Section I.

The First World War and

its Influences
CHAPTER 1

‘Bellification’
War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of
World Wars (and beyond)

REICHHERZER Frank

1. Introduction1
“The experience of the world war shows us that the frames of war we draw
– war as a purely military affair and business – were too narrow. We now know
that we have to study war as a whole; that means war as an affair of society as a
whole”.2 This is a quote from Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer’s book ‘Wehrpolitik’
(Defence Policy) of 1939 taken from the chapter ‘Wehr und Wissenschaft’
(Defence and science/academia). In the 1930s, Niedermayer was a colonel on
leave (Ergänzungsoffizier) and worked as a professor and director of the Institute
for Defence Policy (Institut für Wehrpolitik) at Berlin University. Niedermayer
knew what he was talking about. As a soldier and a researcher, his field of action
was the zone between military and academia from his early career.3

By analysing Niedermayer’s words, one can get an impression of the general

characterisation of war in ‘high modernity’4: a) understanding war as mainly a
military affair is too simple; b) modern war should not be seen as a fight of military
organisation vs military organisation but as a clash of societies vs societies; c)
this opens a zone where military and many parts of civil society interact; and
d) the role and flows of knowledge for planning, organising, fighting, and even

1
This article is based on the research in my book Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’. Here further
literature on the touched topics and source material are presented. This paper is also part of the work
of a recent research group ‘Knowledge, Military, Force and Violence’ at the German Armed Forces
Center of Military History and Social Sciences.
2
Niedermayer: Wehrpolitik, p. 137.
3
Niedermayer’s life is captured in Seidt: Berlin Kabul Moskau. Regarding World War I see Seidt:
From Palestine to Caucasus. For Niedermayer’s life and activities during the NS-regime and his
ambivalent attitudes toward NS-ideology see Jahr: Generalmajor Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer.
4
‘High modernity’ tries to make sense of the years from the 1880s to the 1970s. For this temporal
framework see Scott: Seeing Like a State; Herbert: Europe in High Modernity. For a critique and
differentiation see Raphael: Ordnungsmuster der ‘Hochmoderne’.
4 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

imagining war could be added.

The observations and arguments in Niedermayer’s book – more than 20

years after the beginning of World War I – were honestly spoken; they were not
a revolution. One can find ideas and phrases like these in many articles, books,
and governmental and military memos worldwide. However, before World War
I, questioning the military’s role in preparing and fighting a war after a more or
less political decision to go to war – especially in Germany – would cause much
irritation – not only in the military establishment.5 Niedermayer’s and similar
ideas did nothing less than question the monopoly of the military on warfare.

Niedermayer’s quote leads to questions: What happened between the turn of

the century and the 1940s in how people thought about the nexus of war, military,
and society? What was the role of knowledge about war and warfare, and further,
what does this all mean? Hence, my paper will try to give answers to these
questions. Thus, I develop my argument on three levels.

The first is empirically. During World War I, society became more critical of a
common and joint war effort. War resonated in almost every societal system. This
development caused a power shift in the triangle of war, military, and society. A
centrepiece in this complex relationship is a manifold ‘knowledge about war’.6
Therefore, the academic field, especially the implementation and development of
concepts and institutionalisation of ‘Wehrwissenschaften’ (‘war studies’/‘defence
studies’) in Germany in the interwar years, is the focus of my interest.

Secondly, I will move to an analytical level. The question of knowledge in

academia and its connection to war opens a broader view. Hence, a characteristic

5
The dispute between the General Staffs Historical Division and the historian Hans Delbrück about
strategy of Friedrich II in the Seven Years War is an example. One vindication for the General Staffs
position was that Delbrück was a civilian with less military experience. See Lange: Hans Delbrück und
der ‚Strategiestreit‘; Bucholz: Hans Delbrück and the German Military Establishment.
6
I understand ‘knowledge’ here in a broad sense. It implies ‘know how’, ‘know to’, ‘scientific’,
‘artisan’, and ‘tacit’ knowledge. A very good introduction into the field of knowledge is Burke: What
is the History of Knowledge?
 ‘Bellification’ War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of World Wars (and beyond) 5

signature of the Age of World Wars becomes possible to sketch: ‘Bellification’.7

The term derives from the Latin word ‘bellum’ for war. Bellification as an analytical
tool makes it possible to discuss the process and intensity of how a society orients
itself toward war or how far the imagination of war affects societies.

By having this first outline in mind, my paper will deepen this in three parts:
1. In the first part, I will point out the imagined ‘future war’ and answer
how and why thinking of war changed during/especially after World
War I and what consequences arose from this change.
2. My second part outlines the role of knowledge and impact of ‘totality’
of warfare on the academic world and the ‘war studies’ concept in
Germany as a ‘total’ approach.
3. Moreover, in the last short part, I will sketch the concept of ‘bellification’
as a heuristical and analytical tool for research and discussion of
twentieth-century history.

2. Shifting Paradigms. Framing War in the Age of World Wars

The contemporaries perceived World War I as a war unequal to all former
wars. The war reconfigured the relationship between experience and expectation.8
Phrases like “The Revolution of the war ...”9 and “The war was a rigorous cleaning-
up of old-fashioned attitudes…”10 could be found everywhere. Sure, one could
easily find wordings and framings like this for every war in history. However, in
the case of the Great War of 14-18, the contemporaries felt a very deep caesura

7
This word was coined in the context of a research centre at Tübingen University (SFB 437) und
further developed and conceptualised by my own empirical studies. See Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’,
esp. pp. 413-426. For a similar understanding see the works of Rüdiger Bergien and Michael Geyer.
For example, Bergien: Bellizistische Republik; Geyer: The Militarization of Europe; Geyer: Der zur
Organisation erhobene Burgfrieden. For a summary of the work of the Tübingen Center see Beyrau/
Hochgenschwender/Langewiesche (Ed.): Formen des Krieges.
8
Reinhart Koselleck’s work on temporality and history(icit)y and the interconnectedness of the
past, present and future, especially the concepts of “spaces of expectation” (Erfahrungsräume) and
“horizons of expectation” (Erwartungshorizonte) provide a profound framework. See e.g. Koselleck:
‘Space of Expectation’ and ‘Horizons of Expectation’. For a further conceptualization of war and
experience in modern Europe see: Buschmann/Carl (Ed.): Die Erfahrung des Krieges.
9
Benary: Die Revolution des Krieges, p. 757.
10
Cochenhausen: Wehrkunde als Lehrfach, p. 263.
6 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

and acted based on new ‘imagined realities’, which were relatively constant till
the 1970s. Hence World War I represented – in the words of the philosopher of
science Thomas S. Kuhn – a fundamental ‘paradigm shift’, or according to the
likewise famous term of Ludwik Fleck, a changing ‘style of thought’.11

Here, two long-lasting processes were critical. One becomes visible from
catchwords like industrialisation, mechanisation, and a high level of technology.
The other one is mass-mobilisation. These processes started in the eighteenth
century and became crucial in the nineteenth century’s last 20 or 30 years. In
World War I, their destructive potential came together. Industrialisation/the
spread of technology and mass-mobilisation, communication, and logistics went
hand in hand. The catchy phrase ‘total war’, coined in the 1930s, epitomizes this
in contemporary discussions and marks the process of ‘totalisation’.12

With a closer look, it becomes clear that the visions of war and the arising
consequences were based on two commonly accepted, unquestioned beliefs. First,
war is unavoidable or even permanent with the only statuses being war and non-
war. Furthermore, war is an event without any limits. These two core elements
became almost axiomatic assumptions of military and political planning and the
‘total mobilisation’ of society, along with the seemingly new needs of war.13

• War is unavoidable/permanent
Indeed, the belief that war is unavoidable was not new. In former times
war was regarded as divine intervention in nature and human history.
Nevertheless, in the late 19th century and during World War I, war was seen
– especially in right-wing circles – more and more within the context of a
conflict-oriented reading of Darwinist theory. The ‘struggle for existence’

11
See Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Fleck: Genesis and Development of a Scientific
Fact.
12
For the historizing ‘total war’ see Förster/Nagler (Ed.): On the Road to Total War; Boemeke/
Chickering/Förster. (Ed.): Anticipating Total War; Chickering/Förster, (Ed.): Great War, Total War;
Chickering/Förster (Ed.): The Shadows of Total War; Chickering/Förster/Greiner (Ed.): A World at
Total War.
13
For this see the war poet Ernst Jünger, Jünger: Die totale Mobilmachung.
 ‘Bellification’ War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of World Wars (and beyond) 7

became a key concept of life and applied to social organisation.14 So,

war seemed to be a non-neglectable essential part of human life. “Blood
alone […] drives the wheel of world history”,15 as a popular author wrote.
Connected to this, the ‘good’ order of the society would be a society built
along with the needs and categories of war. Hence war lost its character
as a political instrument and became an endless ‘struggle for existence’,
namely in national-socialist ideology. The vision of an unavoidable war in
the near future legitimised organising society for war and fuelled a certain
kind of radicalism.

• War without limits

In the eyes of the contemporaries, war became an unlimited, ‘total’ event.
This understanding is observable in many areas. Just to highlight some
examples: the breaking down of borders between war and peace, between
the ‘front’ and the ‘homeland’ (the latter becoming ‘home-front’), between
the soldier and the civilian, between military and political leadership,
between military and civil use of technology and infrastructures, and the
questioning but destruction of ethical values and standards by the so-
called ‘necessity of war’.16 This shows that the border between the military
and civil spheres dissolved during World War I. In the interwar years, the
vision of a future war swept it away. War was, in the eyes of the many
contemporaries, no longer limited to the military and its institutions.17
Instead, now war was characterised as an affair of society as a whole, and
its ‘civil’ aspects were getting attention. So, war had to be conceptualised
as a ‘total’ phenomenon. In this interpretation, again, war was everything
and became the top category for the organisation of society. That means
that every action, subject, and object had to be valued by their necessity for
the future war effort. So, from this point of view, war became the measure

14
On the metaphorical use of this theory see Weingart: ‘Struggle for Existence’.
15
Soldan: Mensch und die Schlacht der Zukunft, p. 104.
16
See Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’, pp. 43-63.
17
For one of the many voices see Linnebach: Wehrwissenschaften. Begriff und System. For a critique
of this trend, Ambrosius: Zur Totalität des Zukunftskrieges, pp. 187-188.
8 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

of all things (including man).

From this outlook, two divergent but entangled processes emerged from
the interpretation of war experience: a) civil appropriation of war and b)
demilitarisation of war.

Figure 1: The Nexus of War – Military – Society…

…after WW1
War War

Tendency: BELLIFICATION
Civil Society

Civil Society
…before WW1
War Military Military
“interstices”
Military Military “hybrid zone”
“transgressive arenas”

In a schematic and simplified view (Figure 1), seen from nineteenth-century

history, military and war were congruent before World War I. Dealing with war
and warfare was a pure affair of the military and its institutions. During World War
I, war became more and more unlimited – as mentioned above. Military assets
like soldiers, tanks, artillery, ships, planes, and trucks were seen as a necessity for
warring. All capacities of the country – the whole ‘potential de guerre’ – had to be
taken into account. Hence a wide gap opened between war on the one hand and
the military organisation on the other. The proponents of civil society aimed to
fill this gap. According to these ambitions, they focused on new perceived factors
– the civil dimension of war. The agents of many parts of the civil sphere tried to
identify and solve the problems of total war in a scientific/academic manner, which
 ‘Bellification’ War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of World Wars (and beyond) 9

arose from the specific interpretation of war as an unlimited event. Overarching

knowledge about warfare was the key factor for solving problems of imagined
total warfare.18 Those problems could range from the ‘perfect’ organisation of
society, and the preparedness of the economic system for war, to area studies and
the arrangement of landscape and urban spaces for war. Here, on the one hand, an
appropriation of war by non-military actors and their expertise becomes visible.
On the other, this process can be described as ‘demilitarisation of war’. The ‘old
and traditional term war’ (Kriegsbegriff) became ‘substituted by the new political
term of defence’19 (Wehrbegriff). The military lost its ultimate capability in all
matters of warfare. Moreover, there was no apparent difference where the tasks
of the military end and the responsibility of civil society begins.20 Here, an area
with interstices developed – the habitat for civil-military hybrids and the realm of
transmission and translation of knowledge.

This development happened all over Europe and North America and maybe
in Japan.21 In the case of Germany in the interwar years, the substantial ‘civil’
engagement was amplified by the restrictive military provisions of the Treaty of
Versailles and within the context of the revitalisation of war in politics, culture,
and art during the late 1920s, and not to forget rising militant masculinity,
nationalism, and Nazism during the interbellum.22

The reduction of the German army to a small military force allowed no room
for answering the questions of a ‘total’ war with an extension of the Army or
the incorporation of experts into military institutions. The opposite was the
fact. For sure, the peace treaty prohibited military-related activities outside the

18
Programatic is Szöllösi-Janze: Wissensgesellschaft in Deutschland; see as well Ash: Wissenschaft – Krieg
– Modernität; and for the NS-Regime Flachowsky, Hachtmann, Schmaltz (Ed.): Ressourcenmobilisierung.
19
Niedermayer: Wehrgeographie, p. 7.
20
So Erich Ludendorff, First Quartermaster-General of the Imperial Army’s Great General Staff in the
second half of the First World War, Ludendorff: Kriegserinnerungen, p. 1.
21
For Japan see Tomohide: Militarismus des Zivilen in Japan 1937–1940; for Britain see: Edgerton:
Warfare State; for the USA this process grew strong short before World War II and especially during
the Cold War. See for a mass of literature and bridging the times, Lowen: Creating the Cold War
University.
22
For further references see Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’, pp. 96-127.
10 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

military – especially at universities and in private associations (Art. 177, Treaty of

Versailles). However, military and civil authority and even private organisations
could camouflage these ‘civil’ actions easily. The military leaders were forced
to cooperate with civilian administrative staff and civilian organisations, and
the universities. With the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies destroyed the famous
Prusso-German general staff as the central military planning organisation and
the centrepiece for waging war. Hence civil-military cooperation became more
necessary and less questioned.23 So, forced from outside, the military had to give
up its monopoly on warfare. In the context of ‘demilitarisation of war’, military
planning organisations tried to induce and manage action within fields of the
civil society and to channel the different activities outside and beside the military
organisation. Here, they were confronted with self-confident civil actors who
claimed management of warfare for themselves.24 Rivalry and cooperation went
hand in hand. Civil-military relations were negotiated in a permanent process.25
However, a manifold civil-military complex came into existence in interwar
Germany, which fitted much better with the image of ‘total war’ than a pure
military general staff as a unique supreme planning unit.

3. ‘Wehrwissenschaften’ – The Impact of ‘Total War’ on the

Academic World
When researching about the impact of war experiences in German science
and academia and the role of knowledge and even management of knowledge
after World War I, one will find a new and vague concept in German, which is
called ‘Wehrwissenschaften’. The term ‘Wehrwissenschaften’ was a fashionable
neologism. The phrase appeared in Germany in the above described political and
socio-cultural atmosphere of the late 1920s. Librarians at the Army Central Library
(Heeresbücherei) in Berlin coined the term. The librarians had to categorise the
new literature on the civil aspects of war. Thus, they used ‘Wehrwissenschaften’
as an umbrella term. So, the word was pragmatically created but became very

23
See Bergien: Bellizistische Republik.
24
Dülffer Vom Bündnispartner zum Erfüllungsgehilfen, pp. 291-292; Reichherzer ‘Alles ist Front!’,
pp. 161-170.
25
A thought-provoking study of civil-military relations is still Huntington: The Soldier and the State.
 ‘Bellification’ War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of World Wars (and beyond) 11

popular soon. It was able to work as the focal point of all activities connected
with the civil aspects of war or in the space between military, science, academia,
politics, economy, and any other field – in short, society as a whole.26

Although there are similar phenomena in many countries, ‘Wehrwissenschaften’

is not easy to translate. It has a special meaning, which derives from particular
German circumstances in the interwar period. ‘War studies’, ‘(total) science
of war’, ‘military studies’, ‘national defence studies’, ‘preparedness studies’,
‘polemologie’ and many more terms are found in journals, newspapers, and
pamphlets in the US, Britain, and France in connection with ‘Wehrwissenschaften’.
However, there is no direct hit among these translations. ‘Wehrwissenschaften’
is an all-inclusive term that covers all implications of the concept. Drawing
together all these aspects mentioned here, like the totality of defence measures,
preparedness, and possibility to switch from peace to war within a short period,
provides an impression of what is meant by the concept of ‘Wehrwissenschaften’.
I will call this ‘war studies’ in a broad sense below.

A heterogeneous group of people advanced the concept from different parts of

society, who acted in the space between military, administration, and academia.
Proponents of war studies never developed or established a coherent program.
We can see intense discussions and different manifestations within the academic
landscape.27 However, on a meta-level, all these concepts and manifestations had
some things in common. The common intention of war studies and its proponents
was, following the image of total war, to mobilise society for an anticipated
war. Academia, science, humanities, universities, and other research institutions
should be the core of this project. Within the context of a rising information
and knowledge society, knowledge was the key to this kind of mobilisation.
Hence, generating, augmenting, distributing – the flow of knowledge – was seen as a
necessity. By looking at articles, programmatic studies, pamphlets, memos, and many
other sources, three main components become visible, shaping war studies’ aims.28

26
Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’, pp. 140-141.
27
For examples see Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’, pp. 140-189.
28
See in a comprehensive form Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’, pp. 17-19.
12 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

• Crosslinking and Flows of Knowledge

The first was the striving for integration and cross-linking of knowledge.
This was a direct reaction to the experience of an unlimited war. Integration
and cross-linking were means of handling unlimited war under the umbrella
term of ‘Wehrwissenschaften’/’war-studies’. Integration should be achieved
within academia between the classical disciplines as well as between politics,
military, academia, and administration. Linking should enable the flow of
concepts, ideas, and outcomes between different disciplines, different people
and different social systems. Needless to say, the interconnected questions of
war were the driving impulse here.29

• Knowledge-Based Policy Advice

The second component could be described as knowledge-based policy
advice and the education of policymakers. The background for this aim is the
diagnosis of a lack of knowledge about the war in the political leadership of the
German Empire before and during World War I on the one hand and the lack
of understanding of political affairs by the general staff and military leaders
on the other hand. In this context, war studies should constantly contribute
scientific knowledge about war to the decision-making process. To overcome
the lack of knowledge about warfare, proponents of war studies advocated that
every higher official should acquire a basic knowledge of war and warfare.
The ubiquity of war implied that almost every issue had to be analysed from
the outlook of war over any other aspect. So, the constant consideration of
war was necessary: for example, providing a tax break for all­terrain trucks,
which could later be used in the army, building rail coaches which make
transportation of the wounded possible, to transforming landscapes and urban
areas into ‘warscapes’.30

29
For a conceptual approach on circulation of knowledge see the volume of ‘Nach Feierabend’,
Gugerli et al: Zirkulationen; see as well the steady growing articles on the topic on the following site.
<https://historyofknowledge.net/category/circulation-of-knowledge/> (15.09.2021).
30
See for example Oestreich: Vom Wesen der Wehrgeschichte, p. 232; Frauenholz: Wehrpolitik und
Wehrwissen, pp. 124-135. Especially for the idea of warscapes (Wehrlandschaft) see the chapter in
Wiepking-Jürgensmann: Die Landschaftsfibel.
‘Bellification’ War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of World Wars (and beyond) 13

• Affecting and Organising Society by Knowledge

The third aim dealt with the education of society as a whole for the needs
of war. A popular form of ‘war studies’ was to bring the knowledge of war
into every corner of society. The traumatic experience of the defeat in 1918
seemed to make necessary the creation of a society ready for war at all times.
Proponents of war studies saw within this ‘mental armament’ a factor (almost)
equal to the ‘material armament’ of the nation. This does not mean the creation
of a pure ‘warrior nation’. The project of ‘Wehrwissenschaften’ had a more
subtle approach: Modern men (and even women), the agents of total war,
should be two-faced. They should be able to live a peaceful life but also be
able to fight an ultimate all-out war, in a tank, in a submarine or fight on the
shop floor, in a laboratory or an office.31

As a consequence, war studies could not simply be one discipline among

others. From my point of view, which is inspired by intellectual history, this
specific German type of war studies could not be measured in categories of the
standard modern academic order built around the concept of easily separated
disciplines. They should be viewed as an overarching conception busting academic
disciplines in the classic sense. Like ‘environment’ or ‘climate’ today, ‘war’
affected everything and everybody. If war is ‘total’, it could not be investigated
by one discipline. So, war studies transgressed and overarched the borders of
disciplines. Hence, they have to be understood as – in terms of science studies –
an ‘inter’ – or even ‘transdisciplinary’ approach with the object of investigation
of war in the centre.32

This is also reflected in the systematisation of war studies. War studies could
find arenas of transgressions in the disciplinary system, but they could not change
the system. So, they were present in the academic landscape in four different
variations.

31
See for example Linnebach: s. v. Wehrwissenschaften, p. 742; Siehe hierzu exempl.: Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Wehrpolitik und Wehrwissenschaften (Ed.): Kleine Wehrkunde.
32
For this and the following see Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’, esp. pp. 377-382.
14 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

The first step was a more general version, which collected, processed, and
distributed the outcomes of other disciplines dealing with war. This manifestation
of war studies gave an overview of the main topics of war studies for a broad
audience from all parts of universities and even from the public. Switching from
peace to war and thinking about war already in peacetime should be possible for
anybody. In this process, knowledge of war should trickle down to all parts of
society and be made applicable by everyone.

The second form of dealing with war in academia was found within traditional
disciplines – like history or physics – which in particular were oriented toward war.
Scholars in areas of interest for warfare should look at their field from the angle of
war and generate specific knowledge for the field. For example, geographers paid
attention to geopolitical questions, and historians covered the history of war. By
the way, historical and geographical studies were reasonable means for painting
a broad picture of war – because the categories of time (history) and space
(geography) could – in the eyes of the contemporaries – be used in an integrative,
‘total’ way.33 Course catalogues and syllabi from the 1930s and 1940s tell us,
for example, that chemists and biologists were informed about chemical warfare.
Likewise, students of medical science and law had to take this knowledge about
chemical agents into account.

The third step was an integrative and even intensive study of war. Collecting
and systematising information and data from other disciplines and transforming it
into a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of war was a centrepiece.34 An
Encyclopaedia of Wehrwissenschaften, which was published from 1936 onwards,
fostered the approach of systematisation and distribution of knowledge.35 In a kind
of feedback loop, this overarching knowledge should be influence research in the

33
See for the case of history e.g. Schmitthenner: Die Wehrkunde und ihr Lehrgebäude and for
geography Niedermayer: Wehrgeographie. Practical outputs of his institute include the visualization
of knowledge in different atlases (Wehrgeographische Atlanten) for France, UK, USSR, and USA, in
print in winter 1944/45. These atlases functioned as devices which systematize different knowledge
and brought intelligence in maps and visualizations together.
34
E.g. Niedermayer: Wehrgeographie; Niedermayer: Wehrpolitik; Linnebach: Wehrwissenschaften.
Begriff und System; or Ewald: Wehrwissenschaft.
35
Franke: Handbuch der neuzeitlichen Wehrwissenschaften.
 ‘Bellification’ War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of World Wars (and beyond) 15

discipline. The synthesised, systematised, and aggregate knowledge should be

distributed to other fields of knowledge and interested ministries, other political
institutions, and the private sector.

At the beginning of the 1930s, the concept manifested itself in teaching

appointments at almost every German university. In a few hotspots (like Berlin
and Heidelberg), the universities established special institutes dealing with war
studies in more or less close relationships with the military.36 Besides this, the
German Association for Defence Policy and War-Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft
für Wehrpolitik und Wehrwissenschaften) was founded, which works as a central
network for distributing knowledge of war.37 The association tried to specify the
concept, coordinate the outcomes, and give advice to politicians, military leaders
and lecturers and professors at the university. A look into university course
catalogues and calendars shows us an increasing number of themes dealing with
war in the 1930s. War studies were intensively pushed by people acting in the
space between the military, academia, science, industry, administration, and
student organisations. These civil-military ‘hybrids’ or ‘go-betweens’ worked –
almost literally – as interpreters in the intermediate sphere between academia, the
military, administration, and any other part of society.

4. Beyond Militarisation – Bellification as a Signature for

Analysing Twentieth-Century History?
The birth of the concept named ‘Wehrwissenschaften’ (war studies) in the
interwar years shows that the image of industrialised mass warfare without limits
– ‘total war’ – provided the basis for claiming the concept of ‘total studies of war’.
If war has become total, it has to become a project of society as a whole. In this
context, war studies were both: a) an indicator and b) an agent in a process called
‘bellification’ of society.

36
For example at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin.
37
See Kolmsee: Die Rolle der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Wehrpolitik und Wehrwissenschaften;
Reichherzer: ‘Alles ist Front!’, pp. 233-253.
16 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

War advanced in the modern mindset to a guiding principle of collective belief

systems. War took a diffuse meaning as an influential idea of order in virtually
every area of society – regardless of a liberal, a communist or an authoritarian-
fascist worldview. The societies of the twentieth century, in particular, were
primarily structured with the threat of war looming over them. War became the
measure of all things during this period: Every action, subject, and object was
questioned and evaluated for relevance to the common (future) war effort.

In my view, this tendency, what I suggest we call ‘bellification’, was an

essential signature of the twentieth century with the high tide from the interwar
years till the fading of the Cold War order since the 1970s. Why ‘bellification’? The
analytical framework of bellification is related to but differs from ‘militarisation’
or ‘militarism’. First: Militarisation focuses on the military and the expansion of
military organisational values and into civil society and social systems. In contrast,
the military was not the centre and not the role model, which advanced the process.
It was the self-empowerment of the civil society for war besides a military sphere.
Hence second: ‘Militarisation’ often implies a hijacking of the civil society by
the military. Conversely, bellification brings the agency and actions of the civil
society into the focus of analysis. Third, looking from a bellicistic point of view
back on twentieth-century history, we can identify civil societies in a status of
permeant preparedness and total mobilisation ready for switching from peace to
war literally in one second. Nevertheless, society became not a uniformed military
camp or a ‘garrison state’38. Such kind of ‘hyper-militarisation’ was impossible
and never a goal and was even seen as dysfunctional by most proponents of civil
mobilisation and even within the military.

Instead, the situation was very complex. Bellification sheds light on this. A
quote from German war poet Ernst Jünger in his essay ‘Total mobilisation’ finally
made clear what bellification was about: “Just pressing one button on the console,
and the widely ramified net of energies of peaceful, modern life had to be channelled

38
See Lasswell: The Garrison State.
 ‘Bellification’ War, Military, Society and Knowledge in the Age of World Wars (and beyond) 17

to the power of war”.39 So, the crucial point of ‘war’ in the twentieth century is
more subtle. The heuristic framework of bellification allows for identification and
analysis of self-mobilisation, self-authorisation, or even self-empowerment of the
civil society and emphasises on the appropriation of all affairs of planning and
waging war by non-military actors. War became or should become ‘in-scripted’
into civil societies. Air raid shelters in the basement of skyscrapers or in subway
stations, highways designed to work as potential airfields, public health matters,
pre-military training in schools, transfer of technology to the arms industries,
the resilience of critical infrastructures and many more are examples of taking a
potential war in civil affairs into account – sometimes more visible, sometimes
less visible. The consequence is a hybrid situation, which was neither war nor
peace. However, war has to be put in quotation marks because ‘war’ is a fluid
phenomenon. Sure, ‘war’ could be seen as an armed conflict. Further, ‘war’ is
an idea, an imagination, or principle of order, and at the very least, ‘war’ is a
powerful metaphor. Bellification takes all this into account.

Hence the imperative for research using bellification could be: Look at the
twilight zone between war and peace, between military and civil society. This
could be fruitful for historians and social scientists alike. Bellification works well
as a heuristic and analytical device to explore the role of ‘war’ in societies. The
concept of bellification sheds light on civil-military relations. It makes processes
of using ‘war’ and the specific form and intensity of an orientation towards
‘war’ and their advocates in different quantity and quality visible. Moreover,
bellification is connectable to other processes.

Applying bellification to twentieth-century history, it becomes clear how the

order of war shaped the twentieth century from World War I to the 1970s. Beginning
in the late 1960s and especially since the 1970s, the organisational power of war
for arranging society was questioned from many sides. The implosion of the Cold
War paradigm started from then and faded during the 1980s. If there is a switch
from the concept and metaphor of ‘war’ to ‘market’ as on organising principle

39
Jünger: Die totale Mobilmachung, p. 14.
18 Sharing Experiences in the 20th Century

during the last decades of the twentieth century and maybe to something else
today – this would be another story.

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