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

by Dave Grossman

“man is not a killer, but the group is.”

All crowding has an intensifying effect. If aggression exists, it will become more so as a result of crowding; if joy exists, it will become intensified by the crowd.

if he can get others to share in the killing process (thus diffusing his personal responsibility by giving each individual a slice of the guilt),

the bow as a distance weapon, the social distance created by the archers’ having come from the nobility, and the psychological distance created by using the chariot in pursuit and shooting men in the back—

He fought alone, but when asked what motivated him to do this, he responded simply, “They were killing my friends.”

But what those photographs represented was a crack in the veil of denial that makes war possible.

Factors such as cultural distance, moral distance, social distance, and mechanical distance are just as effective as physical distance in permitting the killer to deny that he is killing a human being.

During Christmas of 1914 British and German soldiers in many sectors met peacefully, exchanged presents, took photographs and even played soccer. Holmes notes that “in some areas the truce went on until well into the New Year, despite the High Command’s insistence that it should be war as usual.”

In Vietnam this process was assisted by the “body count” mentality, in which we referred to and thought of the enemy as numbers.

In Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, cultural distance would have backlashed against us, since our enemy was racially and culturally indistinguishable from our allies. Therefore we tried hard (at a national policy level) not to emphasize any cultural distance from our enemies.

deriving from our moral “crusades” against communism and terrorism.

And in Iraq, the photographs of abusive behavior by U.S. soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal helped to inflame our enemies and undermine our own determination.

The truth is that we are still trying to suppress racism more than a century after the end of slavery,

Their cause is holy, so how can they sin while doing their duty? If what we do is frightful, then may frightfulness be Germany’s salvation.

this process has traditionally enabled violence in police forces,

Punishment Justification: “Remember the Alamo/Maine/Pearl Harbor/9-11”

Legal Affirmation: “We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident”

The moral foundations of our legal affirmation for our nation’s concern for the oppression of others

In the last hundred years we have moved slightly away from moral affirmation as a justification for starting wars and have focused more on the punishment aspect of moral distance.

It is interesting to note that although punishment was used to justify starting American involvement in these wars, moral affirmation

came into play later and lent a very American flavor to some of these conflicts.

That danger is, of course, that every nation seems to think that God is on its side.

The essence of the military is that to be a good leader you must truly love (in a strangely detached fashion) your men, and then you must be willing to kill (or at least give the orders that will result in the deaths of) that which you love.

One consistent tendency is to elect to shoot leaders and officers.

Throughout military history the leaders and the flag bearers were selected as targets for enemy weapons, since these would represent the highest payoff in terms of the enemy’s loss.

Oftentimes the criteria for deciding whom to kill are dictated by deciding who is manning the most dangerous weapon.

It is because of this response to helmets that United Nations peacekeeping forces prefer to wear their traditional beret rather than a helmet, which might very well stop a bullet or save their lives in an artillery barrage.

“they were holding up photographs of their families and offering watches and other valuables in an attempt to gain mercy.”

Watson states that soldiers who have conducted this kind of simulator training “often report, after they have met a real life emergency, that they just carried out the correct drill and completed it before they realized that they were not in the simulator.”

The recent loss of friends and beloved leaders in combat can also enable violence on the battlefield.

Revenge killing during a burst of rage has been a recurring theme throughout history, and it needs to be considered in the overall equation of factors that enable killing on the battle field.

But he is also very much influenced by his temperament, or the nature side of the nature-nurture equation,

A more accurate conclusion would be that there is 2 percent of the male population that, if pushed or if given a legitimate reason, will kill without regret or remorse.

What these individuals represent—

is the capacity for the levelheaded participation in combat that we...

we recognize that that has practically nothing to do with the kind of personal aggression that would endanger us as their fellow citizens.

Erich Hartmann, the World War II German ace—unquestionably the greatest fighter pilot of all time, with 351 confirmed victories—claimed that 80 percent of his victims never knew he was in the same sky with them.

there is undoubtedly a division in humanity between those who can feel and understand the pain and suffering of others, and those who cannot.

Be not mistaken: the longing is there and it’s loving and terrible and beautiful and tragic.

they are a distinct minority, and in times of danger a nation needs them desperately.

But if the abstract image is overdrawn or depersonalization is stretched into hatred, the restraints on human behavior in war are easily swept aside.

permits us to develop an “equation” that can represent the total resistance involved in a specific killing circumstance.

“the road to My Lai was paved, first and foremost, by the dehumanization of the Vietnamese and the ‘mere gook rule’ which declared that killing a Vietnamese civilian did not really count.”

The day before the massacre, the popular Sergeant Cox was killed by a booby trap.

When we look at photographs of the piles of dead women and children at My Lai it seems impossible to understand how any American could participate in such an atrocity,

Although it is not an excuse for such behavior, we can at least understand how My Lai could have happened

and those nice kids who accompany us today would rape like champions. Kill, rape and steal is the name of the game.[10]

These killers are not suicidal: they are homicidal and are willing to die in order to kill.)

and the juvenile mass-murderers in our schools today.

This religious leader may not be immediately proximate during the actual killing, but in the spiritual realm that the killer believes to await him after the crime, the religious aspect is all-important.