Psychology of Killing

[i3670]

Late last night I stumbled upon a short essay called "Psychology of Killing" by William S. Frisbee Jr. I found the text intriguing and had a hard time tearing my eyes of the text. For obvious reasons I can't post the whole text in this post. I will instead post some bits of the text and leave a link at the bottom of the page.

Hollywood is great at making war seem so simple and strait
forward. It makes the watcher believe that people kill each other
because they are told, because it is kill or be killed, the enemy
is hated or whatever. Hollywood tries to make us believe that all
soldiers fire at each other, desperately attempting to hit and kill
each other. While there is some truth in the matter, it is mostly
wrong. - William S. Frisbee Jr.

Spoiler below!

When most people talk about killing, they are like virgins talking about sex. You can talk about it all day, you can fully understand the mechanics involved but when the time comes there is so much more involved than the person thought.

A look at history might help illustrate what I am talking about. In World War Two, it is a fact that only 15-20 percent of the soldiers fired at the enemy. That is one in five soldiers actually shooting at a Nazi when he sees one. While this rate may have increased in desperate situations, in most combat situations soldiers were reluctant to kill each other. The Civil War was not dramatically different or any previous wars.

In Korea, the rate of soldiers unwilling to fire on the enemy decreased and fifty five percent of the soldiers fired at the enemy. In Vietnam, this rate increased to about ninety five percent but this doesn't mean they were trying to hit the target. In fact it usually took around fiftytwo thousand bullets to score one kill in regular infantry units!

If one studies history and is able to cut through the hype, one will find that man is often unwilling to kill his fellow man and the fighter finds it very traumatic when he has to do so. On the battlefield the stress of being killed and injured is not always the main fear.

Spoiler below!

Distance from the other human directly affects how easy it is to kill him. Bomber pilots don't have trouble laying waste to kilometers of land and killing hundreds or thousands because they don't see or hear the dead or dying. For infantry units, this takes on a different aspect, they see the fear in the other person's eyes, the sweat on his brow, the pain in his face, the blood spurting from the wound, the desperate cries for help or mercy. The enemy becomes very real and vivid, the enemy becomes someone with hopes, dreams, fears, a mother, a father, maybe a wife, just like the shooter. In a way the shooter can see the enemy as little different than himself and killing that enemy soldier is like killing oneself. This is why infantrymen are more traumatized by war than any other field.

It should be noted that although a soldier may shoot, he may not try to kill. He may be ordered to fire but it is very hard to determine if he is trying to hit as can be noted by the 52,000 rounds fired for one hit ration in Vietnam. People were willing to fire but not always willing to hit the target. This can also be evident in earlier times when muskets were used when soldiers would get in a line, shoulder to shoulder, shoot each other and not hit anything. Even then some would not shoot.

Most sane humans, if given the choice, will not kill their fellow man and are extremely reluctant to do so, despite what hollywood would like you to believe. When they are forced to do so, many can experience a great deal of psychological trauma.

For those to lazy read the whole text or even my selected pieces, here's a summary:

People don't want to kill each other on the battlefield and mainly shoot to miss, simply because he/she doesn't want to kill another person .This does, however, not apply to a soldier in let's say a bomber or an army base(with the capability of launching a nuke).

Link to text: http://www.military-sf.com/Killing.htm

P.S. I do realize that this will become what Frisbee described in his first or third paragraph (depending if you read my snippets or the full text). However, I felt it could be a topic of discussion.

[Paddy™]

In conjunction with the above I also recommend "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. Unfortunately he has some rather ridiculous beliefs about video games leading to high school massacres and the like, but apart from that it's worth checking out.

Fascinating topic. It's totally counter-intuitive to think of soldiers resisting killing so strenuously.

[Bridge]

Bullets aren't intended only for killing enemy soldiers. One of the main concepts in war is gaining the upper hand by controlling strategically important locations, which can be done through pinning enemy soldiers down and forcing them into cover and ideally forcing them to retreat. That's the reason soldiers are given so much ammo in the first place. To suggest that they would waste 50K bullets just to avoid killing someone is very ignorant.

[i3670]

Bullets aren't intended only for killing enemy soldiers. One of the main concepts in war is gaining the upper hand by controlling strategically important locations, which can be done through pinning enemy soldiers down and forcing them into cover and ideally forcing them to retreat. That's the reason soldiers are given so much ammo in the first place. To suggest that they would waste 50K bullets just to avoid killing someone is very ignorant.

That is totally logical. Flee from danger. I was a bit puzzled when I read that figure and wondered if that could really be true and with the addition of what you wrote the image is less blurry.

However, that aspect is never, or very rarely, shown in movies or video games though.

[Bridge]

Bullets aren't intended only for killing enemy soldiers. One of the main concepts in war is gaining the upper hand by controlling strategically important locations, which can be done through pinning enemy soldiers down and forcing them into cover and ideally forcing them to retreat. That's the reason soldiers are given so much ammo in the first place. To suggest that they would waste 50K bullets just to avoid killing someone is very ignorant.

That is totally logical. Flee from danger. I was a bit puzzled when I read that figure and wondered if that could really be true and with the addition of what you wrote the image is less blurry.

However, that aspect is never, or very rarely, shown in movies or video games though.

True. Still, there are some absolutely fantastic movies that portray war from the soldiers' standpoint and just what it can do to people. Namely: Jacob's Ladder (to a certain extent - not really a war movie), Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now. Also, the Metal Gear series focuses really heavily on these types of topics. But you're right that Hollywood has given most of us a skewed view of war. Then again, Hollywood gives people a skewed view of almost everything.

[i3670]

True. Still, there are some absolutely fantastic movies that portray war from the soldiers' standpoint and just what it can do to people. Namely: Jacob's Ladder (to a certain extent - not really a war movie), Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now. Also, the Metal Gear series focuses really heavily on these types of topics. But you're right that Hollywood has given most of us a skewed view of war. Then again, Hollywood gives people a skewed view of almost everything.

I've not yet seen FMJ (planning to) and only bits of AN, and as for hollywood I agree.