The Front Lines: A Space of Violence. Characteristics, Mechanisms, and Contexts of Military Violence in the First World War between Containment and Escalation

Abstract

This article deals with the war crimes committed during the First World War. Whereas in historiography the presence of franc-tireurs, the new industrial warfare or the specific military and radicalised command culture of individual armies often served as explanatory patterns for the escalation of violence, this contribution attempts to introduce a different perspective into the discussion. The focus is on the specific violence of mobile warfare, which was articulated in the context of military “forward panics” (Randall Collins) on the Eastern and Balkan fronts and was responsible for a considerable part of the war crimes committed there. The article therefore deals with the nature and character of these military forward panics. Starting with a description of the spatial characteristics of the front as a specific space of violence, the role of military orders and the significance of the front as a soldierly space of imagination, the article analyses above all the structural violence of forward panics. In this context, the article discusses three factors that played an essential role in this escalation process: first, the special soldierly frame of reference of combat in mobile warfare, which continuously lowered the inhibition thresholds for the escalation of violence; second, the escalation-forcing dynamics that the swift advance or the flight-like retreat of the troops brought with it for the process of violence; and finally, third, the significance of soldierly group pressure for the process of escalation of violence.