Eye-to-face with the enemy: killing face to face in the wars of the 20th Century (1914-1975)

Book synopsis: Whether people are able to abolish mutual killing is an old question. It has been and is being discussed controversially, and even among peace scientists, it is quite controversial whether it is at all useful to put it. Against the backdrop of the escalation of killing in two devastating world wars and in the face of numerous further wars and civil wars, massacres and genocides, this question was and still is the starting point and driving force of diverse discourses in politics, society, art and science. Surprisingly, however, the massive killing itself, that is, the action that forms the core of wars and genocides, has for a long time neither engaged research nor the public. In the portrayals of wars and genocides, killing is brought about indirectly, talked about the causes and consequences of killing, but killing itself disappears behind generalizing and abstracting formulations. In this volume, historians, jurists, political scientists, psychologists, literary scholars, and journalists investigate mass killings - active killing, not just death - in the wars and genocides of the 20th century. The contributions ask for the practices and social contexts of killing how these inhibitions are overcome, and they deal with how public and private talks about the mass killings or how they were silenced