The spirit of war is deified.
Obedience to the State and its war lord leaves no room for any other
duty or feeling. Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory.
Proclaimed by the heads of the army, this doctrine would seem to have
permeated the officers and affected even the private soldiers, leading
them to justify the killing of noncombatants as an act of war, and so
accustoming them to slaughter that even women and children become at
last the victims. It cannot be supposed to be a national doctrine, for
it neither springs from nor reflects the mind and feelings of the German
people as they have heretofore been known to other nations. It is a
specifically military doctrine, the outcome of a theory held by a ruling
caste who have brooded and thought, written and talked, and dreamed
about war until they have fallen under its obsession and been hypnotized
by its spirit.
The doctrine is plainly set forth in the German Official Monograph on
the usages of war on land, issued under the direction of the German
Staff. This book is pervaded throughout by the view that whatever
military needs suggest becomes thereby lawful, and upon this principle,
as the diaries show, the German officers acted.
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