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

by Dave Grossman

This bonding is so intense that it is fear of failing these comrades that preoccupies most combatants.

The responsibilities of a combat leader represent a remarkable paradox. To be truly good at what he does, he must love his men and be bonded to them with powerful links of mutual responsibility and affection. And then

he must ultimately be willing to give the orders that may kill them.

These decorations, medals, mentions in dispatches, and other forms of recognition represent a powerful affirmation from the leader’s society, telling him that he did well, he did the right thing, and no one blames him for the lives lost in doing his duty.

The enemy’s humanity is denied, and he becomes a strange beast called a Kraut, Jap, Reb, Yank, dink, slant, slope, or raghead.

Peter Marin condemns the “inadequacy” of our psychological

terminology in describing the magnitude and reality of the “pain of human conscience.” As a society, he says, we seem unable to deal with moral pain or guilt. Instead it is treated as a neurosis or a pathology, “something to escape rather than something to learn from, a disease rather than—as it may well be for the vets—an appropriate if painful response to the past.”

end of the scale, where sex and killing intermingle.

From a distance, I can deny your humanity; and from a distance, I cannot hear your screams.

In This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski’s memoir

Incredibly, yet undeniably, there is a qualitative distinction in the eyes of those who suffered: the survivors of Auschwitz were personally traumatized by criminals and suffered lifelong psychological damage from their experiences, whereas the survivors of Hamburg were incidental victims of an act of war and were able to put it behind them.

I have not found one single instance of individuals who have refused to kill the enemy under these circumstances, nor have I found a single instance of psychiatric trauma associated with this type of killing.

Even in the case of the individuals who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contrary to popular myth, there are no indications of psychological problems.

Yet for all its effectiveness, there is a strange revulsion and resistance toward this very personal, one-on-one killing by snipers.

Joe

When soldiers do kill the enemy they appear to go through a series of emotional stages. The actual kill is usually described as being reflexive or automatic. Immediately

after the kill the soldier goes through a period of euphoria and elation, which is usually followed by a period of guilt and remorse.[4] The intensity and duration of these periods are closely related to distance. At midrange we see much of the euphoria stage.

After this euphoria stage, even at midrange, the remorse stage can hit hard.

The key factor in close range is the undeniable certainty of responsibility on the part of the killer.

The vast majority of personal kills and the resultant trauma occur at this range.

can remember whispering foolishly, “I’m sorry” and then just throwing up…I threw up all over myself. It was a betrayal of what I’d been taught since a child.

“it is a touching fact that men, dying in battle, often call upon their mothers. I have heard them do so in five languages.”