I will post this at the risk of being downvoted because I am all but a pacifist and it is not a popular position. This is not surprising at all for two reasons.
Despite what films will depict, people fighting on the front lines in a war do not generally begrudgingly respect each other. They hate eachother in a way most people probably cannot understand. Many would not pass up the opportunity to rid the world of what they see as the most evil upon its face unto the very last minute. The grudging respect you see discussed in documentaries comes decades later. After the continual trauma and memories of dead friends have time to fade.
War beaurocracies transform people into rational psychopaths. They create an order in which a letter of the law is utmost and that letter is laid by your betters. If your betters find some purpose in ordering you to kill pointlessly, you will. We all like to think we could find the courage or clarity to disobey an unethical order. But history is much more full of compliant atrocities than righteous mutinies. Soldiers kept firing because that is the perogative that came out of the leadership black box.
Despite what films will depict, people fighting on the front lines in a war do not generally begrudgingly respect each other. They hate eachother in a way most people probably cannot understand. Many would not pass up the opportunity to rid the world of what they see as the most evil upon its face unto the very last minute. The grudging respect you see discussed in documentaries comes decades later. After the continual trauma and memories of dead friends have time to fade.
War beaurocracies transform people into rational psychopaths. They create an order in which a letter of the law is utmost and that letter is laid by your betters. If your betters find some purpose in ordering you to kill pointlessly, you will. We all like to think we could find the courage or clarity to disobey an unethical order. But history is much more full of compliant atrocities than righteous mutinies. Soldiers kept firing because that is the perogative that came out of the leadership black box.