Tucholsky‘s renewed topicality

About patriotic intoxication, collective war crimes and sanctioned murder

by Lieutenant Colonel Jürgen Rose, Germany

In a precise and unadorned manner the German Chancellor named in his government statement what constitutes the core of war, every war, even the so-called ‘just’ war! It is death, mutilation and destruction, in huge numbers and extensively. Gerhard Schroeder is in good company with this insight: for example Kurt Tucholsky, one of the most courageous and most brilliant German journalists during the Weimar Republic, who as a radical pacifist fought hard against (Prussian) militarism. For him, war was a ‘pure unadulterated collective crime … sanctioned murder … organised mass murder’, and soldiers were ‘professional murderers’; generals were ‘no longer proper soldiers but directors of battles’; parents who put their sons at the disposal of the ‘Fatherland’ for the ‘slaughter block’ were no better than ‘vermin, guilty of the death of hundreds of thousands.’

The acuity and accuracy of Tucholsky’s verdict also applies for the current war against Iraq, athough in this case to compound matters, this war fundamentally violates the United Nations Charter, and as such it also violates international law. There are simply no ifs and buts about it. The war is a crime against international law, as the leading German philosopher of law, Reinhard Merkel, stated recently. The wirepullers of this crime – Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle and many others – should therefore be summoned before the International Criminal Court.

The German Federal Government appears well aware of this fact. Concerning German support for this war of aggression being waged by the US and Great Britain, the German government clearly shrinks from strictly adhering to international and constitutional rules with its policy. The maxim for this policy lie in Immanuel Kant’s work, who once postulated that: ‘law must never be brought into line with politics, but instead politics must always be brought into line with the law.’ In dread of negative implications for transatlantic relationships, Schroeder and company refer to their alleged duties as allies. This, though, is a legend, as proved by just taking a brief look at the text of the North Atlantic Treaty of April 4, 1949: Under the heading of ‘Settling international disputes peacefully’ Article 1 says, ‘The Parties undertake, as set forth in the , to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.’ Thus no obligation whatsoever can be derived from the NATO treaty to assist the violators of international law, Bush and Blair, in their disgraceful actions. On the contrary, as article 7 ‘Obligations under the UN Charter’ clearly proves: ‘This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.’ More precisely, this means that the obligations in the UN Charter are given priority over the obligations in the NATO treaty, and thus any appeal to alleged alliance commitments is invalid. Anyone who claims the opposite, although he should know better, makes himself an accomplice to the violations of international law. And, at the same time, he violates the constitution. In article 26 German Basic Law makes the preparation and waging of a war of aggression a punishable crime. Moreover, article 25 of German Basic Law binds all inhabitants of Germany to the general regulations of international law, including the Federal government and Parliament. From this it follows that neither the German government nor the Bundestag are authorized to order German armed forces to participate in actions that violate internnational law or that are dubious according to international law, and by no means are they to give orders for the direct or indirect participation of German armed forces in a war of aggression.

What are the implications of the verdict for the soldiers involved that the war against Iraq is an act of aggression that violates international law? These people have been sent there by their governments to conquer a foreign country, and by doing so they will unavoidably kill other people and be killed themselves. First and foremost, these soldiers, as Tucholsky once so fittingly wrote, ‘stupid with pride, unwittingly, with wobbly ideals and blinded by the colours of their country’s flag, they make themselves the henchmen of criminal controllers of the state, willing enforcers of the crime against international law. They themselves become perpetrators. Appealing to the fact they were acting on orders from superiors is invalid since neither moral or legal criteria would stand up to closer examination.

The moral philosophical proof for this conclusion is provided by Immanuel Kant’s criticism of practical rationality. It is thus the starting point for the question of soldierly responsibility, for the answer to the fundamental question of: What should I do? is based on the knowledge that for all human actions it is the conscience of each individual that forms and sets the yardstick. This applies to soldiers as well and implies the invalidity of any appeal that one was acting on orders in an effort to legitimize some military action. By carrying out an order the soldier makes a foreign will his own, and before he puts this will, his own, into practice with his action, he must first of all examine its legitimacy against his own conscience.

A former general inspector of the German Federal Army, Lieutenant General Peter von Kirchbach, referred to this moral philosophical insight when he noted, in 1992, in the officers journal Truppenpraxis, which is financed by the Federal Ministry of Defence: ‘The conflict between freedom and obedience consists in the commitment to orders on the one hand, and the commitment to a value system on the other hand. The conflict consists in the commitment and loyalty to the state on the one hand, and the knowledge that state action can only be penultimate and that conscience, which is bound to a higher value system must be the decisive court of appeal. Naturally, the state will not normally expect its citizens to act against the advice of their conscience. On the contrary, the democratic state will refer to the values on which conscience is based. However, it is the awareness of this conflict and the awareness that one is not required to carry out everything that is demanded of one that determines the difference between a soldier and a mercenary.’ And he is right too, the general.

The unconditional duty to act in a morally conform manner, postulated by Kant, is meanwhile also reflected in international law. This is, for instance, expressed in examplary fashion in the ‘Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security’, which was signed at the 1994 Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe Summit in Budapest. There, in paragraphs 30 and 31 it is stated that:

30. Each participating State will instruct its armed forces personnel in international humanitarian law, rules, conventions and commitments governing armed conflict and will ensure that such personnel are aware that they are individually accountable under national and international law for their actions.

31. The participating States will ensure that armed forces personnel vested with command authority exercise it in accordance with relevant national as well as international law and are made aware that they can be held individually accountable under those laws for the unlawful exercise of such authority and that orders contrary to national and international law must not be given. The responsibility of superiors does not exempt subordinates from any of their individual responsibilities.

This code of conduct, which according to international law is legally binding, was also signed by the United States and Great Britain, and is therefore binding for the armed forces of these countries. In spite of this, a group of rogues with the tillers of power in their hands have now, after having ‘beforehand made the business of murder out to be something morally acceptable by persistent kneading of the masses,’ as Tucholsky so aptly put it, sent roughly 300,000 uniformed workmen of war into a war of conquest which violates international law. And these people, brainwashed by official government propaganda, nationally intoxicated, dressed to kill, are promptly ‘ready to risk their lives for such stuff and nonsense, for that is exactly what the nationalistic interests of a state are,’ according to Tucholsky. And they are ready to carry out what he terms ‘state sanctioned murder.’ The Budapest Code of Conduct raises in the case of Iraq breathtaking consequences, because at this point it becomes evident why the USA is attempting to block the international criminal court with everything at its disposal and why it has meanwhile even passed a law which gives the President the right to free, if necessary by force, US soldiers from custody of the court in the Hague.

But the soldiers of the German army that have been commanded by the German government to protect and cover the aggression in violation of international law are also in a precarious situation. This concerns in particular the crews in the AWACS planes of NATO operating in Turkey, the ABC defence unit stationed in Kuwait, and the forces of the German army that have been assigned to guard the barracks of the US forces in Germany. Besides the principles of international and constitutional law mentioned above, the military personnel act provides the binding legal framework for German soldiers. Its paragraph 11, defining military obedience, specifies among other things: ‘An order must not be obeyed, if, by obeying it, a crime were committed. And paragraph 10, which describes the obligations of a commander, stipulates: ‘He must give orders only for official purposes of the service, and only in observance of the regulations of international law, the laws of Germany, and the general regulations.’ The legal obligations just mentioned result in a serious dilemma for every German soldier active in the context of the Iraq war. There is the urgent question whether he or she must obey such orders, or even, if he or she is not actually prohibited from carying them out. It is urgent that the government provide legal clarification for the soldiers concerned.

Finally, as far as the limits to a soldier’s obedience are concerned in principle, there is a categorical imperative, erstwhile postulated by (what an irony of history) an American Attorney General, namely Ramsey Clark. It says that the greatest act of cowardice is in obeying a command that demands an action that cannot be morally justified. This implies conclusively that: A soldier who carries out unlawful or immoral orders, out of cowardice, simply acts on mean motives. Morevoer: according to the definition of the German penal code, he who ‘commits a homicide out of mean motives, maliciously or cruelly or by means posing a danger to the public,’ is a murderer. Kurt Tucholsky recognized the irrefutability of this reasoning when he declared harshly: ‘Soldiers are murderers.’

Jürgen Rose has a degree in educational science and is a lieutenant colonel in the German Federal Army. The opinions voiced in this article are his own.