War/Crime

Abstract

C hoosing a single image to represent a collection of articles is always a challenge. Selecting the cover for this special issue was no exception. Ultimately, a desire to encapsulate the complex intersection of war and crime brought us back to the iconic figure of Henri Désiré Landru, a serial murderer whose story belongs at once to the history of the First World War and to broader histories of crime. Landru cloaked himself in the chaos of the war to move beyond the litany of frauds he had committed in the prewar era. While the police were distracted and many of the men away at war, Landru escalated his crimes, producing a list of casualties that rivaled many soldiers at the front. Arrested in 1919, he was charged with and convicted of the murders of twelve women and one man. Landru, though, was no singular aberration. The "Bluebeard of Gambais," as he was dubbed in the press, was one among a handful of serial murderers active during the First World War, including Fritz Haarmann, "Butcher of Hanover"; Carl Großmann, "Butcher of Berlin"; George Joseph Smith, "Brides in the Bath Killer"; and Helmuth Schmidt, "American Bluebeard." 1 If the First World War "made" these monsters, it did so conditionally. That is, it provided conditions favorable to the exercise of monstrosities. 2 Moving beyond the First World War, the conditional making of monsters might just as well apply to the actions of the "ordinary men" who perpetrated the Holocaust in Poland or the French paratroopers who committed torture during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62). 3 If war makes "monsters" conditionally, it also makes them imaginatively and contextually. The dehumanization of the enemy has historically been central 1. See, e.g., Watson, Trial of George Joseph Smith; Buhk, Shocking Story of Helmuth Schmidt; Béraud, Bourcier, and Salmon, L'affaire Landru; Elder, Murder Scenes; and Aubenas, Les vampires.2. This ideas is most famously encapsulated in George Mosse's "brutalization thesis" and attendant debates. See Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. The most pertinent critique of this position for the French context is Prost, "Les limites de la brutalisation."3. Browning, Ordinary Men; Branche, La torture et l'armée.