Hans Kirst - The Night of the Generals

“Generals also have an individual existence. They stand apart from the surrounding masses much as the manager of a factory or the star coach of a famous football team does. Like them, generals have power, influence and importance. Like them, they have to shoulder responsibility. But it is responsibility of a very special kind, and it is that alone which makes their position so incompatibly different.

“A general’s responsibility is immeasurably greater than, say, that of a factory manager, who is only worried about production and turn-over, nor can it be equated with that of the manager or trainer of a football team. It does not consist merely in knowing how to deploy troops skilfully or employ them methodically. Intelligent planning, the art of strategy and an outstanding capacity for coherent thought all pale into insignificance beside a fact which is inseparable from victory or defeat: generals operate with human lives.

“Generals’ decisions, therefore, are life-or-death decisions. They do not affect the odd individual alone, as in the case of judges and doctors, but thousands of human beings simultaneously. Indeed, the total losses incurred in wars conducted by generals can run into millions.

“Teachers can either spoil their pupils or show them the true nature of beauty, dignity and worth; politicians can either stupefy nations and pander to their basest instincts or rouse them to a genuine sense of freedom and justice; but generals make decisions which directly affect human lives, and continue to do so, again and again, for as long as they remain generals.

“A general knows that in war-time he must be prepared to take this hardest of all decisions unflinchingly. That being so, he has no choice but to approach his task with profound humility. He must be fully aware of his special relationship to the highest price a human being can pay—unless, of course, he is inspired by a ruthless quest for power, fatal stupidity or a penchant, conscious or unconscious, for bloodshed, all of which lead, in the last analysis, to murder.

“It is a cheap excuse, nothing more, to mouth platitudes like “sacrifices are inevitable” or “the innocent always suffer with the guilty” or “human beings are the manure of history because their death prepares the ground for national greatness.” In the view of certain historians, the road that leads to a better world has always been paved with corpses—not that they themselves are, or would wish to be, among those corpses.

“Yet how can anyone who remembers his mother, who has known and loved a fellow-being, who knows what children are, even look on human life as a form of war material to be employed with mechanical indifference?

“Such generals do exist, but there are other kinds.

“Some generals are ‘soldier’s generals’ who do their best to live like the humblest private soldier under their command. They try to think like him and they often die like him. General Modersohn (principal character in the novel Officer Factory , by the same author) was one such, and he is far from unique.

“There are other generals who not only serve their country selflessly and responsibly but whose thoughts range far beyond their immediate horizon, who ponder on the meaning of life, the merits of their nation and their personal responsibility not only toward the individual but toward history as a whole. The men of July 20th, junior officers as well as generals, belonged to this category, as does General Kahlenberge. Many of them proved their worth during their country’s lowest ebb and darkest hour.

“Still other generals do no more than act as willing lackeys of the strong-man of the moment. But what may have been understandable in Kaiser Wilhelm’s day becomes unscrupulous, if not criminally irresponsible, under a man like Hitler. Utterly foolish as it may seem to us today, some generals genuinely believed in Hitler, not that this was necessarily a mark of dishonour. Others, again, half-believed in him but maintained certain reservations, while still others inured themselves to the idea that it was their patriotic duty to believe in him. General von Seydlitz-Gabler may be classified as one of the latter.

“There were, however, a considerable number who were well aware that Hitler and his clique constituted a danger. In private, they called their Supreme Commander “the sewer-rat” or simply “that swine.” They reviled him, abused him or poked fun at him, probably with justification in each case. Yet it is an undeniable and incomprehensible fact that the same generals did not hesitate to send thousands upon thousands of poor, brave, unwitting soldiers to their deaths for the sake of the man they called a sewer-rat and a swine.

“Still other generals were, and are, merely artisans of war—regimental sergeant-majors on a grand scale. They drill their men for a hero’s death in the simple belief that they are doing the right thing and are immune to criticism. They have equally simple explanations for their activity and presumably cherish an implicit faith in them. They enjoy talking about love of country, defence of home and hearth, preservation of freedom, call of duty. They spoke of Hitler and Germany in the same breath, never faltered, never erred, and far-sightedly defended the West against Communism. Men like these fight and die, armed with water-tight explanations for doing both.

“It is frightening that men of this type should become generals. In almost every other sphere of life, people are prepared to take such individuals for granted. We are familiar, for instance, with business men who will gladly ruin their competitors for the sake of profit, with industrial tycoons and financiers who try to squeeze out rival concerns with every means at their command and even enlist government support in their endeavours, with public idols who turn out to be monumental fools or ravening sexual hyenas, with corrupt and power-hungry politicians who finally lose their ability to exploit the benign gullibility of the masses.

“In the realm of generalship, however, we cannot afford any imperfections, ambiguities or inadequacies. The price of failure has to be paid in blood, and errors which might be termed ‘human’ in any other sphere of life are fatal here. In the final analysis, generals are entrusted with the fate of nations, and it is they who make the ultimate decisions.

“Generals are unable to look into their soldiers’ eyes while making such decisions, yet if they do not think of them while doing so they have failed both God and their fellow-men. Countries and nations—even generals—depend for their existence on the individual soldier. Anyone who sees fit to burn human beings like coal is not a human being himself.

“Even when generals are ready to die for their men, it does not follow that they know how to live for them. To do this successfully entails at least an attempt to convince the soldier that he is not just another entry in a casualty list.

“Some generals, perhaps a substantial number, try to cultivate this state of mind. Others have abandoned the struggle, and still others regard the questions as one of supreme indifference. The dead of their divisions and armies are merely laurel-leaves in the victor’s crowns which are their constant preoccupation. Their path is paved with corpses.

“From such an assortment of men, all of whom bear the common title of general—unjustifiably, since one is unlike the next, all are dissimilar, and insignia of rank are no indication of merit—from such an assortment of men, constantly exposed to the gravest and most extreme demands, there sometimes emerges a human enigma.

“Ever since the beginning of time, humanity has occasionally thrown up creatures of appalling and monstrous perversity. Some of them have been called kings, others statesmen; at least one was a Pope and others have been soi-disant scientists or outwardly respectable citizens. Some, needless to say, have been soldiers.