An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare [Paperback]

Joanna Bourke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

The characteristic act of men at war is not dying, but killing. Politicians and military historians may gloss over human slaughter, emphasizing the defense of national honor, but for men in active service, warfare means being - or becoming - efficient killers. In An Intimate History of Killing, historian Joanna Bourke asks: What are the social and psychological dynamics of becoming the best ”citizen soldiers?” What kind of men become the best killers? How do they readjust to civilian life?These questions are answered in this groundbreaking new work that won, while still in manuscript, the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History. Excerpting from letters, diaries, memoirs, and reports of British, American, and Australian veterans of three wars (World War I, World War II, and Vietnam), Bourke concludes that the structure of war encourages pleasure in killing and that perfectly ordinary, gentle human beings can, and often do, become enthusiastic killers without being brutalized.This graphic, unromanticized look at men at war is sure to revise many long-held beliefs about the nature of violence.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The characteristic act of men at war is not dying, it is killing".

With that unsettling--yet incontrovertible--assertion, Joanna Bourke opens her investigation of how servicemen deal with the most willfully ignored of wartime activities. Drawing on private letters and diaries of men (and a few women) from the First and Second World Wars and Vietnam, she shows not only how military men talk of their fears and anxieties--familiar enough territory--but also how they talk of joy and pleasure: the physical, sexual excitement of killing other men.

In its own right, the material--lucidly and wittily handled--is fascinating enough. But across Britain, the U.S., and Australia, across three distinct wars, the same stories come through loud and clear: the joy of a man-to-man combat, which, ironically, became less and less common through the century. As Bourke shows, these powerful stories were influenced by the combat tales in magazines, novels, and films that enthralled boys across generations. In the end, despite the best efforts of the military, the experience of war cannot be prepared for.

Some may have reservations about Bourke's conclusions, but the huge mass of detail she brings to light in An Intimate History of Killing forces us at the very least to reconsider those easy clichés about the brutalizing, traumatizing effects of war. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A historian at London's Birbeck College, Bourke (Dismembering the Male) writes that she "aims to put killing back into military history." To do so, she focuses on the two world wars and Vietnam, examining American, British and Australian combatants' writings. Soldiers' letters and diaries, she writes, "weave together domestic trivia with a narrative of murder," combining surprising pleasure with persistent guilt. Bourke finds that men at war often harbored contradictory notions of their behavior, claiming that they were "following orders" while still trying to accept personal responsibility for their actions. Bourke also examines theories of combat and killing held by psychologists, sociologists and literary writers. Some of the surprises she offers refute conventional belief. In a large-scale firefight, only 25% of men ordered to shoot will shoot; the other three-quarters are "essential for morale." Later chapters concern "fraternizing" and battlefield homoerotics, war crimes and massacres, doctors, chaplains, and women in combat. Admirers of Paul Fussell's books about both world wars will appreciate Bourke's methods. Against Fussell's stress on war's disagreeable burdens, she emphasizes its mixed motives and even pleasures: many soldiers liked their bayonet training, and many fighter pilots loved their work. A persuasive final chapter attacks the "brutalization thesis," the claim (advanced frequently after Vietnam) that combat obliterates a soldier's conscience. Bourke makes the disturbing and convincing argument that soldiers can kill, and even enjoy it, while retaining their senses of self and society, right and wrong. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 509 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465007384
• ISBN-13: 978-0465007387
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #830,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth the time..., February 28, 2000

By 

T. E. Vaughn (Chattanooga, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Intimate History Of Killing (Hardcover)

This rather massive book is long on notes, which gives the impression of careful study, but in fact is not much for substance. There is nothing new here. Men -- and women -- are involved in fighting and killing; some are heroic in every sense and others commit atrocities. They all participate in warfare for what they believe are valid and worthwhile reasons. Their perceptions are molded in part by the books they read, the stories they hear, and in the latter part of the century, what they see in movies or on television. One reviewer on the book jacket claimed that this was "good revisionist history." How? Is it that we now realize that there is really not much glory in warfare, no matter how necessary conflict may sometimes be? That frightened people under incredible stress sometimes react badly? No, nothing new here nor terribly revisionist either. Ms. Bourke dwells a lot on barbarous acts, the mutilation of bodies being just one example. Much is made of "necklaces of ears" or of other body parts taken and flaunted in accounts of the Vietnam war. Having served there, I can assure the author that we all smelled bad enough without carrying around or wearing body parts of enemy dead. That it was done is somehow seen as common rather than the very rare aberration it actually was. Just one of the many myths of that war fostered by writers who, even if veterans, have their own agenda: the war was not bad enough just by itself, they have to make it even more horrible. The book also suffers from poor editing. Names are wrong, and the index not always accurate. Lastly, the author is drawing her conclusions (that fit her preconceived notions?) from excerpts from various books on the two world wars and Vietnam. Each of those books is a personal view and sometimes reflects ONLY that participant's perception. Ms. Bourke seems to find universal truths in that approach, but I feel it is rather a leap. Which brings me to the only really good thing about this book: it has a marvelous bibliography. My advice to readers is to seek some of those books out. As for killing and how it's done, taught, and thought of, Dave Grossman does it much better with his masterful ON KILLING.

41 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Despite Footnotes, Bourke does not know Sources, September 2, 2001

By 

"timdavin" (Las Vegas, NV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Intimate History Of Killing (Hardcover)

The depressing thing about this book is that it *could* have been good. Interesting, in a morbid sort of way, Bourke attempts to demonstrate that war is about killing. Despite the "well DUH" factor that entails, there is potential in this approach. Unfortunately, Bourke is not a military historian, and as a result has no clue about the sources she uses.

The most egregious examples of course, have to do with the numerous fakes (fake combat veterans that is) she cites. Since she did practically zero primary source research for this book (at least that is the impression one gets from her footnotes) all she has really done here is assembled other people's writings. She did not know the field well enough to know that many of her sources for American behavior in Vietnam were not who they said they were in various other books written by non-historians. Most glaringly are the citations of Woodley and Kirkland, both African Americans that claimed to have committed atrocities, both in Special Forces or Long Range Recon(if you believe their accounts in Wallace Terry's book _Bloods_), but the reality was that one was a supply clerk and the other was a truck driver. Similar problems exist with fully 1/5 of the accounts Bourke uses on Americans in Vietnam, a depressing demonstration of the lack of rigor in today's modern academic history.

Adding insult to injury, despite the fact that she acknowledges that one of her central conceptual sources (I stopped counting at 50 citations of this one source), SLA Marshall, "had problems" she continues to use his material throughout. Marshall's problem was that he made his statistics UP! How can one cite a man who's been proven a liar, and a fraud? I don't get it.

Finally, there are the problems when Bourke cites novels as though they are historical sources. I recognized at least two novels in her bibliography, so I went back and checked the notes...yep, she cites Anton Myrer's _Once An Eagle_ (a great novel, but a novel none the less)as though it were a memoir. There may be more than two cited, I am only familiar with the American novels. For all I know half her English "sources" might be novels too.

As I said, this is depressing because the subject matter *is* important, and potentially useful. Oh well.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, but overly familiar material....., January 6, 2000

By 

Brooke276 (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Intimate History Of Killing (Hardcover)

While the central theme is bold and original, the documentation and historical data fail to break any real ground. Still, to argue that human beings (yes, even Americans) enjoy killing and warfare far more than we would imagine is daring in an age when we prefer to discuss "sacrifice" and "nobility in death" more than deliberate and calculated killing. Interestingly enough, the book is far from a pacifist rant and the author refrains from demonizing soldiers and their superiors. Instead, the book concerns itself with the unavoidable truth about war: men, often from good backgrounds, possessing educations and the capacity for warmth and love, are able to brutally take the lives of others with little disruption to their conscience. Furthermore, these men are able to return to "civilization" and resume their duties as husbands, fathers, and workers. The author raises important questions related to our blindness about this disturbing fact. Perhaps, as she states, men remain quiet about their wartime experiences not because they are ashamed or disgusted, but because they enjoyed it in ways that cannot be conveyed to civilians and loved ones. The book will hopefully expand the debate about war and killing and instead of oversimplifying the factors that both cause and result from the ultimate form of human combat, we might attempt to face our collective (and human) passions and urges.