The German 'Landser'
At one level the experience of the German soldier ('Landser') in World War One was little different than that of the English 'Tommy' or the French 'Poilu'. The horrors of life in the front-line trenches has so often been described in lurid detail: the appalling suffering and loss of life, the fear and the monotony, the incessant artillery barrages, the rotting corpses, the damp, the cold, the mud, the rats and the lice. The debate still continues as to how men were affected by the experience: were they brutalised or ennobled; were their lives destroyed or enriched?
'...were they brutalised or ennobled; were their lives destroyed or enriched?'
There can be no doubt that all who experienced the war at first hand were profoundly altered by it, and that the world to which they returned was changed forever. It was an extreme situation with which each man had to cope in his own way. Some were transformed into Ernst Jünger's 'man of steel', achieving a serene indifference towards the horrors around them. Others found solace in deep religious faith, or redefined life in terms of the absurd. Many turned their backs on the violence and became pacifists, others espoused militant socialism and longed to turn the war between nations into a war between classes. A large number failed to cope at all and suffered from what was first known as 'cowardice', for which the penalty was death, then diagnosed as 'hysteria' or 'neurasthenia', soon to become 'shell shock' and now usually labelled 'post traumatic stress disorder' (PTSD).
Published: 2002-02-01
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