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On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
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On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

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A controversial psychological examination of how soldiers’ willingness to kill has been encouraged and exploited to the detriment of contemporary civilian society.
 
Psychologist and US Army Ranger Dave Grossman writes that the vast majority of soldiers are loath to pull the trigger in battle. Unfortunately, modern armies, using Pavlovian and operant conditioning, have developed sophisticated ways of overcoming this instinctive aversion.
 
The mental cost for members of the military, as witnessed by the increase in post-traumatic stress, is devastating. The sociological cost for the rest of us is even worse: Contemporary civilian society, particularly the media, replicates the army’s conditioning techniques and, Grossman argues, is responsible for the rising rate of murder and violence, especially among the young.
 
Drawing from interviews, personal accounts, and academic studies, On Killing is an important look at the techniques the military uses to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects the soldier, and of the societal implications of escalating violence.
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2014
ISBN9781497629202
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
Author

Dave Grossman

A former army Ranger and paratrooper, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman taught psychology at West Point and was a Professor of Military Science at Arkansas State University. The author's website, Grossman On Truth, amplifies and extends the material covered in his books and is regularly updated with new, topical information on the subject.

Read more from Dave Grossman

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Rating: 3.862069017241379 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an exploration of the societal and psychological influences that can aid or hinder one human being to kill another, especially when one is close enough to see the actual death. Bombing or artillery fire are covered only peripherally but, they are easy to explain once you've read this book. Grossman was a serving soldier in the USA, and this gave him access to real professional soldiers and access to psychological sources for the intellectual part of the work. It certainly was an eye opener, and should be read by those engaged in the creation of adventure fiction. I also understand that Dr. Grossman now crusades against the proliferation of "Point and Shoot!" video games. He believes they are useful in desensitizing humans so as to make them easier to train to fatal violence.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I don't agree with some of what Grossman says--he seems for example not to have read the literature on suicide bombers, but his book convincingly describes the psychology of lethal violence: the innate abhorrence almost all humans have for killing one another, the methods used to train soldiers to kill and the causes of post-traumatic stress disorder. Grossman also offers in this context a persuasive critique of violence in film, television and video games. This is an essential book, one that is required reading at West Point and one I would make required reading for anyone who, like me, is working to create nonviolent alternatives.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting read. The author explains why soldiers kill, and more importantly, why don't they kill.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Societies which ask men to fight on their behalf should be aware of what the consequences of their actions may so easily be."The above quote is included in this book and, I think, sums up why everyone should read this. We so easily (and thoughtlessly) accept sending our men and women to war and we give little, if any, thought to the toll killing in battle takes on them. Grossman's in-depth research teaches us how much damage is caused by our indifference.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I grew up under the guidance of a father that like many, served his country in its time of need. He chose not to share his WWII experiences with me, or anyone for that matter. Through brave reactions to horrific circumstances, the U.S. Army bestowed the Silver Star and Purple Heart upon him. He also earned a life of anguish, regrets, self-loathing and a torchered soul. I read On Killing, to gain a greater understanding of what enabled him to destroy, especially his own kind. Broken down into many reactions and scenarios, and observed from many directions, I was thoroughly engrossed by the mind-set of the individual(s) that have to find the strength to commit the evilist of deeds, the very opposite of what we are taught to respect above all else in life; life itself. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman draws on first-hand accounts (including his own), past research of others and the edition I read is as current as the world we live in today. I strongly recommend reading On Killing, for those that wish to gain insight to what a killer is faced with before, during and after the ultimate decision to kill is made; or not!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Grossman is a west-point psychologist and a Army ranger vet. He provides a good look into the ways armies train people to be killing machines and what the negative long-term effects of such training are - both on the individual and on the community/society that has to deal with that person. The last chapter - about violent video games - feels like an add-on to get the book published. Worth reading though - espcially if you have been through or know/care about, anyone who has been through military training.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Is a little dry at times, but stuffed full of an amazing amount of information about humans natural adversion to killing another human. Lots of charts and graphs.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was recommended by an active duty military officer friend of mine. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to read. It was not full of Military terms or jargon. He had interviews with people who have seen the elephant
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great insight into the effects of killing on the psyche of both the killer (justified or murder) and the influence OF and TO society at large. Well worth the read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It is very difficult to "review" rather than "summarize" a fact filled book.
    Numerous examples throughout history were given to show how
    soldiers, trained to fight, did not meet their commanders' expectations.

    Drugs ( supposedly supplied to Germans during World War 2 ) and
    psychological conditioning of US troops resulted in troops capable
    of long term combat and vast increases in returning fire - but at what
    cost after the war ?

    I once read that Japanese men consumed graphic novels which
    portrayed horrific, bloody pictures of the most violent kinds and
    yet Japan has a crime rate much lower than the US.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book contains interesting information / evidence, but the author goes too far away in the interpretation and conclusions from the provided evidence (there are other explanations too ...); an indication - too often use of the word "obvious" (nothing is obvious, (there are other possible explanations too); there are contradictions (ww2 non-firers, stated multiple times, different values, ranging from 30% to 85%, no sources); I think that the weighting of this factor (psychological) is not as high as set in this book (85%), but rather around 20-30%, as found in the actual war or post-war analytics and surveys.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. This seems to be the definitive book on why soldiers do and don't kill in battle. Author's thesis is that most infantry don't shoot because of inbuilt resistance to killing. That seems very hard to believe and the stats, while convincing, aren't verifiable...e.g. 85% of civil war soldiers did not shoot, not because they're scared, but because they have inborn resistance to killing. It's a difficult book to read because of the subject; not fun reading. If you read it, be skeptical.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Not a fan of the book. I’m a combat veteran and feel like he missed the mark on this book especially the lasting effects killing has on a person’s life.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The end of the book is not good, bad conclusion. 6 6 6 6 6

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It helped open my eyes.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Stopped reading after first several pages. The premise of the book is obviously flawed. For example, the author proposes that in poor families where everyone lives in one room, sexual deviance is reduced. What an ignorant statement!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It was interesting until he described video games as murder simulators, maybe about 10 pages into the book. I checked out after that, and really couldn't find the willpower to push myself much further. I skimmed a bit, but wasn't very impressed overall with what I'd read. Some of it felt like he was rehashing what he said in the previous paragraph(s). It's really odd - I usually LOVE nonfiction. This one, I'm just not a fan.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had read many years ago - in high school - that only one in six soldiers at the front line even fired their rifles. What I didn't know was that that had changed, that in the Vietnam war and more recent wars the fire rate has gone way up, and that has happened as a result of training methods that condition people to respond in a more automated way, so that taking the shot happens without processing. This explains to me what I feel is a higher level of damage to people involved in recent wars. People who wouldn't have killed in the past, even while feeling it was patriotic and that they should, are now killing and have to live with that.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Grossman's study provides some needed insights into the process of killing and the impact on the individual and society. His understanding of PTSD is helpful and rounds out the picture of how a nation's attitudes towards the soldier can either heal or damage a fighter returning from combat. Grossman never really penetrates to the source of what he calls "guilt" (is it objective: according to an absolute law; or simply subjective: being either real or false?). He assumes that in every engagement guilt will always be present, which implies that all killing has an aspect of wrong in it regardless of circumstance or intent. His model of evaluation is based in ancient Greek mythology and modern Freudian psychology. Although these models provide some metaphorical maps they do not provide any clearly defined ethics for a man to deal with the act of killing in war. Grossman provides shallow and superficial models of rationalisation, and so there is little clarity in regards to actual right and wrong. This is not a book on the casuistry of killing or war, and so will provide little ethical guidance for those trying to understand the subject from this angle. In this way, the book may be of little help to the returning soldier or to those who are seeking to understand their role in the military or police force. One of the odd methods that Grossman employs is "counting bullets" as a measure of a willingness to engage the enemy. He does not take into account cover-fire, suppressive fire or fire and maneuver tactics as used in modern engagements. In most of these instances bullets are being used to control a battle environment and not necessarily to engage an enemy directly. This is an odd accounting that is never justified as a way of supporting his thesis.It's a relatively valuable book, but I was looking for something a bit more penetrating in it's analysis and ethics.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society is a great subject with books far and few between. Perhaps it is because of the subject's rarity that this particular book falls short. Lacking in much evidence and reference, this seems to be an extremely biased book. Aside from the word "killology", Grossman does not contribute much new thought or experimentation. While the majority of what Grossman says may be true, it is difficult to stand behind without sited evidence or experiment.

    1 person found this helpful

Book preview

On Killing - Dave Grossman

SECTION I

Killing and the Existence of the Resistance: A World of Virgins Studying Sex

It is therefore reasonable to believe that the average and healthy individual—the man who can endure the mental and physical stresses of combat—still has such an inner and usually unrealized 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…. At the vital point he becomes a conscientious objector.

—S. L. A. Marshall

Men Against Fire

Then I cautiously raised the upper half of my body into the tunnel until I was lying flat on my stomach. When I felt comfortable, I placed my Smith Wesson .38-caliber snub-nose (sent to me by my father for tunnel work) beside the flashlight and switched on the light, illuminating the tunnel.

There, not more than 15 feet away, sat a Viet Cong eating a handful of rice from a pouch on his lap. We looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity, but in fact was probably only a few seconds.

Maybe it was the surprise of actually finding someone else there, or maybe it was just the absolute innocence of the situation, but neither one of us reacted.

After a moment, he put his pouch of rice on the floor of the tunnel beside him, turned his back to me and slowly started crawling away. I, in turn, switched off my flashlight, before slipping back into the lower tunnel and making my way back to the entrance. About 20 minutes later, we received word that another squad had killed a VC emerging from a tunnel 500 meters away.

I never doubted who that VC was. To this day, I firmly believe that grunt and I could have ended the war sooner over a beer in Saigon than Henry Kissinger ever could by attending the peace talks.

—Michael Kathman

Triangle Tunnel Rat

Our first step in the study of killing is to understand the existence, extent, and nature of the average human being’s resistance to killing his fellow human. In this section we will attempt to do that.

When I started interviewing combat veterans as a part of this study, I discussed some of the psychological theories concerning the trauma of combat with one crusty old sergeant. He laughed scornfully and said, "Those bastards don’t know anything about it. They’re like a world of virgins studying sex, and they got nothing to go on but porno movies. And it is just like sex, ’cause the people who really do it just don’t talk about it."

In a way, the study of killing in combat is very much like the study of sex. Killing is a private, intimate occurrence of tremendous intensity, in which the destructive act becomes psychologically very much like the procreative act. For those who have never experienced it, the depiction of battle that Hollywood has given us, and the cultural mythology that Hollywood is based upon, appear to be about as useful in understanding killing as pornographic movies would be in trying to understand the intimacy of a sexual relationship. A virgin observer might get the mechanics of sex right by watching an X-rated movie, but he or she could never hope to understand the intimacy and intensity of the procreative experience.

As a society we are as fascinated by killing as we are by sex—possibly more so, since we are somewhat jaded by sex and have a fairly broad base of individual experience in this area. Many children, upon seeing that I am a decorated soldier, immediately ask Have you ever killed anyone? or How many people have you killed?

Where does this curiosity come from? Robert Heinlein once wrote that fulfillment in life involved loving a good woman and killing a bad man. If there is such a strong interest in killing in our society, and if it equates in many minds to an act of manhood equivalent to sex, then why hasn’t the destructive act been as specifically and systematically studied as the procreative act?

Over the centuries there have been a few pioneers who have laid the foundation for such a study, and in this section we will attempt to look at them all. Probably the best starting point is with S. L. A. Marshall, the greatest and most influential of these pioneers.

Prior to World War II it had always been assumed that the average soldier would kill in combat simply because his country and his leaders had told him to do so and because it was essential to defend his own life and the lives of his friends. When the point came that he didn’t kill, it was assumed that he panicked and ran.

During World War II U.S. Army Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall asked these average soldiers what it was that they did in battle. His singularly unexpected discovery was that, of every hundred men along the line of fire during the period of an encounter, an average of only 15 to 20 would take any part with their weapons. This was consistently true whether the action was spread over a day, or two days or three.

Marshall was a U.S. Army historian in the Pacific theater during World War II and later became the official U.S. historian of the European theater of operations. He had a team of historians working for him, and they based their findings on individual and mass interviews with thousands of soldiers in more than four hundred infantry companies, in Europe and in the Pacific, immediately after they had been in close combat with German or Japanese troops. The results were consistently the same: only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges.[1]

The question is why. Why did these men fail to fire? As I examined this question and studied the process of killing in combat from the standpoints of a historian, a psychologist, and a soldier, I began to realize that there was one major factor that was missing from the common understanding of killing in combat, a factor that answers this question and more. That missing factor is the simple and demonstrable fact that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.

To some, this makes obvious sense. Of course it is hard to kill someone, they would say. I could never bring myself to do it. But they would be wrong. With the proper conditioning and the proper circumstances, it appears that almost anyone can and will kill. Others might respond, Any man will kill in combat when he is faced with someone who is trying to kill him. And they would be even more wrong, for in this section we shall observe that throughout history the majority of men on the battlefield would not attempt to kill the enemy, even to save their own lives or the lives of their friends.

Chapter One

Fight or Flight, Posture or Submit

The notion that the only alternatives to conflict are fight or flight is embedded in our culture, and our educational institutions have done little to challenge it. The traditional American military policy raises it to the level of a law of nature.

—Richard Heckler

In Search of the Warrior Spirit

One of the roots of our misunderstanding of the psychology of the battlefield lies in the misapplication of the fight-or-flight model to the stresses of combat. This model holds that in the face of danger a series of physiological and psychological processes prepare and support the endangered creature for either fighting or fleeing. The fight-or-flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger other than that which comes from its own species. When we examine the responses of creatures confronted with aggression from their own species, the set of options expands to include posturing and submission. This application of animal kingdom intraspecies response patterns (that is, fight, flee, posture, and submit) to human warfare is, to the best of my knowledge, entirely new.

The first decision point in an intraspecies conflict usually involves deciding between fleeing or posturing. A threatened baboon or rooster who elects to stand its ground does not respond to aggression from one of his own kind by leaping instantly to the enemy’s throat. Instead, both creatures instinctively go through a series of posturing actions that, while intimidating, are almost always harmless. These actions are designed to convince an opponent, through both sight and sound, that the posturer is a dangerous and frightening adversary.

When the posturer has failed to dissuade an intraspecies opponent, the options then become fight, flight, or submission. When the fight option is utilized, it is almost never to the death. Konrad Lorenz pointed out that piranhas and rattlesnakes will bite anything and everything, but among themselves piranhas fight with raps of their tails, and rattlesnakes wrestle. Somewhere during the course of such highly constrained and nonlethal fights, one of these intraspecies opponents will usually become daunted by the ferocity and prowess of its opponent, and its only options become submission or flight. Submission is a surprisingly common response, usually taking the form of fawning and exposing some vulnerable portion of the anatomy to the victor, in the instinctive knowledge that the opponent will not kill or further harm one of its own kind once it has surrendered. The posturing, mock battle, and submission process is vital to the survival of the species. It prevents needless deaths and ensures that a young male will live through early confrontations when his opponents are bigger and better prepared. Having been outpostured by his opponent, he can then submit and live to mate, passing on his genes in later years.

There is a clear distinction between actual violence and posturing. Oxford social psychologist Peter Marsh notes that this is true in New York street gangs, it is true in so-called primitive tribesmen and warriors, and it is true in almost any culture in the world. All have the same patterns of aggression and all have very orchestrated, highly ritualized patterns of posturing, mock battle, and submission. These rituals restrain and focus the violence on relatively harmless posturing and display. What is created is a perfect illusion of violence. Aggression, yes. Competitiveness, yes. But only a very tiny, tiny level of actual violence.

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There is, concludes Gwynne Dyer, the occasional psychopath who really wants to slice people open, but most of the participants are really interested in status, display, profit, and damage limitation. Like their peacetime contemporaries, the kids who have fought in close combat throughout history (and it is kids, or adolescent males, whom most societies traditionally send off to do their fighting), killing the enemy was the very least of their intentions. In war, as in gang war, posturing is the name of the game.

In this account from Paddy Griffith’s Battle Tactics of the Civil War, we can see the effective use of verbal posturing in the thick woods of the American Civil War’s Wilderness campaign:

The yellers could not be seen, and a company could make itself sound like a regiment if it shouted loud enough. Men spoke later of various units on both sides being yelled out of their positions.

In such instances of units being yelled out of positions, we see posturing in its most successful form, resulting in the opponent’s selection of the flight option without even attempting the fight option.

Adding the posture and submission options to the standard fight-or-flight model of aggression response helps to explain many of the actions on the battlefield. When a man is frightened, he literally stops thinking with his forebrain (that is, with the mind of a human being) and begins to think with the midbrain (that is, with the portion of his brain that is essentially indistinguishable from that of an animal), and in the mind of an animal it is the one who makes the loudest noise or puffs himself up the largest who will win.

Posturing can be seen in the plumed helmets of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which allowed the bearer to appear taller and therefore fiercer to his foe, while the brilliantly shined armor made him seem broader and brighter. Such plumage saw its height in modern history during the Napoleonic era, when soldiers wore bright uniforms and high, uncomfortable shako hats, which served no purpose other than to make the wearer look and feel like a taller, more dangerous creature.

In the same manner, the roars of two posturing beasts are exhibited by men in battle. For centuries the war cries of soldiers have made their opponents’ blood run cold. Whether it be the battle cry of a Greek phalanx, the hurrah! of the Russian infantry, the wail of Scottish bagpipes, or the Rebel yell of our own Civil War, soldiers have always instinctively sought to daunt the enemy through nonviolent means prior to physical conflict, while encouraging one another and impressing themselves with their own ferocity and simultaneously providing a very effective means of drowning the disagreeable yell of the enemy.

A modern equivalent to the Civil War occurrence mentioned above can be seen in this Army Historical Series account of a French battalion’s participation in the defense of Chipyong-Ni during the Korean War:

The [North Korean] soldiers formed one hundred or two hundred yards in front of the small hill which the French occupied, then launched their attack, blowing whistles and bugles, and running with bayonets fixed. When this noise started, the French soldiers began cranking a hand siren they had, and one squad started running toward the Chinese, yelling and throwing grenades far to the front and to the side. When the two forces were within twenty yards of each other the Chinese suddenly turned and ran in the opposite direction. It was all over within a minute.

Here again we see an incident in which posturing (involving sirens, grenade explosions, and charging bayonets) by a small force was sufficient to cause a numerically superior enemy force to hastily select the flight option.

With the advent of gunpowder, the soldier has been provided with one of the finest possible means of posturing. Time and again, says Paddy Griffith,

we read of regiments [in the Civil War] blazing away uncontrollably, once started, and continuing until all ammunition was gone or all enthusiasm spent. Firing was such a positive act, and gave the men such a physical release for their emotions, that instincts easily took over from training and from the exhortations of officers.

Gunpowder’s superior noise, its superior posturing ability, made it ascendant on the battlefield. The longbow would still have been used in the Napoleonic Wars if the raw mathematics of killing effectiveness was all that mattered, since both the longbow’s firing rate and its accuracy were much greater than that of a smoothbore musket. But a frightened man, thinking with his midbrain and going ploink, ploink, ploink with a bow, doesn’t stand a chance against an equally frightened man going BANG! BANG! with a

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