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On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Paperback – November 1, 1996
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- Print length366 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBack Bay Books
- Publication dateNovember 1, 1996
- Dimensions5.5 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100316330116
- ISBN-13978-0316330114
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Product details
- Publisher : Back Bay Books; 1st edition (November 1, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 366 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316330116
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316330114
- Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,428,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,012 in Violence in Society (Books)
- #3,215 in Popular Social Psychology & Interactions
- #5,894 in Criminology (Books)
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About the author

LT. COL. DAVE GROSSMAN, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Director, Grossman On Truth
www.GrossmanOnTruth.com
In their description of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Slate Magazine said, “Grossman cuts such a heroic, omnicompetent figure, he could have stepped out of a video game.” He has five patents to his name, has published four novels, two children’s books, and six non-fiction books to include “perennial bestsellers” such as:
-ON KILLING (translated into 7 languages, with over half a million copies sold in English, cited in scholarly works over 3,400 times)
-ON COMBAT (US Marine Corps Commandant’s Required Reading list, translated into 5 languages, a quarter-million copies sold in English, cites in scholarly works over 600 times), and
-ON SPIRITUAL COMBAT (a Christian Book Award Finalist).
He is a former buck Sergeant who came up through the ranks from Private to Lt. Colonel. He is a US Army Ranger, a paratrooper, and a former West Point Psychology Professor. He has a Black Belt in Hojutsu, the martial art of the firearm, and has been inducted into the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame.
Col. Grossman’s research was cited by the President of the United States in a national address, and he has testified before the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Congress, and numerous state legislatures. He has been to the White House on two occasions, to brief the President and the Vice President in his areas of expertise. He has served as an expert witness and consultant in state and Federal courts. And he helped train mental health professionals after the Jonesboro school massacre, and he was also involved in counseling or court cases in the aftermath of the Paducah, Springfield, Littleton and Nickel Mines Amish school massacres.
Col. Grossman has been called upon to write the entry on “Aggression and Violence” in the Oxford Companion to American Military History, three entries in the Academic Press Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict and has presented papers before the national conventions of the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Since his retirement from the US Army in 1998, he continues to be “on the road” over 200 days a year, spanning across four decades, as one of our nation’s leading trainers for military, law enforcement, mental health providers, and school safety organizations.
Through his “Bulletproof Mind Resiliency” presentations, Col. Grossman has been of service to countless thousands of military personnel, law enforcement officers, and first responders. He likes to tell his audiences that, “The Bible says, ‘Greater love has no one than this, that they give their lives for their friends.’ But there are many ways to ‘give’ your life. Sometimes the greatest love is not to sacrifice your life, but to live a life of sacrifice.”
Today Col. Grossman is the director of the Grossman On Truth (www.GrossmanOnTruth.com). In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks he is has written and spoken extensively on the terrorist threat, with articles published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Civil Policy and many leading law enforcement journals, and he has been inducted as a "Life Diplomate" by the American Board for Certification in Homeland Security, and a "Life Member" of the American College of Forensic Examiners Institute.
His hobbies are jigsaw puzzles, canoeing, pistol shooting, and asking questions that no one else is asking. Like, “Why will no one talk about how it felt to kill in combat? Why do we wear neckties? And why do we mow our lawns? A hundred years from now they will say, ‘Were they all crazy? Why did they do that?’” He is a fan of the “Meadowing Movement” (something he made up completely). For all his love of poetry, he is not capable of mustering any such himself. His one bit of doggerel is:
I think that I shall never settle,
In a lawn as nice as any meadow.
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Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
Book Review
By Richard E. Noble
I was expecting this book to be an expose of the needless and barbaric, brutalization of American youth and their transformation from loving, innocent teenagers into conscienceless, military assassins.
This is not such a book.
This book written by a military officer is a basic description of military indoctrination practices, and an explanation of why they have been enacted. It is not only a defense of the military and its traditions but a declaration of why these practices are a just and moral necessity for the proper protection of the country, its citizens and the average teenage American soldier trainee.
From the peacenik's point of view this book is an American horror story.
From the authoritarian, militarist perspective this book is a reasonable and logical explanation of the way things are the way they are and why they must be the way they are.
The author's philosophy is simplistic and basic:
1) War is a fact.
2) That war is a fact necessitates the need for soldiers.
3) That it is a fact that soldiers are necessary, it is a moral imperative that the nation train and condition their soldiers to kill efficiently, expeditiously, without hesitation, guilt or remorse. Soldiers must be mentally prepared to kill the enemy. If proper training in killing is lacking the soldiers will be killed themselves and their country will not be protected.
And it is as simple as that.
But there are basic problems that result from the above necessities. These problems have very little to do with military practices according to this author. They are the problems of our civilian society and polity and its responsibility to its soldiering community.
I will simplify the author's basic problem:
We begin with a young, wholesome, properly indoctrinated child. The child has been raised in our democratic society and has incorporated all the proper values. He/she has learned to be peace loving and to avoid conflict and aggressive entanglements: no fighting in the school yard, no biting, no kicking, no punching. He has been trained to be a good little boy or girl.
Now this properly, socially adjusted child reaches military age and volunteers to be a patriotic part of the national fabric serving in the necessary defense of the nation.
He/she must be transformed into a killer. A soldier must be a killer. It is necessary to their personal survival that they are given the equipment and the psychological skills to kill effectively and without hesitation.
The military knows how to do this. It has been learning and passing down these techniques and basic training practices for over 2000 years. These proper and morally necessitated techniques are learned in our traditional basic training practices and at our officers training academies.
All of this is proper, moral and acceptable to this author. The problem comes when our trained killer completes his military duty and attempts to rejoin a peaceful, democratic society once again. Now our conditioned, trained, soldier killer must be transformed back into a non-aggressive, social citizen.
This is the author's scope of interest for the first 300 pages.
This transition has not been going all that well and it is primarily the fault of the citizenry. We were seriously lacking in this respect with our returning Vietnam veterans. We the general public must be made to understand what we have done to these children. Also the political system must be better informed. More money must be allocated to the reclamation and desensitization of our properly trained soldiers. Not just wounded veterans but all our returning soldiers.
In effect, they must all be put in a psychological decompression chamber. The soldiers must be confirmed in the notion that they have done nothing wrong and that they have acted righteously. We, the public, must be warmer, more gracious, more approving and more supportive. We should have more parades honoring soldiers and soldering. We should give out more metals and ribbons honoring what they have done. We should celebrate our military more often and more elaborately. We should provide returning soldiers with more support groups, more clubs and easier access to more services whatever their problems may be. We need to supply to them more slaps on the back, more hugs and embraces, more TLC and national approval. After all we gave them the problems they are now experiencing. It is our fault. We have a moral obligation to do more and to do it better.
For this officer/author, America has acted correctly in all of its military encounters. America is and has been good; its enemies have been bad. This knowledge is all a soldier needs to proceed forward in America's defense programs abroad.
For example, he dismisses all the debate over Vietnam in one paragraph. His argument is that history has now proven that the Viet Cong were Communists.
That's it. Case closed.
Like the military tribunals assigned to make the judgments at Nuremberg this author/militarist has great trouble in distinguishing between an atrocity and proper, normal military, moral, necessary killing. What would appear to most of us as a clear and obvious distinction becomes a muddled mire of over simplistic misinterpretations, at least according the author's authoritarian, militarist mindset.
I personally think that this officer/author is an interesting study in how the typical, average authoritarian, militarist mind operates. This guy is a study unto himself.
But once we get past page 300 we get into a little different twist. This final section of the book deals with the application of the killing technologies used so effectively in military indoctrination being made available to the general public and especially children in the form of video games, Hollywood movies and the desensitization of our children and the general population to blood, gore, unauthorized violence and killing.
It is the author's contention in this section that, these killing techniques and processes of desensitizing of the individual warrior, though perfectly legitimate for the training and indoctrination of teenage soldiers, is a total horror when released indiscriminately onto our children and the general public. He would like to see certain video games, those recreating real humans being killed complete with blood and scattering brain and body parts, taken off the market. He would like to see violent movies censored or regulated. He sees problems with our new Hollywood anti-heroes and the basic notion that it is acceptable for civilians or even authorized police or investigators to take the law into their own hands.
Like the majority of Americans the author has a double standard. Most Americans are perfectly willing to abandon the Constitution, the Bill of Right and our entire freedom loving, democratic system in the stern face of Military necessity. This author takes that abandonment to an even higher level with his killing machine notions. Most Americans and this author are able to compartmentalize their value system and incorporate two acceptable systems. One that applies to military and war and another that applies to civilian life. This is the main reason, in my opinion, for all of our confusion on this subject. In one area the killing and murder of women, children, old men and non-combatants are considered warranted and necessary and in the other a slap in the face or even a spiteful remark are looked upon as possibly criminal and subject to legal sanction and prosecution.
I find most of my personal agreement with the author in this last small section of the book.
Overall, I think this book was a good experience. I think peaceniks and warmongers will both find lots of food for thought in this text.
The book is filled with facts and studies and with an equal number of the author's personal opinions or insights. I would put the author's insights in the 50/50 category. Half of them I can accept and half of them I find lacking in proper interpretation.
The author is fearful that without proper regulation of videos, movies, Hollywood and gun regulation we risk turning our country into a Nazi-like Germany. Yet he is not at all fearful that the very same technologies, indoctrination and techniques when applied to our young trainee soldiers will turn our military personnel into a Nazi-like SS or Einsatzguppen.
We must remember the defense of the committed Nazi, "We were only following orders." This counters the author's main defense of soldering and proper moral killing that in the military, soldiers must follow orders and therefore their actions are controlled and regulated.
Nazism is the most recent historical proof that "following orders" is far from an effective barrier in defense of an authoritarian military structure.
It is my opinion that the author will always have big problems with moral decisions because of his obvious acceptance of militarism and its dehumanizing aspects.
This author is first and foremost a soldier. As a soldier and militarist he must find a method for justifying killing. Once this adaptation is established all moral questions with regards to killing become obfuscated and confusing.
The value of this book, in my opinion, is not whether it is true or false. It is the psychological opportunity provided to the reader of a concise, rational, educated and unheated presentation of the American modern-day authoritarian/militarist outlook and overall justification for war and killing.
I have already dealt in great detail with this basic authoritarian/militarist point of view in my book "Mein Kampf - An Analysis of Book One."
In Adolf's book he justifies war and killing by claiming that it is all a part of Nature's Divine Plan. Adolf taught that War is good.
This author starts his justification from what I would call the Winston Churchill position. Which is, like it or not, war is an unfortunate but necessary evil.
This author does not go as far as Winston in that he says simply that war and killing are necessary. He doesn't mention evil in his basic justification. He states simply that war and the consequent killing are necessary - and he adds that the killing is not only necessary but moral. A country that didn't train its soldiers to become conditioned killing experts would be acting immorally, the author claims.
I would also say that this is the accepted point of view of most Americans.
The author's personal opinions and interpretations of the facts that he presents of what and how this acceptance of war and killing should be dealt with by America and its government is controversial to say the least. His basic moral acceptance of the methods used by the military to indoctrinate and fortify killing expertise in its soldiers should be evaluated by all Americans.
After all, his ideas and the practices that he describes and teaches ARE what your young adults are being taught presently in the American military.
The Hobo Philosopher, Richard Edward Noble, is a writer and author of "Mein Kampf - An Analysis of Book One."
I first heard the author, Dave Grossman, on a radio interview promoting this book. I heard him say that that in the history of combat from Alexander the Great through World War II only about 15% of soldiers in battle were trying to kill the enemy. He's not talking about the long administrative and logistical tail of the army. Only 15-20% of the people with guns or swords in their hands, facing an enemy trying to harm them, were willing to kill that enemy. I know this is hard to believe. I first heard this statistic from a pacifist and I called him a liar. Then I heard it from this author, a former US Army Colonel and military historian, who references the research of the US Army's official W.W.II historian as well as many other scholars.
Once one accepts this fact, two questions immediately present themselves: "Why?" and "What to do about it?" The first question is easy: most humans have a deep and strong taboo against looking a person in the face and destroying them. Many would literally rather die than cross that line. The second question is more complex and hugely interesting.
Clearly, if only 15% of the assets you have expensively brought to face an enemy are performing, your army has a major problem. The US Army raised this traditional firing rate from 15% up to 50% between W.W.II and the Korean conflict and again to better than 95% in Vietnam and Desert Storm. The British similarly increased their firing rate, to devastating effect in the Falklands against Argentines still performing at traditional levels. All modern militaries have since solved the problem. How?
The low firing rates have been cured by the new ways modern militaries train and lead soldiers. This is where my interest as a trainer of business leaders and salespeople is piqued. I have long noted that the biggest problem with most sales people is that they will not do the uncomfortable or unfamiliar things necessary to make more sales faster. It is not a knowledge problem, it is a performance problem. I figured that if the Army could get most ordinary men to pull the trigger, similar methods ought to get most typical salespeople to dial the telephone.
Grossman reports five factors which influence (determine?) the likelihood of a person to kill: Predisposition of Killer, Attractiveness of Target, Distance from Target, Group Absolution, and Demands of Authority
Many of these factors were well understood and widely practiced in the days of 15% firing ratios. This may be how armies got beyond relying on the 2% of the population willing to kill in combat without dramatic prompting or remorse. A huge gap in combat performance remained because, "When people become angry, or frightened, they stop thinking with their forebrain (the mind of a human being) and start thinking with their midbrain (which is indistinguishable from the mind of an animal). They are literally "scared out of their wits." The only thing that has any hope of influencing the midbrain is also the only thing that influences a dog: classical and operant conditioning." [p. xviii] The big change came when the US Army began, perhaps unintentionally, to incorporate the behaviors demonstrated by Pavlov and B. F. Skinner and made training much more realistic, repetitive, and rewarding.
"World War II-era training was conducted on a grassy firing range..., on which the soldier shot at a bull's-eye target. After he fired a series of shots the target was checked, and he was then given feedback that told him where he hit.
"Modern training ... comes as close to simulating actual combat conditions as possible. The soldier stands in a foxhole with full combat equipment, and man-shaped targets pop up briefly in front of him. These are the eliciting stimuli that prompt the target behavior of shooting. If the target is hit, it immediately drops, thus providing immediate feedback. Positive reinforcement is given when these hits are exchanged for marksmanship badges... Traditional marksmanship training has been transformed into a combat simulator." [p. 177]
And the citizen soldier has been transformed into a reliable killing machine: "When I went to boot camp and did individual combat training they said if you walk into an ambush what you want to do is just do a right face - you just turn right or left, whichever way the fire is corning from, and assault. I said, 'Man, that's crazy. I'd never do anything like that. It's stupid.' The first time we came under fire, ... in Laos, we did it automatically. Just like you look at your watch to see what time it is. We done a right face, assaulted the hill -- a fortified position with concrete bunkers emplaced, machine guns, automatic weapons -- and we took it. And we killed - I'd estimate probably thirty-five North Vietnamese soldiers in the assault, and we only lost three killed." [p. 317]
Contrast that with the report of a commander in W.W. II: "Squad leaders and platoon sergeants had to move up and down the firing line kicking men to get them to fire. We felt like we were doing good to get two or three men out of a squad to fire." [p. xiv] Sounds a lot like what I hear from sales managers. Perhaps because salespeople, like soldiers, find they must transgress strong taboos to be successful, for example, intruding on strangers, talking about money, and persisting past, "No," to name only three. The salesperson's taboos are clearly of a lesser import than the soldier's, yet the parallel is strong. Both the soldier and the salesperson suffer when they fail to transcend taboos, even though ignoring them is crucial to success and permission has been granted.
Redesigning a salesperson's training to take advantage of these well demonstrated methods of behavior modification can have a similarly spectacular effect. Another key to enhanced salesperson performance evident from Grossman's work is the value of on-the-job group dynamics. "Numerous studies have concluded that men in combat are usually motivated to fight not by ideology or hate or fear, but by group pressures and processes involving (1) regard for their comrades, (2) respect for their leaders, (3) concern for their own reputation with both, and (4) an urge to contribute to the success of the group." [p. 89] Many sales organizations, by contrast, pit salespeople against each other and minimize the role of sales managers. It is a world of lone wolves, though teamwork and leadership are demonstrated multipliers of effectiveness. How much of a multiplier? Modern armies have faced similarly equipped, by traditionally trained enemies and killed 35 to 50 of their adversaries for each soldier lost. [p. 197] Salespeople trained, organized, and lead on this model can also expect order-of-magnitude improvements.
"On Killing" describes in visceral detail a mental conditioning phenomenon. My 40-some years of defense R&DTE experience runs directly and indirectly through the subject.
The narrative converges on a seeming constant summed up with the long studies that normative conscript and basically trained citizen soldier translates to ‘80-90% of front line combat shooters don't shoot’. They may in fact be unable to kill another human being. Is there a deep subconscious rejection to killing that cannot be trained out? The phenomenon has been observed for 300 years and well documented between even the most desperate belligerents.
The writers and amenders here compare very long-term rifle range 'marksmanship' scores with long observed battlefield kill statistics ... 80-90 out of 100 shooters, all with 10 for 10 scores on the firing range can be predicted to not shot in combat or intentionally shoot high. Up to 1000 shots per kill from a trained army have been observed on the battlefield even against closely spaced bayonet charging enemies. The civil war should have been predictably many times more lethal if combatants actually shot. WWI should have demonstrated the highest lethality of any war before, but casualties were in fact statistically lower than major medieval battles. WW2 may had the worst shooter marksmanship disparity between range accuracy to 100M vs actual <25m kill rates. How can it be that automatic single serve weapons have not been conclusively demonstrated to be more battlefield lethal than 18th century Prussian single shot muskets? Training evolved accordingly.
Begin with the data ... 10-20% of rifleman will kill. 80-90% won’t. The squadron level soldiers are shown to know the killers from the non-shooters. A squadron battle order is collectively and perhaps without discussion resolved by its members. Members know who a reliable shooter is and who is not. Non-shooters are accepted, not rejected by squad members. There is no apparent squad level dishonor in not shooting in the heat of battle. The non-shooters will earn their keep and lose their own lives more frequently than squad shooters to ensure the killing shooters survival and rate of fire. The squadron shooters will abide by the collective arrangement. An unspoken equilibrium emerges among squad members.
Crew served weapon shooters are savage killers. Collective killing dynamics are far different than the rifleman dynamics.
Grimly, how can it be that a ‘firing squad’ member can exit 5-years of battlefield firing squad duty to describe the experience of never shooting a convict? Why do firing squad records reflect a progressive inaccuracy of shots on target? How could it be that some recorded firing squads required three or more attempts to execute the convicted? Here is a deep, dark human psychology primer. "On Killing" forces unanswerable questions on the reader … is PTSD more prevalent among shooters or non-shooters? Is the high rate of vet suicide a function of killing or a breakdown from not shooting? How much PTSD is the result of self-loathing or deep regret for not shooting when comrades and the battle demanded it? Is special forces training designed so rigorous in an attempt to separate shooters from non-shooters from among the general infantry population? Here the modern training regimen has reversed and changed the shooter from non-shooter.
Tough, intense questions from such a short read. "On Killing" will most assuredly affect your military and history thinking. The authors here focus understanding around the killing dimension.
The book is a thoroughly adult read I think. Young adults headed for the police or military career should read it. Concealed carry citizens should read it. Here be thoughts that might save your own life.
In the early years I never believed that violence on TV influenced kids because it didn't influence me. The author cited actual military training & linked to A Clockwork Orange, & could have also included the Desensitization Training in childhood in Universal Soldier.
Highly recommend this difficult but important read.
Despite the pretty grim title, the book is really about living. Its subtitle is more apt, though less sexy than its titular superior: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.
That's why I say that the book is really "on living." Grossman, a former Army Ranger, delivers an incisive and spellbinding history of killing both during wartime and in society. Beyond surveying the incredibly interesting research and findings about this (only 15-20% of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles in World War II), Grossman analyzes WHY it's proven so difficult over the centuries for warriors to take the life of another human being.
Grossman's analysis, and he's well supported here, runs quite counter to the imagery of soldiers and masculinity we've come to expect (and perhaps crave?) from our popular media.
Indeed, one of Grossman's most compelling arguments is that Hollywood participates in a vigorous process of social propaganda first, by inuring us to violence far more grotesque than what an average soldier sees, and second and perhaps more damaging, by perpetuating the stereotype of the Rambo, Jason Bourne, Natural Born Killer who finds it easy to take a life during wartime and feels not guilt or compunction about doing so. The former is dangerous because it's one of the first steps the military must take when retraining a civilian to be willing to kill another human being; the latter, however, is insidious because it continues to make it difficult for veterans to talk about their feelings, their fears, their guilt, their shame for fear of being seen as dishonorable and cowardly. Grossman spends MUCH of the book explaining why it's so incredibly difficult for a soldier to kill; he spends the other "much" exploring the necessary processes society and the military must provide for veterans who HAVE had to kill while in service. Pop culture's ubiquitous depiction of soldiers and super heroes who demonstrate their courage and manliness by killing their enemies without hesitation only serves to make real soldiers and heroes less able to heal upon return to society.
Two last things.
First, Grossman says, at one point, that the historic record of man's deep sense of dread and hesitation in killing his fellow man makes him proud to be human and gives him hope. I had a similar reaction. While I DID know that the military started making its targets more realistic during shooting practice in order to ease a soldier's finger onto the trigger in wartime, I was totally unaware of the statistics regarding how many troops, in wars throughout history, either refuse to kill or intentionally miss their targets.
Second, apparently, this book has become required reading at military and police academies. That makes me very happy. It also confuses me. On the one hand, it's incredibly courageous of military leaders to arm their soldiers with information that undermines the goal they're trying to achieve! It's also psychologically ethical for these same leaders to show their young students what it is they're getting into. On the other hand, I fear that the REASON they have them read Grossman's book is because he also explains the processes necessary to overcome the hesitation to kill.
That ambivalence, on my part, is both empathetic and naive. It's nice that I care for the soldiers' psychological health; but if I accept having a military as a necessary fact, I should want them to be as effective at their jobs as possible. And the first job of a military is to protect themselves and their country by overcoming the hesitation to kill an enemy.
And that's where Grossman takes us. Into complexity. Into a world with no black and white morality. And I was transfixed.
Why is it hopeful? Because it argues that for the vast majority of humanity, killing another human is a vastly unnatural act. Societies may find a way to battle at every opportunity, but individual humans have a hard time killing another human being.
One of Dave Grossman's arguments is that – to paraphrase – ‘the recruit doesn’t want to kill, but only has 20 years of total life experience, while the army has the breadth of history on their side.’
Against this, even the most soft-spoken the recruit may turn into a killing machine. Their acts might haunt them for the rest of their lives afterwards, but in the moment – they can kill.
The recent shade of war has gotten recruits over many psychological barriers they might have.
Distance helps – the farther you are from your target, the easier it is to kill psychologically. Roman soldiers gained dominance through fighting with pikes – and today’s solders go even further back with drone fighting.
Technology helps – many battles go on at night now. In night fights, you see a green shape moving, and not a face.
Verbiage helps – The enemy is labeled the enemy, or some sort of racial epithet. The enemy is not killed, but rather hosed, zapped or fired on. If you can take away the enemy’s humanity, it helps. And Grossman notes that this is common in war. The North Vietnamese called the American’s Hairy Monkeys.
Here are some other insights Mr. Grossman had –
1) The concept of ‘courage’ should be thought of as a ‘well of fortitude’
He argues that everyone – everyone can be broken in war. Some have more fortitude, some have less. But it can and will all run out for everyone. You can refill the war with a good leader or a win, but in general, time is not on the soldier’s side. Even the bravest runs out of fortitude sooner or later.
2) Group pressure is the primary driving force behind soldiers
Most soldiers that fight do so to avoid letting their comrades down. Not the country, or an ideal – but the soldier in their troop.
If they kill, it’s often in defense of their comrades.
3) Personal involvement brings PTSD, not just action
Grossman looks at data on the bombing victims in WWII in England and also in the firebombed German cities. He looks at medics, and war reporters. He finds that the incidents of PTSD in these people is low, often non-existent.
Why? It’s not personal. There is something about the person on the other end personally trying to eliminate you that kicks of PTSD.
4) Psychopaths – the right kind of psychopaths – are enormously valuable to an army
I am paraphrasing so might have the numbers wrong – but 1% of all fighter pilots account for 40 percent of all kills. If a soldier exhibits no remorse, but can be turned into an order-following soldier – the military will put them in the right position.
5) One more quote that I’ll leave you with
'One veteran I interviewed told me that he thought of most of the world as sheep: gentle, decent, kindly creatures who are essentially incapable of true aggression. In this veteran’s mind there is another human subspecies (of which he is a member) that is a kind of dog: faithful, vigilant creatures who are very much capable of aggression when circumstances require. But, according to his model, there are wolves (sociopaths) and packs of wild dogs (gangs and aggressive armies) abroad in the land, and the sheepdogs (the soldiers and policemen of the world) are environmentally and biologically predisposed to be the ones who confront these predators.'
Do I believe this? Somewhat. I still believe the best way to fight a war is to bring diplomacy, a robust economy, opportunity and an assortment of other things so you don’t have a war in the first place.
Grossman doesn’t quite believe this view either, at least not entirely. Still – it’s a way of thinking about it.
And if I’m a sheep – which I may be, because I don’t engage in any sort of aggression myself, then I’m thankful for those sheepdogs who keep the wild dogs at bay.
In any case – fantastic book. It should be required reading for just about everyone.
Grossman's argument is carefully researched and methodically laid out. He begins by filling in some historical details, discussing the statistics for shots fired per soldier killed for the World Wars and the American Civil War. It's a refreshing and enlightening look at war that dispels a lot of misconceptions. An average solder in those wars was extremely reluctant to take arms against fellow humans, even in cases where his own life (or the lives of his companions) was threatened. Not to say that any of these people are cowards; in fact, many would engage in brave acts such as rescuing their comrades from behind enemy lines or standing in harm's way while helping a fellow to reload. But the ability to stare down the length of a gun barrel and make a conscious effort to end a life is a quality that is happily rare.
The book continues on then, detailing what steps the US Army took to increase the percentage that they could get to actually fire upon their enemy. By studying precisely what the soldier's ordinary reactions were, the officers were able to change the scenario of war in order to avoid the most stressful of situations. The soldier found up-close killing to be abhorrent, so the emphasis was countered by inserting machinery (preferably one manned by multiple soldiers) between the killer and the enemy to increase the physical and emotional distance. Every effort is made to dehumanize the act of killing.
Grossman spends a great deal of time discussing the trauma that the solder who kills faces when he returns to civilian life. Nowhere is this more apparent than in those veterans who returned from Vietnam. Those soldiers had been psychologically trained to kill in a way that no previous army had gone through, and there was no counteragent working to heal their psychological wounds. Grossman takes great pains to discuss how horrifying the act of killing is, and points out how detrimental it is to one's mental health. When the Vietnam veterans returned home to no counseling and the spit and bile of anti-war protestors, the emotional effect was astounding. Most of Grossman's thesis is supported by in-depth interviews and psychological profiles, but it is the story of the Vietnam veterans that comes across as the most disturbing.
Much of the chatter about this book seems to revolve around the final section, the discussion about our own civilian society. While this is understandable, I actually preferred reading the earlier portions, simply because they opened my eyes to a lot about the military that I had been previously ignorant of. I think it would be a mistake to concentrate solely on the argument's conclusion as it rests heavily on the case that has been building. In any event, the book eventually develops its final conclusion: the methods that the military uses to desensitize its soldiers to killing are also being used in our media, but without the proper command structure that keeps people from killing indiscriminately. In a military situation, firing a weapon without proper authorization or instruction is a very serious offense, and this is drilled into the mind at the same time as the desensitization. Without this safety, there is nothing to hold back the killing instinct, and this is one of the main reasons why the homicide rate has increased so dramatically.
Now, I'll say right off the bat that I was partial to this line of argument before I read the book; I think that children repeatedly exposed to such images would almost certainly become blasé towards extreme violence. But Grossman's book gave me so much more to think about. It isn't just a Pavlovian force at work here; Grossman points out many reasons (both stemming from society and the changing family structure) for why young people of today seem much more able to kill than their parents and grandparents were.
I was honestly surprised at how strong of a writer Grossman is. He manages to put forth his argument without boring the reader. By its very nature, a lot of what he discusses is repetitive and disturbing, but the subject matter is so compelling that I didn't mind. Grossman is very logical in his approach and his argument is a powerful one. I highly recommend this book, especially for people like myself who have never experienced war at close quarters. The summary I (and others here) have given is simply not nearly adequate to capture all of Grossman's thorough contentions. ON KILLING made me think harder about a subject that I hadn't given a lot of thought too before. The information and research here is invaluable.
A Kuwait and Iraq vet told me of a vet who went berserk in a waiting room at UAB in Birmingham recently. He was able to calm him from his own understanding and some words I had used with him frequently. The trigger was the picture of a green snake on the cover of a magazine. The vet, a tunnel rat, had followed his best buddy into a tunnel where the VC had laid a favorite trap. His friend was struck and almost instantly died from the bite of a Mamba, which then struck at him and missed. Almost 50 years later an image on a magazine cover had resulted in a flashback and behavior that almost resulted in his removal by security. I often refer to PTSD as "the gift that keeps on giving" and firmly believe that whatever the reported percentages of returning vets have PTSD, no one comes back the same, and the percentages go much higher if those with delayed reactions are taken into account. The numbers reported for wounded are also deceptive, because the numbers of seriously maimed are not broken out. A single bullet wound, even if relatively serious, counts as one and so does the loss of 2 legs and other disfiguring injuries on the same soldier also counts as one. Read Lee Warren's recent book No Place to Hide, written by a neurosurgeon after a 4 month deployment in Iraq in the run-up to the first elections in 2004-2005 for added perspective, or Brian Castner's (AF EOD officer) The Longest Walk.
I think there is much truth in Grossman's assessment on the impact of violent movies and violent video games on our children, although poverty, the protection offered in gangs that rely on violence independent of video games and violent movies, and single parent families and failed bonding also contribute. Those in suits at a great distance who formulate policies do not really comprehend what they are sending our young men into and the cost to our nation that results. Grossman gets much right at the end, even if he relies on inaccurate statistics in the opening chapters. "War, what is it good for?"
The rest of his book, however, is flawed and should be taken with a grain of salt. To begin with, he takes modern assumptions and assigns them to all eras and epochs of the past, as if people of the past all have the same outlooks and reactions that we do today - they just wore different clothes. His assumption that people are somehow inherently predisposed not to kill each other and only do so with great mental conditioning leading to psychological harm flies in the face of the obvious lessons of history. A reading of history suggests our ancestors often waged aggressive and enthusiastic war with little trouble. Even more importantly, they did not need video games or death metal to encourage them to do it. The society and its views of war, I think, has more to do with reactions of soldiers than any innate mental disposition.
Some items he mentions show a poor understanding of practical matters. He suggests that centurions simply stood around encouraging their soldiers to fight, while a student of Roman warfare would recognize that the centurions were often in the thick of the fighting and doing so by fighting. They often led just as much by example as by shouting orders. The author also asserts that the reason thrusts with a sword are not used much is related to some psycho-sexual mental block. This only proves he has little concept of weapons through the ages, not to say the fact that he has never seriously used one. He also fails to comment on the development of specialized thrusting weapons in the late middle ages or the development of rapiers. That these weapons were used for several hundred years and thrusting the accepted technique for inflicting damage shows a poor understanding of swords, not to say weapons of the past in general. I wonder how he addresses the spear, the most common weapon for thousands of years?
Even more troubling is his use of SLA Marshall's work Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command to justify many of his positions. He quotes Marshall's famous firing rate: less than twenty-five percent of a unit would engage in combat with the enemy. The first problem is: He ignores Marshall's reason for this occurring. Marshall felt a lot of this had to do with the way soldiers were trained - only to fire their weapon if they could see a target. In modern war, a target is not always visible, hence the soldiers did not shoot when shot at. The soldiers who did shoot often were armed with BARS, machine guns, flame-throwers, etc. That is weapons that are meant to be used against an area as much as against individual targets. The second problem is that recent research has suggested that it is very likely Marshall simply made up this figure. His methodology was more focused on recreating the battle experience, not obtaining specific pieces of information for statistical purposes. With doubt cast on Marshall's firing rate, doubt has to be cast on LTC Grossman's conclusions and arguments which stem from it.
Another problem with LTC Grossman's book is that despite saying he conducted over four hundred interviews, he quotes from these very little. In fact, he tends to quote from the same couple of works, Soldiers: A history of men in battle by John Keegan and Richard Holmes and Acts of War: Behavior of Men in Battle by Richard Holmes, over and over again. Because of the repetition and limited sources, many of his assertions seem poorly supported and to rely entirely on the works of other people. If he conducted all these interviews, why does he not reference them more? Also to consider, just because modern people have certain reactions in battle, it does not mean that this is how it has been through time immemorial. This reviewer highly recommends the works of Richard Holmes and John Keegan as an alternative to this poor work.
Finally, when he is given information that runs contrary to his views, he glosses over it or attempts to make it fit his conclusions. The most prominent example regards the guilt officers feel when men under their command die following that officer's orders. Essentially, he says none of the officers he interviewed expressed any guilt. Rather than concluding that maybe they really do not feel guilt, he concludes they must all be suppressing it. This is just absurd - a blatant attempt to make the facts fit a preconceived notion that the author has.
It is unfortunate that this book is accepted so uncritically. His work has affected the work of others in a detrimental manner. The subject is an interesting one, but unfortunately poorly researched. Grossman did do a service in pointing out the importance of the topic. His arguments and conclusion, however, are flawed and poorly thought out. Despite his claim to a history degree, he seems to have a poor grasp of the subject and its study. And in the end his book becomes a screed against violent video games, movies, and music, as if this is to blame for all our problems. My advice is to avoid this book if at all possible.
Military buffs will be thrilled at the psychological secrets it reveals about various strategies have sought to counter man's innate resistance to killing throughout history. Who would have suspected that up until Vietnam (according to battlefield archaeology) soldiers had a tacit understanding amongst themselves not to shoot to kill, or even fire at the enemy at all. Apparently, before WW II only about 10% of soldiers fired their weapons at the enemy, and only 2% (natural born psychopaths) could kill easily without adverse psychological consequences.
However, this "military psychology" is to psychology as military music is to music. The author's heavy reliance on behaviorism, leavened with a crude rendition of psychoanalysis, leads to shallow analyses and sometimes wrong conclusions. He worries, for example, that modern youngsters are being conditioned to kill by violent video games. He explains away the lack of statistical evidence for this by asserting that these deaths are masked in official statistics by advances in medical technology. In one place he naively states that he thinks that the psychopaths in the military (who are the only one's willing or, indeed eager to kill) are benign. This is contrary to everything that is known about psychopathy.
Elsewhere, he describes the plight of Vietnam vets, who have one of the highest and most debilitating rates of PTSD because they faced a kind of "perfect storm" of insensitivity and mismanagement. First, most of the recruits were very young; they were subject to new forms of training to get them to shoot and kill at historically unprecedented levels. They were assigned to units on a replacement basis so that they never developed the kind of mutual supports which soldiers who train together typically develop. The counter-insurgency nature of the war--where it was difficult to distinguish enemies from friends--was highly stressful and prone to tragic errors. When they began to exhibit stress and "battle fatigue," their symptoms were managed with anti-depressants and other drugs. They were returned home without any chance to debrief or decompress, and they walked straight into an unsympathetic society which viewed them (not always unjustly) as war criminals. Instead of using this information to point out the unacceptable costs of engaging in unnecessary and unjust wars, and the unconscionable lack of regard for the soldier's basic humanity, Grossman suggests that perhaps a little historical revisionism is in order. He suggests that we tell Vietnam vets that the war did make a difference in thwarting the spread of communism (which it most emphatically did not).
These examples seem to reveal a kind of willful blindness bordering on moral tone-deafness that makes one wonder if this sort of thing should even be studied at all. What is missing is any sense of the social, psychological and moral career a person undergoes from ordinary citizen. To get the necessary theoretical perspective I recommend reading another book back to back with it--Lonnie Athens' "Dangerous Violent Criminals." No amount of "conditioning" is going to turn a decent man into a killer; his decency has to be removed by a distinct sequence of events which advance him on a kind of "moral career." Once you realize what it is, you also realize that it is a thing to be avoided by any civilized society.
This book was written before 9-11, so is overdue for an update. If the past is prologue, we may be facing the most traumatized and dysfunctional group of vets yet returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Grossman notes that many studies have shown that most soldiers in combat will not spontaneously fire a rifle at an enemy, and suggests that there is an instinctive barrier against killing our own species in most people. So far, so good, and the evidence he sites convinced me. But then he tries to apply this to all of military history, with dubious results. For instance, it never occurs to him that among the reasons so many people using smoothbore muskets missed are 1)The muskets had no sights; 2)The soldiers using them had no markmanship training -- in fact, they frequently went into their first battle without ever having fired their weapon at all; 3)It's always easier to shoot on the firing range than on the battle field (naval gunnery in combat deteriorated radically compared to pre-war practice). Similarly, 1% of the fighter pilots got 40% of the kills -- but considering that bomber gunners weren't taught how to fire properly at attacking fighters till almost the end of the war (see Geoffrey Perret's WINGED VICTORY), fighter training may have been similarly bad. And one reason so many of the abandoned muskets at Gettsyburg had multiple loads may well be that the soldiers who double loaded them were paniced, and the panic also led them to get killed, or drop their rifle and RUN.
When he comes to the plague of violence in modern urban USAmerica, Grossman is alarmed by violent video games and movies, and their possible effects on our children. An important subject, and he may be right. But I looked the movies he sees as dangerous (DIRTY HARRY, FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, etc.), and they didn't appear till after the rate of violent crime had shot up. Same with the video games. Nor is there much consideration of cross-cultural crime rates, even though "violent American movies" (and even more violent Japanese movies) are seen worldwide. Why the wide national differences in crime rates?
Further, while it's easy to see how a military training program that teaches automatic reactive firing in combat is rather like a modern video game, the high school massacres we've seen recently didn't occur as a result of someone firing at an armed teenager, who then went ape. They occured because kids brought guns to school with the deliberate, pre-meditated intention of murdering the unarmed. Mass murder and serial killing have existed throughout human history.
Still, even with these reservations, I highly recommend this book. Grossman has taken the first good look at a subject that has been almost totally ignored. I hope others follow his lead.
First of all, however, it gave me a new and very important perspective on PTSD, that of the aggressor. Working with the victims of wars, I admit to have often neglected the fact that the victimizer may end up being just as traumatized as the victim. Also Grossman points out that the traumatic event in itself is only part of the equation, whether or not the traumatized person is accepted into the surrounding society may be a factor just as important. A very important notion regarding both war veterans and diplaced persons.
As an eager student of history, Grossman offered me long sought after answers to why we have not (yet) managed to extinguish ourselves as a race, despite countless wars and conflicts throughout our history. The many accounts on the difficulty of killing another human being offers some comfort in between the unnerving accounts of what the killer actually experiences during and after the act. It is quite different from the average action movie.
Finally Grossman discusses how modern armies have developed simple techniques to effectively overcome the resistance to killing, and how these techniques are also being applied in the computer gaming industry. Sadly this part of the book is mainly based on speculation and comparison of murder rates with increase in computer gaming. Still Grossmans makes a good argument that parts of the entertainment industry desentizises children to violence and actually encourages violent and murderous behavior is very unsetteling, and deserves the attention of every parent.
Criticisms:
It is being pointed out in other reviews, that the historical research on this book is based on few and very desputed sources, and it neglects other theories explaining the inaccuracy of shots fired in black powder battles (read William R. Forstchen's review of the book). This greatly challenges Grossman's theory of instinctively missing a human target, but does not, in my opinion, completely disqualify it. However it remains a subject for further study.
The use of the highly controversial concept of Thanatos adds to the notion that the scientific foundations of the book is not so solid after all.
The chapters regarding the effect of first-person-shooter games is based on statistics and very little direct research on the subject, and lacks alternative theories and explanations.
In conclusion Grossman touches on some very interesting topics, he handles his material eloquently and with great respect. Depite the serious criticism regarding his research, I still found Grossman's theories inspiring and thought-provoking, and although his theories cannot be applied universally, they have given me valualble new perspectives on human behavior.













