Casualties and Civil-Military Relations: The German Polity between Learning and Indifference

Abstract

The issues of casualties and presumed casualty aversion in democratic societies were of marginal importance in the German debate about civil-military relations in the 1990s. Although these issues were ever present, they were never studied in detail. This article analyzes the reactions to German casualties by the political and military elites and by the press. It focuses on a number of recent cases of German soldiers who were killed in out-of-area missions. Our findings indicate that German society seems to be less casualty averse than is widely assumed. Two explanations for this are put forward: First, that Germany appears to have undergone a substantial learning process and seems ready to accept casualties for the “right” cause. Second, German society has become indifferent to military matters. Further research is needed to specify the extent to which these two hypotheses apply to different segments of German society.

Safety Bubble versus Risk Awareness

“…59 Further, death in combat affects various subsystems of society since soldiers are usually mourned publicly and may be deemed more significant than the deaths of people in other parts of society. 60 This especially holds true in the case of small and highly connected societies.…”

Conceptualizing the Spectrum of the Bereavement Discourse

“…An analysis of the response of the politicians and the media to six incidents in which German soldiers died on missions between 1993 and 2003 indicates German society’s indifference to military causalities. Such indifference may arise from the society’s learning to accept casualties as part of the cost of the country’s taking part in global security missions or from framing the casualties as a purely military affair (Kümmel & Leonhard, 2005). Regardless of the reasons, the bereaved families remained mute in the bereavement discourse.…”