war of annihilation.

So far, this has stood for Germany's war of aggression against the Soviet Union.

Last but not least, the battlefield was Ukraine.

Today, the term war of annihilation is increasingly used for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

There, the Russian soldiers are already being called "the Germans" because of their war crimes - especially by the older Ukrainians who had to experience the Second World War.

Against this background, the question arises again and all the more urgently as to why in most of Europe, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the “conservation” of the war largely succeeded for a hundred years.

But not after that - with consequences up to today's news situation.

Not infrequently reference is made to the European experiences in the colonial wars.

They would also have changed the wars in Europe.

But is there really a linear development here?

Dieter Langewiesche poses this question by comparing pre-colonial and colonial wars - something that has rarely been attempted ("'Savage War' as 'People's War': Nineteenth-Century African Wars, European Perceptions, and the Future of Warfare", in : The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 94, Issue 3, September 2022 / The University of Chicago Press).

The long road to total war

Langewiesche arrives at extremely valuable results - especially with a view to the future of war in the present.

First, he reminds us that “uncontrolled war” has run through the entire history of mankind.

Modern technology has changed the ways of killing and the number of dead has increased enormously.

But uncontrolled war has always aimed to fight the opponent by destroying the living environment from which he drew his ability to fight.

In this respect, war at all times has approached what has been called total war since the early twentieth century.

In order to determine the place of the colonial war in the history of war, it is enough for Langewiesche to state: In total war, society as a whole is object and subject of war, goal and resource.

This totality only breaks open when war is protected under international law, in that a distinction is made between combatants and civilians and the war is declared a matter for the state and its military.

The division between civilians and combatants is at the heart of the war that is cherished.

It presupposes a functioning state that has a monopoly on the use of force even in times of war.

According to Langewiesche, this was not the case when Ottoman rule in the Balkans collapsed.

That is why the mixture of citizen, conquest,

Secession and state-building wars repeatedly spread to the population.

According to Langewiesche's analysis, the temporarily special path of the cherished war after 1815 was only taken in non-Ottoman Europe.

There is also another observation: in the nineteenth century, war of annihilation meant something different than in the twentieth – Langewiesche describes a shift from the destruction of the enemy's fighting power in battle to the destruction of his society's war capability.

This fundamental change was inherent in the people's or national war, as it emerged as an idea around 1800, from the beginning - and its disengagement was inscribed in it as a program, so to speak.

Langewiesche emphasizes that it was possible to prevent it in the wars within Europe for a century after 1815.

For the Tübingen historian, who was born on January 11, 1943 and who published the book “The Violent Teacher.

Europe's Wars in the Modern Era" is one of the great cultural achievements of nineteenth-century Europe.

In their colonial wars, on the other hand, the Europeans did not attempt this preservation from the outset, as Langewiesche notes.

There they encountered the disenfranchised war, waged and radicalized it themselves.

Therefore he sees the connection between the colonial wars and the wars in Europe in the twentieth century not in a transference from there to here, but in the peculiarity of the people's war.

This is designed to disengage because he wants to involve the whole of society in the fighting.

This is exactly what happened in Africa, but already in the pre-colonial wars.

They were people's wars in the full sense of the word, therefore not cherished wars - on the contrary: "levée en masse" of all men who were physically capable of war, with the participation of all women.

According to Langewiesche, one could already have observed in the colonial areas how wars in Europe were supposed to turn civil society into an object of struggle, when social performance was decisive in people's wars.

The wars there would have given a glimpse into the future of the war - and thus into the current war of annihilation in Ukraine.