We have just left behind a century of unprecedented violence. In the dawn of the 21st century, it is imperative that we study how different societies have participated in acts of war, often with grotesque enthusiasm. How is mass killing in modern warfare organised? What enables "ordinary" men and women to kill? And, the most difficult question of all, what enables some people to resist taking part in mass orgies of slaughter?
These are some of the questions addressed at a conference today at Birkbeck College, London, writes Joanna Bourke.
The 20th century has been characterised as a period of "total war" in which distinctions between combatants and civilians progressively evaporated. While only 5 per cent of deaths in the 1914-18 war were civilian, in 1939-45 the figure was 66 per cent.
There is also an "after" to the violence. How do people adjust to life after war? Many return to their peace-time jobs and "get on with life". But others, such as the 41,000 British men who had limbs amputated during the first world war, found it more difficult.
Another group of combatants suffered psychologically. Soldiers who had bayoneted men in the face developed hysterical tics of their own facial muscles: stomach cramps seized men who had knifed foes in the abdomen.
The labels given to such suffering shifted. During the first world war it was called "shell shock"; by the second world war, "battle fatigue"; in the Korean war it was "brainwashing"; and in Vietnam "post-traumatic stress disorder". Now we have "Gulf war syndrome". The 1991 Gulf war was terrifying, fought by relatively inexperienced troops in a particularly hostile environment (one-third of all servicemen killed were killed by "friendly fire") in which there was immense fear of biological and chemical weapons.
After the war, veterans exhibited a range of symptoms, including depression, anxiety, musculoskeletal disorders, fatigue, respiratory problems, and memory loss. These veterans passionately disputed the charge that their physical symptoms might have any psychological basis. Instead, they blamed herbicides, vaccines or Iraqi nerve gas. Many believed that their disease could be transmitted "like Aids" and pointed to the fact that their wives suffered from genital disorders and their children were born with distorted limbs or tumours. They had a point. After all, in previous conflicts, senior medical personnel in the military have cooperated with the government to skew diagnoses in order to minimise pension requirements. Gulf war veterans not only worry about the stigma associated with being "unstable", but also about what a diagnosis of psychological disorder might do to their pensions.
Engaging with such issues is never easy. But if we are to work towards a world in which conflict is resolved in ways that do not involve mass slaughter, debates about history and ethics cannot be ignored.
Joanna Bourke is professor of history at Birkbeck College, London, and co-organiser of the "Cultures of Killing" ( conferences/killing.htm) conference at which Ian Palmer will speak. Telephone: 020-7631 6299.
Anglo-American Historians, pages I-IV