Shying away from war

It may be the longest period of peacetime in European history, but wars continue to be fought elsewhere. German troops have been in Afghanistan for over a decade now, but the war remains strangely quiet - happening to other people, in another land.

"Politicians and, in turn, society do not want to discuss Afghanistan," said social psychologist Harald Welzer at the recent lit.COLOGNE literary festival. "There is a passive acceptance of the war. The elimination of compulsory civil service in Germany, for example, passed with relatively little discussion."

The lack of public discourse on the war in Afghanistan dominated the panel discussion between Welzer, journalist Caroline Emcke and former army General Klaus Reinhardt.

Indeed, the issue of military engagement is still highly problematic in Germany. What was officially termed a "stabilization mission" in Afghanistan was tentatively described by former Defense Minister Theodor von Guttenberg as "war-like conditions."

It wasn't until February 2011 that Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told parliament that the mission in Afghanistan was an "armed conflict."

Wall of disinterest

Modern combat tends to be asymmetric: Armed forces fight against guerilla combatants and partisan civilians in wars which cannot be won with force. For Klaus Reinhardt, the ongoing war in Afghanistan is one such example.

"The war in Afghanistan is almost a taboo subject in Germany," he commented. "People wonder why we are there. Germans are not interested because they do not see themselves as being personally affected by the war."

From time to time, shocking events in Afghanistan burst back onto the front pages: The killing of Osama Bin Laden, civilian deaths in the Kunduz airstrike and, recently, the unprovoked massacre of 16 Afghans at the hands of a single US soldier.

But the art of engaging a war-weary public is tough, and that has a negative impact on returning soldiers in particular.

"The general public is simply unable to relate to the extreme psychological stress soldiers must endure," explained Reinhardt. "Soldiers are unable to wash for days on end and are afforded time alone. There is the constant itching and scratching from the lack of water, the stench of ammonia secreted from the human body as it metabolizes fat down to muscle permeates the air."

War is anything but heroic, he added.

Letters home

Reinhardt's account of the day-to-day drudgery of war peppered with moments of extreme danger is reflected in letters sent by German troops in Afghanistan to friends and loved-ones back home, some which were read by well-known German actress Iris Berber during the discussion at lit.COLOGNE.

In 2010, a team of journalists from the Süddeutsche Zeitung attempted to gain access to letters sent by German soldiers from Afghanistan. The German Ministry of Defense was criticized for trying to restrict access to the letters on grounds of national security.

Eventually, a collection of letters, emails and text messages were published in the book "Feldpost" (Field Post) in early 2011. Not aggression, but an overwhelming sense of loneliness and homesickness, interspersed with large doses of irony, dominates the book.

"A violent explosion occurs just 500 meters away. In the safety bunker, an American journalist calmly paints her nails. Then a minutes silence for fallen American soldiers," wrote 33-year-old Captain Thomas Brackmann in Kabul in 2006.

The field post letters provide a human perspective on the horrors of combat, but also highlight the apparent senselessness of war. "War is no longer a self-evident fact of life," said Caroline Emcke, a foreign correspondent for Der Spiegel, alluding to what she described as the contemporary era of "post-heroism."

War-weary public

While the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks briefly pushed the media focus back on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, editors and broadcasters are well aware that the public has grown weary of stories covering these conflicts.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that in a year which saw the news dominated by the economic crisis and unrest in the Middle East, the war in Afghanistan held just a 2 percent share of media coverage in the US in 2011 - less than both the 2012 presidential election and the tsunami in Japan.

But a new wave of literature hitting bookstores is bucking the trend. Last week, the New York Times reported on the recent flourishing of literature on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the US. First-hand accounts of life as an elite Navy Seal and of war in the Middle East have struck a cord with male audiences in rural America.

Chris Kyle's autobiographical account of his time as a Seal, "American Sniper," has been on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list for 10 weeks. Another first-person account of military life released last year, "Seal Team Six" by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin, has sold over 400,000 copies.

Publishers believe that a new generation of readers who have grown up hearing about the military campaigns in the Middle East are looking for a heroicized, positive spin on events which provide vivid you-are-there accounts of the horrors and dangers of war.

"People feel they're reading about the war, but it's not as hard to swallow. How many books can you read about how we shouldn't be there, or how we got there, or the history of the Taliban?" said Sarah Brown, a buyer at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona.

Whether the trend for such an heroicized interpretation of warfare will find an audience in Germany, a country with a brutal - and still raw - history of military engagement, remains to be seen.

Author: Helen Whittle
Editor: Kate Bowen