World War I has often been described as a traumatic event for German society - not only for those who participated in the war but also for the generations that followed. In view of the openness with which the war's violence was discussed in public, it is surprising how little the experiences of the participants who dealt professionally with injuries, that is the doctors, have been analyzed. This neglect is all the more surprising because the medical profession was one of the largest groups of academics to participate in the war. Doctors also were pillars of the war's propaganda: They were experts in the rhetoric of war; they ministered to the armed forces' fitness for war (Kriegsverwendungsfähigkeit); and they believed in the war's bounties for science.

Between 1914 and 1918, 8,986 German doctors were mobilized for military service, and 1,724 of them died of injuries or disease during the war. Moreover, many doctors worked in the hospitals of the hinterland. In 1914, 46 female doctors also served in hospitals before the Prussian War Ministry's medical board concluded that their presence was undesirable and began removing them in 1915. Nevertheless, no other war saw such a large number of doctors in service.

This chapter examines the totality of war as it applies to the history of medicine and to the experience of a crucial scientific discipline. The totality of war within this discipline was documented in the political and propagandistic engagement of the medical profession, as well as in the martial metaphors of social Darwinism that dominated the medical discourse. But the war's totality also was reflected in the bodies and minds of those whom the physicians treated. The doctors were supposed to heal and save lives, but in the novel conditions of this war they frequently mistreated their charges.