Afterword: Reflections on Security Warfare and Occupation The memory of apocalyptic war (22 June 1941-9 May 1945), shapes contemporary GermanRussian relations. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, in 2016, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued a government statement in which he wrote, ‘we must never forget what Germans did to the Soviet Union.’1 Twenty-five years before, the Soviet Union was on its last legs. Boris Yeltsin had defeated Mikhail Gorbachev in the presidential elections. In June 1991 the old regime remembered Barbarossa, in the old style, but in December the Soviet Union was finally dissolved. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of VE-Day, Vladimir Putin wrote for social media: ‘The political map of the planet has changed. The Soviet Union that claimed an epic, crushing victory over Nazism and saved the entire world is gone.’ In Russian culture, the will to celebrate, remember and commemorate is more than paying lip service to the past. By contrast, in German society there is a deeper will to forget the past. Reconciliation was the hallmark of 1990s cultural relations, but history has been hijacked for global power plays which exposes Putin’s cynicism: Today, European politicians, and Polish leaders in particular, wish to sweep the Munich Betrayal under the carpet. Why? The fact that their countries once broke their commitments and supported the Munich Betrayal, with some of them even participating in divvying up the take, is not the only reason. Another is that it is kind of embarrassing to recall that during those dramatic days of 1938, the Soviet Union was the only one to stand up for Czechoslovakia.2 Putin’s abuse of history is typical of an unsettling trend in social media. Memory has become the first casualty in the politician’s playbook for Twitter. In Putin’s case, the employment of weaponised nostalgia to stage political coups within the democratic processes. Acts of remembrance are turned into displays of nationalism, bordering on jingoism, on YouTube. Mass hysteria can be whipped up to a frenzy for ‘culture wars’, the rejection of scholarship, and the joy of outing a non-compliant historian, by a person with smart phone in a lounge chair, in a cottage on a mountain. We look on the public remembrance of Barbarossa with awe, but then recoil at the public display of nostalgia woven into a parade of modern weaponry - the traditional signifier of great power status. There is a perception from social media that ‘real’ history has failed, because it has not prevented politicians from abusing history like the Brexit campaign. Is not true, but a well-placed three-line soundbite can end historical debate within 1 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/issues/remembrance-and-commemoration/unfathomable-suffering429936 2 https://nationalinterest.org/feature/vladimir-putin-real-lessons-75th-anniversary-world-war-ii-162982 minutes. In arguing the case for history, and memory, I want to reflect of the potential dangers of forgetting or ignoring history. Living through the 1990s was a very different experience from how it’s portrayed. The decade witnessed a return to conflict in Europe, the war in former Yugoslavia 1991-2001. Elsewhere, there was state-on-state conventional war in the First Gulf War (1990-91), the Somali civil war (1993), and genocide in Rwanda (1994) were the most prominent of other armed conflicts. The decade exposed military history to a wave of seismic jolts that had unsettled the status quo. The language of modern warfare, with the prominence of ideological practices such as ethnic cleansing, war rape, genocide, insurgencies and political assassination raised red flags even in the histories of wars long presumed to be safe from reinterpretation. Research trips to Germany, and the USA, opened a window on public opinion about war across the western world. A sense of divided outrage was acute in Germany, over the Nazi-Soviet war (1941-1944) and claims of Wehrmacht crimes in Hitler’s war. The Wehrmachtsaustellung or the ‘Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibition’ (1995-2004) polarised society and some historians were attacked for shaming the nation. There were many heated debates over the moral rectitude of the Wehrmacht in the public arena.3 In the USA, the newly opened USHMM, in Washington DC, actively encouraged visitors to join discussions about Daniel Goldhagen’s Willing Executioners (1996). In Chicago, a friend invited me to a Holocaust fund raising event, where I heard survivors tell of finally hearing their words of anguish being expressed through Goldhagen. Meanwhile back in Britain, PhD students of the now defunct Anglo-German Study Group regularly held meetings with two particularly ‘hot’ topics being the forthcoming Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd trial and the implications from the Goldhagen debate.4 At 3.30pm in Ropley (Hampshire), on 20 August 1997, I was a guest at the home of the late Professor Richard Holmes, the soldier-gentleman of British military history. After tea and courtesies, we sat and discussed my proposal for PhD research – Hitler’s Bandenbekämpfung. Richard was surprisingly well informed having discussed the topic with a former director of Strategic Studies Institute at Cranfield University.5 The rules and procedures for research were worked over in ten minutes, then we delved into war in history. He asked about the content 3 Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich, (London, 2002), pp.14374. 4 The Anglo-German Study Group held regular meetings in seminar room at the German Historical Institute, from 1997-1999 – the participants were all PhD’s from different universities and the range of subjects ran from ancient to modern. Each student delivered a paper and we then discussed. 5 Keith Simpson, ‘The German Experience of Rear Area Security on the Eastern Front,’ Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies 121, (1976), pp.39-46. from studying with Martin Edmonds, the field of Civil-Military relations, and Dr. John Gooch on European Wars and Armies while attending Lancaster University.6 These were important building blocks behind the research of Bandenbekämpfung from the civil-military perspective rather than military history. However, Richard could not grasp how an MBA (Aston 1984) might assist my historical research, but was reassured that management systems, organisational theory, and social psychology had hidden benefits. He agreed to supervise and requested a formal presentation of sources to support the research in six months. On Wednesday 4 March 1998, I sat before Richard and Professor Chris Bellamy (advising supervisor), a specialist of Soviet Russian history taught by John Ericson (1929-2002).7 My notes add that during discussions we crossed over into contemporary issues, in particular travelling to Yugoslavia to meet former Tito’s partisans. Yugoslavia was gripped by ‘Europe’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War,’ and there was a consensus that ruled againsz a visit. The documents held in the USA had better options for easier access than Germany. Chris had experienced Yugoslavia as a correspondent and was sceptical that the country could survive; that it might fracture into micro-states plagued by multiple insurgencies.8 On reflection, our perceptions of further global insecurity and genocide was honed by thoughts of Bandenbekämpfung being practised in a derivative form. Following several months of research in the USA, I visited the German archives to double check the completeness of my collection and to fill any gaps. During the visit to Freiburg, the LWSB/JSKB were located, as mentioned in the introduction. In March 1999 the supervisors reconvened, and I placed before them three sets of documents: the Bandenbekämpfung manual, regulations and operations (August 1942-November 1944); the Luftwaffe records 1942-1944; and German occupation security (1871-1920). Richard recommended a synthesis of the first two was enough to deliver a PhD thesis. Chris was intrigued by the Luftwaffe documents, but Richard cautioned that all though they had the potential as ‘the smoking gun’ of the research, the outstanding problem with the military geography had to be resolved before publication. Richard added that, although the Great War evidence brought a fresh dimension to Germany’s war, this should not be included in the PhD thesis. We then discussed wider events and I ventured the opinion that the Albanian-Yugoslavian frontier incident, in December 1998, bore all the hallmarks of a world turned upside down, with a Bandenbekämpfung action conducted 6 Martin Edmonds, Armed Services and Society, (Leicester, 1988), John Gooch, Armies in Europe, (London, 1980). 7 John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad (London, 1975) and The Road to Berlin (London, 1983). 8 Chris Bellamy, Knights in White Armour: New Art of War and Peace, (London, 1997). by the partisans. Both Richard and Chris opined that there were traces of extreme counterinsurgency resident in contemporary security thinking. We discussed for what seemed a long time a range of issues including insurgency, security, occupation, and the nature of modern warfare. The step that carried my research from solely Bandenbekämpfung doctrine into the realm of security warfare followed a chance meeting with Jürgen Zimmerer, then a PhD student in Freiburg, studying German colonialism.9 Jürgen not only suggested helpful texts but pointed to key markers in German colonialism that set it apart from the other European powers. Germany had imported colonial methods into the homeland, especially during and after the Great War, and from 1919 was the first post-colonial power following the mandated loss of the territories in the Treaty of Versailles. Reading the various studies of the German conduct of the Herero Wars (1904-1908) revealed a glaring similarity with Bandenbekämpfung operations on the Eastern Front (1942-44). Perhaps the most ominous connection was the similarities in the manoeuvres for the Battle of the Waterberg (1904), and the large scale anti-partisan drives in Soviet Russia. There was also another salient feature, the German security forces were quite comfortable at organising the roundup of civilians within security operations in both the colonies and the rear areas. Perhaps the less obvious but most malicious aspect was the employment of young troops, mostly under training to receive their ‘first blooding’ like puppy dogs in the hunt. The literature about German colonialism also referred to texts in other archives, which included the old field manuals of military regulations for organising rear area security known as the Etappen (lines of communication). The germ of an idea began to ferment that German military security and civilian policing had formed a synergy, which formed Sicherheitskrieg or security warfare with origins back to the Seven Years’ War. The security forces and the security system were expected to coordinate their actions in step with the frontline fighting formations – this was reality that underpinned the German way of warfare. There were further discussions with Jürgen in Kiel (2001), Augsburg (2003) and a conference about genocide held in Berlin. Jürgen kindly introduced me to the leading scholars of colonialism including Dirk Moses, Donald Bloxham, and Christian Gerlach.10 In parallel with the incorporation of ideas from the schools of genocide and colonialism, there was still the primary work with the Wehrmacht. I had met Nick Terry in 1997 and we 9 Jürgen Zimmerer, Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner. Staatlicher Machtanspruch und Wirklichkeit im Kolonialen Namibia, (Hamburg, 2001). 10 A. Dirk Moses, Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, (New York, 2008), Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, (Oxford, 2005), Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, (Hamburg, 2013). became very interconnected in our study of the Wehrmacht and the SS. Nick was supervised by Richard Overy, who received a copy of my thesis through Nick, and was very receptive to furthering discussion. A former colleague, Christoph Rass, was working on his PhD and we shared many ideas across several years.11 We attended a seminar presented by Hannes Heer, formerly from the Wehrmachtausstellung, in Aachen, in May 2000.12 There were several meetings with Ben Shepherd; his research into anti-partisan warfare has since developed into a complete history of the German army under Hitler.13 However, it was discussions with Jochen Böhler that led me to re-examine Poland, in 1939, as the crucible for Nazi occupation beyond the General-Government of Poland.14 Discussions concerning the Luftwaffe stemmed from a long term association with Bernd Lemke from the ZMSBw. Bernd had studied the politics of air raid precautions in the 1930s and later wrote a counter argument the Moelder’s controversy (the naming of Bundeswehr-Luftwaffe squadrons after pilots’ from Göring’s Luftwaffe).15 Economic history played a critical role in both security warfare and German occupation methods. Declan O’Reilly, from Kings’ College London, was exceedingly helpful in pushing me towards certain literature but mostly the work of Adam Tooze. Finally, I must refer to the uniqueness of London as a hub of research in 1996-99, through the public seminars hosted by the Institute of Advanced Historical Research (IHR) in Senate House, University of London. Free access and discussion with Nicholas Starghardt16, Richard Evans17 and Richard Overy mentioned above, and visiting scholars from around the world contributed to building a unique atmosphere for learning, which many of us took for granted. There was an aspect of the research that was extremely difficult to control and that concerned individual war crimes perpetrators. The central perpetrator to Bandenbekämpfung was Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, mentioned earlier in this book. Traces of his record were everywhere because of his role as an alleged ‘turncoat’ during the International War Crimes Tribunal (Nuremberg).18 Peter Calvocoressi was one of the last remaining allied prosecutors 11 Christoph Rass, Menschmaterial. Sozialprofil, Machtstrukturen und Handlungsmuster einer Infanteriedivision der Wehrmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg, (Aachen, 2001). 12 Hannes Heer, Tote Zonen: Die Deutsche Wehrmact an der Ostfront, (Hamburg, 1999). I hope my contribution to history met his kind words then. 13 Ben H. Shepherd, Hitler’s Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich, (Yale, 2016). 14 Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg: Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939, (Frankfurt/Main, 2006), and Rge Waffen-SS (Oxford, 2017). 15 Bernd Lemke, ‘Luftschutz in Grossbritannien un Deutschland 1923-1939’, Freiburg University PhD, 2001, subsequently published. 16 Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms 1939-1945, (London, 2015). 17 Richard J.Evans, In Defence of History, (London, 1997). 18 https://www.academia.edu/43099548/Turncoat_expert_or_fraud_Erich_von_dem_BachZelewski_s_evidence_during_the_Nuremberg_war_crimes_process when I approached him about Bach-Zelewski and his status as a prosecution witness. He would not discuss the matter except to say, ‘it was a dirty business and that was the dirtiest.’19 Later I interviewed Gitta Sereny, about her opinion of Bach-Zelewski and why there was a reluctance to talk about him. Sha cautioned about Bach-Zelewski’s treacherous influence in his courtroom evidence and recommended two paths: either to meet a leading figure of the Holocaust denial movement, or taking the hard road of long methodical research.20 Like the proverbial bad penny he was, Bach-Zelewski was back in the news again through his daughter.21 Meetings with former Wehrmacht and SS men was tedious and fruitless, usually listening to long monologues of rehearsed tales about nameless Jewish friends or never witnessing any killing. The rare exception was talking with Henry Metelmann, a resident member of the Guildford adult education circuit. He approached me after a lecture on the German war crimes and offered to engage in questions about everyday life in the Third Reich and how Nazism filtered into the home.22 Then it was time to weave all this content into a thesis. September 11 turned the world upside down and this was magnified against the completion of the PhD thesis. The thesis was a challenge, pulling together so many strands to a single piece of work – the eternal dilemma of the student. There was a hard decision to face, to continue with colonialism or to introduce security warfare. Unfortunately, time was against me introducing security warfare as the overriding operational concept and plumbed instead with the colonial content to explain the origins of Bandenbekämpfung.23 However, a year before September 11, there was a conference where I delivered a paper on security warfare and the reasoning behind the Nazis decision to resort to Bandenbekämpfung. In the swirl of conversations that followed September 11, the repeated question to me was whether America and western security would resort to a derivative of Bandenbekämpfung. This question has never gone away, in 2020 when the National Guard and US Army were mobilised in American cities, during the pandemic, there were hints again of its presence. The research did not end with the thesis, and in 2003 I immediately delved into the question of the militarisation of the Order Police. Kurt Daluege, the notorious Chef der Ordnungspolizei was the subject of a study into twentieth century policing. This time I adopted security warfare as the frame to how the police were organised under the Nazis and setting the 19 Peter Calvocoressi, Nuremberg: The Facts, the Law and the Consequences, (London, 1947). Gitta Sereny, The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938-2000, (London, 2000). 21 https://www.dw.com/en/daddy-was-a-man-of-honor-daughter-of-nazi-ss-officer-insists/a-51853837 22 Gitta Sereny, The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938-2000, (London, 2000). 23 Philip Warren Blood, ‘Bandenbekämpfung: Nazi Occupation security in Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia, 1942-45’, Cranfield University, unpublished PhD, 2001. 20 dogma of militarisation in a civilian landscape. An examination of police training in the 1930s highlighted their exposure to colonial techniques and the adoption of civilian skills sets, like the fire-brigade, to both increase the manpower and extended militarisation into the community.24 Then, after almost five years in Germany, I arrived in Britain to hear talk of war across both public and academic space. The momentum of success from the conventional invasion of Iraq, had broken down under occupation mismanagement, and transformed the conflict into an insurgency – shades of occupied Soviet Russia. During a typical telephone conversation between friends, Richard dropped the bombshell that he was ‘packing his kit’ for Iraq to observe for himself – echoes of ‘Slam’ Marshall.25 At the time, it seemed both logical, the desire of a military historian and soldier to experience war; and illogical that in full gaze of public viewing there was a growing fear that all ideas were exhausted and the violence was spiralling out of control. A year later I received a copy of his book, a masterful narrative almost bereft of all-important dates and footnotes, for security purposes – but an account of men in combat, a contemporary Face of Battle (1976).26 Richard made a critical observation: What happened in in Iraq in mid-2004 was neither a conventional battle between two symmetrical adversaries nor a peace-keeping operation, for the very phrase implies that there is a peace to be kept. It was instead a postmodern conflict comprising extreme violence and near-normality, formally structured military operations and sheer terrorism, diplomatic negotiations and mafia style-powerbroking, all intertwined like the skeins of a rope.27 Richard’s observations contrast with his earlier book Firing Line (1985) in the most dramatic and realistic form. Dusty Warriors is largely ignored by all but a few professional historians and soldiers, but for me it signalled a changing opinion. Many subsequent reviews focused upon cap badges and regimental identity, but entirely missed his cathartic experience of coming face-to-face with the inevitability of contemporary security warfare, the radicalisation of occupation and the latent endurance of genocide. All the certainties of modern war, which had been based upon Clausewitz and rules of engagement were wiped away, having long failed to comprehend the implicit issues of ‘small war’ within ‘large war’. State on state war continued, but only briefly; the ‘real modern war’ is security warfare, occupation and genocide endure. This was dirty war, as prosecuted by all sides in Białowieźa; the realisation of that is harsh. Richard came to terms with ‘the horror’ of modern warfare but as a professional, but not in the 24 Philip W. Blood, ‘Kurt Daluege and the Militarisation of the Ordnungspolizei, in Gerard Oram, Conflict & Legality: Policing mid-twentieth century Europe, (London, 2003), pp.95-120. 25 Slam Marshall, Men Against Fire, (Oklahoma, 2000). 26 John Keegan, Face of Battle, (London, 1976) 27 Richard Holmes, Dusty Warriors, (London, 2005), p.135. pathos of Colonel Walter E. Kurz in Apocalypse Now (1979). Modern security warfare placed his troops in an unenvious position, once the conventional fighting had ended, and as the politicians struggled to find a solution, while atrocities continued, and not only soldiers died. In 2006, Richard very kindly wrote the foreword for my book and was happy to endorse the sections that reflected on modern warfare. He observed that, ‘… men capable of carrying out deeds that might make us doubt our common humanity were themselves subject to the whole gamut of human emotions.’ In essence, we were in the same place and his unusually long telephone conversation informed me that Iraq was a still burning issue. The year before I was highly involved in writing the manuscript, and Chris advised the Birds of Prey (it had already assumed that title) should be removed until a deeper understanding of the troops was available to compare with the police troops of Browning’s Ordinary Men. His point was concerned with stacking blocks of evidence. In his words, ‘if’ Bandenbekämpfung was grim indictment of humanity then Białowieźa questioned civilisation. However, the publisher was reluctant to place a German word on the front cover of a book. This was a time of increasing terror attacks, which led me to write, ‘a nation gripped by terror will overreact (p.305).’ The ramifications from September 11 were still reverberating and there was a perception of society being imprisoned by security. The “war(s) against terror”, in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan, had destabilised all attempts at building global order. My thoughts expressed concern in my conclusions: The impulses to turn to Bandenbekämpfung still resonate. To extend security, raise response level, stamp an official footprint on civil rights, and exploit the public’s susceptibility to psychological pressure by governments: these are the phenomena that originally gave Bandenbekämpfung release. Scholars of the post-September 11 world, examining our perceptions of security, might examine the military abuse and political manipulation of Bandenbekämpfung.28 Today, those thoughts are both relevant and irrelevant, but the greater concern that Bandenbekämpfung had infiltrated security methodologies was palpable. This concern was magnified by the unconscious thought that historians might empower security agencies as they had once done for corporate NGO’s during the Vietnam War. In October 2006 I was invited to the annual conference of the Association of the US Army in Washington DC, for the launch of Hitler’s Bandit Hunters. As a guest of General Richard Trefry, US Army retired, I had the opportunity to discuss modern war and Iraq. General 28 Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters, p.306. Trefry had started his military service as an enlisted GI in the Second World War and had served in the US constabulary, a militarised police force administering occupation in Germany. After West Point, he served in Vietnam and Laos, and eventually became Inspector General of the Army. He was therefore uniquely qualified and candid in his approach to modern warfare, security and occupation. General Trefry understood how occupations turned into insurgencies and recognised that security warfare appealed to beleaguered soldiers as the last resort. He was disappointed that historians kept embellishing the Second World War as America’s greatest generation, which learned nothing from history but effectively undermined the morale of the modern soldier. The chapter on ‘security warfare’ fascinated him. He thought the similarities had led to ‘body counts’, the ‘strategic hamlets’, killing prisoners, and the other failings from Vietnam – the derivatives of Bandenbekämpfung.29 He informed me that some retired US army generals were donning the uniforms of ordinary soldiers to see for themselves how grim the situation was – this echoed with Richard. General Trefry also thought the voice of the ordinary soldier was being drowned out. For several years afterwards I was an historical advisor for the US Army in Europe. I took General Trefry’s advice and listened to the ordinary soldiers. There was fascinating contrast to how the modern soldiery deployed for war and soldiers in the past. I recognised there were barely marginal differences in German and American security tactics and tested the templates by swapping the names of historic security operations and recent combat missions – no one noticed any difference. Meanwhile public opinion was mortified over the abject failure of military leadership, in both the USA and Britain. The military historians seemed reluctant to speak truth to power and there was a growing feeling of war fatigue. Regardless, the demand for counter-insurgencyterrorism literature proliferated in Britain and America. In 2007, Chris Bellamy published one of the finest books of the Soviet viewpoint of the Eastern Front and incorporated Bandenbekämpfung as the Nazis’ vain attempt to counter the increasing partisan menace. A year later Richard made his opinion about troop casualties’ public, in an article for a London newspaper about the death of a British officer in Afghanistan: I write not simply to mourn a friend, but to use his death to illuminate the war ... We have been so preoccupied with other issues that it is easy to forget that our commitment to Afghanistan has rumbled on since 2001. It has lasted longer than the Second World War. … We need a real strategy, not a sequence of tactical ploys; winning battles will not necessarily win the war. Confident assertions that the “comprehensive approach”, a key plank of our doctrine (notable for its absence from Iraq), is in place must be matched by visible and accurate application of both 29 Refer to chapter: Reading Maps Like German Soldiers. money and talent, much of the latter by definition non-military. … Although the Army had considerable experience of counterinsurgency (and went on at unwise length about the fact), there is little sign that it applied its own doctrine in Iraq… Within the military profession there is much debate as to whether Afghanistan is “the war” — the defining struggle of our times — or “a war”, to be followed by different sorts of struggle elsewhere, for which different techniques and equipment will be required. The discussion is wrapped round the axle of inter-Service politics, more than usually febrile as this cohort of single-Service chiefs departs in an air of budgetary gloom. If it is the war, then the Army needs more people to fight it, and it must change the way it does business. Quantity has a quality all of its own, and excessive recourse to long-range firepower (with all it means in that evasive phrase “collateral damage”) is often a sign that one is losing the real battle.30 One of my last conversations with Richard was to confirm the publication of an article about the Birds of Prey before he died in April 2011.31 At the time this article signified the termination of the academic process that started in 1997. A few weeks later, however, the first GIS maps began to filter out the clutter in the LWSB/JSKB diaries. The GIS maps had also been linked to the German hunt removing any doubts over their role in hunting Jews, insurgents and others. Frevert’s influence on the hunt led to the examination of how the hunt had developed in Germany after 1848, as a cultural pastime for the middle classes, but had then been applied to military security. This then unravelled the wider story of Białowieźa and why occupation was always a political question, even under the Nazis. In the cold light of aftermath, the allied interventions into Iraq and Afghanistan make grim reading. Casualty figures are always a difficult subject in insurgencies because of the propaganda and the ethics of war. In 2015 the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) published a book on Body Count from the interventions into Iraq and Afghanistan. The foreword noted: ‘The term “Body count” was taken from the Vietnam War, in which the U.S. army used body counts in an effort to show that the U.S. was winning the war.’ This of course was a textbook analogy with Bandenbekämpfung operations. The introduction observed: ‘Today, permanent acceptance of war and occupation is most easily accomplished by using humanitarian, human rights pretexts for war, such as “reconstruction”, “stabilization,” “securing human rights” or democratization.” Change the words and this parallels the pretext behind the application of Bandenbekämpfung – in the colonies and Weimar Germany. Later another observation concerned the media: ‘Unfortunately, the media often portray passively collected figures as the most realistic aggregate number of war casualties.’ The Nazi 30 Richard Holmes, ‘Rupert should not have died for this’, The Times, 7 July 2009. Philip W. Blood, ‘Securing Hitler’s Lebensraum: the Luftwaffe and the forest of Białowieźa 1942-4’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2010. 31 propaganda used the newspapers and newsreels to inform the masses of the heroic struggle against the partisans. The report also noted that at least 31.5 per cent of civilian casualties were caused by the allied occupation forces. This figure appears low until we recognise estimates of casualties ranging from 150 -170,000 dead in Afghanistan and from 100,000 to 500,000 dead in Iraq.32 All the appeals for peace, the peace marches, the media reports, the counter arguments could not prevent determined politicians from going to war. The application of derivatives of security warfare was horrendous, and the allied armies have barely restored the trust of society after ten years of war without victory. As Hannah Arendt recognised a long time ago: [B]y the end of the Second World War everybody knew that technical developments in the instruments of violence had made the adoption of ‘criminal’ warfare inevitable. It was precisely the distinction between soldier and civilian, between army and home population, between military targets and open cities, upon which the Hague Conventions definitions of war crimes rested, that had become obsolete.33 As for the future, technology is the present game changer and through smart phones is gradually consigning traditional military history to the proverbial dustbin. The contents and the scholars are not at fault for poor research or faulty findings. The cause has been the remote battlefield, the digitalisation of combat and the game changing drone. We can no longer observe soldiers engaged in contemporary warfare and compare them to battles in history. The modern soldier sits at a console and a handset, like a Sony PlayStation, to send drones to kill insurgents. In one sense it’s the radicalisation of the chair-bound killer, in another it represents the prospect for the end of casualties and a reduction in the reluctance to wage war. The battlefield is gone, this is the age of permanent occupation, policed by social media and drones. Contemporary de-personalised warfare has displaced the soldier. The last place for soldiers to behave like warriors is the civilian space in the civil-military relations equation. The story of the modern soldier no longer harks back to Pericles funeral oration, but to the more insidious character of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The contemporary political soldier hastens our journey to security warfare and the unthought through application of derivatives of Bandenbekämpfung. The military historian faces the stark reality of remaining in the past or stepping into the future. The Holocaust and genocide scholars face the loathsome prospect of more genocides and more Holocaust. We once believed the Holocaust was the end of civilisation, we now face the glum prospect of living side-by-side with the Holocaust as a constant. 32 Physicians for Social Responsibility, Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror, Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan, (Washington DC, 2015). 33 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil, (London, 1963), p.256.