Howard J. Romanek

Main Ideas
The incident at Athens, Alabama, in May 1862 provides the students with the opportunity to grapple with many difficult questions. Are there limits on how a government and its armed forces may conduct war? If there should be limits, can laws of war ever be enforced? Is it possible for an individual to be a humane warrior? What accounts for some soldiers participating in war crimes or atrocities and others refusing?

Connection with the Curriculum
This material is appropriate for world history, U.S. history, and current events classes.

Teaching Level
Grades 9-12

Materials for Each Student

• A copy of this article's narrative portion

•Handouts 1-3

• With Handout 3 use the film, "Joseph Schultz." 13-1/2 minutes. Rental or purchase available from Altschul Group Corporation, 1560 Sherman Ave., Suite 100, Evanston, IL 60201 (1-800-323-9084).

Objectives for Each Student

• Decide if there should be limits on how a war may be conducted by a government and its soldiers.

• Decide if it is possible to enforce the laws of war.

• Decide if it is unrealistic to expect a warrior to also be humane.

• Explore the possible reasons why soldiers do or do not participate in atrocities against civilians.

The student should be assigned the article to read several days before any of these activities are done in class. Each handout is designed for a single class period. Many follow-up assignments are possible for each handout.

Opening the Lesson
Give the students Handout 1, 2, or 3. For Handout 3, you may wish to show the film "Joseph Schultz" first, then give the students the handout. The student should read the background information. The questions may be discussed with the whole class. You might also divide the class into groups for discussion and then later call upon the groups for their answers. The teacher might also designate a person from each group to write down some of the specific comments made by its members. The answers will be turned in at the end of the class.

Developing the Lesson
The teacher should move from group to group to monitor and answer questions.

Concluding the Lesson
After answering the students' questions, ask if they have any questions that resulted from the activity.

Extending the Lesson
Students could research the following topics:

1. Conduct of warfare in earlier periods of history

2. General Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea

3. The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after World War II

4. The My Lai Massacre of March 1968 and the trial of Lt. William Calley

5. War crimes in the former Yugoslavia

6. The portrayal of the enemy by both sides during World War II (posters, movies, and radio programs)

The students may also interview or invite to the classroom veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War. If the class is studying the Civil War, a visit by a Confederate and Union reenactor may be a worthwhile experience.

Assessing the Lesson
The teacher may assign an essay based on the questions discussed in class.

52

In earlier periods of history, the victorious forces in a war often gave no thought of treating the enemy with compassion after the battle or of sparing civilians on the losing side. If the captives were not killed, they were often made slaves. The practice of ransoming captured leaders developed during the Middle Ages. It was not until the seventeenth century that some scholars suggested that captives should be treated as innocent victims. Because of the cruelty of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) in Europe, a debate began on whether it was possible to limit the devastation of war. The idea that warfare should be brought under the rule of law was not really accepted by governments and the military until the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. After American independence, the U.S. government included in its treaties the humane treatment of prisoners. Early in the Civil War, many people consulted one of the major works on the laws of war, The Laws of Nation, written by the Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel in 1758. One hundred years later, in May 1861, another book on the laws of war was published. The author was Henry Wager Halleck, who became General-in-Chief of the Union Armies in July 1862. In 1874 fifteen European nations met in Brussels to try to create regulations that would guarantee better treatment of prisoners. Conferences followed at the Hague in 1899 and 1907, and at Geneva in 1929 and 1940. Their goal was civilized treatment of prisoners and civilians. At the Hague Convention of 1907 there was also an attempt to regulate the weapons used in warfare. In 1945 twenty-two top German officials were tried as war criminals at Nuremberg. In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of General Yamashira, who was sentenced to death for his failure to restrain his troops from committing war crimes against civilians.

Questions:

1. Christian scholars taught that all wars are necessarily just on one side and unjust on the other. St. Augustine in the fifth century stated that "those wars may be defined as just which avenge injuries or repel aggression." St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century wrote that for a war to be sanctioned, three conditions must be met: "authorization by a sovereign, a just cause, and a rightful intention."

   Are there any wars that are just? Were the soldiers from Illinois who were in Athens, Alabama, in May 1862 fighting a just war?

2. Should there be limits on war? Is there a moral way to fight a war? Or does the only thing that matters in war is that your side wins? Was it right to court-martial Colonel Turchin? Was it right for President Lincoln to set aside the verdict?

3. If a nation believes that there should be limits to war, can laws of war really be enforced? Does any nation really believe that its own troops could commit war crimes? Can any nation "cast the first stone" against another nation? Did the United States and the Soviet Union have the moral right to sit in judgment of the German and Japanese leaders in 1945?

According to the narrative portion of this article, "both North and South had gone to war with an idealized version of war and the warrior." What is the reality of warfare? What does the warrior experience? Paul Fussel, an infantry officer during World War II, argues that in many wars the homefront never learns the truth about the warfare. Fussel wrote of his experience as a warrior in 'The Real War, 1939-1945," The Atlantic Monthly, 264:2 (August 1989):

There was a blinding flash a few yards in front of me. I had no idea of what it was and fell flat on my face. I found out soon enough; a number of the infantry were carrying mines strapped to the small of their backs, and either a rifle or machine gun bullet had struck one, which had exploded, blowing the man into three pieces—two legs and a head and chest. His inside was strewn on the hillside and I crawled into it in the darkness, (p. 35).

There were pieces of human beings littering the beach. There were headless bodies, there were legs, there were arms. There were even shoes with feet in them. (p. 35).

It was literally impossible to work for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh, (p. 40).

Besides being wounded or observing death, a World War II soldier could experience malaria, dengue, blackwater fever, dysentery, pneumonia, and trench foot.

Questions:

1. Do war movies realistically portray what happens to the warrior? Does a new recruit really understand the reality of warfare?

2. Have civilians suffered in warfare because the warriors want revenge? Can warriors be stopped from getting revenge? What had the troops under command of Colonel Turchin experienced? Can this possibly explain their actions? By the summer of 1862, did the people who supported the Union want revenge? If civilians from the opposing side support their troops, are they not the enemy too?

3. Were the American people shielded from the reality of warfare during the Persian Gulf War?

54

Faces of the Enemy by Sam Keen raises a number of questions. Why is there a tendency to dehumanize the enemy? Why are human beings from the other side often turned into an abstraction? Is this the only way to get ordinary people to kill the enemy? In Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, author Christopher R. Browning examines a group of five hundred policemen, mainly from Hamburg, who participated in the shootings or the transport to the concentration camp at Treblinka of approximately eighty-three thousand Jews. Browning argues that it was easier for many of these policemen to kill Jews because Jews had been portrayed as not really being human beings and because Jews were held responsible for the bombing deaths of German women and children. Also, many of these policemen said that they were not responsible; they were only following orders of a superior and ultimately the orders of the leaders of the German state. However, not all soldiers will participate in committing atrocities against innocent people. Watch the film "Joseph Schultz," a true story about a German enlisted man. Schultz, a member of the 714th Wehracht Division, fought in Yugoslavia in 1941. After destroying a Yugoslav village, he was ordered to join a firing squad to execute a group of innocent blindfolded hostages. He refused, and he was executed along with the hostages on July 19, 1941. Included in the filmed reenactment of that day are photos taken by an officer.

Questions:

1. If Joseph Schultz did not want to kill the hostages, did he have any other alternatives? Since the hostages were still killed, did his death serve any purpose?

2. What might account for his refusal to participate in the executions?

3. If you had been a member of the firing squad, would you have killed the hostages? Would you have fired at your comrade Joseph Schultz?

4. Some have called Joseph Schultz a hero. What is a hero? Was Schultz a hero?

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