Dave Andrews

I’ve just been reading a book called On Killing. It’s a study about killing in combat. And its not written by a pacifist propagandist, but by a credible military paratrooper psychologist who goes by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman.[i]

Grossman cites research that suggests that – contrary to some of our most famous cultural stereotypes – ‘the vast majority of men are not born killers.’[ii] At most only 2% of men could be considered aggressive psychopathic personalities with a predisposition towards killing.[iii] A figure reflected in the kill figures of fighter pilots in World War II, where only 1% of fighter pilots accounted for more than 40% of all enemy planes shot down.[iv]

Grossman quotes Brigadier S.L.A. Marshall, whose study of soldiers’ conduct in World War II  suggests ‘that the average healthy individual has such a resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility.’[v] A view that is reflected in the shots-per-soldier and the kills-per-shot recorded in every major war from the Civil War through to World War I up until World War II. During this period,  when it became possible to measure shots fired in combat, research has showed that the vast majority of soldiers – between 75 and 95% – either did not fire their weapon – even when fired upon – or only fired into the air – refusing to kill the enemy – even when given orders to do so.[vi]

In Civil War times, conscience-stricken soldiers had the option of pretending to fire – that is, loading up their muskets, mimicking the movements of a firing soldier next to them, and pretending to recoil. These soldiers would then be carrying loaded weapons or would have loaded their weapons multiple times.

When the fighting at Gettysburg was over, 27,574 muskets were found on the battlefield. Over 90% were loaded. Given that loading a weapon took roughly twenty times as long as firing it, the chances of these muskets representing mostly soldiers cut down just as they intended to shoot are slim. But then how do you explain the 12,000 multiply-loaded weapons, with 6,000 of them loaded with 3-10 rounds apiece? The most obvious answer is these soldiers could not fire their weapons. “Most soldiers were trying not to kill the enemy. Most appear to have not wanted to fire in the enemy’s general direction”[vii].

The Battle of Gettysburg is considered one of America’s bloodiest battles, but as Grossman shows, it could have been a great deal bloodier. Averages and estimates suggest that during Napoleonic and Civil War times, an entire regiment, firing from a range of thirty yards, would hit only one or two men a minute.

Let’s break down the numbers. A regiment contains between 200 and 1,000 men. A soldier operating at peak efficiency could get off 1-5 shots per minute. During training, these soldiers were 25% accurate at 225 yards, 40% accurate at 150 yards, and 60% accurate at 70 yards. So, taking the most modest of these estimates – a 200 man regiment shooting once per minute with 25% accuracy – you would expect to see about 50 hits, which would be more than 25 times greater than that which actually happened.

As one officer observed, ‘It seems strange that a company of men can fire volley after volley at a like number of men at not over a distance of fifteen steps and not cause a single casualty. Yet such was the facts in this instance.’[viii] What was happening? Soldiers were resorting to a range of options that meant that they didn’t have to kill. Some fell back to support positions. A few faked injury or ran away. Many fired into the air.

Colonel Milton Mater’s uncle said the most significant fact he could remember about his combat experience in the World War I was ‘draftees who wouldn’t shoot’[ix]

Gwynne Dyer says that apart from ‘the occasional psychopath who really wants to slice people open’ most soldiers on both sides of World War II were interested in ‘damage limitation’[x] And ‘all forces had somewhere near the same rate of non-firers’[xi]

According to Brigadier Marshall ‘At the vital point’ (when a soldier has to decide to fire or not) the average healthy individual ‘becomes a conscientious objector.’[xii] (emphasis mine)

When the military realized what was happening, they embarked on a new program to turn their soldiers into killers. They knew that while they couldn’t change the vast majority of men’s natural aversion to killing, they could put could soldiers under sustained systematic pressure to kill – by reframing killing as saving lives, portraying the enemy as sub-human, increasing the distance between the trigger and the target so soldiers can not see the human-ity of the enemy, demanding every soldier’s immediate obedience to the commands of their leader and developing each unit’s capacity for collective violence..

Reframing killing as saving lives

As it has become clear that most men are motivated to serve and to preserve life, the  military has taken the desire to serve and preserve life and used it to make men killers by telling men that killing is the only way they can the save the lives of those they love. Soldiers in Iraq are told killing terrorists is the only way to save the lives of civilians.

Portraying the enemy as sub-human

In World War II it became clear that soldiers found it harder to kill people they could identify with; but easier to kill people they couldn’t identify with. Only 6% of Americans said they wanted to kill Germans; while 44% said they wanted to kill the Japanese.[xiii] So the military has encouraged soldiers to see the enemy as ‘ragheads’ rather than humans.[xiv] As it has become clear it is harder for soldiers to kill people who are innocent; but easier to kill people who are guilty, ‘ragheads’ are deemed bloodthirsty, baby killers in advance.[xv]

Increasing the distance between the trigger and the target

Most soldiers find it difficult to kill up close and personal. ‘Where you hear ‘em scream and see ‘em die, it’s a bitch’[xvi] It has always been easier to kill from a distance and to pretend its not personal. Sailors shoot up ‘ships’. Aviators shoot down ‘planes’.[xvii] The artillery attack enemy ‘lines’.[xviii] ‘They can pretend they are not killing human beings.’[xix] So the military is increasing the distance between the trigger and the target technologically as quickly as it can. Through night goggles for example when a soldiers shoots someone they say its just like shooting on a TV show – ‘as if its happening on a TV screen’ [xx]

Demanding every soldier’s obedience to their leader

Sigmund Freud said ‘never underestimate the power of the need to obey’.[xxi] Those with no combat experience presume that ‘being fired upon’ was the reason most soldiers fired. But veterans of combat say that being ‘ordered to fire’ was the reason most soldiers fired.[xxii]. Without an order to fire soldiers many soldiers would not fire, even when they came face to face with the enemy in combat.[xxiii]

Stanley Milgram‘s experiments at Yale prove that more than 65% of people will obey authority figures to the point of inflicting (seemingly) lethal shocks on strangers.[xxiv]

Gwynne Dyer said in his book on War that while ‘the vast majority of men are not born killers’; nonetheless ‘men will kill under compulsion – men will do almost anything if they know it is expected of them and they are under strong social pressure to comply’.[xxv]

Since Marshall’s report on surprisingly low firing rates, the military have tried to increase soldiers’ compliance with orders to fire through social learning, classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

Through social learning men have been socialized to imitate role models like the ANZAC legends who obeyed orders to attack impregnable positions in Gallipoli – even when it was obvious to everyone that the orders were insane and to obey them was suicidal.[xxvi] Through the classical conditioning[xxvii] devised by Pavlov to make dogs salivate at the sound of a bell. [xxviii] soldiers have been conditioned to associate obeying the orders of drill sergeants[xxix] with rewards (pleasure), and disobeying orders with punishment (pain)[xxx] And through behave-ioural engineering[xxxi] devised by Skinner to make rats through mazes[xxxii] soldiers have been engineered to increase their automatic quick shoot reflex[xxxiii] by repeatedly shooting at targets which look like people in simulated battlefield conditions[xxxiv] to such a degree that an average infantryman now has a 95% shot-per-soldier rate[xxxv] and a marksmen now has a 1.39 kill-per-shot ratio. [xxxvi]

Developing each unit’s capacity for collective violence

Research has shown that the greatest fear of a man in combat is not the fear of death but of ‘letting others down’[xxxvii] ‘You can’t turn around and run the other way. Peer pressure, you know?’[xxxviii] So the military have used peer pressure – along with the intensification of power [xxxix] and the diffusion of responsibility that a group provides[xl] (‘there were so many guys firing, you can never be sure it was you’ who killed someone[xli]) – to turn men into killers. Konrad Lorenz says: ‘Man is not a killer, but the group is.’[xlii]

Grossman concludes his book On Killing by saying that the same techniques used by the military are now being used by the media in society at large – and that not only soldiers, but also civilians, are being socialized to kill without constraints by watching movie heroes like Dirty Harry kill outside the constraints of the law;[xliii] being desensitized to the act of killing by seeing thousands of people being killing on television;[xliv] and being engineered to kill reflexively by shooting at human targets with model guns in life-like video games.[xlv] Grossman says ‘we are learning to kill and learning to like it.’ [xlvi](emphasis mine)

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[i] Dave Grossman On Killing Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company New York 2009

[ii] p31

[iii] p189

[iv] p110

[v] p1

[vi] p3

[vii] p23

[viii] p20

[ix] p29

[x] p6

[xi] p16

[xii] p1

[xiii] p162

[xiv] p161

[xv] p165

[xvi] p117

[xvii] p58

[xviii] p58

[xix] p108

[xx] p170

[xxi] p142

[xxii] p143

[xxiii] p144

[xxiv] p141

[xxv] p31

[xxvi] p.306

[xxvii] p255

[xxviii] p254

[xxix] p322

[xxx] p255

[xxxi] p255

[xxxii] p 255

[xxxiii] p 256

[xxxiv] p256

[xxxv] p36

[xxxvi] p256

[xxxvii] p52

[xxxviii] p150

[xxxix] p151

[xl] p152

[xli] p111

[xlii] p151

[xliii] p325

[xliv] p329

[xlv] p319

[xlvi] p315