To use an economic analogy, war is the most competitive and ruthless of all markets: all edges are used and the most aggressive risks are taken, because war is the ultimate competitive ground. Self-preservation is our most overpowering primal instinct. War is the last resort when other options are exhausted or untenable (or sometimes, not preferable). From this, we find that war gives us the conditions to discover in ourselves capabilities we would never have found otherwise. By creating new necessities, it pushes us to our limits. Activities which require militaristic skills are pervasive throughout society as forms of entertainment, often because they are both physically and mentally challenging. While the recreational equivalents of war may not in fact be truly as challenging as the “real thing,” they reflect those elements of it which we desire.

What we gain from playing video games is not necessarily “real-world” knowledge, but situational understanding. Games are our window to the knowledge that would previously only have been attained in war, because they can lawfully model real-world dynamics (and as they improve technologically, even randomize impressively). Through them, we can encounter hypothetical situations and not only learn about the dynamics of that particular instance, but experiment with solutions to it and even learn entirely new, generally applicable inferential structures in the process. In Rome: Total War (a complex, turn-based campaign strategy game with real-time combat), players can be faced with a broad variety of world states in the historical campaign after a few turns, depending on their actions and the actions of AI-controlled computer factions responding to each other and environmental dynamics (such as natural disasters or plagues). If Rome declares war on Egypt in 250 B.C., the player finds that many of his profitable trade routes have been lost, and that his resources are spread too thin in fighting Gaul and Germania at the same time. This is one of many different strategic decisions and outcomes a player of this game will encounter while playing.

With the growth of the internet in the mid-90s came the more frequent implementation of “multiplayer” features in computer games. Over the following decade, multiplayer games reached a new height of competition. One of the first games that utilized a fully 3D graphics engine (which included Z-axis rendering and movement, unlike Doom or Wolfenstein 3D) along with a flexible, player-modifiable mapping system, was a futuristic first-person shooter called Starsiege: Tribes, released in 1997. The game was specifically catered to team-based internet games (it lacked a single-player mode) with quantities of players never seen before: most popular maps were so large that games with less than 16 players were impractical, and servers could host up to 32 players in a single game (and up to 64 after later improvements). In the game, players select their own equipment loadouts, and thus define their own roles, such as a fast and mobile skirmisher, or a slow and heavily-armed bombardier. Orders can be issued via first-person targeting or a command map, which integrates all current sensor data from all team members and emplacements to create an image of the battlefield. Very uniquely to Tribes, all players are also equipped with jetpacks which are needed to fly across the planet surface to attack the enemy base or capture the flag, and which inevitably play a major role in player-on-player combat.. Compare this to horizontal-axis-only, 4-player maximum multiplayer games of Doom, and the result is an intense, constant, and large battle whose outcome is highly dependent on skill and teamwork- all in all, a revolutionary war gaming experience.

Tribes alone encompasses several beneficial aspects of warfare. For one, an adept player likely has excellent reflexes combined with strong hand-eye coordination and ambidexterity, which allows him to control his horizontal movement on the keyboard and his vertical jetpack movement with the mouse, while simultaneously firing his weapons accurately at his (moving and fighting) opponent. Meanwhile, he must also pay attention to his ammunition, his amount of jetpack energy, his relative position to the ground and other objects and players nearby, etc., resulting in a fairly demanding dogfight. His individual battle plays into a larger one, in which team leaders issue orders to destroy or construct defensive emplacements, attack certain enemies, or defend a map area. Because of the potential for advanced strategy embedded in the game, Tribes was initially aimed at being played in a competitive ladder system between registered teams. By these teams (“clans”) always practicing and competing together, their command structures and strategies solidified, enabling them to execute complex battle plans, adapt to unexpected situations faster, and become more efficient and more competitive overall. At higher levels of competition, this also resulted in comradery and friendship among members, especially when the stakes were prestige or money. While it may not compare to that experienced in actual war, “clan” comradery can be so strong that significant real-life favors are traded. Many more computer games played on the internet possess similar characteristics to Tribes, except with even much more dramatic technological improvements in a broad variety of genres.

Despite all these benefits, some object to the violent nature of the vast majority of video games. A common grievance against violence in media, particularly video games, is that it “desensitizes” children- and even adults- to the horrors of violence. This is tantamount to blaming oxygen for fire. It implies that our emotional sensitivity to violence determines our attitudes toward it. This may be the case for many people, but then does the problem lie in what they are exposed to, or in what they use to form their attitudes? Granted, our natural aversion to violence is perhaps a built-in moral safeguard against wrongdoing, but what would make us different from animals if we relied only on innate predispositions? Simply put, an experience does not have to be emotionally traumatizing for it to bear moral significance. In the absence of moral values, fear, ignorance, and indifference are the only real deterrents against wrongdoing; when something disrupts this contingent balance, it is disingenuous to blame the disruptor and not the conditions that preceded it.

Likewise, there are concerns that our military is utilizing technologies which make soldiers more and more detached from the foes they vanquish. The same argument stated above applies: equip them with the tools to consciously, not innately, understand the moral weight of their actions. Thucydides said, “Any nation that draws too great a distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.” The “Land Warrior” referred to by Perlmutter would not need to stumble into a shell-hole and encounter an enemy soldier to realize that he is killing another human being like himself, unless he is a fool.[ii]

Advanced, “arm-chair” military technology in many respects is subject to the same class of opposition against the modern video game (and modern media). The rhetoric is “too much distance, too much efficiency, not enough feeling” and “too much realism, too much fun.” Opponents of both believe that we would be better off without them, but the oxygen and fire analogy holds. Advanced military technology has the potential to save thousands of lives (on both sides of a conflict) and lower the costs of war; video games can teach us faster reflexes and better hand-eye coordination, improve our critical thinking, allow us to explore a broader variety of situations, increase our understanding of those situations, and entertain us. Should we reject these great innovations, which would improve greatly the quality of our lives, on the grounds that humanity is too stupid to handle them? Instead of abolishing oxygen, we need to stop leaving flammable materials lying around unattended.

[i] Chris Hedges, War is a force that gives us meaning (New York, NY: First Anchor Books, 2002)

[ii] David D. Perlmutter, Visions of War: Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyber Age (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 228

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Shakeouts in the Music Industry

The history of music industry concentration and the chronology of events provide general evidence against technology always being the direct cause of shakeouts. At the beginning of the industry’s life (1890-1900), there were three major firms producing the vast majority of audio products: Victor, Columbia, and Edison. This included both the machines- cylinder and record players- and the actual cylinders and records. Patents on these machines were a major barrier to entry, but major innovations from 1900-1910 and the expiration of important patents in 1914 resulted in industry deconcentration. Early record production required live-action recording to produce each record, requiring either multiple record writers present during a performance or multiple performances. From 1914 to 1919, the number of firms manufacturing records and record players grew on average by 44 percent annually. Demand was stimulated as a result of a new variety and quantity of available products on the market, and the period was characterized by heavy innovation in the music, particularly by small producers. However, from 1919 to 1925, the number of producers declined at an average annual rate of 14.4 percent. Larger firms were able to capitalize on the small producers’ innovations, resulting in imitation as well as several horizontal mergers. The onset of the Great Depression and World War II finalized the reconcentration of the music industry. Prior to 1948, Columbia, Decca, RCA Victor, and Capitol were responsible for three-fourths of record sales in America.

Following the war, a new innovation reshaped the industry: magnetic tape recordings. Previously, records were produced in a very tedious and unforgiving fashion. Errors in the performance for a recording would require the artists to execute the piece perfectly – start to finish – in order for the recording to be successful, but magnetic tape

allowed a particular section with an error to be spliced out and replaced by a re-recorded part. Magnetic tape machines were also much cheaper. By reducing the amount of studio time required and also lowering the costs of starting up a recording business, magnetic tape technology was followed by an increase in the number of companies producing LP (long-play) records from eleven to two thousand between 1949 and 1954 (Gelatt 1954).

By 1956 independent firms held around 52 percent of the music recording industry’s total market share, increasing to the industry’s peak in 1962, at which time independent firms accounted for 75 percent. Afterward, major firms began to reacquire market share, primarily through horizontal mergers, and the number of firms in the industry began to shrink.

Why did music industry shakeouts happen?

This prompts us to seek an alternative explanation to technological changes for the causes of the most recent extended music industry shakeout (1962-). Several technological improvements turned out to be exogenous (allowing universal adaptation) rather than endogenous (proprietary and thus concentration-inducing). The nature of the technologies Alexander cites tended to be scale-reducing, thus reducing barriers to entry. Developments in musical technology over the past 50 years have been consistently scale-reducing, though the trend for a large portion of that period has been toward consolidation. Magnetic tape and compact disc players became commercial and low-cost home appliances, and their respective means of creation grew as common (tape recorders, CD-burners, etc.). Computer-based music recording and playback has become more widespread. Still, the number of firms has been decreasing. Currently, the music market is dominated by six major firms: Time/Warner, Sony/CBS, Thorn/EMI, Philips-Polygram/PMG, Bertelsmann Music Group/BMG, and Matsushita/MCA.

One important factor stands above all other explanations for this consolidation: distribution. While prior to 1962 there were several strong and independent music distributors who provided an alternative to the major firms’ distribution networks, major firms began making significant buyouts in the 60s onward, creating a dominant market tendency toward the horizontal integration of distribution. Many independent distributors went bankrupt, and this tendency grew even more exaggerated in the 1980s. The six major firms mentioned above presently constitute almost the entirety of the industry’s market share at the distributor level.

In light of this evidence, one revised hypothesis is that technology can play a role in market concentration in as much as it augments scale economies. Technological innovations such as widespread personal computers with sound processing and recording capabilities, as well as advanced software for manipulating recordings, have reduced the necessary scale to begin producing consumable music recordings to anyone with or without talent, with just a $300 personal computer, a $30 microphone, and some small degree of sound engineering skills. The internet has also drastically reduced the scale required for significant levels of distribution, with peer-to-peer sharing networks, internet-based record stores, and social networking pages like MySpace.com.

On the other side of the story, some non-technological things may account for firm “lock-in” or other phenomena that lead to high industry concentration. Distribution strategy is one possible example of this, but it is likely that the dominance of particular firms that allowed them to construct their distribution networks shares a cause with their distribution strategies. Music is a very unique kind of product. Each new “product” (a song or album) also happens to be distinctly associated with a set of individuals. The quality of the music itself is controlled from a non-technological (in the physical sense) set of innovations relating to meter, pitch, tone, content, or overall theme. Some major firms may have the musical brainpower to “get it”- a group of experts, who manage bands and affect the musical product, that ultimately represents a stock of knowledge the firm has about stimulating and satisfying demand for music. Furthermore, labels fortunate enough to enlist legendary bands, perhaps by only good fortune, gain a long-lasting advantage, both from their experiences with a popular band (more concerts, albums, events, merchandising, etc.) as well as from the profits, which attract more expertise, which attracts and creates better bands, etc. There appear to be many opportunities for self-reinforcement in the industry. Overall, the technology-based shakeout story lacks explanatory power in music.

Source:

Alexander, Peter. New Technology and Market Structure:

Evidence from the Music Recording Industry. Journal of Cultural Economics, Volume 18, 113-123, 1994.

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John F. Kennedy’s successful use of television

If JFK’s ability to use television to his advantage is acknowledged even as a minor component of his presidential victory, then the conclusion can be made that the introduction of television as part of the country’s political landscape was a notable milestone in the advancement of American society. As president, JFK utilized the intimacy of broadcast television to strengthen his image among the populace that he was ardently committed to preventing the spread of communism worldwide. His foreign policy was largely a continuation of the containment policy with an emphasis on the development of specially trained ground units to handle the unique implications of counterinsurgency warfare and other types of unconventional strategy and tactics that were increasingly important in the battle to repress the spread of communism abroad. This is another important idea to analyze contextually because it shows the enhancement of traditional policy in light of developing Cold War political and military situations.

When JFK took office the US was just seven years out of the Korean War, the first conventional ground battle of the Cold War. The conflict in Korea indicated that, in support of its containment policy Washington must be prepared and ready to engage in a new type of battle in hot-spots across the globe. The idea of rollback, a total destruction of the enemy’s government, was shelved and the aforementioned policy of containment began to look like the more reasonable strategy in preventing the spread of communist influence. The Kennedy administration’s initial stumbles—the publicized failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the inability to prevent the construction of the Berlin Wall, for example—meant that Washington was compelled to take action for fear of appearing weak to its allies and rivals alike. The first US military advisers to South Vietnam had arrived a decade before, and it seemed that bolstering military presence there would be an effective way of showcasing the versatility and strength of the modern US force. In the years between his inauguration and untimely death, JFK increased US troop presence in South Vietnam from 800 to 16,000 and implemented a series of covert military actions aimed at overthrowing the communist regime and destabilizing insurgent forces.

The assassination of JFK was a major event that forever altered the course of American history. Coverage of the event by the broadcast industry gripped the nation and further solidified the role of television news as a mainstay in the collective American consciousness. The immediate demand for news and images related to the assassination meant that people across the nation surely tuned-in in unprecedented numbers. It was shortly after the death of JFK that both the major news networks extended their evening broadcasts from fifteen minutes to thirty. The news coverage of the president’s death has been described as “a shared media experience of astonishing unanimity and unmatched impact, an imbedded cultural memory that as years passed seemed to comprise a collective consciousness for a generation”(Doherty). As the nation mourned the loss of its commander in chief, the networks inadvertently further expanded their influence on the public’s perception of events both global and domestic. 

Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam strategy

Upon assuming his role as president, Johnson was quick to assert his determination to stand-up against communism, even as political instability in South Vietnam had the country in tatters Johnson showed his resolve and quickly began working to reverse Kennedy administration plans to start withdrawing troops. An additional 5,000 advisers were sent by Johnson within months, and Johnson’s appointment of general William Westmoreland as commander of forces in Vietnam indicated that the Johnson administration was preparing for a ground war in southeast Asia. On August 2nd, 1964 a major event referred to as the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” led Johnson to present congress with a proposal to authorize military action and further the troop build-up. What happened in the Gulf of Tonkin has been subject of controversy over the years, as some believe the attacks on US reconnaissance vessels there was misreported in the field or exaggerated by Johnson’s administration. Regardless of what actually happened, the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin would allow Johnson to acquire the permissions required to officially begin engaging in military operations against North Vietnam.

Johnson used to powers given to him in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to begin airstrikes targeting communist and rebel strongholds in North Vietnam. Ultimately, Johnson would initiate a massive troop build up in Vietnam and the start of a sustained campaign that would become the nation’s most unpopular and unsuccessful war. It is crucial to note that at this stage of the war the press was more than willing to accept the State Department’s “official line” and present the Gulf of Tonkin story to the American people. This type of manipulation of the media by military and political leaders wasn’t exactly revolutionary, there are other examples of questionable journalism aimed at fooling the public to supporting a war effort, but it was significant in that it established a modern precedent of misinformation being presented to the public as fact which would eventually contribute to an idea known as the “credibility gap” which would be an increasingly relevant topic in the later years and aftermath of the war.

By 1965, Johnson and general Westmoreland had implemented a strategy that has been referred to as the “Americanization” of the Vietnam War. It meant the build up of large quantities of American troops to conduct operations against the North Vietnamese Army. This policy was part of the administration’s larger strategy of containment. Johnson hoped that by lending the South Vietnamese the aid of US forces it would eventually stabilize and be able to resist falling to an attack from the communist forces. Containment was the strategy that worked in Korea, but it would become increasingly clear that the situation in Vietnam was quite dissimilar from the situation in the previous conflict. Both the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong insurgents that US forces battled quickly discovered that they would have to develop more complex strategies if they wanted to repel the US military. Thus both sides dug in and the US entered into a war of attrition against the enemy forces in hopes they could root out and wear down the enemy forces while attempting to minimize friendly casualties.

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It is impossible to perfectly stratify discussion about video games in society into neat categories. With that in mind, one must contemplate the following facts when considering the place of video games in society, as I will in this paper. Video games are the product of the brilliance of technology, and conceptually they are the single medium that will come ever closer to the fullest representation of reality and pseudo-realities. However, there exists a conservative element of society that imagines that video games are empty, brain-draining activities upon which children and adults spend wasteful hours, leading them to violent or lewd behavior and to the breakdown of society.

Part of this element comes from inexperience with and ignorance of video games; another part comes from an arbitrary view of society and morality; and another part, fundamentally, comes from a subconscious hatred of the good for being good. Video games are not just mindless, substance-free, sugary candies for the brain. They, like all other media, have the ability to be beautiful, emotional, intelligent, poetic, reflective, or any other adjective one can find to describe a piece of art, yet they can do it in an exceptionally new way. They put the consumer in the driver’s seat, saying, “make this experience your own,” whether it is in custom character creation, open-ended problem-solving, or pervasive ethical quandaries. A full understanding of the educational and entertaining possibilities to be offered by the medium of video games, as well as the nature of its enemies, can lead to the full realization of its potential benefits.

Video games as simulations of an alternate reality

A false assumption to make about video games, especially in the modern day, is that they are ergodic- predictable, repetitive, or otherwise banal. Quite contrarily, the nature of logic and modern technology’s ability to manifest that logic on the computer screen has demonstrated repeatedly that video games (and their scientific counterparts, computer models) have lead to new kinds of situations, interactions, and understandings of things never observed before. Even in terms of game design, games have been played and optimized beyond ways that game developers would have ever expected. Though older game design may have been more directly and linearly construction with fewer possibilities, newer games have capitalized on the presence of new technologies- as well as the experiences learned from past greats- to create dynamic gaming experiences.

The more characteristics and variables programmed into more individual objects and entities, the greater and greater exponentially the possibilities become. The gradual evolution of video games is not toward “realism” per se, but toward immersion: natural consistency and dynamics. It is nonsensical to ask for realism in a game about Dungeons & Dragons, a universe jam-packed with magic, but that does not mean that anything goes: the magic must act as believably as it can, as though the game were saying “if magic actually existed, this is how it would behave.”

It is thus a misconception that video games provide the same singular, preprogrammed experience that movies or television provide. Though, of course, individuals have subjective responses to the same content in movies and television, games provide subjectivity of two orders: the first of the player, and the second of the content that is experienced itself. Beyond the simple spontaneity implemented into the games (randomized behavior of enemies, item appearances, etc.), the actual subjective presence of the player- whether it is in his ability to operate his character or his choices of action- affects the outcome of what actually occurs on-screen. The greater in complexity a game becomes, the more and more this becomes true.

This facet of video games- their non-ergodicity- is by far their most important characteristic. It is, as we have seen, what makes them unlike any media ever before. Generally speaking, the power of computers has given us the ability to imagine different objects of totally diverse natures, program them into a system of laws of interaction, and then sit back and watch the show. Biologists can now see things that are very logically real, but do not have to be directly observed or deduced by hand anymore; one researcher speaks of DNA shuffling for forecasting genetic behaviors: “we used thermodynamics and reaction engineering to evaluate and model this complex reaction network so we can now predict where the DNA from different parent genes will recombine.”[1] Economists can imagine economic actors of certain preferences, assume they are utility maximizing, plug in the amount of resources available, and learn about what kinds of things people will produce. In the same regard, the video gamer can ask, “let’s say we have a mountain lion fighting a huge wasp; who will win, and will the fight be awesome or lame?” The process is about imagining independent things and making assumptions about their characteristics, and then throwing them into a figurative box, shaking it, and then pouring it out to find out what is there.

Gaming as Art and Narrative

Some have argued that video games offer no valid mode of expression. In April 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Sr. ruled that video games are not subject to first amendment protections under the constitution: “[There is] no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures.”[2] Nothing could be farther from the truth, even besides the point that board games and even athletics can, too, be artistic in the creativity that goes into their rules and aesthetics. The games contemplated and cited in the court opinion, “Fear Effect,” “Doom,” “Mortal Kombat” and “Resident Evil,” were not only six to nine years old at the date of the court opinion, but had titles falsely cited as “Mortal Combat” and “Resident of Evil Creek.”[3] This is testament to the fact that inexperience with video games has a strong positive productive relationship with total, ape-like ignorance about them.

Though to some degree this paper is guilty of it, the primary problem with much formal academic research into video games is its insistence on “boxing” characteristics of games into neat little propositional packages. Usually, it is the result of an infrequent video game player conducting a study, or a frequent gamer attempting to appeal to a broader audience with his writing. The problem with this approach lies in attempting to convey the facets of such a complex kind of thing to someone who has never experienced it. Simply to say, “imagine something like a movie, where the player holds a controller that moves a character around on screen and makes him do things” clearly fails to capture all the qualitative essence of video games, especially in the present-day context. It is the equivalent of trying to explain to an 11^th-century Catholic Bishop the concept of a car as “imagine something like a carriage, but one that moves by itself.” He, too, would condemn it, probably as the product of witchcraft, because he would not understand how it worked. The attempt, then, to “sound-bite” video game research certainly creates skewed perceptions of their supposed social implications.

Video games are free speech

Thankfully, the 7^th District Court (which affected a much broader jurisdiction than the Limbaugh ruling) had previously upheld video games as free speech. The bottom line is that inanimate visual art, audio, and films are protected under freedom of expression, no matter whether their substance is contributory to public discourse or not. The same should go for video games, and relying on prejudice against the “new guy” will not suffice. Many games require just as much, if not plenty more effort than a single painting or a book. Development teams often number between thirty and two thousand people, frequently allocating many members simply to developing the plot and characters and making them believable. Besides all the technological input that must go into the game in order to make it playable on the user’s computer, the art for the “look” of the game must be drafted and implemented into three dimensional graphics, while voice-overs and sound effects must be created and integrated into the entire process seamlessly. A good game must be one with entertaining gameplay, an interesting plot, and appealing graphics and sound, meanwhile operating on a budget and somehow turning a profit.

Interactivity and character

The desire for interactivity in entertainment is, in some regards, a product of social evolution. Instead of watching television, children often play in imaginary worlds. Many adventurous persons have a passion for exploring the wilderness or traveling to different cities, to enjoy the alternative aesthetics and atmosphere. It is this same spirit that leads to the appreciation of quality video games. Movies and books do not afford the reader the kind of flexibility and freedom that video games do; the actions of the characters always happen no matter what the reader says or does, and all he can do is try to imagine otherwise. The video game provides the interface by which the audience can instead be the protagonist, for a change.

Many games, especially role-playing games, offer character customization schemes that both affect the aesthetic role of the character on screen (clothes, hair and skin color, body shape, facial features, etc.) as well as his substantive role (attributes, skills, and abilities). Throughout the game, characters can collect items or earn experience that gives them more abilities, often at the player’s choice. The result is character development, which leads to close identification with the character at play and even sentimental value (try deleting someone’s character in World of Warcraft and receiving an indifferent response).

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The war had many preconditions, yet a structured sequence of events led to the commencement of armed conflict. On September 1^st, 1939 Germany invaded its neighbor state, Poland, after having already invaded Czechoslovakia in April of the same year. This caused Britain to declare war on Germany two days later in defense of Polish sovereignty when it then became clear that the Soviet Union had already agreed a secret pact with the Germans to partition Poland. The leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin, would soon find himself in a difficult position as he had underestimated Hitler and the German intentions. It became clear that the Soviets would also be targeted. With the war in the European theatre well underway, Japan began attacking and defeating its neighbors in the Pacific. On December 7^th, 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American navy in Pearl Harbor and destroyed much of the Pacific Fleet of the United States. In response, the United States declared a state of war against Japan the next day. Throughout this sequence, almost all of the world’s states became involved on one side or the other. Many became partners, in the case of Italy with Germany, or many became occupied states, such as France.

The war had many underlying currents, some that had been in action many years prior to the actual conflict. One of the most striking features of the Second World War was the ideology and use of propaganda in the fabric of each nation. The goal of this paper is to identify the types of propaganda that became such a central focal point in the prosecution of the war and to judge the effects on those that were the target audience. The other feature of war that examined in this paper is the role of the “hero”; in this war there would be the victors and the vanquished, as there are in most wars. Accordingly, there would be heroes and villains.

Propaganda in Nazi Germany

In the 1930s, the National Socialist ideology and aesthetic were successfully attached to the state in the person of Adolf Hitler. While nearly all countries give their fallen soldiers a place in national myth, Germany went beyond memorial, making death in war a philosophy of life. At the forefront of Nazi propaganda was minister Josef Goebbels, who produced the primary thrust of Nazi propaganda through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. He was an outstanding graveside orator, speaking at all major Party funerals, and in this tradition he knew how to morph terrible defeats and the horrors of war into victories. Unlike much propaganda elsewhere, which was addressed to existing belief systems, his propaganda works would also serve to be the building blocks for the irrational ideology of National Socialism. The pledge that German soldiers took is reflective of the die-hard sacrificial loyalty adopted in much of the Third Reich: “I swear before God this sacred oath, that I will obey absolutely the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, and that I will be ready at any time as a brave soldier to give my life for this oath.” Every common foot-soldier who did not know otherwise ideally possessed a firm belief in this statement, with the ultimate satisfaction in knowing that fighting and living for his country was great, but fighting and dying for his country was even greater.

This myth, though it was nurtured by a long previous German tradition of warrior hood and heroism, was born for the Nazis from a battle in Langemarck, where in 1914 tens of thousands of young, poorly trained Germans died in a frontal assault against entrenched, veteran English troops. They became iconic of the pure Aryan warriors who would restore the heroic spirit of their ancestors to the dying Germany. In reality, the attack was a tremendous waste of young human life, and was testament to the gross excesses of nationalism which were recognized by much of the participants after World War I. In Nazi Germany, the blood of the sacrificial dead in Flanders would be the force that would revitalize the glory of the nation, and these battles of martyrdom would repeat themselves in Marne, Verdun, and Somme. Nazi propaganda posters would come to be dominated by images of shirtless, young Aryan men working and flashing their weapons in heroic poses.

In 1923, the Nazi Party found its own martyrs during Hitler’s failed beerhall putsch. After an unsuccessful attempt at a coup in a beer hall with government officials, sixteen Party members were killed in the ensuing violence. These became the Sixteen Immortals, to whom Hitler built the Temple of Honor in Munich to honor them. Each year, he commemorated the failed putsch by reenacting his march. Large celebrations honoring the German war dead became a critical part of Hitler’s arsenal in reinforcing the sacrificial Nazi ideology. Horst Wessel, a member of the Stormtroopers killed by communist partisans in 1930, was turned into Germany’s number-one national martyr by its propaganda machine. His image was so well-admired that celebrations in his name were turning into a national cliché, and Minister Goebbels even banned all celebrations except those commemorating the day of his death in order to preserve Wessel’s strength as an icon.

Horst Wessel, the Sixteen Immortals, and the dead at Langemarck were only a few of the numerous symbols that summated to create the German national mythology and its attraction. When Hedges refers to “War as Culture,” no better major example springs to mind than the National Socialists of Germany. Ironically, without World War I, World War II probably would not have happened. The major tragedy and loss of life in the first war supposedly told the world that this was the end of war. For Germany, however, the carnage in hindsight only brought them closer to war, and needless death became necessary heroism. War pervaded their culture in the absence of stable, orderly, and productive society. In a propaganda publication, Friedrich Holderlein wrote, “live on high, O fatherland, and do not count the dead! Not one too many has died for you.” Ideas like these brought the Nazi party to power by creating the higher cause that could justify anything, and making it noble to be a part of it. In the end, its follies and absurdities were too great for even the greatest of giants to sustain.

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