War trauma

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A war trauma or war neurosis ( Combat stress reaction ( CSR )) describes a serious change in behavior after war experiences, which are usually caused by a trauma (also psychological, emotional or mental trauma or psychotrauma) and are caused by the soldier (after the War - " veterans ") but also civilians can be affected.

In the past, these incidents were only officially registered when the soldiers affected were immediately incapacitated . For the first time in large numbers was in the First World War , especially after barrage persistent disturbances or Nahexplosionen, registered with the soldiers, who in the German Reichswehr as war trembling , in English as shell shock (de: grenades shock) or battle fatigue , in French as obusite and in Spanish as Fatiga de combate . This was not a temporary acute stress reaction in the people, but a long-term disturbance.

A psychological effect during the use of weapons has already been assumed and should weaken the enemy psychologically and morally, especially through continuous fire. Internal injuries from explosions had long been known; Explosions from grenades could still lead to cracks in internal organs at a distance of more than 10 meters , which is why it was assumed at the time that the brains of the suspicious soldiers could have been injured, even if there were no external injuries ( pop trauma etc.). Recent research suggests that people exposed to severe explosions during the war did indeed have internal brain damage.

After the Vietnam War , psychological effects were recorded for the first time, which were not only noticed during, but often only after the end of a period of service. With the new possibility of diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) it was soon established that soldiers and war veterans can also use it to depict these symptoms , and PTSD diagnoses have been recognized as an occupational disease for soldiers in the USA since 1980 . (PTSD was included in the psychiatric diagnostic code Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM III that year.)

Among veterans is suicide rate higher than among other population groups. This was evident, for example, after the two Iraq wars and among those returning from Afghanistan . One in ten British convicts and one in four American homeless people is a veteran.

Civilian population groups can also be affected by a war trauma, whether in the narrower sense of a PTSD or other after-effects:

It turns out that the traumas suffered are passed on by way of transgenerational transmission to the following generations , who themselves had no part of their own experience in the event, and thus have a long-lasting effect on society.

Symptoms

The most frequently mentioned and occurring behaviors and accompanying circumstances of a Combat stress reaction (CSR) that are first noticed by an affected person are in particular:

  • Changed reaction time or its perception
  • Slowdown in thinking
  • Abnormalities in general behavior and the right setting of priorities
  • Occupation with incidental matters and personal sensitivities
  • Difficulties and breaks in concentration
  • Listlessness and indifference
  • States of exhaustion

These changes in behavior can be accompanied by various physical symptoms; u. a .:

  • Cardiac arrhythmias and circulatory disorders
  • General tension and back pain
  • Sweats
  • Tremble
  • Loss of appetite
  • Hyperventilation
  • Nightmares and flashbacks
  • Impossibility to relax
  • Incontinence

It is not uncommon for these complaints to increase in old age or to be more noticeable in retirement than before during the period of employment.

During the Second World War , 504,000 men in the American Army (excluding the Navy and Air Force) were incapacitated due to mental health problems .

Some people experience trauma reactivation: they suddenly remember earlier suffering, B. can be triggered by television images of current wars (e.g. Second Gulf War (1991), Kosovo War (1989/99) or Iraq War (2003)). Suddenly people are caught up with their past.

history

Ancient and Middle Ages

The Greek philosopher Heraklit (around 520 – around 460 BC) describes war as the father of all things, separating gods and men, free people and slaves:

“War is the father of all things and the king of all. He makes some gods, others men, some slaves, others free. "

- Heraclitus

Pindar (522 or 518-446 BC), on the other hand, formulates the horrors of war that only those who have experienced it know:

“War seems sweet to the inexperienced; yes, when he approaches; the heart is terrified beyond measure; the one who knows him "

- Pindar of Thebes

Erasmus of Rotterdam took up this quote from Pindar and in 1517 published his anti-war pamphlet The Lamentation of Peace ; he was also one of the first to mention dementia (Latin for "madness") as a psychological consequence of the war.

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648 was interpreted early as a collective trauma . War atrocities were documented for the first time, which also included the mass rape of women and a preliminary form of waterboarding (" Swedish drink "). In his “The Lamentations of Germany” in 1638, the Briton Philip Vincent described the torture methods used by the mercenaries in the Thirty Years' War. In the besieged cities as well as in the plundered land, cannibalism also arose after the war , as Hans Heberle documented in his "Zeytregister".

In 1983 the historian Arthur E. Imhof stated that this period of horror had permanently traumatized the inhabitants of many localities.

“Comparisons with the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries suggest that people were severely traumatized as a result. Surprisingly, the reports that have come down to us do not provide any direct evidence for this. Belief probably offered ways to deal with the crisis. The significance of cultural explanatory models for dealing with trauma has, however, so far hardly been researched. "

- Bernd Roeck : Trauma: God's punishment, God's grace on www.spektrum.de

Attempts are made to see this “collective trauma” as the prehistory of a “German Sonderweg” , which would ultimately have led to National Socialism , as it was stated in some cases. a. was postulated by Helmuth Plessner .

The best-known example of a literary processing of this time is Bertolt Brecht's play " Mother Courage and Her Children " from 1938/39, which makes it clear that the brutalization and destruction of people through violence is possible anywhere and at any time.

American Civil War

In this armed conflict (1861–1865) soldiers were registered for the first time who were no longer fit to fight due to their mental state. Such diagnoses were rarely made and were rarely documented absolute exceptions.

Symptoms in the direction of a current PTSD diagnosis were already known and were referred to as "irritable heart" (en: nervous heart) but above all as "soldiers heart syndrome" (en: soldiers heart syndrome). The heart problems often disappeared when the soldiers were no longer exposed to the stressful situation, as the American doctor Jacob Mendes Da Costa subsequently discovered in 1871. DaCosta had investigated the cases in order to differentiate them from other heart syndromes (for Da Costa syndrome, see cardiophobia ).

The American author and war veteran Ambrose Bierce vividly describes the change in thinking and acting with a changed perception of the reaction time in his stories and short stories from the American Civil War .

Franco-German War

The Franco-German War (1870/71) had similar data; there are only 13 registered cases of incapacitated soldiers. As in the American Civil War, what happened to former soldiers after their service did not matter.

First World War: "War Shiver"

Some symptoms were already present in the First World War (1914-1918) and a. also noticed in the German Reichswehr . As war Zitterer soldiers were called, who suffered from "shell shock" (especially "psychogenic movement disorders").

Most of the patients had a tremor : they trembled uncontrollably (hence the name), could not stand on their feet or use a gun, refused to eat and had to face everyday objects such as B. hats or shoes panic fears . Treatment was with a controversial type of electrotherapy ("surprise therapy").

"The generation of 1914 died in the war, even if they escaped his grenades."

- Nothing new in the West from Erich Maria Remarque 1928

Those affected were often diagnosed with hysteria or the like; the term post-traumatic stress disorder was completely unknown at the time. Rather, one was quickly seen as a desateur or fugitive : z. For example, the graphic designer and artist George Grosz (including Christ with the gas mask) claimed to have been almost shot in 1917 and was only saved through the intervention of Count Harry Kessler . Instead, he was sent to a mental hospital and on May 20, 1917, he was released as "unusable".

In the sense of a psychopathography of Adolf Hitler , it is speculated today to what extent a war trauma contributed to Adolf Hitler's destructive character or even was mainly responsible. For this purpose z. B. Gerhard Vinnai 2004 Hitler's book Mein Kampf analyzed.

Bomb Shell Disease

The Allies established the terms bomb shell disease or shell shock as well as the adjective shell shy . It was assumed that the pressure waves from the explosions pressed the brains against the walls of the skull and thus damaged them.

The whistling of the grenades during their flight or general combat events could trigger conditioning due to perceived helplessness . ("A grenade is about to strike, maybe you will be wounded or dead; there is nothing you can do") which leads to panic or complete freezing. (In the case of the latter, the Americans have also been speaking of two thousand yard starlings since 1944 , when the affected soldier looks motionless and unresponsive into nothing without focusing on anything).

German Empire (1933–1945)

After a law of July 3, 1934, during the Nazi era , mental illnesses were no longer recognized as a result of war trauma, between 4,000 and 5,000 mentally ill veterans of the First World War were finally killed as part of the Nazi murders .

During the Second World War, other symptoms of the disease came to the fore, in particular gastric, intestinal, and cardiovascular diseases. In the Wehrmacht they spoke of "stomach battalions", in which soldiers with corresponding psychosomatic ailments were grouped together. These were then often used behind the front lines, but also served as cannon fodder . If the fighting conditions were similar to those in World War I, especially in the Battle of Stalingrad , the symptoms of "war tremors" reappeared.

Okinawa

In the Battle of Okinawa from April 1 to June 30, 1945, the Japanese defenders on Okinawa probably lost around 100,000 (at least 66,000) soldiers and 42,000 civilians. The attacking US troops subsequently counted around 7,600 dead and 37,000 wounded.

In addition, there were around 26,000 "other illnesses" among the Americans, which were mainly of a psychological nature, and around 10,000 soldiers who were considered so exhausted that they were only rated as partially operational.

post war period

War returnees

The extent of the war trauma was taboo for many in Germany after 1945 ; As a rule, those returning from the war did not say a word about their personal war experiences and sufferings from them.

As z. For example, the writer Bernhard Schulz wanted to publish his text “Pencil Outline of a Resurrected Man” in 1946 by describing his war trauma for the first time, but it was rejected as too brutal.

Returnees spoke even more rarely about war crimes that had also been committed by the Wehrmacht . This silence about crimes committed by the Wehrmacht belongs to the same complex of “collective repression” that was observed even more closely in dealing with anti-Semitism , the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust . Nobody had known anything, nobody had done anything, or just carried out orders. The majority of those returning from the war apparently practiced the same "ostentatious ignorance" (Peter Longerich) as the general population with regard to youth persecution.

1.1 million German soldiers did not even return from Russian captivity until later (the last in 1955) and had apparently been traumatized by the circumstances of captivity there at the latest. Russian soldiers of the Red Army , insofar as they had survived captivity at all, were released immediately after the end of the war, but Stalin treated these returnees like traitors and persecuted them.

War children

Michael Ermann (Head of the Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at the Psychiatric University Clinic in Munich) completed a study on 'War trauma in war children ' in 2009 . The largest study to date (as of 2010) on the subject of childhood at war resulted in a .:

  • Children of war suffer from mental disorders such as anxiety, depression and psychosomatic complaints far more often than the population average.
  • Around a quarter of the war children surveyed were severely restricted in their psychosocial quality of life,
  • one in ten had been traumatized or had significant traumatic complaints, for example recurring, intrusive war memories, anxiety, depression and psychosomatic complaints such as cramps, palpitations and chronic pain.

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War (1964–1975) marked a turning point; For the first time, the phenomenon was perceived as "combat stress" and systematically recorded.

Term and diagnosis Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was first established by Ann Wolbert Burgess and the sociologist Lynda Lytle Holmstrom in 1974 - albeit not specifically for soldiers. It soon became clear that the "combat stress" - which made many Vietnam veterans homeless because their own lives had completely slipped away - was largely congruent with the PTSD clinical picture.

Audie Murphy (1925–1971), the most decorated US soldier of World War II, also suffered from war trauma since his combat missions. He advocated the concerns of US military veterans (e.g. returning Korean War and Vietnam War soldiers) and finally broke the taboo on speaking publicly about the causality of military operations and psychological damage.

Falklands War

War trauma from British and Argentinean soldiers and veterans could also be observed in the Falklands War of 1982 and thereafter. Several studies show that about a fifth of British soldiers developed symptoms of PTSD after the war, but that this rarely led to an "abnormal life" later.

A group of 2,000 veterans, including a number of soldiers who had been to the Falkland Islands, sued the UK Department of Defense in 2002 on charges of inadequate medical or psychological care for severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The lawsuit reached the Supreme Court in 2003, which dismissed the lawsuit.

Adaptations

Visual arts

  • 1944: Two Thousand Yard Stare ; Painting by the war painter Thomas C. Lea, which he made in 1944 after the Battle of Peleliu . The picture shows the frontal portrait of a soldier after the battle, whose fixed gaze seems to penetrate the viewer. After the picture was published in Life Magazine , the painting's title became synonymous with the facial expression and unfocused gaze of a traumatized and exhausted soldier, now considered a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

performing Arts

Movies

  • 1969: Ryan's daughter ; British melodrama ; the film character Randolph Doryan is transferred to Ireland to cure his war trauma and there involved in the Irish uprising of 1916 ( Easter Rising ).
  • 1970 Catch-22 - The Bad Trick ; The US film addresses the stress of the bomber crews of a bomber squadron during the Second World War, in which the behavior of those involved becomes increasingly grotesque. The key scene is a recurring traumatic flashback of the main character John Yossarian in a severely damaged plane on the return flight with the dialogue: "Help him! ..... Help the bombardier!" “But that's me! I'm the bomber ”-“ Then help him! ”-“ I'm fine. ”
  • 1979: Apocalypse Now ; The American anti-war film depicts a trip to hell through the absurdities of a meaningless war and reveals the abysses of the human soul. From today's point of view, the main character Captain Willard himself shows symptoms of a war trauma from the very beginning and is therefore not the only one in the film.
  • 1982: Rambo : in the US film, the Vietnam veteran is picked up by a sheriff while he is on foot. Physically abused and humiliated by the deputies, traumatic memories of his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam are awakened in the former Green Beret . He forcibly breaks free and the situation gets out of hand. In a monologue at the end of the film, Rambo describes how after the war he was unable to find his way in the society that no longer gave him a chance. He describes how he still suffers from the terrible events of the war.
  • 1989: Born on July 4th , the filmed autobiography by Ron Kovic , is a cathartic development story confronting the trauma of Vietnam ; which explains that Kovic was apparently not only physically, but also mentally wounded in the war.
  • 2013 Our mothers, our fathers : In the German miniseries about the Second World War, the film character Wilhelm is incapacitated by the impact of a bazooka and wandering around without being outwardly wounded. This is interpreted as deserting him. The death penalty is converted into a transfer to a penal battalion . His brother, actually the more sensitive of the two, develops more and more into a brutal fighting machine after being wounded.

theatre

  • 1929: Erwin Piscator publishes his manifesto “The Political Theater”, with which he wanted to transform the internal horrors of war into a total reform of the theater. The implementation began in 1927, lasted until 1931 and is now known as the Piscator stage .

music

  • 2013: In the music video The Wrong Side of Heaven , the American metal band Five Finger Death Punch addresses the difficulties of US veterans reintegrating into civilian life. A list of organizations where affected people can find help is shown in the credits.

Others

MAPS is an association that considers MDMA and other psychoactive substances indispensable for many people - e.g. B. severely traumatized people (rape, accident, war trauma, mistreatment) - and calls for the therapeutic use of these substances for patients.

Web links

Wiktionary: War trauma  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

  • Bettina Alberti: Emotional Trümmer: Born in the 50s and 60s: The post-war generation in the shadow of the war trauma. (With an afterword by Anna Gamma ). 4th edition. Kösel-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-466-30866-8 .
  • Evangelical Academy Bad Boll: Children of War - Yesterday and Today. Documentation for the conference Children of War - Yesterday and Today, April 17-19, 2000, ISSN 0170-5970.
  • Sabine Bode : The forgotten generation - the war children break their silence. 5th edition. 2011, ISBN 978-3-492-26405-1 .
  • Sabine Bode: The German disease - German fear. 3. Edition. 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-25135-8 .
  • Hartmut Radebold , Werner Bohleber , Jürgen Zinnecker (eds.): Transgenerational transmission of war-burdened childhoods: Interdisciplinary studies on the sustainability of historical experiences over four generations . 2nd Edition. Beltz Juventa, 2007, ISBN 978-3-7799-1735-9 .
  • Maria Hermes-Wladarsch: Illness: War. Psychiatric interpretations of the First World War , Klartext Verlag Essen 2012 (dissertation).
  • Maria Hermes-Wladarsch: Conceptions of hysteria in the medical discourse of the First World War. An examination of the patient files of the St. Jürgen Asylum in Bremen , Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin 2008

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Invisible but deadly scars from Kai Biermann on Zeit.de from June 11, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d e War trauma among soldiers: Hardened souls by Christoph Wöhrle from February 7, 2020 on Spiegel.online (based on the book Illness: War by Maria Hermes-Wladarsch)
  3. ↑ www.veteranscrisisline.net
  4. ^ US Department of Veterans Affairs - Mental Health , mentalhealth.va.gov
  5. ↑ Ronja von Wurmb-Seibel: Bundeswehr: "... then new ones will come again". Worn out, managed, forgotten - Germany leaves its war veterans alone. In: zeit.de. June 21, 2012, accessed December 8, 2014 .
  6. ↑ spiegel.de (2008, English): New German Study Looks at Rape Trauma 60 Years On
  7. ↑ War trauma: Got away again on fr-online by Renate Kingman on June 28, 2009
  8. ↑ a b spiegel.de November 1, 2008: The children of war remember. - 14 million senior citizens in Germany spent their first years of life in misery and fear. After decades, many of them are now struggling with long-repressed experiences.
  9. ↑ Gabriel: The Painful Field: The Psychiatric Dimension of Modern War. New York Greenwood Press, 1988, ISBN 0-313-24718-8 , p. 2.
  10. ↑ a b Battlefield in the Hell of Nerve Doctors on www.sueddeutsche.de on March 19, 2014
  11. ^ The Lamentations of Germany, wherein, as in a glasse, we may behold her miserable condition, composed by Dr Vincent, Theo [alias Philip Vincent] , London 1638. Paperback edition Eebo Editions Verlag; December 14, 2010, ISBN 1240163681
  12. ↑ Gerd Zillhardt: The Thirty Years War in a contemporary representation: Hans Heberle's 'Zeytregister' (1618–1672). Records from the Ulm territory; a contribution to historiography and the understanding of history among the lower classes . Research on the history of the city of Ulm. Volume 13. (also University of Tübingen, dissertation 1975). Kohlhammer Verlag . Stuttgart 1975.
  13. ↑ Arthur E. Imhof: The lost worlds. Coping with everyday life through our ancestors , CH Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-30270-X .
  14. ↑ https://www.spektrum.de/news/die-psychischen-haben-des-dreissigjaehrigen-kriegs/1589152%7C Bernd Roeck: Trauma: God's punishment, God's grace on www.spektrum.de
  15. ↑ Helmuth Plessner: The fate of the German spirit at the end of its bourgeois epoch. Niehans, Zurich et al. 1935, (With a changed title as the 2nd, expanded edition: The belated nation. On the political seduction of the bourgeois spirit. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1959)
  16. ↑ Rainer Rupprecht, Michael Kellner: Anxiety disorders: Clinic, research, therapy
  17. ↑ Ludwig Mann: New methods and points of view for the treatment of the war neuroses. In: Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift. Volume 53, 1916, pp. 1333-1338.
  18. ↑ Ferdinand Kehrer : On the question of the treatment of war neuroses. In: Journal of the Entire Neurology and Psychiatry. Volume 36, 1917, pp. 1-22.
  19. ^ Fritz Kaufmann: The planned healing of complicated psychogenic movement disorders in soldiers in one session. In: Münchner medical Wochenschrift. Volume 64, 1916, pp. 802-804.
  20. ↑ Reinhard Platzek: The psychiatric treatment according to Kaufmann - is it really medical torture? A reflection on the modern perception of electrosuggestive therapy. In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 34, 2015 (2016), pp. 169-193.
  21. ^ Gerhard Vinnai: Hitler - failure and extermination. On the genesis of the fascist perpetrator , Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2004, ISBN 978-3-89806-341-8 ; Author's website
  22. ^ Edward Shorter : A historical Dictionary of Psychiatry . Oxford University Press, New York 2005, ISBN 0-19-517668-5 , Stw. Shell shock, pp. 224 ff., 290; Archive link ( Memento from December 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  23. ↑ Mardi Gras in Hell. The First World War and the senses. House of History Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 2014, p. 108 f., P. 156–159 and 166.
  24. ↑ Susanne Michl: Emotional Worlds: Concepts of Fear in War Psychiatry. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt. 2014, 111 (33-34), pp. 1218-1220. on-line
  25. ↑ The horror of Okinawa became a trauma for the GIs on www.welt.de on April 1, 2005
  26. ↑ Second World War: "Resurrected from the mass grave" on spiegelonline.de from April 15, 2018
  27. ↑ Peter Longerich: Collective displacement: We didn't know anything about it. The Germans and the Persecution of the Jews 1933–1945 . Siedler-Verlag, Munich 2006
  28. ↑ World War: The Terrible Fate of the Soviet Prisoners of War of November 15, 2017
  29. ↑ spiegel.de | Repressed horror: How war children pass on their trauma by Ulrike Demmer on spiegel.de on February 27, 2009
  30. ↑ Rape Trauma Syndrome . In: Am J Psychiatry . 131, No. 9, 1974, pp. 981-986. doi : 10.1176 / ajp.131.9.981 . PMID 4415470 .
  31. ^ IMDb - Biography for Audie Murphy
  32. ^ Freedman: The Official History of the Falklands Campaign. Vol. II, 2007, pp. 737-739
  33. ↑ Glenn R. Schiraldi: The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook . McGraw Hill, New York 2009, ISBN 007161494X , p. 215.
  34. ↑ the First World War: Trauma and theater on www.aerzteblatt.de of Vera Kattermann in PP 17, December 2018 page 572
  35. ^ Christian Klein, Franz-Josef Deiters: The First World War in Drama - German and Australian Perspectives ; Springer Verlag 2018