Abstract
Reviewed by: Philip Dwyer, University of Newcastle, Australia
In 1870, in the midst of the Franco-Prussian war, the German historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, wrote to his sister to say, ‘For what can a German soldier wish for that is more beautiful than to take part in this struggle. Oh, dear sister, in such days one must be pious; a higher force rules over us Germans and forces us to become a nation (Volk)’ (II, 433). Treitschke never fought or even witnessed battle, which is probably why he was able to wax lyrical about war and the nation, but the sentiments go to the heart of these books. They are a study of soldier and civilian responses to war, and how those responses supposedly changed over time. The material is largely based on memoirs, diaries, letters and contemporary newspapers articles, although Hewitson doesn’t make much of a distinction between the genres; he is more interested in their ‘underlying similarities’ rather than in their differences. It becomes obvious very quickly that there was always an apparent disconnect between what Germans recounted about war at the time it was taking place, and how war was later remembered and imagined.
Both books fall within an increasing number of works that examine the social, cultural and political aspects of warfare. The first volume, Absolute War, covers the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (and a little beyond). The second volume, The People’s Wars, is twice as long, but then it has to deal with the rest of the nineteenth century, including the revolutions of 1848, the struggle for Schleswig-Holstein in 1848–51, the Crimean War of 1853–56, the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, the war against Denmark in 1864, the war against Austria in 1866, and finally the Franco-German War in 1870–71. A third volume is expected that will no doubt cover the First and Second World Wars.
In the introduction to Absolute War, Hewitson argues that ‘a culturally and socially defined aversion to the perpetration and, especially, the suffering of injury and death affected a large but increasing number of German combatants’ during the wars of the nineteenth century (i, 9). That is a big claim, especially given the multiplicity of German experiences and the diverse forms of remembering and forgetting. Moreover, this was an aversion that certainly did not prevent Germans of all hues from going to war on any number of occasions in the nineteenth century. This rejection of war ostensibly goes back to the 1850s for Britain and France and the 1860s for Germany, during which time ‘significant sections of the public had become increasingly wary of it’ (I, 13). Finally, Hewitson argues that changes in the ‘sensibilities’ of soldiers had an impact on the ways in which they experienced war (I, 29). These changes had long-term consequences, helping transform the ‘terms of the debate about war’, teased out in volume two, while volume one looks at the more immediate impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the first to involve mass conscripted armies.
The conclusion Hewitson draws in the first volume is that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were largely romanticized, and continued to be so into the nineteenth century, only for those notions to be dispelled by the realities of the wars of unification. If the horrors of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars did not translate into a public disdain or fear of war, the second half of the nineteenth century led to ‘widespread acceptance… of the possibility of mass warfare in the future’ (II, 6). Conscripts proved more willing to go to war, and civilians proved readier to support military intervention during the nineteenth century, even if they were not sure of their governments’ political aims. Of course, the nineteenth century is complicated by the national aspirations of the German people, but Hewitson argues that what was most striking about this period is the readiness of the people to go to war, regardless of whether the aims were ‘national’. Hewitson attempts to disconnect the nation and nationalism from war (II, 13–14) and argues that the romanticization of military conflict in the nineteenth century occurred independently of national or political considerations.
The second tome is an attempt to reassess nineteenth-century conflicts by looking at the period as a continuous whole, and by asking questions that purportedly have not been asked of the German wars before. Why did conscripts go to war with so little opposition; why did they continue fighting; and what was the long-term impact of their participation in conflict (I, 15)? Some of the answers seem to me to be self-evident, but leaving that to one side, Hewitson’s argument is that an expanding public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) altered contemporaries’ attitudes to war. Those attitudes and conceptions were shaped ‘to a significant extent’ by discussions taking place in the media of the day, including through sermons and popular catechisms. As Hewitson points out (II, 76–86), however, this was a fragmented, regionalized public sphere, and varied from one section of the population to the other (the subject of the second volume, Chapter 2). Historians have questioned the extent to which German wars were driven by national sentiment, and whether that has been confused with patriotism, but Hewitson demonstrates how many journalists and pamphleteers used national arguments to justify war; war and the nation became intimately connected in the course of these debates, so that war was no longer seen as the domain of princes, but a matter of public concern, and even a matter of ‘national honour’ (II, 118).
At the end of Absolute War then, Hewitson dismisses questions of nationalism or national allegiance and warfare; he thinks that support for the German nation was of little importance. Much more significant for him was that the wars ‘had become more threatening, lasting longer and entailing greater financial and human cost, and they had become participatory in nature’ (I, 244–5). He then goes on to say that contemporary experiences of war ‘altered the parameters within which nineteenth-century Germans understood military conflict’ (I, 247). That is to say, although there is nothing to suggest that opposition to war increased, there is enough to indicate that the public understood that military conflict from that time on would be bloodier and costlier. From there Hewitson concludes that both civilian and soldiers’ views of the conflict ‘altered the basis on which wars were waged’ (I, 248). It is not easy to put his arguments succinctly, but there were tensions between policy makers’ conceptions of conflict – such as undefined war aims, and the lack of restraint in war – and citizens’ expectations of war – conflicts had become more heroic, if you will, in part because they involved greater numbers of people. Conscription, censorship, dynastic celebrations of the wars, and the delayed publication of most war memoirs meant that the image of warfare remained ‘predominantly positive’ (I, 252). As a result, fewer people were opposed to war in the nineteenth century.
Anyone interested in the experience of war will find the material in these books fascinating. As thought-provoking as some of the material is, however, I am not sure how much of what we have learned is as new as Hewiston contends. I was also gnawed by a certain disquiet while reading the books. There are so many sub-arguments that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of the main contention around violence and remembering; there are a number of assertions that appear self-evident or that are difficult to demonstrate; there is somewhat of a disconnect between theory (the first volume has an opening chapter on theories of war and violence) and what follows; and the underlying premise – that people accepted conscription and warfare despite is horrors – seems a little ingenuous. Moreover, the ‘shifting experiences’ of warfare appear to have been remarkably uniform; wars throughout the nineteenth century were romanticized, as much in 1815 as in 1870, in both the press and in the memoirs of the day.
Hewitson’s conclusions are just as challenging. He asserts that his analysis of wartime violence runs counter to those put forward by historians of political violence in the twentieth century, but it is not entirely clear how. He claims that it is only by reinserting nineteenth-century assumptions about violence that we can understand the excesses and atrocities of the twentieth century, but the connection between the two has not been made (that might come in volume three). He asserts that attitudes to war were frequently different from national or political objectives, but should that come as a surprise? Recruits throughout the nineteenth and into the first half of the twentieth century, went to war with a mixture of ‘excitement, ignorance, and enjoyment of public approbation’ (II, 515). Why Hewitson finds this surprising is a little puzzling.
In some respects, it is the success of conscription that is at the heart of these books. That men went so ‘willingly’ to war was due, according to Hewitson, to the ‘power and pervasiveness of romantic myths of armed struggle’ (II, 520). But surely only up to a point, and it is possibly not even the main reason why men went to war. There had to be other factors that do not get much of a look in, including the success of the state in imposing its structures and demands on its citizens, the fact that conscription had been part and parcel of daily life for decades, the fact that conscription took place mostly during times of peace, and the fact that most conscripts did not, could not, know what war was like. In a memoir written about another war, Vietnam, William Broyles, a former marine, wrote ‘I believe that most men who have been to war would have to admit, if they are honest, that somewhere inside themselves they loved it too’. That possibility is also something Hewitson does not consider. These books are full of interesting details about the experiences of war, and it makes for a wonderful ramble through nineteenth-century German history, but I think there is more to be gained from the detail than from the overarching arguments.