Noah Kayser-Hirsh

PHIL-106
Paper 1: Rommel and The Moral Equality of Soldiers
9/25/15

World War II was, at its core, unique and unprecedented. No war before and no war
since, when looked back upon, has had quite the same sense of good versus evil. Of course,
every war is polarized, and nearly every soldier believes he is fighting for the good side, but
you would be hard pressed to find a more universally accepted villain than Adolf Hitler, and a
more inhumane cause than that of the Nazi regime. We simply cannot treat World War II the
way we treat other wars, and yet when judging war, we are confronted with the daunting
realization that we must. In attempting to evaluate the justice of war we cannot rule out certain
conflicts as anomalies, we must avoid exceptions to rules. This, I believe, is why Michael Walzer
uses World War II as his example arguing for the moral equality of soldiers1. He takes a morally
abhorrent ideology and argues that the instruments used to further that ideology are morally just.
Walzer seems to say that even at the most extreme end of the moral spectrum, soldiers are
morally equal. He uses Erwin Rommel, a very noble Nazi General, to further illustrate this idea.
Dwight Eisenhower disagrees. He focuses on the extreme nature of World War II and the
fundamentally evil nature of the Nazi regime. To him, World War II was far too personal a
thing. 2 Walzer, I think, disagrees with Eisenhower primarily because Walzer does not believe

1
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New
York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 2005), 34-41
2
Dwight Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948), 156-157, quoted
in Desmond Young, Rommel: The Desert Fox (New York: Quill, 1978), 137-138.

the limitations of force itself,3 should be the only limitations at war, but also simply because of
the positions they hold in relation to World War II.
Without the equal right to kill, war as a rule-governed activity would disappear and be
replaced by crime and punishment, by evil conspiracies and military law enforcement.4 This is,
in the most basic way of putting it, Michael Walzers view on the moral equality of soldiers. He
believes that because soldiers are so often instruments of the state, absent of freedom. when
soldiers fight freely, choosing one another as enemies and designing their own battles, their war
is not a crime; when they fight without freedom, their war is not their crime. 5
In explaining the moral equality of soldiers Walzer focuses on jus in bello uses the case
of Erwin Rommel to further his point. It is quite easy, in the case of Rommel, to evaluate the jus
ad bellum of his cause. Rommel was one of Hitlers generals, therefore he is very clearly fighting
an unjust war. This, Walzer points out, is not of Rommels choice. He is merely an instrument of
the state, and the war is not his to be blamed for. Walzer believes we must focus on how Rommel
fights this war, and this evaluation is also very clear: he fought a bad war well.6 Walzer
believes that the line between jus ad bellum and jus in bello is very clear, and that military
generals straddle that line. However, he believes we can distinguish the role of generals by the
nature of their political obedience: Rommel was a servant, not a ruler.7
Eisenhower, upon capturing German General von Armin, would not obey the common
practice of meeting and shaking the hand of the captured general. He argues that these customs
were originated in a time when soldiers fought purely for enjoyment, and that the tradition that

3
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 38
4
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 41
5
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 37
6
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 38
7
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39

all professional soldiers are comrades in arms haspersisted to this day.8 Eisenhower does not
think these customs applied to the war he was fighting, as he believed he was, confronted by a
completely evil conspiracy with which no compromise could be tolerated.9 He believes that we
cannot completely separate jus in bello from jus ad bellum, that the nature of their cause made
any soldier and general on the German side inherently unjust, that whether or not they were
acting of their own volition was completely irrelevant, they were furthering a completely evil
cause thus they themselves were completely evil.
On the surface, it seems Walzer and Eisenhower disagree about a handshake, but the
disagreement is, morally, far deeper than that. Walzer summarizes Eisenhowers views by
saying, On this view, it doesnt matter whether or not von Arnim had fought well; his crime was
to have fought at all.10 This is where Walzer and Eisenhower part ways ideologically. Though
Walzer certainly agrees that the German side was unjust, he believes that we must view the
actions of German soldiers and generals, specifically Rommel, independent of their unjust cause.
He believes that they are acting as well as they could in the sphere that they occupied. They did
everything they could, given the nature of their position, to act morally. Eisenhower could
possibly agree with this, anyone would recognize that, given his position, Rommel acted as
nobly as possible. However, what Eisenhower essentially thinks is that though these soldiers and
generals may act as morally as possible, the nature of their cause immediately blacklists them as
immoral. This is mainly what Walzer disagrees with. Taking this view, Walzer thinks, means
that the only the only restrictions we apply on force are the limitations of force itself. 11 In

8
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 37
9
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 37
10
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 37
11
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 38

other words, we would reduce our evaluation of war to just the evaluation of each sides cause.
This is so problematic to Walzer because it means that we view war only as a combat between a
criminal and an enforcer. If we adopt that view, war would serve no purpose other than a purely
punitive one, and that is a dangerous thought because it would abandon all restriction on force
other than that it be force working for a just cause.
Eisenhower and Walzers disagreement stems from the difference in their backgrounds.
The thing that sets Eisenhower and Walzer apart, on the most basic level, is simply their frame of
reference. Eisenhower was the commander of the Allied forces 12, Walzer is a historian and
philosopher. The nature of his position required that Eisenhower be focused not on war as an
abstract concept, but war as a reality. Eisenhower needed to understand the moral realities of his
war, not all war. Walzer has an entirely different focus. His job is to evaluate all wars, and he
cannot successfully create a theory about the justice of war without that theory (as well as it can)
applying to war across the board. Walzer must view World War II as an example in a larger
collection of occurrences, Eisenhower must view World War II as his mission, and this affords
him certain rights of judgment that Walzer is not entitled to. Walzer must step back and look at
the context of World War II and how that contributes to the action, he must separate the jus ad
bellum from jus in bello. Eisenhower, however, is in the bello. He is afforded the right to
completely disagree with one side of the war, because he is on the other side. If we are to
examine how Walzer and Eisenhower view the moral equality of soldiers, we must look at the
perspectives they are working through, and this, I believe, is where Walzer misses the boat.

12
Ambrose, Stephen E., Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 18901952
(New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1983)

Eisenhower is in a unique position, and his view on the moral equality of soldiers must not be
evaluated without first recognizing his position.
Walzer is working towards an evaluation of all war, throughout history, and this leads
him to look at conflicts through different eyes than those of military generals like Eisenhower.
While Rommel fought for perhaps the worst cause in the 20th century, Walzer believes we
mustnt let that shroud the fact that he fought with nobility, mercy, and chivalry. Walzer seems
to believe that Rommel, given his position, did as best he could to fight justly, though for an
unjust cause. Walzers point is that we must deliberately separate jus ad bellum from jus in bello,
and while I am not keen on the absolute independence of the two, I do recognize how important
the distinction is, because, as Walzer says, without it war would disintegrate into a system of
crime and punishment. We must draw the line somewhere between soldier and statesman,
otherwise we lose all hope of a functional global community.