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An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare
The characteristic act of men at war is not dying, but killing. Politicians and military historians may gloss over human slaughter, emphasizing the defense of national honor, but for men in active service, warfare means being - or becoming - efficient killers. In An Intimate History of Killing , historian Joanna Bourke What are the social and psychological dynamics of becoming the best "citizen soldiers?" What kind of men become the best killers? How do they readjust to civilian life? These questions are answered in this groundbreaking new work that won, while still in manuscript, the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History. Excerpting from letters, diaries, memoirs, and reports of British, American, and Australian veterans of three wars (World War I, World War II, and Vietnam), Bourke concludes that the structure of war encourages pleasure in killing and that perfectly ordinary, gentle human beings can, and often do, become enthusiastic killers without being brutalized. This graphic, unromanticized look at men at war is sure to revise many long-held beliefs about the nature of violence.
509 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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654 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Bourke
38 books64 followersJoanna Bourke (born 1963 in New Zealand) is an historian and professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 14, 2019
The most effective combatants…were hostile, emotionally insecure, unstable men who were acting out infantile fantasies of heroism – in other words, they were lucky that killing was socially approved in war because otherwise they would find themselves in prison. (p. 102)
This is a sobering book. Many readers have probably heard of the research by S.L.A. Marshall that said only a small percentage of infantrymen in World War II ever fired their weapons at the enemy. It is easy to extrapolate from this idea that most men refuse to kill because of their moral scruples (Marshall’s argument, which remains controversial, was more complicated than that, and focused on fear, isolation, and confusion as the main reasons soldiers did not fire). It is easy, therefore, to forget that some men like killing, and that the militaries of the world spend a lot of time and effort identifying them and trying to harness their murderous impulses. Some of these men like not just the killing, but all the viciousness that goes with it.
There are more ghastly moments like this in this book, but most of it focuses on what combat does to those who fight and those who support the fighters. The chapter titles give a good indication of the book’s scope, and include: Training Men to Kill, Anatomy of a Hero, Love and Hate, War Crimes, The Burden of Guilt, Medics and the Military, Priests and Padres, and Return to Civilian Life.
In every chapter there are nuances and considerations that are not obvious, complicating the situations and the required responses, and inevitably readers find themselves asking what they would do, how they would react given the stresses of battle and the fog of war. The scariest thing about Lt. Calley and My Lai was how ordinary he and his troops were, and the most troubling consideration of it is that My Lai was unique only because it came to light despite the Army’s best efforts to cover it up.
For me one of the most troubling parts of the book was the description of how armies handled the post traumatic stress disorders known as Shell Shock in the First World War, Combat Fatigue in the Second, and PTSD today. We like to think that we learn from history, and that our treatments become more humane and more effective. It is possible that is true today, but it certainly wasn’t from World War II through Vietnam.
World War I marked a profound difference in how battles were fought. Previously, no matter how violent and bloody they were, they usually lasted only a few days, and then the armies disengaged and went back to camp. In World War I, even in the intervals between the major battles, the trench rotations kept men under fire for weeks at a time, after which they were pulled back to re-train and re-equip, then sent back to the trenches again and again. It is not surprising that many men broke under the strain.
When the British army realized how large the problem was becoming they hurriedly commissioned psychiatrists to help the soldiers recover enough to return to their units. These psychiatrists saw themselves as doctors, not military men, unbeholden to the military hierarchy, so they were free to experiment with different treatments. What they finally settled on was to send the men to rest areas far behind the lines, in undamaged sectors beyond the sound of artillery fire. The soldiers were encouraged to talk with each other, share their experiences and come to understand that they weren’t alone, and were not cowards or incompetents. This form of treatment was a great success, and over 80% of the men eventually returned to their units.
After the war armies realized that they were going to need mental health professionals, and began recruiting them as part of their medical services. The difference was that for these men the Army was a career, and advancement depended on keeping their chain of command happy. Many of their superiors knew nothing about mental health issues, and suspected that all cases of combat fatigue were just malingering. Heavy casualties also caused them to push the doctors to declare the men able to continue fighting, and the doctors usually complied. As a result, in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, mentally damaged soldiers were kept in the line until they suffered complete breakdowns that left them permanently disabled. The compassionate treatments of World War I were forgotten, and soldiers who were a danger to themselves and their comrades were sacrificed to keep the ranks full and the generals happy.
I once had a neighbor who had been part of the Army’s Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol group in Vietnam. He came back with medals for valor, multiple Purple Hearts, and an inability to concentrate which left him unable to hold down a job. He lived with his family on a disability pension and self-medicated with alcohol and marijuana. I think about him when I hear stories of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD, and wonder how many of them will never make the transition back into society.
This book is long enough to go into depth in each of its subject areas, and is well researched, with 109 pages of footnotes and a 42 page bibliography. Almost every page includes apposite quotations from men and women who had experienced combat or dealt with its aftermath. Important questions are addressed, about who kills, and why, and what does killing do to those involved? The better we understand the impact of war on soldiers and society, the better prepared we will be to deal with the consequences.
This is a sobering book. Many readers have probably heard of the research by S.L.A. Marshall that said only a small percentage of infantrymen in World War II ever fired their weapons at the enemy. It is easy to extrapolate from this idea that most men refuse to kill because of their moral scruples (Marshall’s argument, which remains controversial, was more complicated than that, and focused on fear, isolation, and confusion as the main reasons soldiers did not fire). It is easy, therefore, to forget that some men like killing, and that the militaries of the world spend a lot of time and effort identifying them and trying to harness their murderous impulses. Some of these men like not just the killing, but all the viciousness that goes with it.
Twenty-year-old Chuck Onan recalled that troops training alongside him in the Marine Corps Special Forces ‘liked the idea’ of torturing, raping, and killing prisoners: ‘Many volunteered to go to Vietnam. Their sergeants made it seem attractive – in a sick way, you know – you’ll get a chance to kill and all this’. The fact that Marines were allowed to rape women was ‘an inducement to encourage Marines to volunteer for Vietnam’. (p. 179-180)
There are more ghastly moments like this in this book, but most of it focuses on what combat does to those who fight and those who support the fighters. The chapter titles give a good indication of the book’s scope, and include: Training Men to Kill, Anatomy of a Hero, Love and Hate, War Crimes, The Burden of Guilt, Medics and the Military, Priests and Padres, and Return to Civilian Life.
In every chapter there are nuances and considerations that are not obvious, complicating the situations and the required responses, and inevitably readers find themselves asking what they would do, how they would react given the stresses of battle and the fog of war. The scariest thing about Lt. Calley and My Lai was how ordinary he and his troops were, and the most troubling consideration of it is that My Lai was unique only because it came to light despite the Army’s best efforts to cover it up.
For me one of the most troubling parts of the book was the description of how armies handled the post traumatic stress disorders known as Shell Shock in the First World War, Combat Fatigue in the Second, and PTSD today. We like to think that we learn from history, and that our treatments become more humane and more effective. It is possible that is true today, but it certainly wasn’t from World War II through Vietnam.
World War I marked a profound difference in how battles were fought. Previously, no matter how violent and bloody they were, they usually lasted only a few days, and then the armies disengaged and went back to camp. In World War I, even in the intervals between the major battles, the trench rotations kept men under fire for weeks at a time, after which they were pulled back to re-train and re-equip, then sent back to the trenches again and again. It is not surprising that many men broke under the strain.
When the British army realized how large the problem was becoming they hurriedly commissioned psychiatrists to help the soldiers recover enough to return to their units. These psychiatrists saw themselves as doctors, not military men, unbeholden to the military hierarchy, so they were free to experiment with different treatments. What they finally settled on was to send the men to rest areas far behind the lines, in undamaged sectors beyond the sound of artillery fire. The soldiers were encouraged to talk with each other, share their experiences and come to understand that they weren’t alone, and were not cowards or incompetents. This form of treatment was a great success, and over 80% of the men eventually returned to their units.
After the war armies realized that they were going to need mental health professionals, and began recruiting them as part of their medical services. The difference was that for these men the Army was a career, and advancement depended on keeping their chain of command happy. Many of their superiors knew nothing about mental health issues, and suspected that all cases of combat fatigue were just malingering. Heavy casualties also caused them to push the doctors to declare the men able to continue fighting, and the doctors usually complied. As a result, in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, mentally damaged soldiers were kept in the line until they suffered complete breakdowns that left them permanently disabled. The compassionate treatments of World War I were forgotten, and soldiers who were a danger to themselves and their comrades were sacrificed to keep the ranks full and the generals happy.
I once had a neighbor who had been part of the Army’s Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol group in Vietnam. He came back with medals for valor, multiple Purple Hearts, and an inability to concentrate which left him unable to hold down a job. He lived with his family on a disability pension and self-medicated with alcohol and marijuana. I think about him when I hear stories of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD, and wonder how many of them will never make the transition back into society.
This book is long enough to go into depth in each of its subject areas, and is well researched, with 109 pages of footnotes and a 42 page bibliography. Almost every page includes apposite quotations from men and women who had experienced combat or dealt with its aftermath. Important questions are addressed, about who kills, and why, and what does killing do to those involved? The better we understand the impact of war on soldiers and society, the better prepared we will be to deal with the consequences.
August 16, 2014
-Conceptualmente interesante y de ejecución discutible.-
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Revisión del acto de matar en tiempos de guerra, centrado en la Gran Guerra, la Segunda Guerra Mundial y la Guerra de Vietnam, de sus implicaciones tanto en el soldado individual como en la sociedad, los factores internos y externos que pueden afectar el desempeño homicida bélico, los problemas de la vuelta del soldado a la sociedad civil en tiempos de paz y la relación de todo ello con la cultura del siglo XX.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Revisión del acto de matar en tiempos de guerra, centrado en la Gran Guerra, la Segunda Guerra Mundial y la Guerra de Vietnam, de sus implicaciones tanto en el soldado individual como en la sociedad, los factores internos y externos que pueden afectar el desempeño homicida bélico, los problemas de la vuelta del soldado a la sociedad civil en tiempos de paz y la relación de todo ello con la cultura del siglo XX.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
June 4, 2021
I’ve read this book many times during my undergraduate degree and and while I’m doing my PhD studies and every time I’m blown away by how carefully constructed Bourke’s argument is and just how confidently she states her claims and makes her points. This is a profoundly important book and I can’t recommend it enough for people interested in this sort of thing
May 16, 2022
Karmaiseva lukukokemus post-24.2.2022 -ajassa.
"Warfare was as much about the business of sacrificing others as it was about being sacrificed. For many men and women, this was what made it 'a lovely war'."
"Warfare was as much about the business of sacrificing others as it was about being sacrificed. For many men and women, this was what made it 'a lovely war'."
September 18, 2025
A haunting account that doesn’t let anyone off the hook. Bourke makes brilliant, nuanced and transnational criticisms of society, militaries, cultures, and the individuals within - it is a history full of shocking, complex, and contradictory experiences that simultaneously feel completely predictable.
February 14, 2025
Very interesting challenge to the "war is hell" standard conceptualisation. Probably some of the most interesting points for me was the differences between the military and civilian views on killing and their different reactions to and internalisations of propaganda, as well as the section devoted to the after effects of war and the differences between the return to civilian society after the World Wars and the Vietnam War.
October 23, 2020
As with most educational non-fictions, some chapters were dry while others were engaging.
‘Women Go To War’ was an interesting chapter. Apparently, the majority of men during that time were apprehensive about women joining the military because it largely disrupted traditional gender roles. That wasn’t surprising.
I also liked ‘The Pleasure of War’ in which it’s noted the men often responded to slaughter with sexual eroticism. Interesting information indeed.
I think ‘Priests and Padres’ was the only chapter I’d omit. On top of the fact that I had trouble getting invested into reading it, I also felt that it seemed out of place with the rest of the book in terms of the history of killing.
Overall, not a bad read.
‘Women Go To War’ was an interesting chapter. Apparently, the majority of men during that time were apprehensive about women joining the military because it largely disrupted traditional gender roles. That wasn’t surprising.
I also liked ‘The Pleasure of War’ in which it’s noted the men often responded to slaughter with sexual eroticism. Interesting information indeed.
I think ‘Priests and Padres’ was the only chapter I’d omit. On top of the fact that I had trouble getting invested into reading it, I also felt that it seemed out of place with the rest of the book in terms of the history of killing.
Overall, not a bad read.
February 11, 2019
Compré este libro hace 4 años, en mi añorado Rastro. No le hice mucho caso hasta la semana pasada, cuando lo «redescubrí» en mi biblioteca. Y resulta que es una aportación importante a la historia militar que vuelve a situar el acto central de la guerra, matar, en el primer plano de la narración del conflicto. Muy bueno.
October 5, 2022
Interesting study of how modern men and women confront modern war, how they view it, how they prepare for it, what they do and feel while participating in it, and how it affects them after their return to civilian life. The last third of the book drags a bit and I wish the author had devoted more of the book to the effects modern war has on its participants. The bibliography is excellent.
May 8, 2020
I had wanted to read this for years, and finally got a chance due to COVID-19. The scholarship is fine, it's written with a general audience in mind so is fairly unchallenging history. However I found there was a lot of repetition, some clunky framing of quotes and historical fragments, and the structure of the book was confusing.
For example, the My Lai massacre features heavily in this book, and rightly so. Irrespective of the legality and ethics, the first-person accounts of what was witnessed, and the revulsion (or defiance) is eye opening and highly relevant to the book's overall trajectory. But why does archival material re-occur at several points of this book, scattered throughout under different chapters and sections. Surely this should have been a central case study or a chapter in itself, rather than scattered between thematic chapters? Several other stories and accounts similarly re-occur across subsections and chapters.
There is one main chapter that deals with the topic of the title, but the story of the influence of psychology (and the American Psychological Association) on studies of battlefield stress, a section of another chapter, was absolutely fascinating and has inspired me to further investigation.
Joanna Bourke (I've met her, she's a lovely person!) has developed some unusual approaches within popular-facing history in her other books, too, and has to be commended for bringing the archival material to light. This would have made a fascinating if somewhat chilling documentary film, too.
For example, the My Lai massacre features heavily in this book, and rightly so. Irrespective of the legality and ethics, the first-person accounts of what was witnessed, and the revulsion (or defiance) is eye opening and highly relevant to the book's overall trajectory. But why does archival material re-occur at several points of this book, scattered throughout under different chapters and sections. Surely this should have been a central case study or a chapter in itself, rather than scattered between thematic chapters? Several other stories and accounts similarly re-occur across subsections and chapters.
There is one main chapter that deals with the topic of the title, but the story of the influence of psychology (and the American Psychological Association) on studies of battlefield stress, a section of another chapter, was absolutely fascinating and has inspired me to further investigation.
Joanna Bourke (I've met her, she's a lovely person!) has developed some unusual approaches within popular-facing history in her other books, too, and has to be commended for bringing the archival material to light. This would have made a fascinating if somewhat chilling documentary film, too.
December 12, 2018
I find it interesting that other reviewers thought that this book didn't tell them anything they "didn't know already", because I found a lot of concepts this book talked about very non-intuitive.
Particularly, what caught me off-guard was the inherent contradictions described as present within the soldier who kills: how a person who at first was horrified of killing could come to enjoy it, despite having respect for their opponent, how a person who believes in justice could stoop down to committing acts like rape and mutilation, etc. This is very different from the portrayals of war in fiction movies and books, which tend to either frame the protagonist as more virtuous than the soldiers who didn't mind killing people portrayed as innocent or don't bother to grant the enemy "person" status (and yes, this includes revenge stories where the villain is seen as only a monster).
I read this book because I am writing a novel with a protagonist that fights in a war similar to Vietnam's and wanted to gain a basic understanding of what they could have gone through not only physically, but emotionally. This book did that for me, hence why I rated it 5 stars. Of course, it won't be read alone, and I will never claim to truly understand the wartime experience unless I somehow experience it myself, but if anyone is curious about what sort of frame of mind you'd have to be in to kill someone in war (and then not be consumed by it later), this is a good starting point.
Particularly, what caught me off-guard was the inherent contradictions described as present within the soldier who kills: how a person who at first was horrified of killing could come to enjoy it, despite having respect for their opponent, how a person who believes in justice could stoop down to committing acts like rape and mutilation, etc. This is very different from the portrayals of war in fiction movies and books, which tend to either frame the protagonist as more virtuous than the soldiers who didn't mind killing people portrayed as innocent or don't bother to grant the enemy "person" status (and yes, this includes revenge stories where the villain is seen as only a monster).
I read this book because I am writing a novel with a protagonist that fights in a war similar to Vietnam's and wanted to gain a basic understanding of what they could have gone through not only physically, but emotionally. This book did that for me, hence why I rated it 5 stars. Of course, it won't be read alone, and I will never claim to truly understand the wartime experience unless I somehow experience it myself, but if anyone is curious about what sort of frame of mind you'd have to be in to kill someone in war (and then not be consumed by it later), this is a good starting point.
August 26, 2025
Excellent dive into the motivations as well as cultural and psychological mechanisms that soldiers employ while engaged in the grislier aspects of their business. The author argues her points very well, namely that soldiers generally enjoy killing, as well as a series of assertions regarding the motivations men hold for killing - psychosexual, cultural, social. Excellent read.
April 6, 2025
Interesting book, but somehow I felt that everything was a bit rushed and compressed.
November 11, 2008
The author covers the evidence from four nations in four wars to document some elements that are obvious when you think about them and some the are counter-intuitive. On the obviousl side: killing is a tiny proportion of the act of war, as almost all the people and energy in involved are focused on transporting people and food from one place to antoher. On the counter-intuitive side, the tiny fraction of soldiers who actually kill people (as opposed to they large group involved in buying, transporting, etc) tend to feel close to the soldiers they killed, even if they never had face-to-face contact. It's a fascinating and disturbing book.
February 9, 2016
This book focusses on the experience of British, American and Australian soldiers in the First and Second World Wars, as well as the Vietnam War. Based on primary accounts and interviews with former soldiers, Bourke constructs an analysis of the personal experience of conflict which challenges the 'war as hell' myth. Instead, the book shows how Western militaries have perfected the creation of the soldier, and the manner in which war can often be perceived as a positive experience to the individual.
February 22, 2016
While there may not be any great new discovery about this subject in this book, it is a worthy effort to show how the need to kill in combat affects soldiers in many ways. The subject remains misunderstood or ignored by the broad population, but it is such a difficult reality for those who face it.
January 8, 2011
Joanna was my old history professor and supervisor at Uni. A very happy time
November 11, 2012
it's one of those books that make you go "tell me something I don't know!" Such a huge dissappointment.
Read
November 13, 2017To quote Mr Spock.....facinating
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews