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Military Thinkers, Military Thoughts
Vol. 1: Grossman, Part 1: Killology
By Dr. Simon Ng

Article Type: Feature
Article Date: June 15, 2001

Perhaps, to those who delve into the realm of warfare gaming, the idea of killing as a moral (or immoral) act very rarely reaches consciousness. Truth be told, when I’m directing my M1s to assault a prepared position in ProSimCo's Brigade Combat Team, I don’t stop to ponder the fates of all those little binary lives I’m toying with, the psychological and social impacts their training and acts will have. After all, the mission, the Commander’s intent, is my focus, not the suffering of the (codified) men and women who are doing the fighting or the broader consequences of that fighter for society. Let the politicians and policy makers consider that. But in my day job, the rather unsavoury, and altogether too nebulous, issue of morality in combat rears its ugly head as something that must be, if not confronted, at least acknowledged. It might sound like I’d rather it stayed well submerged in my subconscious—nothing can smother the fun of mayhem as much as a conscience. Rather, I’m glad that my job forces me to address these issues, because war isn’t the glamorous adventure that most games portray it to be.

“…war isn’t the glamorous adventure that most games portray it to be.”
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman doesn’t think so either. Following in the footsteps of luminaries such as Sun Tzu, Ardant du Picq and S. L. A. Marshall, Grossman has flagged a truth of war in various forums, including books, television and other media. I am starting with perhaps his most well known contribution, his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.

Grossman's 'On Killing'

For those who haven’t yet heard of Lt. Col Grossman, or read any of his works, I should present you with his qualifications. Lt. Col. Grossman holds a Doctoral degree in Psychology, and has held a chair in Psychology at West Point. He is also a US Army Ranger (retired), with twenty-three years experience in leading soldiers in various locations across the world. His chosen area of endeavour during his professional career as a psychologist has been the study of killing. For want of a better name, Lt. Col. Grossman coined the term ‘killology’: “the scholarly study of the destructive art…in particular, focussing on the reactions of healthy people in killing circumstances and the factors that enable and restrain these situations”. Lt. Col. Grossman’s definition is disturbingly clinical. As a scientist, that appeals to me; as a human being, it sends shivers up my spine. But reading the definition of the discipline of ‘killology’, and with all the experiential wisdom of living and partaking in modern society, I can’t help but feel that it is an area worthy of investigation.

Before I proceed further, I should first introduce the broader concept of this series of articles, entitled “Military Thinkers, Military Thoughts”. In being a long-time admirer of COMBATSIM.COM, two things about it have always struck me as frustrating. First, that there seems a dearth of commentary on land warfare. Second, that, except for history, very few of COMBATSIM.COM's contributors seem interested in academic studies of war. Perhaps that is because academia is perceived by most as too dry a landscape to brave. Perhaps (more likely, I suspect), those same contributors are indeed interested, but don’t see it as an area ripe for the readership of COMBATSIM.COM. Well, being an academic by nature, I am going to eschew the common wisdom and delve into this area head first. With this very first article, I am embarking on a journey into the thoughts and motivations of some great (by my reckoning) military thinkers—not only am I going to fill a void I perceive exists at COMBATSIM.COM, I’m also going to get to write about a lot of interesting topics on the way.
“…not only am I going to fill a void I perceive exists at COMBATSIM.COM, I’m also going to get to write about a lot of interesting topics on the way.”
As I somewhat vaguely alluded to in the opening paragraphs of this article, I have decided to commence my journey at the ‘bare coal face’ of war: the act of human destruction; killing. Of course, killing isn’t just the purview of war. Lt. Col. Grossman is abundantly aware of this, because his treatise in On Killing extends to society at large.

Grossman has tried to go beyond the writings of Sun Tzu, Ardant du Picq and S. L. A. Marshall by not just quantifying the psychological effects of battle on soldiers, but also elucidating the causes of those effects. In his own words, “These previous authors [du Picq, Marshall, etc.] have examined the general mechanics and nature of war…[but] no one has looked into the specific nature of the act of killing…”. On Killing is controversial. First off, its author subscribes to the findings of Marshall and du Picq (amongst others): that, historically at least, an inordinately high fraction of soldiers have been averse to firing their weapons in anger. Second, it addresses not just war, but the causes and enabling factors for violence in society as a whole: Hollywood and its entertainment siblings don’t want to be told that they are fundamental contributors to the violence occurring in our streets and homes. Third, it deals with the consequences of war and social violence on men’s psyches, which, as I’m going to show, is something of which we all should be aware.

On Killing begins in the most comforting way possible (if we ignore, for a moment, the statistics on crime rates in Western countries that are presented in the introduction to the paper-back version). The opening section is titled “Killing and Existence of Resistance: A World of Virgins Studying Sex”. The gist of this first part of Grossman’s work is to outline the findings of his predecessors, and then put them into the light of the “conscientious objector” [1]—the man (and here, I mean ‘man’ as a social animal and not just as an individual) who “…will not, of his own volition, take a life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility…” [1]. First off, Grossman outlines the importance of two knew additions to the oft quoted ‘fight-or-flight’ model of battlefield behaviour: ‘posture’ and ‘submit’. These latter behaviours are, in fact, abundant in nature. Intraspecies rivalry—fighting over a desired mate, for example—involves a great deal of posturing, usually followed by submission or flight on the part of one of the contestants. Fighting, especially to the death, is rare. These twin additions are of paramount importance when trying to understand the behaviour of men in battle, and also of the development of war itself.
“For want of a better name, Lt. Col. Grossman coined the term ‘killology’: ‘the scholarly study of the destructive art…’”
An example of the latter is supplied when Grossman suggests that “Gunpowder’s superior noise [in the form of the musket], its superior posturing ability, made it ascendant [over the longbow] on the battlefield…” despite its poorer accuracy and range. The reason: a frightened man, thinking with his mid-brain (that is, reverting to the four characteristic behaviours that govern stressful situations), resorts to posturing, puffing himself up, making himself louder and more fearsome than the guy on the other side of the paddock. After introducing these concepts of ‘posturing’ and ‘submission’, Grossman goes on to argue that the reason soldiers choose posturing over killing is that ‘man’ has an innate aversion to killing ‘man’. This thesis is, of course, exactly what most of us would want to hear. And Grossman supplies plenty of historical evidence to support his case—some of these historical ‘facts’ are, even to my sympathetic ears, absolutely amazing. But we don’t want our soldiers to behave that way when faced with the enemy.

Where On Killing brings something new to the field is in its claim that this natural aversion to killing is the cause of both the low firing rates historically observed in combat and, even more controversially, the abnormal incidents of psychiatric trauma in combat soldiers. Until Grossman’s seminal work, everyone considered that the fear of death, the stress of seeing ones’ friends killed or wounded, physical and mental exhaustion, uncertainty and the sheer horror of war were the causes of combat trauma. Indeed, these are all factors that contribute in one way or another. But Grossman argues that, rather than these being the dominant contributors, they occupy the second tier behind the stress caused by being forced to overcome one’s natural aversion to killing. He cites, for example, the results of studies looking at the effects of strategic bombing on Germany’s citizens during WWII. The finding that many still refuse to accept today suggests that, despite constant exposure to the possibility of death or the loss or injury of loved ones and the inherent uncertainty and fear accompanying this exposure, there was no significant increase in the proportion of psychiatric trauma cases amongst the German civilian population above that in peace time. Fear and uncertainty, physical and mental exhaustion, were all too real for these victims of war, but they didn’t collapse the way soldiers did. Why? Because, Grossman asserts, they weren’t confronted by the “Wind of Hate” or “The Burden of Killing”, the two burdens that soldiers must bear when they experience the personal but completely unfounded hate of the enemy, and when they suppress their innate resistance to killing in order to take another man’s life.

Of course, On Killing doesn’t stop at discussing man’s aversion to killing man. After all, Grossman is a Ranger (retired)—though never having directly experienced war, he appreciates through his professional training its implications; it is clear, in On Killing, that Lt. Col. Grossman knows war for what it is, and accepts that, tragically, it is sometimes the last resort.

It is an unfortunate truth of war that soldiers who can not or will not fire are a liability. If we are to have the capacity to defend our families and friends, someone needs to pull the trigger and become the destroyer. And so On Killing not only addresses the psychology of combat, but delves into the methods that the armed forces can and do use to enable the act of killing. One such enabling factor is distance—physical, emotional, cultural. The further the soldier is from his or her victim, the easier the act of killing becomes. Grossman would argue that, when we drop our bombs in Falcon 4.0 with little or no regard for the dismembered bodies and the burning flesh we leave behind, it’s because of distance—the distance of 3000 feet, and of the computer game.
“Grossman would argue that, when we drop our bombs in Falcon 4.0 with little or no regard for the dismembered bodies and the burning flesh we leave behind, it’s because of distance…”
Other enabling factors also come into play: group absolution and responsibility; submission to a higher authority; belief in the moral rightness of what is being done. A good example of the second of these, submission to authority, is given by the Milgram studies cited in Grossman’s book. I won’t explain what these studies concluded, but they make chilling reading. The final factor that enables killing is operant conditioning, in the mode of Skinner and his rats. Today, soldiers are trained under life-like conditions, instead of on sterile firing ranges as was done in the past. They are conditioned to respond reflexively to the stimulus (the appearance of a target). The forebrain, where consciousness, reflective decision making resides, is cut out of the loop.

Part of the motivation behind On Killing seems to be to educate society at large about the dangers and obligations of training men for war: “all warrior societies, tribes and nations incorporate some form of purification ritual for their returning soldiers, and this ritual appears to be essential to both the returning warrior and the society as a whole”. Vietnam is cited as a classic case of the consequences of not fully understanding the stress soldiers experience from the act of killing—of not fully appreciating the importance of the ritual. While new training regimes motivated by S. L. A. Marshall’s findings had American soldiers pulling their triggers at approximately 90% participation rate, no one had considered the other side of the killing coin. If soldiers were being trained to overcome their aversion to killing through the use of these enabling factors, what would happen when two of the vital factors that enables men to deal with the act of killing (group absolution and the belief in the rightness of the cause) were stripped away. As Vietnam veterans returned to their homelands, they weren’t greeted as heroes, but as villains. They had been sent to fight a war that they didn’t understand with the belief that they were doing what had to be done, only to find that their group—their society—condemned them for it. I must confess, reading this chapter on Vietnam left me internally bewildered. Vietnam, for me, will always stand as a pointless war, an unnecessary stand against communism. But as a nation, we owe everything to those who fought it for us—not because the war they fought in was righteous, but because our society asked them to fight in it, and, by asking, accepted responsibility.

Grossman closes his book on a salient note. The media ensures that we can’t ignore the escalating violence on our streets. A multitude of explanations exist for this ‘Violence Epidemic’—truth be known, there are too many factors to take into consideration. Grossman makes no effort to explain the root causes of this violence, and he is to be commended for not trying. What he does offer is an understanding of one of the facets that helps translate the causes into the effects. On the book’s journey through the act of killing and the trauma experience by soldiers after having done so, the reader is given a glimpse of what allows man to kill fellow man. It is only a short step to extrapolating these factors from the world of the military, where being able to kill is a necessary evil, to the world at large.

In reading On Killing, it has to be acknowledged that Lt. Col. Grossman has never actually been in combat. This is an admission he makes himself. In discussions with others who are interested in these matters, the common criticism of Grossman’s thesis is that he isn’t speaking from experience. Like his analogy “…a world of virgins trying to study sex…”, Grossman is himself a combat ‘virgin’.
“Like his analogy ‘…a world of virgins trying to study sex…’, Grossman is himself a combat ‘virgin’.”
The question is then: how can someone who has never experienced combat understand or lecture on the psychological underpinning of the act of killing? I’ll make my stance now: the conjecture that Grossman’s thesis is not valid because he has no firsthand experience of what he discusses is entirely specious, an ad hominem attack—a criticism of the man, rather than of his argument. I would contend that most historians have no direct experience of their subject matter, but I don’t believe that such ‘inexperience’ translates into ‘naivety’. In some ways, a lack of firsthand experience actually provides the benefit of objectivity. Experience aside, one could make another criticism of Grossman’s work—that it relies heavily on anecdotal evidence oft repeated. Without in any way suggesting that this is true of the evidence presented in On Killing, anecdotal evidence has a way of sounding authentic, when in truth it can actually be quite misrepresentative. But Grossman’s work is not a scientific thesis in the truest sense of the word, and so we can’t expect it to present itself with the same rigour as would such an opus. In On Killing, Lt. Col. Grossman tried to broaden the reader’s understanding of what a soldier experiences in combat, and to provide an explanation for why those experiences are so traumatic, making a bold and reputable effort to explain the behaviour of men under fire. For that, it is to be commended. Further, it forces us to examine our society and our attitudes to those who defend it. And finally, perhaps most admirably, it reaffirms (for me, at least) the common man’s inclination towards peace.

Author’s Note: As I mentioned earlier, this is the first of a series on military thoughts and military thinkers. Perhaps this article has strayed a little from the terrain to which most COMBATSIM.COM articles adhere. I hope you found it interesting nonetheless. The next article is, in many ways, related to this one. In studying the psychology of conflict, Lt. Col. Grossman has also explored ideas of how this knowledge can be applied to winning in war. For those of you fascinated by new (or rediscovered) theories of warfare, look out for Military Thinkers, Military Thoughts Vol I: Grossman, Part II: Psychological Battle.

Go to Part II, The Psychology of Maneuver


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Sources:
1. S. L. A. Marshall, 1978, Men Against Fire, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith


Further Reading: