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we had seen. On one occasion, one of the accompanying fighters chased “our” farmer and his horse and plow, the bullets causing little springs of dirt to fly in the air. Another time, an English pilot landed in the village and because the inhabitants were pro-German and, in addition, none understood him, they turned him over to the German military. He returned in the mid-1950s with his wife to thank the villagers for not killing him.

In the meantime, my mother lived in Brixen (Bressanone), about 15 km away, trying to stay alive. The same bombers that the gunners tried to shoot down with FLAK were also bombing bridges as well as other key sites in and around the city. One evening, my mother and I ran into a bunker that had planks on the ground and in which everything was wet, clammy, and smelly. My excitement about the adventure was matched by my mother’s dread. At the war’s end in May of 1945, my mother spent weeks under house arrest, and lost both her job with a local newspaper and her apartment. She quickly became malnourished; the only photo of the time shows her as very thin and careworn. At the very end of the war, my younger brother died of diphtheria; in a massive snowstorm right after Christmas, we could not transport him quickly enough to the hospital in Brixen. My mother did not know how to cope with this loss and never forgave us, and me, for it. After my father’s second year in American prisons, this loss was followed with my parents’ divorce; the war and its immediate and later consequences were too much for their relationship.

Far away, but during the same period, the future second wife of my father worked in Königsberg (Kaliningrad) as an actress and then, after it fell to the Soviets, in Nürnberg as a factory worker. During one of the bombings, the factory was completely destroyed and in another raid her parents’ apartment was demolished as their entire street went up in flames. Huddling in the basement of the house, they had survived because the bomb landed on the other side of the main staircase, killing everyone there. Aside from the immediate physical dangers, by early 1945 hunger had never left them, she and her closest friend traveled for miles on their bikes to find potatoes and bread.

The war stories of my friends and acquaintances go on and on because of the older generation of Europeans, every single one has directly experienced an aspect of war. In addition, volume after volume has now been written about these experiences and their consequences, both on the individuals who experienced them and their neighbors. All of us, regardless of nationality, were civilians when we experienced war’s traumatic events, whether we are Russians, Jews, Germans, Poles, Frenchmen or Czechs; but our ethnic affiliation made a difference. We are the other casualties of war. Almost everyone who cares to ask assumes that civilians will be involved in warfare, whether they are so by choice or by force. Nevertheless, prior to September 11, 2001, many U.S. citizens assumed that they would never be involved in warfare; that no bombs would ever rain down on them, and that no member of some barely known group would be successful in attacking us.

Even now, we live in a land of illusions. We are afraid that a terrorist might hurt some of us, but surely that will not happen in most of the country, especially rural America; such calamities are reserved for New York, L.A., and Washington, DC.

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Thus, most of us live on without grasping the pervasive immediacy and unspeakable horror and consequences of being involved as civilians in war. In this way, we are similar to Germans in the 1930s and, much more recently, Yugoslavians, Israelis, Palestinians, and Iraqis.

Civilian involvement in warfare may be viewed from at least three perspectives. The first involves civilians of leading national or ethnic groups, the second relates to those of non-leading ethnic groups, and the third highlights the cultural heritage of both, or either of these groups. The traditional view and the one that is caught up in an ideal view of European civil-ness, applies more to dominant than subordinate ethnic groups. I am thinking, for example, of the civilians in Vienna at the outset of the nineteenth century, who were totally astonished when Napoleonic troops were assigned to their houses. Some middle-class women protested, but to no avail. However, the treatment of civilians was civil, that is, civilized. Even during the Second World War, which brought so much anguish to people in many parts of Europe, including England, civilians in many regions were not disturbed and common courtesies continued.

For less powerful and often stateless ethnic groups, the sort of trauma civilians experienced in Europe during WWII was not new; they had been caught for centuries between warring parties, or targeted directly, like Native Americans and Indians in India, and treated no better than an expendable surplus. At the same time, their libraries, religious buildings, schools, and even their graveyards were demolished and dug up. Even as late as WWII, various dominant ethnic groups refined their assaults on non-dominant ethnic civilians, for example, when Germans attacked Jews and Gypsies, that is civilians, and Russians attacked Chechens, Ingushetians, and ethnic Germans who had lived as part of Russia for two centuries. In each case, to reiterate this point, these civilians were members of ethnic groups that were perceived to be less than the leading ethnic groups.

But WWII also introduced a very significant and widely practiced shift from attacks on members of non-dominant ethnic groups to those of dominant ethnic groups. Thus, Germans bombed Belgians, Dutchmen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, and so on; and Englishmen and Americans bombed Germans, Italians, and so on. These attacks came not only in the form of bombs, but also in the form of partisan warfare in parts of Russia and Yugoslavia. Retaliatory raids by all sides used civilians as pawns in order to make a point. Of course, while people were being killed, various cultural expressions were also destroyed, often systematically, as in Yugoslavia. Since then, organized and disparate groups in various parts of the world have refined this approach to killing people while destroying their heritage. For example, we have the apparently organized horrors inflicted in Rwanda and the miseries imposed on the weaker groups in the disintegrating Yugoslavia. This brings to mind the even more recent and organized efforts of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. They are, in many respects, no different from the anti-Russian fighters in the mid-Nineteenth-Century Caucasus, the Russian revolutionaries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries, the partisans of the 1940s, or the freedom fighters of the Caucasus Mountains of the 1990s. In a way, they are not significantly different than the most recent suicide bombers in several parts of the world; they are irregular units and yet they are a superbly efficient form of warfare. With each person who goes to his or her death several others are killed and there is little risk to the “regular” units of the group launching the attack. The targets of all of these groups are civilians, combatants, and the cultures of both, but the men, women, children, and artifacts affected usually are of a regional lead ethnic group rather than the weaker ones typically targeted earlier in history.

A discussion of civilian engagement in war must also include a definition of the word “civilian.” Civilians are the persons who are not in regular or irregular fighting units; whether they are active or passive participants in the internal and external affairs of a nation or not; they are, very importantly, dominant and non-dominant ethnics in every part of the world. But, having had a long-standing practice of some civilians being less valued than others, we extend this pattern to this day. Thus, civilians in Iraq are portrayed more like American Indians and other lesser ethnic groups, since they are seen as permissible targets, therefore more killable than Germans, Russians, and other dominant ethnics who have nation states behind them. The same thinking applies to the cultural expressions of such peoples. Thus, not too long ago Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the destruction and dispersal of Iraqi antiques, museums, and other cultural expressions as insignificant in the overall scheme of things.

Regular units are usually considered a part of an armed force, and irregular units are not part of a

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national army but behave in some ways like an army, that is, have a command structure, carry and use weapons, etc. Regular armies for centuries have attacked, injured, deported, enslaved and killed members of non-dominant ethnic groups, but full “permission” to do the same to civilians of dominant groups has only come within the older generation’s memory. As soon as it became permissible for regular armed forces to attack members of dominant groups, for example, when members of the Luftwaffe bombed Spanish cities during the Spanish Civil War and, a few years later, Warsaw and London, the floodgates were opened not only to the bombardment of German and Japanese cities by the Royal Air Force and the American Air Force, but also to engage irregular forces to accomplish the same end. Everyone became a combatant, whether they agreed with the national government or not, whether they were pacifists or not. Not only did everyone become a combatant, all buildings, whether homes or churches, became targets of destruction as well.

Since this occurred, various groups, whether in armed forces or not, are engaged in war on civilians. It has become rewarding to attack members of a dominant ethnic groups and their cultural products; vide the Twin Towers in New York City. We know these new warriors well. They are the persons, usually men, but now also women and children, who use the cover of civilian attire and behavior to attack perceived enemies and their structures. Thus, Palestinian men, women, and children dressed as civilians attack persons and property in Israel; in Iraq, men, women, and children dressed as civilians attack American, British, Italian, Polish, and other coalition forces as well as U.N. diplomats and the Red Cross/Crescent workers; and Chechens attack Russians in Chechnya and beyond. Quite consciously, they also destroy buildings that are significant to the opposing side.

One must not confuse these warriors with a different, more honorable tradition. History books speak, for example, of the heroic, final defense of the capital city of Carthage when old men, women, and children endeavored to stave off the Roman attack and save their city. Much later, during World War II, ordinary Muscovites were sent into trenches in front of the city to defend it against the German onslaught. At the end of the same war, mostly reluctant German old men and boys, including the father of one of my Jewish friends, were sent to defend what was left of the inner parts of Germany. These were defenders of their own places and spaces, not attackers. Thus, they should be seen as dissimilar from the revolutionaries, guerrillas, and terrorists who falsely claim the cover of defense in their attack on far away noncombatants.

Even the landscape of civilians caught in war has changed considerably over the last two generations. One thinks today of the accidental bombardment of civilians by guided missiles and the intended death of civilians during a suicide attack or during a bombing raid, like those performed by Germans, Russians, British and Americans during World War II. Here one may think not only of the adults and children who are shot as a part of someone’s policy to terrorize an opposing group, but also the rape of women in Berlin at the end of WWII and, more recently, during the break-up of Yugoslavia. One must also include Jews and other minority groups, against whom the National Socialist government declared its own unique and perverse war in the 1930s and early 1940s. Surely, one should also not forget Stalin’s deportations of millions of members of Soviet minority groups and their deaths in various parts of Siberia. He, too, was making war on mostly innocent civilians and everything and anything they considered their own and part of their cultural heritage (Eric Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

Several semesters ago, a West African student in one of my World Civilization courses began to speak to me about the war that one tribe in his country had carried on against another. As a child, he was marched off to a concentration camp from which he escaped after eight years. My student recounted to me some of the most horrific tales of the guards’ brutality toward everyone in the camp, especially women and children. This innocent young man was reluctant to tell some of the details, just as were my stepmother who survived numerous 1945 bombing raids in Nürnberg and one of my Jewish colleagues who was a hidden child during the same war and period. He had buried the detailed memories and the painful emotions associated with them deep inside, where they sit like a festering cancer that explodes off and on into unspeakable dreams and unusual behavior.

As psychohistorians, we are interested in understanding the involvement of civilians in war and the destruction of everything that is valuable to them, as well as with finding better ways to deal with war’s impact on people who survive it. Thus for example, one ought not to emphasize only the

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extremes of civilian exposure to war. One can just as well remain with what may seem the ordinary. After a few days of exposure to modern war, ordinary human beings get headaches, cannot sleep, have nervous ticks, suffer from stomach aches, and allow themselves liberties, such as men not shaving, that they would not ordinarily permit themselves. Other, more dramatic occurrences shape the lives of civilians as well. They cannot obtain food regularly, so they quickly become undernourished, weak, and more vulnerable to health problems. Civilians almost immediately notice their inability to obtain medicines; some of these medications may be seemingly insignificant to a young soldier or a strategist sitting hundreds of miles away, but the high blood pressure pills may mean the difference between a shortened or prolonged life to a middle-aged man. As we have seen once more in Iraq in 2003/04, water, electricity, safety, as well as food, are life-giving necessities. As has been illustrated by the events of the last five years in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, inhabitants in cities become quickly irritated, agitated, and sometimes aggressive without these essentials: civilians weaken, and the oldest and youngest members of the community start to die.

In addition, every war is followed by a shift in the price structure. Almost immediately prices rise dramatically in the few traditional stores remaining open and reach exorbitant dimensions on the black market. Cigarettes and alcohol, often seen as nonessentials, quickly become essential commodities, partly because they seem to lessen anxiety. The list of inconveniences and horrors affecting civilians exposed to war could continue for pages, but one may be assured that no civilian remains unscathed. Even if people survive and their city is rebuilt from old photographs, as was the case in Warsaw and Nürnberg, the destruction wrought by war will be seared into memory. One may say something similar about the loss of a cathedral, mosque or temple because they were part of the symbols of a faith, a place where people spent hours in prayer or meditation. To see it ruined or gone, even temporarily, is a never forgotten source of sorrow. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) had no less impact in WWII, just because this diagnosis was not in use at that time.

We have made it easier for Americans, and others, to ignore or minimize the dangers to us as civilians and what they/we value. In large part, we have done so because of the way the media have presented some of the more recent wars. During WWII, some of the most horrifying destruction was shown in newsreels. By the time of the Vietnam War, our government had already begun to sanitize war footage. The Armed Forces presented what they thought was important to view. “Reality” was left to the movies and films. One may consider the reportage from Iraq by embedded journalists as a great service to our society, since they have informed Americans of the fine, heroic performance of our troops. However, in this context, one may want to consider another side to their reportage: the reports as a way of sanitizing and glorifying war, thus immunizing American civilians to its unspeakable effects. In addition such reporters may feel the dangers to which the soldiers are exposed and identify with them, rather than provide objective coverage.

A few new phrases will help make the point. When we today speak of a target having been “acquired,” this phrase means that, somewhere, there is a human being who is about to be blown to pieces. When we now speak of targets being degraded, we most likely mean that people and buildings are being demolished by sophisticated weaponry. Not surprisingly, American TV audiences did not see many Iraqi casualties. Showing such reality would allowed us to feel empathy with the all too human enemy, considering him or her to be a civilian, a civilian who our government claims is excluded from combat. When evidence of civilian casualties was inescapable, our government asserted that it was merely “collateral damage;” too bad for the woman who lost a leg and the corner store that was leveled to the ground. In case we forget the other reality of civilian casualties, in many cases nothing is left of the destroyed human beings to photograph or videotape.

Like the war on (which included the displacement and marginalization of) American Indians in the nineteenth century, contemporary and later Americans could turn away from the misery of this civilian population because it was quickly sanitized; much like the most recent American violence against civilians in Iraq is ignored or cleansed. We can feel safe once more because we have suppressed another barbaric enemy. Because of the sanitization, we remain mostly ignorant of the horrors we have inflicted, the after effects we have imposed on traumatized civilians, and the damage we have done to their homes and places of worship. We remain even more ignorant of the fact that we have added further to the tradition of involving civilians in war and to all of the consequences this

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will have as others around the world relearn the lesson of including civilians and their homes, churches, libraries and schools in their considerations for warfare. Precisely because it is now “permissible,” and politically “profitable,” to include civilians and their heritage of lead ethnic groups in these considerations, none of the leading ethnic groups, including white Americans and our creations, will be excluded from future combat. No doubt, we, too, will remain civilian casualties.

How do we stop collateral damage? Robert S. McNamara, former Secretary of Defense, asked some very astute questions in a recent article: “Is it legal to incinerate 83,000 people (in Japan during WWII) in a single night to achieve your war aims? Was Hiroshima legal? Was the use of Agent Orange…a violation of international law?” Earlier he wrote: “We need a clear code, internationally accepted, so that not only our Congress and president know, but so that all our military and civilian personnel know, as well, what is legal in conflict and what is illegal. And we need a court that can bring wrongdoers to trial for their crimes” (Charlotte Observer, [August 7, 2003]:13A). Indeed, we need to be involved, not just as a country, but also as individuals.

I think once more of the people I know who were affected by war. All of them ignored or denied the signs of war around them, only to be surprised by its calamitous effects. Not to be involved in preventing war may mean that the life lost may indeed be one’s own.

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