A war of annihilation () or war of extermination is a type of war in which the goal is the complete annihilation of a state or a people through genocide or through the destruction of their livelihood. This is different from other types of warfare, which feature more limited political goals, such as recognition of a legal status (such as in a war of independence), control of disputed territory (as in war of aggression or defensive war), or the total military defeat of an enemy state.
Features A war of annihilation is a radical form of warfare in which "all psycho-physical limits" are abolished.Sven Lindqvist: Durch das Herz der Finsternis. Ein Afrika-Reisender auf den Spuren des europäischen Völkermords, Unionsverlag, Zürich 1999, S. 62; Susanne Kuß, Bernd Martin: Das Deutsche Reich und der Boxeraufstand. Iudicium, München 2002, p. 62. Jan Philipp Reemtsma defined it as war, "which is led to, in the worst case, decimate or even destroy a population"Jan Philipp Reemtsma: Die Idee des Vernichtungskrieges. Clausewitz – Ludendorff – Hitler. In: Hannes Heer, Klaus Naumann (Eds.): Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944. Hamburg 1995, pp. 377–401, hier S. 377, vgl. auch 386–398. The state organization of the enemy is to be destroyed. Another characteristic of a war of annihilation is its ideological character and the rejection of negotiations with the enemy. The legitimacy of the opponent is negated and the opponent is demoted to status of a “total enemy,” with whom there can be no negotiations. “Total victory” of one's own "Volk, Krieg und Politik” (people, war and politics) is the purpose and successful outcome (“triumph”) of a war annihilation.Jan Philipp Reemtsma: Die Idee des Vernichtungskrieges. Clausewitz – Ludendorff – Hitler, pp. 386–398, Zitat p. 397.
The canonical example of a war of annihilation is the war on the Eastern Front of World War II fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.Andreas Hillgruber: Die ideologisch-dogmatische Grundlage der nationalsozialistischen Politik der Ausrottung der Juden in den besetzten Gebieten der Sowjetunion und ihre Durchführung 1941–1944. In: German Studies Review 2 (1979), Bd. 3, p. 263–296.
Development Herero uprising
Social Democratic Party of Germany political communications had circulated the term Vernichtungskrieg in order to criticize the action against the insurgents during the Herero Wars.Frank Oliver Sobich: "Schwarze Bestien, rote Gefahr". Rassismus und Antisozialismus im deutschen Kaiserreich. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2006, S. 301–305.
In January 1904, the Herero and Namaqua genocide began in the German colony German South West Africa. With a total of about 15,000 men under Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, this uprising was prostrated until August 1904. Most of the Herero fled to the almost waterless Omaheke, an offshoot of the Kalahari Desert. Von Trotha had them locked down and the refugees chased away from the few water spots there, so that thousands of Herero along with their families and cattle herds died of thirst. The hunted in the desert, let Trotha in the so-called Vernichtungsbefehl, "Annihilation Command":
Trotha's warfare aimed at the complete annihilation of the Herero ("I believe that the nation must be destroyed as such"Brief an Generalstabschef Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, 5. Oktober 1904, in: Michael Behnen: Quellen zur deutschen Aussenpolitik im Zeitalter des Imperialismus 1890–1911. Darmstadt 1977, S. 292.) and was supported in particular by Alfred von Schlieffen and Kaiser Wilhelm II.Dominik J. Schaller: »Ich glaube, dass die Nation als solche vernichtet werden muss: Kolonialkrieg und Völkermord in «Deutsch-Südwestafrika» 1904–1907«. In: Journal of Genocide Research. 6:3, S. 398. His approach is therefore considered to be the first genocide of the twentieth century. Trotha's action sparked outrage in Germany and abroad; at the instigation of chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, the Emperor lifted the order of annihilation two months after the events in the Omaheke. Trotha's policy remained largely unchanged until its revocation in November 1905.
Ludendorff's conception The war of annihilation was a further development of the concept of Total War, as the former imperial General Quartermaster Erich Ludendorff had designed. Thereafter, in a coming war, victory must be given unlimited priority over all other societal concerns: all resources would have to be harnessed, the will of the nation had to be made available before the outbreak of the hostilities are unified by propaganda and dictatorial violence, all available weapons would have to be used, and international law would be disregarded. Even in its objectives, total war is unlimited, as the experience of First World War was teaching:
In this conceptual delimitation of the war, Ludendorff was able to draw from the German military-theoretical discourse, which had formed in the confrontation with the People's War, as well as the "Guerre à outrance", which had been invoked by the newly created Third French Republic in the fall and winter of 1870 against the Prussian-German invaders during the Franco-Prussian War.Robert T. Foley: From Volkskrieg to Vernichtungskrieg. German Concepts of Warfare, 1871–1935. In: Anja Hartmann, Beatrice Heuser (Hrsg.): War, Peace, and World Orders in European History. Routledge, London/New York 2001, S. 215–220.
Ludendorff also dealt with Carl von Clausewitz and his 1832 posthumously published work On War, in which he distinguished between 'absolute' and 'limited' wars. But even for Clausewitz absolute war was subject to restrictions, such as the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, between military and civil or between public and private. Ludendorff claimed now that in total war it is no longer a "petty political purpose", not even "big ... national interests", but the sheer Lebenserhaltung (life-support) of the nation, its identity. This existential threat also justifies the annihilation of the enemy, at least moral, if not physical.Wilhelm Janssen: "War". In: Reinhart Koselleck, Werner Conze, Otto Brunner (eds.): Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Historical lexicon on the political-social language in Germany. Vol. 3, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, pp. 613. Ludendorffs efforts to radicalize the war (for which he was responsible from 1916) met with social, political and military barriers. In the year 1935, his advice was then, as the historian Robert Foley writes, "on fertile ground"; the time seemed ripe for an even more radical delimitation of the war by the Nazis.
Nazi warfare
The best known example of a Vernichtungskrieg is the Eastern Front of World War II, which began on June 22, 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Free University of Berlin historian Ernst Nolte called this the "most egregious Versklavungs- und Vernichtungskrieg [war of enslavement and annihilation] known to modern history" and distinguished it from a "normal war", such as the Nazi regime conducted against France.Ernst Nolte: Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche. Action francaise – Italienischer Faschismus – Nationalsozialismus. Taschenbuchausgabe, Piper, München 1984, S. 451.
According to Andreas Hillgruber, Hitler had four motives in launching Operation Barbarossa, namely The extermination not only of the "Jewish Bolshevik elite" who supposedly governed the Soviet Union since seizing power in the Russian Revolution of 1917, but also the extermination of every single Jewish man, woman and child in the Soviet Union. Providing Germany with Lebensraum ("living space") by settling millions of German colonists within what was soon to be the former Soviet Union, something that would have required a massive population displacement as millions of Russian Untermenschen ("sub-humans") would have had to be forced out of homes to make way for the Herrenvolk ("master-race") colonists. Turning the Russians and other Slavic peoples not expelled from their homes into slaves who would provide Germany with an ultra-cheap labor force to be exploited. Using vast natural resources of the Soviet Union to provide the foundation stone of a German-dominated economic zone in Eurasia that would be immune to blockade, and provide Germany with the sufficient economic strength to allow the Reich to conquer the entire world.
Later, Hillgruber explicitly described the character of the Eastern Front as "intended racial-ideological war of annihilation".Andreas Hillgruber: Der Ostkrieg und die Judenvernichtung, in: Gerd R. Ueberschär u. Wolfram Wette (Hrsg.): Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion. "Unternehmen Barbarossa" 1941. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt a. M. 1991, S. 185–206, Zitat S. 191. Operation Barbarossa has also found its way into the historical-political teaching of general education schools as a historical example of an extermination war.Wigbert Benz: "Unternehmen Barbarossa" 1941. Vernichtungskrieg und historisch-politische Bildung. In: Informationen für den Geschichts- und Gemeinschaftskundeunterricht. Heft 60/2010, S. 5–33; siehe auch Online-Version .
The concept of the war of annihilation was intensely discussed in the 1990s with reference to the Wehrmachtsausstellung of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, which carried the word "Vernichtungskrieg" in the title.Hannes Heer u. a. (Hrsg.): Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944. Ausstellungskatalog. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung. 1. Auflage, Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1996. Johannes Klotz: Die Ausstellung "Vernichtungskrieg, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944". Zwischen Geschichtswissenschaft und Geschichtspolitik. In: Detlef Bald, Johannes Klotz, Wolfram Wette: Mythos Wehrmacht. Nachkriegsdebatten und Traditionspflege. Aufbau, Berlin 2001. That Operation Barbarossa would be a war of annihilation, Adolf Hitler had pronounced openly on March 30, 1941, before the generals of the Wehrmacht:
The orientation of Operation Barbarossa as a prior planned war of annihilation proves the commands prepared according to the general guidelines cited by Adolf Hitler on 30 March 1941 before the start of the campaign, such as the Barbarossa Decree of 13 May 1941, the Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia of 19 May 1941 and the Commissar Order of 6 June 1941.Rolf-Dieter Müller, Gerd R. Ueberschär: Hitlers Krieg im Osten 1941–1945. Ein Forschungsbericht. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2000, S. 226 f. The German guidelines for agricultural policy in the Soviet territories to be conquered are one of the most extreme examples of a robbery and annihilation strategy. In a meeting of the secretaries of State on May 2, 1941, the Hunger Plan prepared: "This will undoubtedly starve tens of millions of people if we get what we need pried out of the country."
The German historian Jochen Böhler regarded the invasion of Poland as "prelude to the Vernichtungskrieg" against the Soviet Union in 1941.Jochen Böhler: Die Zerstörung der Nachbarschaft. Die Anfänge des Vernichtungskrieges gegen Polen 1939. In: Mike Schmeitzner, Katarzyna Stokłosa (Hrsg.): Partner oder Kontrahenten? Deutsch-polnische Nachbarschaft im Jahrhundert der Diktaturen. Berlin 2008, S. 77–92; Jochen Böhler: Intention oder Situation? Soldaten der Wehrmacht und die Anfänge des Vernichtungskrieges in Polen. In: Timm C. Richter (Hrsg.): Krieg und Verbrechen. Situation und Intention. Fallbeispiele. Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsbuchhandlung, München 2006, S. 165–172; Jochen Böhler: Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg. Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939. 2. Auflage, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006.
Use of the term