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"On
Killing II: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill"
A
Resistance to Killing
To
truly understand the nature of aggression and violence on
the battlefield we must first recognize that most participants
in close combat are literally “frightened out of their wits.”
Once the bullets start flying, and combatants slam head
on into the “universal human phobia,” they stop thinking
with the forebrain (that portion of the brain which makes
us human) and start thinking with the midbrain (the primitive
portion of our brain which is indistinguishable from that
of an animal).
In conflict situations this primitive, midbrain processing
can be observed in the existence of a powerful resistance
to killing one’s own kind. Animals with antlers and horns
slam together in a relatively harmless head-to-head fashion,
and piranha fight their own kind with flicks of the tail,
but against any other species these creatures unleash their
horns and teeth without restraint. This is an essential
survival mechanism which prevents a species from destroying
itself during territorial and mating rituals.
One
major modern revelation in the field of military psychology
is the observation that this resistance to killing one’s
own species is also a key factor in human combat. Brigadier
General S.L.A. Marshall first observed this during his work
as the Official U.S. Historian of the European Theater of
Operations in World War II. Based on his post-combat interviews,
Marshall concluded in his book, Men Against Fire,
(1946, 1978), that only 15 to 20 percent of the individual
riflemen in World War II fired their weapons at an exposed
enemy soldier. Key weapons, such as a flame thrower, usually
fired. Crew served weapons, such as a machine gun, almost
always fired. And firing would increase greatly if a nearby
leader demanded that the soldier fire. But, when left to
their own devices, the great majority of individual combatants
throughout history appear to have been unable or unwilling
to kill.
Marshall’s findings have been somewhat controversial. Faced
with scholarly concern about a researcher’s methodology
and conclusions, the scientific method involves replicating
the research. In Marshall’s case, every available, parallel,
scholarly study validates his basic findings. Ardant du
Picq’s surveys of French officers in the 1860s and his observations
on ancient battles (Battle Studies, 1946), Keegan and Holmes’
numerous accounts of ineffectual firing throughout history
(Soldiers, 1985), Richard Holmes’ assessment of Argentine
firing rates in the Falklands War (Acts of War, 1985), Paddy
Griffith’s data on the extraordinarily low killing rate
among Napoleonic and American Civil War regiments (Battle
Tactics of the American Civil War, 1989), the British Army’s
laser reenactments of historical battles, the FBI’s studies
of non-firing rates among law enforcement officers in the
1950s and 1960s, and countless other individual and anecdotal
observations, all confirm Marshall’s fundamental conclusion
that human beings are not, by nature, killers. Indeed, from
a psychological perspective, the history of warfare can
be viewed as a series of successively more effective tactical
and mechanical mechanisms to enable or force combatants
to overcome their resistance to killing.
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