The Enemy in Heaven?

Ebel states, “Good and evil did not exist only in the abstract for soldiers and war workers… The Allies were synonymous with Good and were cast as fairly uniform in their Christianity.  The Central Powers were, predictably, cast as apostles of a godless militarism when they weren’t portrayed as minions of Satan.” (30)  However, many people, like Woodrow Wilson, believed that “war was not against the German people but against their government.” (31)

Ebel goes on to state that many soldiers viewed their deaths as a “sacred duty”.  “Sacrifice for the nation had been and continued to be noble, that the call of duty was sacred, and that to heed this call as Union and Confederate soldiers had, was to share in a sacred American tradition.” (45)

Ebel goes on to provide three characteristics of heaven in soldierly accounts: 1) that they “will be welcome in heaven”; 2) they “did not incorporate the ‘thrilling’ aspects of war and struggle,” and; 3) they “understood heaven to be a place of reunion and repair.” (153)

Given the fact that many on both sides were Christian – sometimes even the same tradition or family tree – and that many did not see the problem lying with the German people themselves, how did many of the American troops view the enemy dead?  While it is obviously “helpful” in combat to demonize the living enemy, I can’t help but imagine that many soldiers contemplated the afterlife of many of their enemies.  Did many soldiers go beyond just demonizing the living enemy to associating the enemy dead with their concept of the afterlife?  If so, how did these concepts "assist" the soldiers in fulfilling their "sacred duty?"