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

by Dave Grossman

This is one historical circumstance in which noncombatants did suffer a horrifyingly high incidence of psychiatric casualties and post-traumatic stress. Physical exhaustion is not the only or even the primary factor involved here. And neither is the horror of the death and destruction around them principally responsible for the psychic shock of this situation. The distinguishing characteristic here, as opposed to numerous other noncombatant circumstances marked by an absence of psychiatric casualties, is that those in concentration camps had to face aggression and death on a highly personal, face-to-face basis. Nazi Germany placed a remarkable concentration of aggressive psychopaths in charge of these camps, and the lives of these victims were completely dominated by the personalities of these terrifyingly brutal individuals.