Now that we all agree about the main statement in my post of 12 Dec 13 - 10:35 AM (cf. also my message of 12 Dec 13 - 12:51 PM), we can split off that part for the purposes of this thread. In a mathematical formula:

"most soldiers knew what the fought for" =
"most soldiers initially believed the reasons given to them"
+ "those reasons were true and the full story".

Only the last statement, not containing rank and file soldiers, is still disputed.