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

by Dave Grossman

I have met these men, these “sheepdogs,” over and over again as I interviewed veterans. They are men like one U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, a Vietnam veteran, who told me: “I learned early on in life that there are people out there who will hurt you if given the chance, and I have devoted my life to being prepared to face them.” These men are quite often armed and always vigilant. They would not misuse or misdirect their aggression any more than a sheepdog would turn on his flock, but in their hearts many of them yearn for a righteous battle, a wolf upon whom to legitimately and lawfully turn their skills.

The Milgram Factors Milgram’s famous studies of killing behavior in laboratory conditions (the willingness of subjects to engage in behavior that they believed was killing a fellow subject) identified three primary situational variables that influence or enable killing behavior; in this model I have called these (1) the demands of authority, (2) group absolution (remarkably similar to the concept of diffusion of responsibility), and (3) the distance from the victim. Each of these variables can be further “operationalized” as follows: Demands of Authority - Proximity of the obedience-demanding authority figure to the subject - Subject’s subjective respect for the obedience-demanding authority figure - Intensity of the obedience-demanding authority figure’s demands of killing behavior - Legitimacy of the obedience-demanding authority figure’s authority and demands

Group Absolution - Subject’s identification with the group - Proximity of the group to the subject - Intensity of the group’s support for the kill - Number in the immediate group - Legitimacy of the group Total Distance from the Victim - Physical distance between the killer and the victim - Emotional distance between the killer and the victim, including: —Social distance, which considers the impact of a lifetime of viewing a particular class as less than human in a socially stratified environment

—Cultural distance, which includes racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to “dehumanize” the victim —Moral distance, which takes into consideration intense belief in moral superiority and “vengeful” actions —Mechanical distance, which includes the sterile “video game” unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight, or some other kind of mechanical buffer The Shalit Factors Israeli military psychology has developed a model revolving around the nature of the victim, which I have incorporated into this model. This model considers the tactical circumstances associated with: - Relevance and effectiveness of available strategies for killing the victim - Relevance of the victim as a threat to the killer and his tactical situation - Payoff of the killer’s action in terms of —Killer’s gain —Enemy’s loss

The Predisposition of the Killer This area considers such factors as: - Training/conditioning of the soldier (Marshall’s contributions to the U.S. Army’s training program increased the firing rate of the individual infantryman from 15 to 20 percent in World War II to 55 percent in Korea and nearly 90 to 95 percent in Vietnam.) - Recent experiences of the soldier (For example, having a friend or relative killed by the enemy has been strongly linked with killing behavior on the battlefield.) The temperament that predisposes a soldier to killing behavior is one of the most difficult areas to research. However, Swank and Marchand did propose the existence of 2 percent of combat soldiers who are predisposed to be “aggressive psychopaths” and who apparently do not experience th...

An Application: Suicide Bombers

The area of distance from victim is rather unique in this case. The killer does in fact get “up close and personal” with his victims, but he does not need to see the effect of his action! This can form a powerful killing-enabling mechanism, similar to that of bomber pilots dropping their bombs from 10,000 feet or artillery firing from two miles away.

The basic aim of a nation at war is establishing an image of the enemy in order to distinguish as sharply as possible the act of killing from the act of murder. —Glenn Gray The Warriors

War…has no power to transform, it merely exaggerates the good and evil that are in us. —Lord Moran Anatomy of Courage

The Holocaust is sometimes misunderstood as the senseless killing of Jews and innocent people. But this killing was not senseless. Vile and evil, but not senseless. Such murders have a very powerful but twisted logic of their own. A logic that we must understand if we are to confront it. There are many benefits reaped by those who tap the dark power of atrocity. Those who engage in a policy of atrocity usually strike a bargain that exchanges their future for a brief gain in the present. Though brief, that gain is nonetheless real and powerful. In order to understand the attraction of atrocity, we must understand and clearly acknowledge those benefits that cause individuals, groups, and nations to turn to it.

One of the most obvious and blatant benefits of atrocity is that it quite simply scares the hell out of people. The raw horror and savagery of those who murder and abuse cause people to flee, hide, and defend themselves feebly, and often their victims respond with mute passivity. We see this in the newspapers daily when we read of victims who are faced with mass murderers and simply do nothing to protect themselves or others. Hannah Arendt noted this failure to resist the Nazis in her study The Banality of Evil.

Any man who is a man may not, in honor, submit to threats of violence. But many men who are not cowards are simply unprepared for the fact of human savagery. They have not thought about it (incredible as this may appear to anyone who reads the papers or listens to the news) and they just don’t know what to do. When they look right into the face of depravity or violence they are astonished and confounded.

A squad with a death order entered the house of a prominent community leader and shot him, his wife, his married son, and daughter-in-law, a male and female servant and their baby. The family cat was strangled, the family dog was clubbed to death, and the goldfish scooped out of the fishbowl and tossed onto the floor. When the communists left, no life remained in the house—a “family unit” had been eliminated. —Jim Graves “The Tangled Web”

Those who command atrocities are powerfully bonded by blood and guilt to those who commit atrocities, and to their cause, since only the success of their cause can ensure that they will not have to answer for their actions. With totalitarian dictators, it is their secret police and other such Praetorian guard-type units who can be counted on to fight for their leader and their cause to the bitter end. Nicolae Ceauşescu’s state police in Romania and Hitler’s SS units are two examples of units bonded to their leaders by atrocity.

Enabling the Enemy During the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, a German SS unit massacred a group of American POWs at Malmédy. Word of this massacre spread like wildfire through the American forces, and thousands of soldiers resolved never to surrender to the Germans. Conversely, as was mentioned earlier, many Germans who would fight the Russians to their last breath made a point of surrendering to the Americans at the earliest honorable occasion. In its endeavors against Chechen rebels, the Russian army used videotapes of the rebels beheading Russian soldiers to convince their troops that they must never surrender. Those who commit atrocities have burned their bridges behind them and know that they cannot surrender, but even as they have enabled themselves, they have enabled their enemies.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch tell of a German soldier who was a member of an execution squad ordered to shoot innocent hostages. Suddenly he stepped out of rank and refused to participate in the execution. On the spot he was charged with treason by the officer in charge and was placed with the hostages, where he was promptly executed by his comrades. In an act the soldier has abandoned once and for all the security of the group and exposed himself to the ultimate demands of freedom. He responded in the crucial moment to the voice of conscience and was no longer driven by external commands…we can only guess what must have been the influence of his deed on slayers and slain. At all events, it was surely not slight, and those who hear of the episode cannot fail to be inspired.

The Concern Stage: “How Am I Going to Do?”

The Killing Stage: “Without Even Thinking”

The Exhilaration Stage: “I Had a Feeling of the Most Intense Satisfaction”

Problems arise when you begin to want another fix of combat, and another, and another and, before you know it, you’re hooked. As with heroin or cocaine addiction, combat addiction will surely get you killed. And like any addict, you get desperate and will do anything to get your fix. —Jack Thompson “Hidden Enemies”

The Rationalization and Acceptance Stage: “It Took All the Rationalization I Could Muster”

The next personal-kill response stage is a lifelong process in which the killer attempts to rationalize and accept what he has done. In some cases this process may never truly be completed. The killer never completely leaves all remorse and guilt behind, but he can usually come to accept that what he has done was necessary and right.

Soldiers had to be taught, very specifically, to kill. “We are reluctant to admit that essentially war is the business of killing,” Marshall wrote in 1947, but it is readily enough admitted now. —Gwynne Dyer War

In 1904, I. P. Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize for his development of the concepts of conditioning and association in dogs. In its simplest form, what Pavlov did was ring a bell just before feeding a dog. Over time, the dog learned to associate the sound of the bell with eating and would salivate when he heard the bell, even if no food was present.

This process of associating reward with a particular kind of behavior is the foundation of most successful animal training. During the middle of the twentieth century B. F. Skinner further refined this process into what he called behavioral engineering. Skinner and the behaviorist school represent one of the most scientific and potentially powerful areas of the field of psychology. The method used to train today’s—and the Vietnam era’s—U.S. Army and USMC soldiers is nothing more than an application of conditioning techniques to develop a reflexive “quick shoot” ability.

Every aspect of killing on the battlefield is rehearsed, visualized, and conditioned. On special occasions even more realistic and complex targets are used. Balloon-filled uniforms moving across the kill zone (pop the balloon and the target drops to the ground), red-paint-filled milk jugs, and many other ingenious devices are used.

Snipers use such techniques extensively. In Vietnam it took an average of 50,000 rounds of ammunition to kill one enemy soldier. But the U.S. Army and USMC snipers in Vietnam expended only 1.39 rounds per kill.

I changed the standard firing targets to full-size, anatomically correct figures because no Syrian runs around with a big white square on his chest with numbers on it. I put clothes on these targets and polyurethane heads. I cut up a cabbage and poured catsup into it and put it back together. I said, “When you look through that scope, I want you to see a head blowing up.” —Dale Dye “Chuck Cramer: IDFs Master Sniper”

Basically the soldier has rehearsed the process so many times that when he does kill in combat he is able to, at one level, deny to himself that he is actually killing another human being.

The point is that this program of desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms, combined with subsequent participation in a war, may make it possible to share the guilt of killing without ever having killed.

Vietnam was distinctly different from any war we have fought before or since, in that it was a war of individuals. With very few exceptions, every combatant arrived in Vietnam as an individual replacement on a twelve-month tour—thirteen months for the U.S. Marines.

Modern armies have similar mechanisms of purification. In WWII soldiers en route home often spent days together on troopships. Among themselves, the warriors could relive their feelings, express grief for lost comrades, tell each other about their fears, and, above all, receive the support of their fellow soldiers. They were provided with a sounding board for their own sanity. Upon reaching home, soldiers were often honored with parades or other civic tributes. They received the respect of their communities as stories of their experiences were told to children and relatives by proud parents and wives. All this served the same cleansing purpose as the rituals of the past. When soldiers are denied these rituals they often tend to become emotionally disturbed. Unable to purge their guilt or be reassured that what they did was right, they turned their emotions inward. Soldiers returning from the Vietnam War were victims of this kind of neglect. There were no long troopship voyages where they could confide in their comrades. Instead, soldiers who had finished their tour of duty were flown home to arrive “back in the world” often within days, and sometimes within hours, of their last combat with the enemy. There were no fellow soldiers to meet them and to serve as a sympathetic sounding board for their experiences; no one to convince them of their own sanity.

Since Vietnam, several different returning armies have applied this vital lesson. The British troops returning from the Falklands could have been airlifted home, but instead they made the long, dreary, and therapeutic South Atlantic crossing with their navy.

On returning from Vietnam minus my right arm, I was accosted twice…by individuals who inquired, “Where did you lose your arm? Vietnam?” I replied, “Yes.” The response was “Good. Serves you right.” —James W. Wagenbach quoted in Bob Greene, Homecoming

Psychiatric casualties increase greatly when the soldier feels isolated, and psychological and social isolation from home and society was one of the results of the growing antiwar sentiment in the United States.

Societies which ask men to fight on their behalf should be aware of what the consequences of their actions may so easily be. —Richard Holmes Acts of War

Our other World War II veteran was a twenty-five-year-old truck driver (he might just as easily have been an artilleryman, an airplane mechanic, or a bos’n’s mate on a navy supply ship) who served honorably, but never really got up to the front lines. Although he was in an area that took some incoming artillery (or bombing or torpedoes) on a few occasions, he never was even in a situation where it was expected that he would have to shoot at anyone, and no one ever really shot at him. But he did have someone he knew killed by that artillery fire (or bombs or torpedoes), and he did see the constant remains of death and carnage as he moved along behind the advancing Allied lines. He would be placed very low on our degree-of-trauma scale. When our hypothetical World War II veterans came home after the war they returned as a unit together with the same guys they had spent the whole war with, on board a ship, spending weeks joking, laughing, gambling, and telling tall tales as they cooled down and depressurized in what psychologists would call a very supportive group-therapy environment on the long voyage home. And if they had doubts about what they’d done, or fears about the future, they had a sympathetic group to talk to.

Both our veterans generally stayed in touch with their World War II buddies, and they linked up with their old comrades in reunions and informal get-togethers. And that was nice, but what was really best about being a veteran was being able to hold their heads high and knowing just how much their family, friends, community, and nation respected and were proud of them. The GI Bill was passed, and if some politician or bureaucrat or organization didn’t give the vets the respect they deserved, well, buddy, they would have to answer to the influence and votes of the American Legion and the VFW, who would make damn sure they got treated right.

Our two Vietnam veterans departed the war the way they had arrived: alone. They departed with a mixture of joy at having survived and shame at having left their buddies behind. Instead of returning to parades, they found antiwar marches. Instead of luxury hotels, they were sent to locked and guarded military bases where they were processed back to civilian life in a few days. Instead of movies about the veteran, his struggles, and his vulnerable emotional state upon reentry into civilian life, the media prepared the American people by calling the returning veterans “depraved fiends” and “psychopathic killers,” and beautiful young movie stars led the accusing chant of a nation that echoed through the veteran’s soul: “Baby killers…murderers…butchers…”

They were rejected by girlfriends, spit on, and accused by strangers and finally dared not even admit to close friends that they were veterans. They did not show up for Memorial Day parades (which had gone out of style), they did not join the VFW or the American Legion, and they did not participate in any reunions or get-togethers with old comrades. They denied their experiences and buried their pain and grieving beneath a shell.

The military also must understand the need for unit integrity during and after combat.

The psychological, psychiatric, medical, counseling, and social work communities must understand the impact of combat kills on the soldier and must attempt to further understand and reinforce the rationalization and acceptance process outlined in this book.

How simple it now seems for our ancestors to have stood outside their caves guarding against the fang and claw of predators. The evil that we must stand vigilant against is like a virus, starting from deep inside us, eating its way out until we’re devoured by and become its madness. —Richard Heckler In Search of the Warrior Spirit

The easiest and worst mistake we could make would be to blame our present dilemma on the mere technology of war…. It is our attitudes toward war and our uses for it that really demand our attention. —Gwynne Dyer War

Operant conditioning firing ranges with pop-up targets and immediate feedback, just like those used to train soldiers in modern armies, are found in the interactive video games that our children play today. But whereas the adolescent Vietnam vet had stimulus discriminators built in to ensure that he fired only under authority, the adolescents who play these video games have no such safeguard built into their conditioning. And, finally, social learning is being used as children learn to observe and imitate a whole new realm of dynamic vicarious role models, such as Jason and Freddy of endless Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, and Hannibal the Cannibal, along with a host of other horrendous, sadistic murderers. Even the more classic heroes, such as the archetypal law-abiding police detective, is today portrayed as a murderous, unstable vigilante who operates outside the law.

Time and again it has been proven that videogames literally have nothing to do with gun violence in the US, this now obsolete theory was put forward by books like these.

In video arcades children stand slack jawed but intent behind machine guns and shoot at electronic targets that pop up on the video screen. When they pull the trigger the weapon rattles in their hand, shots ring out, and if they hit the “enemy” they are firing at, it drops to the ground, often with cries of pain and chunks of flesh flying in the air. The important distinction between the killing-enabling process that occurs in video arcades and that of the military is that the military’s is focused on the enemy soldier, with particular emphasis on ensuring that the U.S. soldier acts only under authority. Yet even with these safeguards, the danger of future My Lai massacres among soldiers drawn from such a violent population must not be ignored, and, as we saw in the section “Killing and Atrocity,” the U.S. armed forces are taking extensive measures to control, constrain, and channel the violence of their troops in future conflicts. The video games that our children conduct their combat training on have no real sanction for firing at the wrong target. This is not an attack on all video games. Video games are an interactive medium.

This is the origin of this obsolete theory. Gamers never get PTDS from games as well as "desentization" to real violence. The mind perfectly separates what is a game and what is real even if the game is very realistic. Rampant gun violence is observed in only a handful of countries while the entire world plays violent games and nothing bad happens.

Male power, male dominance, masculinity, male sexuality, male aggression are not biologically determined. They are conditioned…. What is conditioned can be deconditioned. Man can change. —Catherine Itzin Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties

Completely wrong. Behavioral genetics are real as well as inbuilt behaviors based on sex. Woke marxist theories like this plague the society today, turns out they arent even new, this book is from 1995.