An Enigma Explained
As a student of history, I was often confused by the numerical inconsistency in battle records of wars throughout time: for example, battles in the Crusades involving tens of thousands of soldiers, lasting more than eight hours, and yet resulting in only a couple hundred deaths. In the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution, after eight hours under fire the British force, numbering 1,500 had sustained only 73 KIA. While the loss of life in battle is lamentable and cannot be downplayed by mere appeals to proportions of casualties, percentages in the single digits during hours of battle (where the goal is, ostensibly, to kill one’s enemy) seemed strange to me. Why do we see such low casualty rates given the scale of many of these battles?
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and West Point psychology professor Dave Grossman’s Nonkiller Thesis resolves the enigma. Dr. Grossman found historical evidence that a surprising number of U.S. soldiers in the American Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War who never fired their weapon in battle (non-firers) and evidence of many soldiers throughout modern history firing their weapons, but purposely missing (non-aimers). His Nonkiller Thesis states that there is a psychological aversion to killing other humans, which has expressed itself as many (but not all) soldiers playing at war to appease their superior officers, while not actually putting much effort into killing their opponents. This phenomenon is “a resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.”[1] This is not just fun psychological speculation; Grossman has the historical documentation to support the existence of significant numbers of non-firers and non-aimers. Let’s examine what he found.
Grossman writes of “a Prussian experiment in the late 1700s
in which an infantry battalion fired smoothbore muskets at a target one hundred
feet long by six feet high, representing an enemy unit, which resulted in 25
percent hits at 225 yards, 40 percent hits 150 yards, and 60 percent hits at 75
yards. This represented the potential killing power of such a unit.”[2]
Yet a firefight at Vicksburg in 1873 with units less than 75
yards away (“15 steps”, writes an eyewitness)—which should have resulted in 60
percent casualties per the Prussian experiment—resulted in a completely
bloodless engagement.[3]
The only explanation for such nonviolent battles is the existence of the two
types of individual firearm non-killers—non-fires and non-aimers—in wars
throughout history.
In 1860, Ardant du Picq wrote that French officers reported
a high number of soldiers fired into the air, and not at the enemy during
battle.[4]
Colonel Milton Mater records first-hand accounts of World War I veterans who spoke
of “the difficulty of making some men fire their rifles.”[5]
Grossman gives a historic account of a group of American soldiers who ran to
the same hiding place as a group of five Germans to escape shell fire; they
stared at each other, and then by silent agreement made no action to kill one
another.[6]
He shares a biographical account of a U.S. and Viet Cong soldier running into
each other in a tunnel, and then having a silent agreement to turn around and
not kill each other.[7]
Colonel Richard A. Gabriel
observed that “during World War II less than 1 percent of their fighter pilots
accounted for 30 to 40 percent of all enemy aircraft destroyed in the air
and... Most fighter pilots ‘never shot anyone down or even tried to’.”[8]
Brigadier General and historian S.L.A. Marshall discovered in interviews with thousands
of WWII veterans that only 15 to 20 percent of U.S. soldiers in that conflict fired
their weapon during battle. He recorded his findings in his seminal work Men
Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. His conclusion that a
significant number of soldiers do not fire their weapons in combat has been
verified by multiple studies performed by other armies, going back to the 18th century,
and continuing into the 20th.[9]
“Lieutenant George Roupell encountered the same phenomenon while commanding a
British platoon in World War I. He stated that the only way he could stop his
men from firing into the air was to draw his sword and walk down the trench, ‘beating
the men in the backside and, as I got their attention, telling them to fire low’.”[10]
M. Gwynne Dyer estimates that percentages of non-firers in the Japanese and
German Armies during the Second World War was similar to that of the American
Army.
“The definitive U.S. military source, The United States Training
and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) historical monograph titled ‘SLAM, the influence
of S. L. A. Marshall on the United States Army,’ strongly defends Marshall's observations.”[11]
The research and personal experiences of such notable personalities as Colonel M.
Gwynne Dyer, Colonel Richard A. Gabriel,
Colonel Richard Holmes, General Harry Kinnard, Colonel Milton Mater, and Lieutenant
Colonel George R.P. Roupell —all military historians and retired military
officers—also support the finding of S.L.A.M.[12]
Large numbers of soldiers in the black powder age
participated in “mock firing” during battle: undergoing the drill of loading,
ramming, and aiming, but never pulling the trigger. “Author of the Civil War
Collector’s Encyclopedia F. A. Lord tells us that after the Battle of
Gettysburg, 27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield. Of these,
nearly 90 percent (twenty-four thousand) were loaded. Twelve thousand of these
loaded muskets were found to be loaded more than once, and six thousand of the
multiply loaded weapons had from three to ten rounds loaded in the barrel. One
weapon had been loaded twenty-three times.”[13]
To the student of history who knows that Gettysburg was the
bloodiest battle of that war—resulting in approximately thirty percent
casualties on both sides—the assertion that large percentages of men were either
not firing or not aiming their rifles seems preposterous. It seems less
incredulous, however if one analyzes the potential kill rate given the Prussian
experiment. Every single regiment of both Armies faced close quarters combat at
75 yards or less. Given the Prussian hit-rate experiment, this should have
resulted in 60 percent casualties per volley. And yet, opposing forces
not only delivered multiple volleys, but multiple waves against the
enemy, resulting in approximately 30 percent casualties for both Armies. While
this figure is staggering, it is optimistic compared to the statistics if there
were a lack of non-killers in both Armies. Assuming that regiments followed the
common practice of two volleys and a bayonet charge per wave, and assuming the
conservative number of at least one wave per regiment per day (it was much
higher), both Armies would have been attritted 76 percent at the end of the
first day, 91 percent by the end of the second day, and 97 percent at the end
of the third day.
Let us also consider that the Prussian experiment used
smoothbore muskets; the estimated hit rates do not even account for the increased
accuracy, range, and velocity of rifles, which were first mass-issued to soldiers
during the Civil War. Factoring in increased rifle lethality, the casualties by
day three would have exceeded 97 percent if soldiers had been aiming and firing
their weapons. As Grossman points out, “At 75 yards, a 200-man regiment should
be able to hit as many as 120 enemy soldiers in the first volley. If
four shots were fired each minute, a regiment could potentially kill around
480 soldiers in the first minute.”[14]
“An average engagement would take place at thirty yards” during
the American Civil War. “But instead of mowing down hundreds of enemy soldiers
in the first minute, regiments killed only one or two men per minute. And
instead of the enemy formations disintegrating in a hail of lead, they stood in
exchanged fire for hours on end.”[15]
Upon mathematical analysis, it becomes increasingly more and
more believable that thousands of soldiers would have multiply-loaded their
weapons during the Battle of Gettysburg because they had no intention of shooting
at other humans.
Grossman writes, “It is my contention that most of these
discarded weapons on the battlefield at Gettysburg represent soldiers who had
been unable or unwilling to fire their weapons in the midst of combat and then
had been killed, wounded, or routed. In addition to these twelve thousand, a
similar proportion of soldiers must have marched off that battlefield with
multiloaded weapons.”[16]
Other historians have observed this same phenomenon in other
wars. Historian Richard Holmes has calculated thirteen rounds per hit at point-blank
range during Rorkes Drift, 1897; 252 rounds per hit at Rosebud Creek, 1876; 119
rounds per hit “the French, shooting at German soldiers advancing across open
fields, fired 48,000 rounds to hit 404 Germans" at Wissembourg, 1870.[17]
Paddy Griffith writes “an attacking unit could not only come very close to the
offending line, but it could also stay there for hours—and indeed for days—at a
time.”[18]
Grossman goes on to paraphrase the British historical
theorist:
Griffith estimates that the average musket fire from a
Napoleonic or Civil War regiment (usually numbering between two hundred and one
thousand men) firing at an exposed enemy regiment at an average range of 30
yards, would usually result in hitting only one or two men per minute! Such
firefights “dragged on until exhaustion set in or nightfall put an end to
hostilities. Casualties mounted because the contest went on so long, not
because the fire was particularly deadly.”[19]
“Muzzle-loading muskets could fire from one to five shots
per minute, depending on the skill of the operator and the state of the weapon.
With the potential hit rate of well over 50 percent at the average combat
ranges of this era, the killing rate should have been hundreds per minute,
instead of one or two. The weak link between the killing potential and
the killing capability of these units was the soldier. The simple fact
is that when faced with a living, breathing opponent instead of a target, a significant majority of the soldiers revert to a posturing mode in which they
fire over their enemy’s head.”[20]
All in-depth statistical analysis supports the nonkiller
thesis, which, in essence, states “The available data indicate that at least half
[if not more] in black-powder battles did not fire their weapons, and only a
minute percentage of those who did fire aimed to kill the enemy.”[21]
This groundbreaking thesis is introduced by Grossman in the
first two chapters of his book. The remainder of his book is dedicated to addressing
criticism of the thesis and expounding upon how various individuals and armies
throughout history have been able
to “overcome” the natural repulsion to killing our fellow man.
In Response to Criticism
First, is the criticism that officers would surely notice if
their men were not aiming or firing. Grossman puts this to rest, “Missing the
target does not necessarily involve firing obviously high, and two decades of army rifle ranges have taught me that a soldier must fire usually high for it to
be obvious to an observer. In other words, the intentional miss can be a very
subtle form of disobedience…generations of soldiers appear to have either
intentionally or instinctively outwitted the powers that be by simply
exercising the soldier's right to miss.”[22]
I would add that it is clear from the writing of Ardant du Picq, Milton Mater,
and many other officers that they were well aware of the existence of non-firers
and non-aimers; but it would be impossible to prosecute or punish 80 to 85
percent of your formation, and an embarrassment to admit that such a large
amount of your men refused to fight (this is part of the reason the nonkiller
phenomenon has been hidden to history, which we will discuss in the third
criticism below).
The most obvious criticism of the nonkiller thesis regards
massive death tolls in battles throughout history. Grossman fails to dictate
the most obvious rebuttal: that every rule has its exceptions. Brutal massacres
and battles to the last man have occurred, but these are rare exceptions. Most
casualty rates and ammunition expenditure datum analyzed support the nonkiller
thesis.
While Grossman fails to mention exceptions on the
operational level, he does mention exceptions on the individual level: crew-served
weapons such as cannon, artillery and machine guns.
“Cannon… is an entirely different matter, sometimes
accounting for more than 50 percent of the casualties on the black-powder
battlefield, and artillery fire has consistently accounted for the majority of
combat casualties in the twentieth century. This is largely due to the group
processes at work in a cannon, machine-gun, or other crew-served-weapons firing.”[23]
What are these group processes? The first factor is “mutual
surveillance.” Crew members will notice if members of their team are not performing
the required task. Another factor is pressure from superior officers. Commanding
officers are more apt to take notice of, and become angry if cannons and
other crew weapons that are not firing, or are not hitting their targets.
Yet another factor is dissociation. In the case of a cannon,
one man loaded the cannonball, another rammed it, another pulled the cord, and
the crew as a team aimed the cannon. It is easy for crew members to dissociate,
telling themselves that any death dealt by the gun was not by them
personally. “I didn’t kill anyone, the crew did (or the cannon did)” is the
thought process.
Still another factor that contributes to dissociation is
distance. “Destroying is easier when done at a distance…much of the mindless cruelty
of recent wars has been perpetrated by warriors at a distance, who could not
guess what havoc their powerful weapons were occasioning.”[24]
Heckler remarks, “the soldier-warrior could kill his collective enemy, which
now included women and children, without ever seeing them. The cries of the
wounded and dying went unheard by those who inflicted the pain. A man might
slay hundreds and never see their blood flow…”[25]
Grossman continues, “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. 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.”[26]
Grossman gives various examples how this distance not only makes it psychologically
easier to kill but makes it less likely the killer will experience any guilt,
regret, or trauma from having done the killing. “They can pretend they are not
killing human beings,” Dyer observes.[27]
Another contributor to mass death on the battlefield occurs
when the enemy is routed. “It is when the bayonet charge has forced one side’s
soldiers to turn their backs and flee that the killing truly begins…Griffith
also notes many instances in which the most effective firing and killing occurred
when the enemy had begun to flee…there appears to be chase instinct in man that
permits him to kill a fleeing enemy.” Contrary to the belief that it is more
cold-hearted to shoot a man in the back, it is actually psychologically easier,
due to the chase instinct, and the fact that the killer cannot see his victim’s
face. “Not having to look at the face of the victim provides a form of
psychological distance.” This is why executioners in the past placed blindfolds
or hoods over their victims; “why Nazi, Communist, and gangland executions are
traditionally conducted with a bullet in the back of the head.”[28]
Grossman points out that “the vast majority of casualties in historic battles
were inflicted upon the losing side during the pursuit that followed the
victory. In this vein Ardant du Picq holds out the example of Alexander the
Great, whose forces, during all his years of warfare, lost fewer than seven
hundred men 'to the sword'. They suffered so few casualties simply because they
never lost a battle and therefore only had to endure the very, very minor
casualties inflicted by reluctant combatants in close combat and never had to
suffer the very significant losses associated with being pursued by a
victorious enemy.”[29]
Drawing the mind back to the Gettysburg example, when one accounts
for routed deaths and cannon fire, claims that only 15 to 20 percent of riflemen
were aiming and firing not only become possible, but are the only explanation
that makes sense mathematically. “Only when artillery (with its close
supervision and mutual surveillance processes among the crew) is brought into
play can any significant change in this killing rate be observed.”[30]
Cannon fire—where the resistance to killing is lower due to
the dual factors of crew served weaponry and greater physical distance
(allowing for denial or dissociation)—and routed deaths—when the chase instinct
at the lack of facial visual lower inhibitions against killing—account for the
deaths at Gettysburg; but the majority of men in that battle never killed a
single enemy soldier.
A third common criticism of the nonkiller thesis is often
expressed in a question: If this was occurring, why has this never been understood
before? The answer is not difficult to comprehend.
Throughout all of history fighting nobly has been seen as
honorable; therefore, refusing to fight and refusing to kill, is dishonorable. Is it any surprise that any man upon returning from war would refuse to admit
that he had not performed the act that was considered his duty? Would any
officer admit that he was unable to assert his authority to compel his men to fire
upon the enemy?
If a soldier would not kill in combat when it was his duty
and responsibility to do so, would he let that be common knowledge? And if the
majority of soldiers two hundred years ago did not fulfill their duties on the
battlefield, would we have known? A general of the era would probably have said,
‘They managed to kill plenty of people, don't they? They won the war for us,
didn't they? They must be doing something right!’ Until S. L. A. Marshall ask
the individuals involved immediately after the fact we had no hope of
understanding what was occurring on the battlefield…
If a professional soldier were to see through the fog of his
own self-deception, and if he were to face the cold reality that he can't do
what he has dedicated his life to, or that many of his soldiers would rather
die than do their duty, it would make his life a lie. Such a man would be apt
to deny his weakness with all the energy he could muster. No, the soldiers are
not apt to write of their failures or the failures of their men; with few
exceptions, it is only the heroes and the glory that make their way into print...
If for thousands of years the vast majority of soldiers
secretly and privately were less than enthused about killing their fellow man
on the battlefield, the professional soldiers and their chroniclers would be
the last to let us know the inadequacies of their particular charges.[31]
I will add that for many of us in the modern day, our
perceptions of warfare have been marred by the cinema. Not only do action heroes
kill rampantly with no qualms, but battle sequences show massive carnage on a
scale that is frankly ahistorical. This is intentional: what director wants to depict
a Civil War sequence with two regiments exchanging volleys for hours with no
casualties? It doesn’t make for good entertainment. But this, in reality, is what
occurred on many occasions.
In Summary
While historians have compiled these statistics during the
black powder era alone; I believe that they are applicable to history at large.
Think of fencing matches. There are usually mere seconds between hits. It would
have been impossible to survive medieval battle if everyone had actually been
trying to kill one another. It was just a show. Two men swinging swords half-heartedly
but not actually attempting to kill the other.
Grossman hints at this during one passage of his book:
Ardant du Picq points out that in all his years of conquest,
Alexander the Great lost only seven hundred men to the sword. His enemy lost
many, many more, but almost all of this occurred after the battle (which
appeared to have been an almost bloodless pushing match), when the enemy
soldiers had turned their backs and began to run. Carl von Clausewitz makes the
same point when he notes that the vast majority of combat loss has historically
occurred in the pursuit after one side or the other had won the battle.[32]
This would explain the massive battles of ancient and
medieval times, massing tens of thousands of soldiers and lasting hours and
sometimes days, that only resulted in a few hundred casualties. These battles,
for many people, were merely swordplay.
This information is restorative. It restored my faith in
humanity. While wars are horrific and filled with pain and anguish, we have not
completely lost our humanity in them. These wars have been but a portion as deadly
as they could have been because of the majority of soldier’s “conspiracy to
miss,”[33]
which “demonstrates the impact of powerful instinctive forces and supreme moral
will.”[34]
Reflect for a moment how history would have been different
had more men been willing to kill - the population would certainly be different,
to say the least.
“The simple fact appears to be that, like S. L. A. Marshall’s
riflemen of World War II, the vast majority of rifle- and musket-armed soldiers
of previous wars were consistent and persistent in their psychological
inability to kill their fellow human beings. Their weapons were technologically
capable, and they were physically quite able to kill, but at the decisive
moment each soldier found that, in his heart, he could not bring himself to
kill the man standing before him.”[35]
“This lack of enthusiasm for killing the enemy... represents
a powerful psychological force on the battlefield; And it is a force that is
discernible throughout the history of man. The application and understanding of
this force can lend new insight to military history.”[36]
What a refreshing bit of information, to know that the
majority of men in battle, against all odds and in the face of death, have been
unable to overcome their instinctive revulsion to taking human life.
[1]
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to
Kill in War and Society, (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2009), Revised
Edition, 4.
[2]
Ibid., 10.
[3]
Pg 11. McIntyre, B.F., Federals on
the Frontier
[4]
Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies, as cited in On Killing, 10.
[5]
Grossman, On Killing, 9.
[6]
Grossman, On Killing, 118.
[7]
Michael Kathman, Triangle Tunnel Rat, as quoted in On Killing, 2.
[8]
Grossman, On Killing, 31.
[9]
Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The Behaviour of Men in Battle, (2003), as
cited in On Killing, 13.
[10]
Grossman, On Killing, 12.
[11]
Ibid., xviii.
[12]
Gwynne Dyer, War, (London: Guild Publishing, 1985); Richard A. Gabriel, Military
psychiatry: a comparative perspective, (New York: Greenport Press, 1986);
Richard Holmes; Acts of war: the behavior of men in battle, (New York: Free
Press, 1985).
[13]
Grossman, On Killing, 23.
[14]
Grossman, On Killing, 20, emphasis added.
[15]
Ibid., 21. The statistic of one or two men killed per minute during the
Civil War comes from the research of Paddy Griffith, Battle tactics of the civil
war, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989).
[16]
Ibid., 26.
[17]
Holmes, Acts of War, as quoted in On Killing, 12.
[18]
Griffith, Battle tactics, as cited in On Killing, 10.
[19]
Griffith, Battle Tactics, as cited in On Killing, 10.
[20]
Grossman, On Killing, 11. Emphasis added.
[21]
Ibid., 25.
[22]
Ibid., 14.
[23]
Ibid., 11.
[24]
Glen Gray, The Warriors, as quoted in On Killing, 97.
[25]
Richard Heckler, In Search of the Warrior Spirit, as quoted in On
Killing, 99.
[26]
Grossman, On Killing, 58.
[27]
Dyer as quoted in On Killing, 108.
[28]
Grossman, On Killing, 127-128.
[29]
Ibid., 129.
[30]
Ibid., 28.
[31]
Ibid., 33-36.
[32]
Ibid., 13.
[33]
Ibid., 15.
[34]
Ibid., 25.
[35]
Ibid., 28.
[36]
Ibid., 29.
No comments:
Post a Comment