The German military and excessive violence during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870/71

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This sub-project will question the emphasis in the historiography on a strict break between the war of 1870/71 and the First World War or, better said, qualify it in favour of the argument of a stronger continuity between these conflicts. Linked to an emphasis on lines of continuity is the theory that the breaking of taboos occurring in the context of excessive violence confirms the assumption that the real rupture is to be found in the 1870s / 1880s, when – in the words of Ulrich Herbert – the period of ‘high modernity’ began. In this way, the study, in addition to the knowledge gained about military history, will make a central contribution to the debate on the connection between violence and modernity. At the same time, the project questions the assumption that a de- or increase in violence in modern times follows certain physical laws or paths. The practices of excessive violence in the years 1870/71 were, ultimately, not new. Instead, they reflect patterns that had already taken shape in the Napoleonic Wars. Where those conflicts assumed features of guerrilla wars, the violence had already escalated at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The observation that violence within Europe was curbed in the decades that followed, only to then assume forms of renewed brutality in the context of the struggle against the francs-tireurs in 1870/71, fits neither in the narrative of increasing violence in the modern era nor in that of the progress of civilisation and thus a continual decline in violence. In this way, the excessive violence of the war of 1870/71 illustrates, first, the inherent contradictions of the nineteenth century. Second, the necessity thereby becomes clear of taking into account the situational contexts as a central level of analysis that favoured the outbreak of illegitimate forms of violence. Keeping all this in mind, the sub-project will enquire as to the existence of a specific Prussian-German military culture of violence that emerged no later than the Napoleonic Wars, existed throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, and could be witnessed above all in the context of anti-guerrilla warfare.