“You know what to do with them”: The formulation of orders and engagement in war crimes

Aggression and Violent Behavior 19 (2014) 83–90

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Aggression and Violent Behavior

“You know what to do with them”: The formulation of orders and engagement in war crimes Sophie Richardot ⁎ University of Picardie, Jules Verne, Department of Educational Sciences, Curapp-Ess (UMR 7319: CNRS/UPJV), Campus, Chemin du Thil, 80025 Amiens Cedex 1, France

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Received 30 May 2013 Accepted 9 January 2014 Available online 30 January 2014 Keywords: Military orders Obedience to authority Violence Torture Mass murder Genocide

a b s t r a c t Based on a study of historical and social−psychological literature, this article examines the various strategies to which political, military, and police authorities have recourse to incite subordinates to engage in atrocities. Our hypothesis is that the formulation of orders plays an important role in processes aiming to get individuals to engage in war crimes. We studied three contexts (the Second World War, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) allowing us to propose a categorization of military orders to massacre or torture into five types: orders that give a choice, or are partial, coded, ambiguous, or fragmented. We add another specific category to the analysis, orders in the act. The analysis shows that in a democratic context, those giving orders tend to privilege vague, ambiguous, or partial orders, preserving appearances by being attentive to what may be verbalized and legality. In dictatorial contexts, order-givers tend instead to privilege explicit orders while trying to soften the psychological impact on subordinates (orders that give a choice, are coded, or are fragmented). We then discuss the consequences in terms of responsibility between the hierarchy and the executants. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents 1. 2. 3.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . Legality and the formulation of orders . . Categorizing orders . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. Orders that give a choice . . . . 3.2. Orders that are partial . . . . . . 3.3. Orders that are vague or ambiguous 3.4. Orders that are coded . . . . . . 3.5. Orders that are fragmented . . . 4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1. Introduction How are ordinary individuals transformed into mass killers? This question is at the heart of the debate between Christopher Browning and Daniel Goldhagen over the “motivations” of the members of the German 101st Reserve Police Battalion in the massacre of the Eastern European Jewish population, beginning in 1942. These authors inferred the reasons pushing battalion members into action from the way the order for the first massacre was given. We know that when the battalion arrived at the site, Commander Trapp announced to his men that they would have to shoot Jews, and offered them the chance to leave the ⁎ Tel.: +33 3 22 82 71 48. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1359-1789/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2014.01.001

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ranks if they didn't feel capable of doing so. Only 10–12 of the 486 men, according to witnesses, took advantage of the opportunity. Browning (1998) concluded that they didn't want to dodge the “dirty work” at the expense of their comrades, that they didn't want to lose face by appearing to be “cowards” and “weak,” and that conformity played a more decisive role in their behavior than obedience did. Goldhagen (1997), on the other hand, saw in this small number of men the proof of German hatred of the Jews, and their complete support of the massacre. But how do we interpret the fact that this order left subordinates the choice between executing and disregarding it? Why was it formulated that way? More generally speaking, how might an order offering the possibility of opting out affect the people receiving it? How can people act, and react, when confronted with an order formulated in a way

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that goes against standard military practice, usually leaving subordinates no latitude? Isn't it, as Canetti reminds us, even “in the nature of the order to not allow any contradiction, to tolerate neither discussion nor explanation nor doubt (1986, p. 322)?” The very form of orders to massacre is certainly not innocuous, and we believe it deserves to be analyzed in order to better understand the process that drives “ordinary” individuals to commit atrocities. We find this is revealing of the representations that the authorities make of the state of mind of those who must pass to the act, and the conditions they think would be most conducive for the effective execution of such acts. Namely, why did the German commander give a choice if he was, as one might assume, convinced that the orders would not be met with reticence, or even opposition? There is little work directly addressing the formulation of deadly orders, but many studies have allowed the identification of different strategies authorities may call on to push individuals to violence. First, they may preferentially recruit people who are particularly malleable and share their ideology of war (Lankford, 2009).1 They may then give them special training aiming to prepare them to commit atrocities and to make them aggressive, often consisting of desensitizing them to violence (by humiliating them or subjecting them to particularly stressful exercises), and/or making them lose their personal identity to a group identity (by giving them, for example, a uniform, a number or a nom de guerre, or subjecting them to hazing) (Huggins, Haritos-Fatouros, & Zimbardo, 2002). This trend in making individuals anonymous and interchangeable – de-individualizing them – facilitates their engagement in destructive behaviors, especially when they are given permission to act in an aggressive way (Zimbardo, 2007). Training also aims to make new recruits into individuals who are unconditionally obedient to their superiors' orders (Haritos-Fatouros, 1995), to make them think that they have no choice but to do what they are ordered to do. Under the influence of authority, the individual tends to no longer see himor herself as personally responsible for the consequences of his or her actions (Kelman, 1973). This phenomenon is even stronger when the victim is physically distant from the executant and when the executant only plays a secondary role in the process that leads to making the victim suffer (Milgram, 2009). This is how the establishment of a “division of labor,” breaking criminal operations down into a series of steps to be carried out by different individuals, facilitates the smooth progression of criminal operations. It is even more effective because the responsibility is diffused all along the atrocity “production chain,” thus favoring their perpetration (Bauman, 2000). This toolkit inciting ordinary individuals to become violent is usually put in place in a context of overall insecurity. Political and military leaders try to play on collective fears, to invite subordinates (and the entire population in general) to defend themselves and to engage in a battle often formulated in terms of “the war against [X].” They thus favor the development of a warlike ideology and a culture of hate and violence in relation to certain clearly identified groups, designating the “enemies” to fight by inciting their target audience to perceive them as “subhuman” (Waller, 2007). This dehumanization of “the enemy” brings actors to stop perceiving their victims as similar to them, to such an extent that it becomes incidental, even necessary, to eliminate them (Grossman, 2009; Kelman, 1973; Welzer, 2008). The hierarchy may also try to create a climate authorizing violence that legitimates actions that would be considered as morally reprehensible in normal times (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). It may give indirect orders susceptible to favor the use of violence. To incite American soldiers to resort to torture in Iraq, for example, superiors only had to describe an activity and suggest it would be suitable for reaching the pursued objectives (Danner, 2004, p. 20). In this configuration, “there 1 It is important to point out, however, that the authorities steer away from sadistic recruits, susceptible to become uncontrollable and impede the satisfactory completion of missions. The selected people are thus generally “normal” people who are not psychopathic (Haritos-Fatouros, 2003).

are no orders to torture, but the situation can be predicted to cause it” (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 256). Because orders are not formally made explicit, the authorities thus clear themselves of responsibility for what they put in place (Baumeister, 2001). The terms used to designate atrocities are often misleading: “final solution,” “special treatment,” “evacuation,” “liquidated,” “finished off,” and “elimination” to designate the extermination of Jews; “tough interrogation,” “enhanced interrogations,” and “controlled acute episodes” to refer to torture in Iraq (Arendt, 1963; Baum, 2006; Blum, 2008; Huggins, 2011; Lankford, 2009; Mitchell, 1999). We know that linguistic manipulations contribute to subordinates' moral disengagement from the crimes they commit by making them lose sight of the real meaning of their actions (Bandura, 1999, 2002; McLister, Bandura, & Owen, 2006). This type of formulation also blurs the boundaries between moral and immoral, between ordinary and abnormal, so well that the frontiers between good and evil become much less solid. Baumeister (2001) identifies another way to bring individuals to transgress their usual moral inhibitions: leave them ignorant of what they will be doing for as long as possible. The individuals will have less opportunity to protest and refuse what is asked of them if they only truly realize the finality of the instructions at the last minute. Welzer (2007, 2008) has shown the effectiveness of this strategy, simultaneously allowing men to work away untroubled and gradually get used to the idea, as they are carrying out their mission, of what might be required of them in the end. This article proposes a research-based categorization, as exhaustive as possible, for the various formulations to which authorities may rely on in ordering executants to engage in criminal conduct. We show that, to bring subordinates to commit atrocities, superiors may try to manipulate them more than exercising genuine coercion. The effectiveness they seek will be even greater if the executant keeps an impression of freedom that allows him or her to subscribe to the criminal undertaking. This is because the operation will be even more successful if the motivations to obey are not solely based on submission (the fear of reprisals or the hope of rewards) but also on identification (loyalty to the leader, group, or organization) or internalization (ideological agreement on what is being asked) (Kelman, 1958; Tyler, 2006; Waller, 2007). As we will see, these are so many strategies allowing subordinates to preserve the feeling of freedom. The strategy we saw earlier in the German battalion, consisting of telling individuals that they are free to accept or refuse what is asked of them in a situation where the probability of refusal is low, is the best possible way to engage people in the desired acts (Kiesler, 1971). This absence of pressure additionally allows a process of rationalization to begin in the person, that is, “a psychological process that brings people to recognize as legitimate behaviors that are extorted from them by the exercise of power” (Joule, 1987, p. 11). They will thus tend to voluntarily obey the orders of authority because they will be made the motivation for their conduct. Thus any free inscription feeds the subordinate's “sense of commitment”, and he or she will feel a moral obligation to play his or her chosen role through to the end (Milgram, 2009). This feeling of obligation is even stronger when the subordinate attributes great legitimacy to his or her superior, considering him or her to be a credible actor in an undertaking that can be trusted (Tyler, 1997). He or she may even go so far as to consider that orders coming from such an authority, exercised in a seemingly legal framework, are by definition legal orders (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). 2. Legality and the formulation of orders We will analyze how orders were given during the Shoah and in two wars fought by the United States, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unlike Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the USSR), the last two conflicts are not “wars of annihilation,” aiming to exterminate a portion of the civilian population. Nevertheless, during the Vietnam War American soldiers massacred the population of an entire village, My Lai, on March 16, 1968. They raped, and tortured, and murdered individuals and held mass executions where they slaughtered

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assembled groups of people under machine-gun fire. Over 500 unarmed civilians were killed in this massacre (Cookman, 2007; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). As for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we know that since 2004 detainees in Baghram, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib prisons were victims of mistreatment and acts of torture that in some cases led to death. These acts were not isolated incidents, but systematic (Shamsi, 2006), and some prisoners were even executed (Von Zielbauer, 2009). In 2005, American Marines also committed a civilian massacre not entirely dissimilar to that of My Lai, in the Iraqi town of Haditha. The soldiers slaughtered 24 victims from two families (13 men, including one in a wheel chair, five women, and six children) in reprisal for the death of one of their own (Donnelly, 2006; McGirk & Ghosh, 2006). Analysis of these conflicts allows examination of the effects of legal frameworks on the formulation of orders. In the case of the Shoah, the orders for the massacre of Jewish populations came from the highest authorities and were part of a program for genocide. It was thus not a question of illegal orders.2 Moreover, in 1940 Hitler successfully requested the abrogation of an article of the military code of justice that had stipulated that a soldier obeying a manifestly criminal order was committing a crime. The situation of the My Lai massacre was entirely different: Lieutenant Calley's order to fire at defenseless civilians was illegal, and the American soldiers were supposed to disobey their superior.3 The situation of torture in Afghanistan and Iraq is different yet again: lawyers highly placed in the Bush administration tried to set up a legal framework that would allow the administration to get around international law, especially the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations' Convention Against Torture. In August 2002, the Department of Justice produced a memorandum giving a new definition of torture. It no longer designated torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from that person or from a third person information or a confession” (United Nations, 1984), but only as an act that causes a pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” (Margulies, 2007). To understand how orders, whatever their legal standing at the national level, are likely to have been morally understood by subalterns, it is important to remember that the victims had already been categorized as “enemies” and dehumanized. The Vietnamese, unlike the Jews, were indeed not the object of a vast propaganda operation of many years length aiming for their extermination, but they were referred to using injurious labels such as gooks, dinks, dopes, and slopes (Kelman, 1973), and they were compared to stubborn and deceitful animals (donkeys, rabbits, squirrels). The people arrested in Afghanistan and Iraq were also labeled with unflattering terms: Hajis, towel heads, dogs (Herbert, 2004). It should also be pointed out that, unlike the men of the Einsatzgruppen who worked behind the front in a safe environment, American soldiers in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were (and are) carrying out their missions in a permanently dangerous environment and regularly suffered the loss of comrades.

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This analysis allowed us to identify five formulation types that give subordinates the feeling that they did what was expected of them of their own free will, and which also potentially authorize their superiors, although they were the ones who gave the orders, to deny responsibility for their consequences. We will present these five case-types by classing them according to the degree of explicitness of the orders, from the most explicit to the least: 1) orders giving a choice; 2) partial orders; 3) coded orders; 4) vague or ambiguous orders; 5) fragmented orders. 3.1. Orders that give a choice The first case-type corresponds to the classic situation where the order is clear and unambiguous: the subordinates are told exactly what they have to do. But they are then given the “choice” to participate in the mission or not, and in a context where it is difficult for them to refuse. In this case individuals do not just obey an order, they decide to obey the order. This is the case, as we saw, of the order given by Commander Trapp in the early morning of the day of the 101st Battalion's first massacre in June 1942, in Jozefow (Poland).4 Gathered around him, the men listen to their commander. A former reservist recalled: He announced that in the locality before us we were to carry out a mass killing by shooting and he brought out clearly that those whom we were supposed to shoot were Jews. During this address, he bid us to think of our women and children in our homeland who had to endure aerial bombardments. In particular, we were supposed to bear in mind that many women and children lose their lives in these attacks. Thinking of these facts would make it easier for us to carry out the order during the upcoming [killing] action. Major Trapp remarked that the action was entirely not in his spirit, but that he had received this order from higher authority. […] As the conclusion of his address, the major put the question to the older battalion members of whether they were among them those who did not fill up to the task. At first no one had the courage to come forward. I was then the first to step forward and stated that I was one of those who was not fit for the task. Only then did others come forward. We were then about ten to twelve men, who kept at the major's disposal (Goldhagen, 1997, p. 212–113).

We studied a vast corpus of orders – coming from legal statements, soldiers' testimonies in enquiries by international organizations, historical archives – concerning Operation Barbarossa, the My Lai massacre, and torture in Afghanistan and Iraq. The analysis was based on orders given directly to subordinates charged with executing acts of massacre or torture, and, when possible, the orders their superiors had received from the hierarchy.

The way in which Commander Trapp formulated this order did not solely come from what he personally thought was relevant to say to his men. It doubtlessly followed a certain structure suggested by instructions that he, like other commanders, may have received from his superiors. The necessity of justifying orders had been clearly emphasized since July 11, 1941, by a high commander of the SS and the police, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Battalion superiors and company commanders had to give psychological support to the men charged with shooting the Jewish population by continually reminding them of the legitimacy of these operations (Browning, 1998). Trapp's invitation to his men to think about their families enduring aerial bombardments obviously has no rational relevance, but it gave the policemen the means to justify the violence being asked of them. Indeed, we know much violence may be perpetrated and legitimated by the evocation of images of suffering. Feeling vulnerable and perceiving the world as threatening increases the probability of aggressive conduct, which is then recategorized as self-defense (Hilberg, 2003; Staub, 1992). The argument of self-defense also put the massacres into a military or police frame of reference — that is, in line with the men's training and usual practices (Welzer, 2007). The fact that Trapp had specified that this operation “wasn't at all to his liking, but that he'd received the order to do it,” on the other hand,

2 However, they would violate the third Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, which Germany had ratified in 1929. 3 Which, for that matter, some of them did (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989).

4 Hilberg cites another case in which the members of a battalion had “a choice.” This was so for the 2nd Battalion of the Lithuanian Shutzmannschaft which upon arrival in Belarus received the order to execute the Jews of Rudensk (Hilberg, 2003, p. 1098).

3. Categorizing orders

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was certainly no form of instructions. Nevertheless, as Welzer points out, “this image of ‘weak authority’ could only have a very sincere, and thus motivating, effect: first of all because, seeing in their superior a man who had difficulty executing the order received, [the men] were prepared to relativize their own difficulties and to consider then, according to his model, as surmountable” (2007, p. 124). But there is more to it than that: it comes down to suggesting a particular state of mind to subordinates for executing their task, making a very clear distinction for them between their duty and their personal feelings.5 Put another way, they were not obligated to agree with what was asked of them in order to do it effectively; they only needed to subscribe to a given principle of obedience. That would also allow Trapp to show that the order that was given was hardly at his own initiative and that it was consequently entirely legal. At the end of his speech, Commander Trapp would thus give the option to the older men, or, according to eyewitness accounts, to all the assembled men, to refrain if they didn't feel up to the mission. But were conditions really in place for the men to be able to avoid it if they really wanted to? It's doubtful. First, because the offer was made point-blank: “there was no forewarning or time to think, as the men were totally ‘surprised’ by the Jozefow action” (Browning, 1998, p. 71). Next, because it was doubtlessly not easy for them to anticipate such acts before experiencing them, or to imagine ahead of time the exact role expected of them (they weren't necessarily expecting to be part of a firing squad). Lastly, they had to make the decision to participate or not in the sight of everyone, both in front of other superiors like -Hoffmann (who obviously did not think well of those who took it) and in front of comrades who might think it showed at best a lack of solidarity, or at worse, cowardice. Having to decide in front of others, in this entirely new situation, had every chance of producing very strong effects of conformity — each one able to see that the others were not moving.6 If only a dozen or so men of nearly 500 took up the offer, it is above all due to the fact that it was formulated in a context where there was little probability they would seize the occasion. Moreover, many more of them would later try to escape the massacre by using less visible strategies (by making themselves look busy with other things, hiding behind trucks, etc.). Obedience here is based on identification, as much with the superiors as with the group. Indeed, in obeying, the men not only do like the other men, but also like their commander who, in spite of everything, executes the order given to him, out of duty. The men will never again have the possibility to get out of such killings. The formulation of this order was thus indeed a way of setting up an “adaptation period” for them — but their participation in the massacres was required regardless of the formulation.

3.2. Orders that are partial The second case-type is that where the situation or the given order clearly states the mission's objectives but gives no instructions on how to achieve them. Based on the fixed objectives, subordinates must deduce the “adequate means” for attaining them. This appeal may be explicit (“you have carte blanche to…”) or implicit (no instructions are given), which may then – without having to say so explicitly – incite the executants themselves to find the (sometimes illegal) means to complete the mission. This is the case for classic invitations to torture. Subordinates are encouraged to obtain information from arrested persons; American soldiers in Afghanistan received the order “Soldiers are dying, get the

5 This is also a classic rationalization that was resorted to frequently by German bureaucrats (Hilberg, 2003). 6 A wealth of studies demonstrates that people often rely on perceived norms when making decisions about their own behavior (Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 1991).

information!”7 But Baghram prison interrogators received neither recommendations nor training on appropriate methods for obtaining information from prisoners.8 Tony Lagouranis, an Army interrogator based at the Mosul Airport detention center, recounted in 2004 how there was no initial training or guide for conduct about what interrogators could or couldn't do (Sifton, 2006). The Fay report, giving the conclusions of a U.S. Army internal investigation following a scandal prompted by the revelation of the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison, confirms that the military police in particular were not trained for conducting such interrogations (Fay, 2004, p. 19). The dangers of such a lack of recommendations were clear for some subordinates: “We knew exactly why we weren't getting clear guidance, just in case something like this [prisoner Dilawar's death] happened” declared an interrogator9 (Gibney, 2008). An officer relates having made repeated efforts to obtain clearer instructions on how prisoners should be treated, but the only answer he got was to use his judgment (Human Rights Watch, 2005, p. 6). A company captain in a military police unit in Baghdad declared that he refused to let military intelligence order his subordinates to keep prisoners awake until they “talk”: “I said, ‘No, we will not do that’,” the captain said. “The M.I. commander comes to me and says, ‘What is the problem? We're stressed, and all we are asking you to do is to keep them awake.’ I ask, ‘How? You've received training on that, but my soldiers don't know how to do it. And when you ask an eighteen-year-old kid to keep someone awake, and he doesn't know how to do it, he's going to get creative’.” (Hersh, 2004, p. 4)10 Indeed this type of orders did bring about several “problems,” to use the Fay report's euphemism, concerning the use of dogs in interrogations, sleep-deprivation techniques, and the use of isolation to interrogate detainees. All were coercive methods approved by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use against prisoners at Guantanamo Prison. They then migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq, where they were never controlled or supervised, contributing to the widespread and systematic usage of torture in American detention centers (Schlesinger, Brown, Fowler, & Homer, 2004). “We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day,” testifies a sergeant who served in Iraq. “Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it” (Human Rights Watch, 2005, p. 10).11 Lacking clear rules, soldiers would follow prevailing group norms to figure out how to behave with prisoners. If it was unclear to subordinates how information should be obtained from detainees, this is also because arrested individuals were no longer thought of as “prisoners of war” (POW) who should be treated following the Geneva Conventions, but as “enemy combatants” or PUCs (“persons under control”) to be treated “humanely” (Human Rights Watch, 2005, p. 3). An officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq explains the problems caused by this semantic shift very well: “Well, what does humane mean? To me humane means I can kind of play with your mind, but I cannot hit you or do anything that is going to cost you permanent physical damage. To [another officer I spoke with] humane means it's okay to rough someone up and to do physical harm. Not to break bones or anything like that but to do physical harm as long as you're not humiliating him, which was the way he put it.” (Human Rights Watch, 2005, p. 19)

7 According to PFC Damien Corsetti, 519th Military Intelligence Unit, Bagram, Afghanistan (Gibney, 2008). 8 “We were all worried about not having that written guidelines. But they kept reassuring us that it was coming.” (SPC Glendale Walls, 519th Military Intelligence, Interrogated Dilawar at Bagram) (Gibney, 2008). 9 PFC Damien Corsetti, Military Intelligence, Bagram. 10 Emphasis our own. 11 Emphasis our own.

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Leaving it up to subordinates to find adequate definitions and appropriate techniques for completing their missions – or suggesting illegal interrogation methods without supervising them – has thus brought about an extremely predictable situation: the systematic torture or even murder of detained persons. Not imposing limits boils down to tacitly authorizing “things getting out of hand.” In this particular case, we could even say that the soldiers were encouraged. Otherwise, how to make sense of what Rumsfeld wrote in the margins beside his signature on the memo authorizing (among other things) the use of “stress positions”12 such as limiting standing a maximum of four hours: “I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to four hours?” (Diamond, 2004). 3.3. Orders that are vague or ambiguous This third case-type corresponds to the situation where the orders are either vague or ambiguous. In the first case, the mission is not clear because, for example, it is overly general or implicit. In the second case, it's unclear because the order might have several interpretations; “ambiguity is a surplus of meaning, not a shortage” (Baumeister, 2001, p. 295). In both cases, the goal is to bring subalterns to the same definition of the situation13 as their superiors, thus trying to get them to share the plan inscribed implicitly in the order. We use two examples here that seem particularly emblematic of this type of order, from the Vietnam War and Operation Barbarossa.14 The mission of the My Lai operation was to oust the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Battalion from its base in the village of My Lai. It was to have taken place at 7 AM, a time at which all the village “innocents” were supposed to be at the market. But Lieutenant Colonel Barker said nothing of what should be done about those who might nonetheless still be there. He only specified to the company commander that most of the inhabitants of My Lai were VC or VC sympathizers. Houses should be burned, livestock killed, provisions destroyed. Captain Medina passed the lieutenant colonel's orders along to his men, calling on them to avenge a good company comrade who had been blown up by a mine that very day and making it understood that only the enemy would be present in the village. The mission's objective then was to destroy the enemy. The day arrives: no Viet Cong, but women, children, and the elderly who obviously had not gone to the market. The soldiers begin by gathering the villagers together. According to the statement made by the soldier Paul Meadlo in the trial of Lieutenant Calley, the events took place as follows: Q: Did you see Lieutenant Calley? A: Yes Q: What did he do? A: He came up to mean and he said, “You know what to do with them, Meadlo,”15 and I assumed he wanted me to guard them. That's what I did. Q: What were the people doing? A: They were just standing there....

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A: [Calley] said, “How come they're not dead?” I said, “I didn't know we were supposed to kill them.” He said, ‘I want them dead’”. He backed off twenty or thirty feet and started shooting into the people – the Viet Cong – shooting automatic. He was beside me. He burned four or five magazines. I burned off a few, about there. I helped shoot 'em.16 These orders are ambiguous at two levels. The first level is that of Colonel Barker: by giving no instructions on the subject of civilians, he opens the door to serious misunderstandings of his possible intentions. Was he making it be understood that only Viet Cong combatants were concerned by the operation, or was he giving implicit authorization to fire, without restriction, on all people present in the zone? It seems that the second interpretation prevailed, since the captain who passes along the order declares that only the enemy will be present. Lieutenant Calley's orders initiating the massacre are also ambiguous, only saying “you know what to do with them” to indicate that Meadlo should fire at the assembled people. The soldier clearly doesn't share this interpretation of the situation, not perceiving the individuals in front of him as VC “to be killed.” The lieutenant is thus forced to make explicit an order that he would likely have preferred to leave in its original formulation. Finally obeying the then-clearly formulated order and imitating his superior, Meadlo ends up opening fire on the villagers, who from then on he sees as “Viet Cong.” The killing contributes to the retrospective redefinition of peoples' identities, and indeed G.I.s thought that every Vietnamese individual killed was a VC (Welzer, 2007, p. 239). There are other examples of formulations making the order's intentions understood without stating them explicitly in the testimonies of former German reservists who participated in the effort to exterminate Eastern European Jews. A former German police reservist recounted that when the men were sent to work on “reinstallations,”17 excesses were committed well before mass massacres took place. Here is his testimony: “The cards handed to us designated the houses that we were to evacuate. During the early period we endeavored to fetch all people out of the houses, without regard for whether they were old, sick, or small children. The commission quickly found fault with our procedures. They objected that we struggled under the burden of the old and sick. To be precise, they did not initially give us the order to shoot them on the spot, rather they contented themselves with making it clear to us that nothing could be done with such people.18 In two cases I remember that such people were shot at the collection point. In the first case it was an old man and in the second case an old woman… Both persons were shot not by men but by noncommissioned officers.” (Browning, 1998, p. 40) Once again, it is a matter of changing the representation the men has of a certain category of persons in order to get them to apply the requested treatment to its members. Like at My Lai, the superiors were there to show what treatment they should get.

3.4. Orders that are coded 12

“Stress position: Detainee is forced to stand erect for several hours. Or forced to stand erect for several hours, with his arms held out to the side. Or shackled to the ceiling with his arms extended, sometimes without his feet touching the ground. Whichever, it's certainly stressful” (Henley, 2007). 13 “Every situation also possesses a kind of ideology, which we call the ‘definition of the situation’, and which is the interpretation of the meaning of a social occasion. It provides the perspective through which the elements of a situation gain coherence. An act viewed in one perspective may seem heinous; the same action viewed in another perspective seems fully warranted. There is a propensity for people to accept definitions of action provided by legitimate authority (Milgram, 2009, p. 145).” 14 We should point out that the entire Operation Barbarossa was partly based on an order of this type. Indeed it had been signaled to the Einsatzgruppen that they should carry out “an energetic and brusque” action toward certain categories of persons, but the list of all the categories was so long that it was an implicit invitation to shoot all Jews. And that is indeed how the commando group members understood it (Welzer, 2007, p. 85). 15 Emphasis our own.

In this case-type, the order is formulated by calling on a coded vocabulary and euphemisms. The order is perfectly clear for those who know the code, and opaque for those who don't. Put another way, understanding the order is belonging to a category of insiders sharing ties of tacit agreement. This type of order thus has every chance of delivering a message that is both precise and effective, without clashing too directly with the actors' moral sense. In addition, such language manifests that those who use it are not barbarians, but professionals. It is present 16

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_tmead.htm. That is, the expulsion of Poles and other “undesirable elements,” Jews and the Rom in particular, and their relocation to the interior of Poland. 18 Emphasis our own. 17

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in the army in general (“surgical strikes”, “collateral damage”). We know the Nazis used this coded language extensively. Indeed, the German bureaucracy tried to keep its doings secret: “[it] wanted to cloak its deeds, to conceal them not only from all outsiders but also from the censuring gaze of its own conscious” (Hilberg, 2003, p. 1085). To do so, even in secret correspondence accounting for its operations, it omitted all references to “massacres” or “death facilities.” Language was systematically camouflaged (“treated appropriately”, “resettlement”, “special pacification”, etc.) and all order transmissions applied these language rules (Arendt, 1963). In other words, by the time individuals came on the scene, the euphemizing terms for them were already in place and ready to play their dissociating role, because, as Arendt stresses, “the net effect of this language system was not to keep people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it with their ‘old,’ normal knowledge of murder and lies” (Arendt, 1963, p. 85–86). The rules of language did not merely have dissociating properties, they also allowed the justification of the policies being put in place: genocide is “a final solution” for “the Jewish problem” (Lifton, 2000, p. 206). The chosen euphemisms qualify the victims, and consequently what was to be done with them: it was a matter of “cleaning” the Jews from “Europe from the west to the east,” making it Judenrein (literally “clean of Jews”), putting them through a “special treatment” (Haugh, 2011). This pseudo-medical terminology presented victims as sources of filth and illness. It thus became urgent to promote “racial hygiene” in order to avoid “contamination with inferior species” (Blum, 2008). The orders given to torture prisoners in Iraq have also often taken a coded form: “Make sure he has a bad night”; “Make sure he gets the treatment” (Danner, 2004, p. 19). Members of military intelligence regularly ordered soldiers to “smoke” detainees before interrogations (Human Rights Watch, 2005, p. 5). It seems that in Iraq, though, this euphemizing language was less orchestrated from above; it seems to have been at least partially developed by the soldiers themselves, who established specific terms for abusive techniques: “smoking” or “fucking” a detainee to push him into exhaustion or even unconsciousness, or to beat him up. They were clearly confronted with difficulty putting words to their acts. And indeed, how to talk among themselves of the tasks they were carrying out? Falling back on euphemized formulas allows the men and women to focus on the practical aspects of their “work” by stifling all possible sentiments of guilt (Baumeister, 2001). This semantic creativity doubtlessly allowed them to morally rationalize their actions (Tsang, 2002) while creating a “common culture” favoring group cohesion.

3.5. Orders that are fragmented There is no general mission specified at the outset in this case-type. The order is deconstructed into a series of successive orders that progressively engage the executants in a chain of behaviors that are increasingly problematic. It may also be distributed among them: certain tasks are done by some persons, and others by others. The deconstruction of the order allows the engagement of subalterns in a process of escalating moral imperilment, where they find themselves increasingly compromised with each step (Milgram, 2009, p. 149). This is a classic compliance technique called “foot-in-the-door” (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Once the first, low entry-threshold actions have been coerced from executants, further actions in continuity with the first may be requested, pushing the limits increasingly farther. Distribution of the order may, to the contrary, give some actors the feeling that the tasks falling to them are less compromising compared to those assigned to others (Welzer, 2007, p. 176). It also allows spreading the moral responsibility for acts out across the entire group instead of making it weigh on each individual. This is how orders were disclosed in September 1941, to the men of the 45th German Police battalion in their operation against the Jewish population of Berditchev (Ukraine). They were asked to gather the

victims, close off the area, and have ditches dug. Then, the order to shoot the Jews was given: “[the company chief], told us […] that we had to get the Jews together, and then we found out the rest.” “It's true that Klamm announced the order at the execution site, in the immediate vicinity of the ditch.” “We stood right near a ditch. Here Klamm now designated me as a gunner, by saying more or less the following: Bischof, you go into the ditch and shoot!” “When the first Jews went by me into the ditch, Klamm grabbed the Jews by the neck with his hand or his fingers. Meanwhile he turned to me and said, more or less, ‘That's where you have to shoot.’” “After Klamm shot the Jews, we also had to start shooting” (Welzer, 2008, p. 173) As Welzer indicates, “if one thinks of this whole new situation for most of its actors, only the last act would stand out in the category of the unusual. But before getting there, the participants had already accomplished a series of actions whose rightness would have raised questions if they had stopped to consider their positions in the progression of the operations” (2007, p. 151). In addition, the progressiveness of the operations leading up to the massacre gave the men time to prepare themselves for what was going to happen but that would not be made explicit until the last minute. Such a preparation for the order for execution was also in the works the night before their first massacre, while they were still all but ignorant of what was awaiting them, when the men were told they would have a “very hard fight” or “an extremely interesting mission” the next day (Browning, 1998, p. 56). Moreover, Heydrich himself had spoken of the “hardest challenges of force” that Germany had to overcome, which required “whole men,” but without further defining what he meant (Ogorreck, 2007, p. 117). We also note that the explanation to the men of the 45th Battalion was not only given at the last moment but also in act: the commander doesn't settle for ordering his men to shoot, he shows them specifically how to do what is asked of them (Welzer, 2008, p. 174). Starting with this operation (and in many to follow), the activities leading up to the massacre of Jews were divided up among men — not all would go into the ditch to fire. Some evacuated Jews from their homes, others escorted them to gathering places, others drove them in trucks to the place of their execution, where others were digging, and yet others would execute them. Some would “only” do one of these tasks, others several of them. All these partial acts made it so that even in what followed, “the actors […] did not at all think they were accomplices in crime because they were “only” member of one of these commando squads or that they had “only” closed off a neighborhood” (Welzer, 2007, p. 152). The distribution of tasks minimizes the sentiment of personal responsibility, since most of the men had the sentiment of only having played a “little role” in the operation. Moreover, it generates a process of social comparison with those who had to do the even harder tasks (Festinger, 1954). Comparing oneself to those who fired the shots thus allows one to think of oneself as “more human” than the others. The shooters compared themselves to each other: for example, some tell themselves that, unlike the others, they only had to kill adults, or children who were already grown (Welzer, 2008, p. 176). 4. Conclusion There is nothing innocuous in the way in which orders are formulated, as we have seen: it follows a more or less developed plan designed by the authorities to bring people to engage themselves in the criminal acts expected from them. There are two general strategies. The first consists of leaving the “choice,” coding the orders, breaking them up and disclosing them gradually. It simultaneously allows giving a perfectly clear and effective order while reducing the psychological impact on the subordinates. This is the case of orders formulated in the context of dictatorial regimes: legalizing murder is not enough, conditions

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fostering individual engagement in accomplishing its objectives must also be established. A second strategy consists of formulating vague or ambiguous orders, imposing goals without defining the adequate means of attaining them. It allows everything to remain within what may legally be said while obligating individuals to commit actions that are outside the legal framework. This strategy is the prerogative of democratic regimes trying to get around the constraints of the international treaties they have signed. This distinction based on the nature of regimes is not, of course, mutually exclusive: Lieutenant Calley ended up disambiguating his orders, and the Nazis took care to define the mission awaiting execution commandos in vague terms. Beyond these two strategies, there is a third way of getting people to adopt criminal behaviors: the order in the act. Calley fires an automatic weapon to clarify what he had just ordered, and Klamm starts the massacre by showing his men how to shoot the assembled Jews. The ordergivers here are the first to put the order into action, thus signifying to the subalterns that the order is both physically and morally doable. But there is more to it than that: the superior initiates the act that the subordinates then only need to follow. This formulation thus is based on imitation and, more fundamentally, on identification with the superior. In all cases, these tactics arouse a form of voluntary submission to orders in the subordinates. Yet clear orders and vague orders do not offer subordinates the same opportunities for rationalization. In the first case, the justification is easily found: “I was only following orders.” Furthermore, they are encouraged to think in such terms: “When Himmler addressed a killing party in Minsk, he told his men that they need not worry. Their conscience was in no way impaired, for they were soldiers who had to carry out every order unconditionally” (Hilberg, 2003, p. 1098). In the second case, the rationalization is more tricky, and subalterns are instead tempted to tell themselves that they were just doing the same as everyone else. Here group conformity explains the conduct more than obedience to authority does, as indicated by the statement of an American soldier having participated in the death of an Afghan prisoner: “Sometimes I feel that I should have gone with my own morality more than what was common” (Gibney, 2008). On the other hand, clear or vague, this type of order absolves the authorities giving them: in the first case because they themselves declare they had to unconditionally follow their superiors' orders, and in the second situation, because the orders were never given.19

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