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

by Dave Grossman

Instead of killing people up close and personal, modern navies kill ships and airplanes. Of course there are people in these ships and airplanes, but psychological and mechanical distances protect the modern sailor. World War I and World War II ships often fired their weapons at enemy ships that could not be seen with the naked eye, and the aircraft they fired at were seldom more than specks in the sky. Intellectually these naval warriors understood that they were killing humans just like themselves and that someone wanted to kill them, but emotionally they could deny it. A similar phenomenon has occurred in aerial combat. As previously noted, World War I and World War II pilots, in relatively slow-moving aircraft, could see enemy pilots, and thus large numbers of them failed to fight aggressively. Modern pilots, fighting an enemy seen only on a radar screen, have no such problems.