Cover page; Halftitle page; Title page; Copyright page; Contents; Figures; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; 1 The First World War as a Laboratory of Violence; I The First World War as a 'total war'; II The historical analysis of wartime violence; III Eye-catching theories and their problems; IV A laboratory of violence; V The structure of this volume; Part One Practices of Violence; 2 Soldiers of the First World War: Killing, Surviving, Discourses of Violence; I Killing and dying; II Survival; III Discourses on violence and victimhood; 3 German Soldiers and their Conduct of War in 1914

I Emotional mobilizationII Extreme losses; III The voice of the soldiers: Georg Schenk; IV The destruction of Réméréville; V Collective learning processes; VI The voice of the soldiers: David Pfaff; VII The voice of the soldiers: Stefan Schimmer; VIII German atrocities; IX The limits and ambivalence of empathy with the victims; X Killing and fighting on the Eastern Front; XI War against Russia as social engineering; XII Conclusion; 4 Ernst Jünger: Practitioner and Observer of Killing; I In Stahlgewittern as male fundamentalism; II Jünger's original war diaries

III Killing in the artillery warIV Patrols; V The killing of prisoners of war?; VI Rationality and emotions; VII The heat of battle: 21 March 1918; VIII Killing and survival from Jünger's perspective; IX Violence as social practice; X Close-quarter combat; XI Explaining the readiness for self-destruction; XII Conclusion; Part Two Refusal of Violence; 5 Desertion in the German Army 1914-1918; I Places of survival: Escape routes for deserters; II Desertion as a mass phenomenon; III The motives for desertion; IV The desertion of Alsace-Lorrainers and Poles; V Conclusion

6 Disillusionment and Collective Exhaustion among German Soldiers on the Western Front: The Path to Revolution in 19187 The German Army in Autumn 1918: A Hidden Military Strike?; I The hidden military strike as a mass movement of soldiers; II The arguments of the critics: An 'ordered surrender'?; III What was 'shirking'?; IV Escape routes; V Patrols and raids; VI The chronology of the military strike; VII Quantifying levels of 'shirking'; VIII A strike outside the public gaze; IX Conclusion; Part Three Processing Violence; 8 The Weimar Republic: A Brutalized Society?

I Great Britain: A 'peaceable kingdom'?II Polarization or cooperation between political camps; III Radicalization in the nationalist camp; IV 'Brutalization': The argument of George L. Mosse; V Brutalization on the front?; VI The reintegration of the veterans; VII Pacifist veterans' associations; VIII Engaging with war violence through the media; IX Conclusion; 9 The Delayed Rejection of Violence: Hermann Schützinger's Conversion to Pacifism; Conclusion; 10 'Rear Area Militarism': Discussing the War in Anti-military Bestsellers in the Weimar Republic