The Model Soldier
Lest We Forget: The State Wins Every War
When Napoleon crossed the Niemen, at the outset of the 1812 French invasion of Russia, he had under his command some 422,000 men. When he approached those same waters the next year, this time from the east, in sluggish, worn down retreat after defeats in Moscow, Borodino, Smolensk…his ranks had been cut to barely 10,000. A few enfeebled diehards were all that remained of the Grande Armée.
[Charles Joseph Minard’s famous graph illustrates the decreasing size of the Grande Armée. The brown line (followed from left to right) shows Napoleon’s march to Russia. The black line (followed from right to left) depicts his retreat. The size of the army is shown equal to the width of the lines.]
Even the most accomplished military strategists may prove slow to learn and quick to forget, especially when it comes to fighting the battles/repeating the mistakes of the past. Napoleon wasn’t the only intelligent fool to covet the vast plains of the east. One hundred and thirty years later, Adolf Hitler embarked on Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation in human history, both in terms of manpower…and casualties.
His monstrous panzer divisions rolled east, pounding Napoleon’s tracks past Minsk, Orsha and Smolensk. They thundered north, over the River Dvina to Leningrad, and South, through the Ukraine and onto Stalingrad. Once again it was a remarkable show, equal parts brute strength and determined stupidity. In the end, the weather and the Russians buried the Germans too, just as they had The Little Corporal’s men. All in, 4.3 million Germans fell during the campaign — a fatality count ten times the size of Napoleon’s entire army. During the whole of WWII, the German army lost a total of 5.5 million soldiers.
To many, it would be obscene to talk about the “sacrifice” made by Napoleon’s army. Most people recognize it for what it probably was: an organized band of thugs invading other people’s land. And yet, the Frenchmen laid down their lives by the hundreds of thousands. They were patriotic to the last. Many considered themselves “liberators,” abolishing feudal laws and birthright privileges across the continent. Equally, it would be considered a breach of decency to hail the bravery and dedication of the Nazi soldiers. They are recognized as aggressors, as brutal occupiers and ruthless killers. And so they should be. But were they not highly trained and committed to their cause, too? Did they not “sacrifice” their lives by the millions for their country, for their own maniacal leader?
Did they not join heartily in that hollow chorus, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”?
And did they not fall for Horace’s old lie, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”?
In both cases, the defeated armies’ men were nothing short of model soldiers. They marched. They obeyed orders. They killed on command. And when the blood dried and the dust settled, they were awarded medals for murdering people they’d never before met, whose names and stories they’d never know. In this manner, they were not unlike their opposition…though without the good fortune of having “won” the war; a fate, as Tolstoy famously observed, that was probably beyond their control in any case.
The ground under a dead German may well be as cold and hard as that under a dead Russian or a dead Frenchman, but history doesn’t remember all soldiers equally. Nor does it tend to separate soldiers — whose job it is to kill — too well from civilians — whose desire it is not to be killed.
It is estimated that between one and three million German civilians were killed during WWII. Who murdered these people? What were their names? Their pastimes? Their unfulfilled dreams? It’s almost considered impolite to ask, lest any blame fall on heroes’ shoulders. Over in the Pacific, Japan lost between a half- and one-million civilians. Who killed these people, these men and women and children? Did they receive medals for doing so? Were they honored by their own State, duly feted, welcomed home with parades and showered in confetti?
Imagine for a second that The Axis Alliance was victorious in WWII. How might history remember President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, ordering the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans in “War Relocation Camps” across the United States?
Moreover, what might history have to say about the only two nuclear weapons ever to have been deployed during wartime? Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, killed between 90,000-166,000 people. Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki three days later, killed between 60,000-80,000 people. In both cases, the vast majority of the victims were civilians. They died of flash or flame burns…falling debris…radiation sickness. Millions more were maimed, deformed, condemned to lives of unceasing pain and misery.
Here’s what US President Harry Truman told the public in a radio address after dropping Fat Man:
“We have used it [the Atomic Bomb] in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We will continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”
Who were these “thousands and thousands of young Americans” Truman was protecting? Surely not the same boys he was sending off to war. The US lost more than 400,000 soldiers on various battlefields in Europe and the Pacific…but “only” 1,700 civilians. Statistically, the best way to protect oneself against war was then, as it is now, simply not to go. Suppose they gave a war, as the saying goes, and nobody came?
Switzerland, which stayed famously neutral (despite their inconvenient geography), lost zero soldiers… and “only” 100 civilians. Remote New Zealand, meanwhile, tucked safely away at the world’s end, lost nearly 12,000 troops, many of whom fell in places like Maleme and Galatas, during the Battle of Crete, and in far flung outposts in Italy and in Northern Africa. Again, these poor sods would have done better to stay at home, tending to their personal affairs, taking care of their families and ignoring heartfelt pleas from “society” for “shared sacrifice.” In all of WWII, not a single Kiwi civilian life was lost due to war.
Alas, The State’s message, articulated by Truman and emulated by “enemy leaders” around the world, was then as it is now: “We will make war in order to shorten it. We will make war until the other side cannot.”
Recall that it is during times of conflict when The State is most able to arrogate authority and resources unto itself. War, it has been observed, is the very health of The State. Not so for those who end their sorry days face down in the muck.
Contrary to these bellicose hollering of the political class, therefore, the message of peace should not be to “share the sacrifice”…but to avoid both suffering and inflicting it altogether.
On this day, lest we forget: The State wins every war.
Regards,
Joel Bowman
Memorial Day, 2021 ~ Houston, Texas