War and Dehumanisation

“In World War I, the pursuit of glory far outweighed the dehumanisation associated with war.”

Miriam Webster defines the act of dehumanisation as “to deprive of human qualities, personality, or spirit.”
For many countries during the war, glory was the need to be acknowledged as a greater nation than others, and by pursuing this glory, governments schemed to dehumanise the enemy to such an extent, that any further action is justified by their ‘evil’, and they were then “less than humans”. These schemes just so happened to work.

Killing other humans is not ‘normal’. It was difficult to comprehend and soldiers were trained to hate their enemy; to realize that they were superior over their enemy. After a prolonged training regime, soldiers were succumbed to killing, and killing other humans became more psychologically acceptable, which is why many of those who fought in the war developed mental illnesses.
There is a group of people though; who we call sociopaths, that have the ability to dehumanise everyone and are able to kill other humans with out concern.
In Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, war and those who fight in the war are said to have been glorified.
Dulce et Decorum est is a Latin phrase which means ‘it is sweet and right’.
Owen has very cleverly added to the end, ‘the old lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori’ which means ‘it is sweet and right to die for one’s country’ as a contradictory way to finish his poem.
This saying was also used widely around Europe as a toast in the nineteenth century; the true meaning of this phrase was hidden behind the glory of winning the war.
‘In Flanders Fields’, a poem by John McCrae, has a very jingoistic final stanza.
The first two stanzas of the poem are used to make us feel sympathy for the soldiers, but the tone changes in the last stanza where it says,
‘If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep’.
This is saying that even when the soldiers die, others are expected to step up and take their place in the pursuit of glory, and those who have already fallen will not rest until the war has been fought between the other men.
Dehumanisation was barely thought of when in the war. The soldiers were trained to kill without remorse, thus allowing them to perform to the best of their ability when in battle. Performing at their best and fighting hard increased a soldiers survival rate as well as the success rate which drove them on until they could feel the glory of surviving, winning, conquering.
After winning a war, the more powerful country and their men would head home, with no thoughts of the enemy soldiers they had killed.
They had become so numbed by the power of glory to even feel the slightest bit of guilt and remorse one would normally feel after injuring another human being.
They would go home with their heads held high, and a deep feeling of joy in their chest. They had done their country proud, and brought glory to their nation.