Once in uniform the recruit found himself part of an institution whose challenges and rewards could provide balm for the wounds of modernization. The myths of both modern liberalism and traditional society asserted a direct, perceptible connection between endeavor and achievement. A man made his way through his own efforts, individually or in a group context—a contradiction more apparent to contemporary sociologists than real in the home towns and farming villages of Bieder-meyer Germany. In the course of the nineteenth century, however, industrialization and agribusiness diminished to the vanishing point any links betwen those myths and everyday reality. The alienation of labor in mines and factories was paralleled by the resentments of clerks, postmen, and the rest of an emerging white-collar world, by the frustrations of independent peasants whose economic position was visibly declining, and even by the anger of farm laborers undercut by ompetition from the Russian Empire. The prizes, tangible and intangible, of the new Germany seemed either completely out of reach or bestowed by criteria incomprehensible to the average man. Hard work now pitted a man either against machines that wore him down and broke his spirit directly, or against a system impossible to comprehend, much less master.17
The army was different. It was ultimately designed to promote success instead of failure. No military organization can function if a significant percentage of its members cannot live up to its standards. The demands of the parallel bars, the rifle range, and the drill ground might be high, but they could be met—and not only by a chosen, exceptional few. One reason why so many Germans spoke so favorably of their military service is that they experienced there the kind of triumphs, visible and recognized, that would be denied them the rest of their working lives in an industrial society. A cigar or a mark piece from the captain, a chance to win one of the kaiser’s medals, perhaps even promotion to Gefreiter towards the end of one’s second or third year, might seem trifles to the opulent bourgeoisie of the late twentieth century. But such trifles, and the implications behind them, can often do far more to motivate behavior than the most high-flown abstract principles.
Once completed, military service came increasingly to be a gateway to the adult world. Marriage, permament employment, a place at the men’s table in the local Gasthaus—all were associated, directly or indirectly, with a certificate of demobilization. Among adolescents and young adults, military service became a major demarcation line. This in turn tended to modify, if not entirely remove, resistance to the annual conscription. The way in which the process was conducted, with an entire age group inducted simultaneously, frequently in a festive environment, generated a collective spirit encouraging potential dissenters to keep their questions to themselves.
Nor was the prospective recruit entirely a pawn of fate. If he was willing to volunteer for conscription, he had the opportunity of exercising some choice of branch of service and formation. Popular regiments had waiting lists. Some senior officers grumbled that this led to an uneven distribution of high-quality manpower, with only the unambitious and the unqualified remaining to be allocated by the recruiting authorities.18 The sense of participation more than balanced this disadvantage. Regimental commanders, moreover, frequently permitted their recruits to express a preference for a certain battery or company—a preference usually allowing some possibility of improving specific circumstances. Perhaps an older brother had served in Number 6. Perhaps the Feldwebel of Number 4 came from one’s neighborhood. Perhaps the corporals of Number 10 were known not exactly to accept bribes, but to be suitably grateful for hospitality freely offered. Small choices can often appear more liberating than great ones. And anyone still wondering if his experience was really necessary could comfort himself with the observable and verifiable fact that he would return two or three years later a full-fledged adult by the standards of his peer group, his community, society in general-and probably in his own eyes as well.
The Prussian/German army’s treatment of its conscript rank and file is generally presented in terms of a coherent attempt to socialize them into the existing order: to generate enthusiastic acceptance of capitalism and Christianity, to inspire support for monarchy and aristocracy and contempt for businessmen and politicians. It is not necessary to deny this interpretation in order to suggest another dimension. Between 1871 and 1914 it grew increasingly apparent to the military that the virtues of the modern soldier were so intertwined with those of the citizen that it was impossible either to separate them, or to tell where one set began and the other ended. The army’s task was to emphasize their military aspects. Discipline imposed from above no longer enabled men to function on a modern battlefield. They needed instead what F. Scott Fitzgerald was later to describe as a “whole-souled sentimental equipment”—an equipment easier to describe than to develop in the context of an increasingly skeptical age.
Training the modern German soldier thus required a significant evolution in the army’s concept of obedience. Formal discipline, the often-criticized Kadavergehorsamkeit of barracks and drill field, was a means to an end. It was not a structure for limiting human rights, or creating obedient citizens uninterested in demanding social changes. Formal discipline was rather the first step in maintaining control on the battlefield—in making patriotism and enthusiasm into military rather than martial virtues. The killing zones and the killing power of modern weapons made rapid movement and rapid decision essential. There would be no time for debate or reflection. Men had to be conditioned to respond promptly under extreme stress, stress having no civilian equivalent. A conscript, citizen army after a long period of peace would have no combat veterans able to inculcate by osmosis the necessity of automatic response in battle. The conditioning process must therefore be theoretical, and preferably involve something disagreeable enough to generate initial resistance. This was the real purpose of the German army’s particularly rigorous close-order drill, despite constant abuse by officers afflicted by a fondness for precision as a military absolute, and despite the certainty of criticism by civilians and enlisted men who saw the whole process as anachronistic.
Emphasis on conditioned obedience was also designed to help soldiers cope with the emptiness of the modern battlefield. Theory and experience alike indicated that even the bravest of men could be shocked into incoherence by modern firepower. Even the most willing could become lost or confused, drop behind cover, straggle to the rear, or appear on the objective after the fighting was safely over. Casualties and confusion were certain to play havoc with command structures. No modern soldier could count on remaining part of a familiar group, or receiving orders from a familiar leader. He must learn to respond to ranks, not men—to accept as a rule of thumb that his superior was better fitted to cope with a military situation because he was a better soldier.19
The lessons of 1866 and 1870/71 suggested that only conscious commitment to a collective brought favorable results in modern war. The military system’s negative sanctions posed a real threat to this commitment. Here the scholar encounters a paradox. On one hand, the empire’s records are replete with horror stories indicating tolerance, indeed acceptance, of harsh treatment escalating into obscene brutality. On the other, most of those same records were generated by the army’s efforts to solve the problem of mistreatment of enlisted men. The issue was a natural focus for interest group conflict. For socialists and liberals, tales of oppression illustrated the essential corruption of the military system. In an open society increasingly interested in scandal and exposè, human-interest anecdotes of suffering while in uniform sold books and newspapers.