Annotation on Dave Grossman’s On Killing The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in

War and Society

“One of Freud's most valuable insights involves the existence of the life instinct
(Eros) and the death instinct (Thanatos). Freud believed that within each individual there is a
constant struggle between the superego (the conscience) and the id (that dark, lurking mass of
destructive and animal urges residing within each of us), and that the struggle is mediated by
the ego (the self). One wit once referred to this situation as ‘a struggle in a locked, dark
basement; between a homicidal sex-crazed monkey and a puritanical old maid; being
mediated by a timid accountant’” (p. 37).

“This state of physical and mental exhaustion is one of the earliest symptoms.
Increasingly unsociable and overly irritable, the soldier loses interest in all activities with
comrades and seeks to avoid any responsibility or activity involving physical or mental effort.
He becomes prone to crying fits or fits of extreme anxiety or terror. There will also be such
somatic symptoms as hypersensitivity to sound, increased sweating, and palpitations. Such
fatigue cases set the stage for further and more complete collapse. If the soldier is forced to
remain in combat, such collapse becomes inevitable; the only real cure is evacuation and
rest” (p. 45).

“Gabriel, a retired intelligence officer and consultant to both the House and Senate
Armed Services Committees, provides a chilling note on the future of the treatment and
prevention of combat psychiatric casualties. He believes that the armed forces of both the
West and the East are searching for a chemical answer to this problem. Gabriel warns that the
perfection of a ‘nondepleting neurotrop’ to be given to soldiers prior to battle would result in
‘armies of sociopaths’” (p. 49).

“The principles of strategy and tactics, and the logistics of war are really absurdly
simple: it is the actualities that make war so complicated and so difficult, and are usually so
neglected by historians” (Wavell as cited in Grossman, 1995, p. 51).

“Fear, combined with exhaustion, hate, horror, and the irreconcilable task of
balancing these with the need to kill, eventually drives the soldier so deeply into a mire of
guilt and horror that he tips over the brink into that region that we call insanity. Indeed, fear
may be one of the least important of these factors” (p. 54)
 “Nonkillers are frequently exposed to the same brutal conditions as killers, conditions
that cause fear, but they do not become psychiatric casualties. In most circumstances in which
nonkillers are faced with the threat of death and injury in war, the instances of psychiatric
casualties are notably absent” (p. 54).

“The magnitude of the exhaustion and the horror suffered by combat veterans and
victims of strategic bombing is generally comparable. The stress factors that soldiers
experienced and bombing victims did not were the two-edged responsibility of (1) being
expected to kill (the irreconcilable balancing of to kill and not to kill) and (2) the stress of
looking their potential killers in the face (the Wind of Hate)” (p. 66).

“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMIII-R), the bible of
psychology, states that in post-traumatic stress disorders "the disorder is apparently more
severe and longer lasting when the stressor is of human design." We want desperately to be
liked, loved, and in control of our lives; and intentional, overt, human hostility and aggression
— more than anything else in life — assaults our self-image, our sense of control, our sense
of the world as a meaningful and comprehensible place, and, ultimately, our mental and
physical health” (p. 77).

“In the field of strategy and tactics the impact and influence of the Wind of Hate have
been widely overlooked. Numerous tacticians and strategists advocate attrition warfare
theories, in which the will of enemy forces is destroyed through the application of longrange
artillery and bombing. [...]. Psychologically, aerial and artillery bombardments are effective,
but only in the front lines when they are combined with the Wind of Hate, as manifested in
the threat of the personal infantry attack that usually follows such bombardments” (p. 80).

“Martin Seligman developed the concept of inoculation from stress from his famous
studies of learning in dogs. [...]. This is all a very interesting theoretical concept, but what is
important to us is to understand that this process of inoculation is exactly what occurs in boot
camps and in every other military school worthy of its name. When raw recruits are faced
with seemingly sadistic abuse and hardship (which they “escape” through weekend passes
and, ultimately, graduation) they are — among many other things — being inoculated against
the stresses of combat” (pp. 81-82).

“Many authorities speak and write of emotional stamina on the batllefield [sic] as a
finite resource. I have termed this the Well of Fortitude. Faced with the soldier's encounters
with horror, guilt, fear, exhaustion, and hate, each man draws steadily from his own private
reservoir of inner strength and fortitude until finally the well runs dry. And then he becomes
just another statistic” (p. 83).

“A general slowing down of mental processes and apathy, as far as they were
concerned the situation was one of absolute hopelessness. . . . The influence and reassurance
of understanding officers and NCOs failed to arouse these soldiers from their hopelessness. . .
. The soldier was slow-witted. . . . Memory defects became so extreme that he could not be
counted on to relay a verbal order. . . . He could then best be described as one leading a
vegetative existence. . . . He remained almost constantly in or near his slit trench, and during
acute actions took no part, trembling constantly” (Holmes as cited in Grossman, 1995, p. 84).

“Soldier is both victim and executioner” (Keegan & Holmes as cited in Grossman,
1995, p. 87).

“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” (pp. 89-90).

“This bonding [between comrades] is so intense that it is fear of failing these

comrades that preoccupies most combatants” (p. 90).

“The dead soldier takes his misery with him, but the man who killed him must forever
live and die with him. The lesson becomes increasingly clear: Killing is what war is all about,
and killing in combat, by its very nature, causes deep wounds of pain and guilt. The language
of war helps us to deny what war is really about, and in doing so it makes war more
palatable” (p. 93).

“If bomber crew members had had to turn a flamethrower on each one of these
seventy thousand women and children, or worse yet slit each of their throats, the awfulness
and trauma inherent in the act would have been of such a magnitude that it simply would not
have happened. But when it is done from thousands of feet in the air, where the screams
cannot be heard and the burning bodies cannot be seen, it is easy” (pp. 100-101).

“From a distance, I can deny your humanity; and from a distance, I cannot hear your
screams” (p. 102).
 “Not the frequency of death but the manner of dying makes a qualitative difference.
Death in war is commonly caused by members of my own species actively seeking my end,
despite the fact that they may never have seen me and have no personal reason for enmity. It
is death brought about by hostile intent rather than by accident or natural causes that
separates war from peace so completely” (Gray as cited in Grossman, 1995, pp. 105-106).

“At close range the euphoria stage, although brief, fleeting, and not often mentioned,
still appears to be experienced in some form by most soldiers. [...]. Usually this euphoria
stage is almost instantly overwhelmed by the guilt stage as the soldier is faced with the
undeniable evidence of what he has done, and the guilt stage is often so strong as to result in
physical revulsion and vomiting” (p. 115).

“Even when the killer has every motivation to hate and despise his victim, and every
reason to quickly depart his close-range kill, he is often riveted, frozen by the magnitude of
what he has done” (p. 117).

“First we must recognize that it is psychologically easier to kill with an edged weapon
that permits a long stand-off range, and increasingly more difficult as the stand-off range
decreases. Thus it is considerably easier to impale a man with a twenty-foot pike than it is to
stab him with a six-inch knife” (p. 120).

“Not having to look at the face of the victim provides a form of psychological
distance that enables the execution party and assists in their subsequent denial and the
rationalization and acceptance of having killed a fellow human being” (p. 128).

“The U.S. Army, along with armies in many other nations, trains its Rangers and
Green Berets to execute a knife kill from the rear by plunging the knife through the lower
back and into the kidney. Such a blow is so remarkably painful that its effect is to completely
paralyze the victim as he quickly dies, resulting in an extremely silent kill” (p. 129).

“Many men who have carried and fired a gun — especially a full automatic weapon
— must confess in their hearts that the power and pleasure of explosively spewing a stream
of bullets is akin to the emotions felt when explosively spewing a stream of semen” (p. 136).

“Thrusting the sexual appendage (the penis) deep into the body of the victim can be
perversely linked to thrusting the killing appendage (a bayonet or knife) deep into the body of
the victim” (p. 137).
 “The link between sex and war and the process of denial in both fields are well
represented by Richard Heckler's observation that ‘it is in the mythological marriage of Ares
[the god of war] and Aphrodite [the god of sex] that Harmonia is born’” (p. 137).