Re: Hope on the Battlefield
I have to admit that I haven’t read Marshall, but I’ve seen him critiqued pretty heavily by the most recent generation of US WWII military historians (most notably Michael Doubler and Peter Mansoor), as part of the general effort to rehability the reputation of the US army in Europe. There’s apparently good evidence that Marshall was sloppy or maybe even dishonest in his research methodology (the argument is summed up here), and some WWII soldiers’ memoirs have explicitly said Marshall’s ratio didn’t apply to their units. (The only example I can remember is this one.) So I’m a little bit dubious of any argument that relies on Marshall. (From my reading of the critiques of Marshall, I think Grossman is right that soldiers more often just aim a little high, rather than not shooting at all as Marshall argued.)
And I agree with Joe that whatever inclination we have against killing (I think more societally conditioned than natural) is more easily overcome when dealing with those we know and who’ve offended us. A book I read recently argued that humans have been extremely violent throughout most of our history, and it’s only modern states that have managed to curb our tendency toward domestic violence. But when those states send people off to fight each other, isn’t there much less emotional motivation to kill?
on August 8th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
My initial thoughts are that it would depend on:
1) What sort of fighting the soldier is in. I hesitate to say this since I’ve never been in this sort of situation, but I suspect that if someone were trying to kill me, I’d probably take it pretty personally.
2) How much does the soldier buy into the ideals of the state/government/etc that’s sending him over? And how much does he buy into the application of those ideals to the particular war or battle that he’s sent to fight?
on August 9th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Two other considerations:
1) Since Vietnam is mentioned over and over again in that article lets not forget that Vietnam was a very unpopular war after the Tet Offensive, which resulted in a lot of open hatred towards returning servicemen. It’s no stretch to say that such widespread hatred led to increased amounts of PTSD.
2) The article is overly concerned with historical battles, battles that would tend to feature militaries composed of draftees. There was no analysis of willingness to kill in volunteer militaries.
I appreciate his concern for vets, but don’t share his rosy view of human nature.
on August 9th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
One other thing that I forgot to mention but I think is pretty cool and relevant–the Wade book I linked to has a chapter on the nature of primitive warfare. Anthropologists used to think that because tribes never fought all-out wars, violence wasn’t a problem. But between domestic killings and the constant, day-to-day low-level skirmishing with other tribes, about 30% of the men in almost all hunter-gatherer societies die in battle. We just don’t notice it because it’s all hit-and-run, and they break off the fight if they’re in any danger–no crazy suicide charges. I think this is a good answer to the point the article makes that in ancient battles most of the killing happened when the enemy’s line was broken. I think the evidence from primitive warfare indicates that people are just naturally CAUTIOUS when the enemy isn’t helpless, not that people naturally have a hard time killing.
Also I completely second Garrett’s last comment.