On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

To understand atrocities, Grossman considers them as a “spectrum of occurrences” (197). Noble killings, or those when soldiers kill armed enemies in self-defense, are not atrocities but are the standard against which other killings are judged.

In the gray area are ambushes where the enemy is not a threat and given no opportunity to surrender, yet they are not deemed atrocities. In guerrilla warfare, the line between combatants and non-combatants is blurred, making the killing of non-combatants less likely to be deemed an atrocity. Grossman posits a dark area consisting of the execution of enemy prisoners of war and those attempting to surrender on the battlefield. The latter are rarely prosecuted.

The black area, per Grossman, consists of the close-range killing of a non-combatant who poses no threat. That is clearly an atrocity.

Grossman describes types of empowerment through death and atrocity. After the death of a comrade, soldiers are strengthened at times and motivated to fight harder. For this reason, it is poor strategy to murder prisoners of war, as it motivates the enemy to fight. With atrocities, there is a brief gain but one that comes at a cost in the future. On the one hand, atrocities scare people. Nations submitted to the Mongols, for example, out of a fear of experiencing atrocities.

Mass murders and executions can provide a source of mass empowerment. With each murder, the Nazis, for example, validated to themselves “the demon of Nazi racial superiority” (211). By dehumanizing their victims, the Nazis kept them at a moral, social, and cultural distance (211). In the case of mass killings, soldiers must choose either to resist and most likely face execution or to kill and choose to deny the humanity of the victim and, therefore, their own guilt. Those in leadership are bonded with those carrying out the crimes. With blood on their hands, the underlings can never reconcile with the enemy. Their fate is linked with that of the leader’s. The leader identifies scapegoats to be targeted.

Women can also be a target, as they were in the rape campaign of the Russians in East Germany. These atrocities, carried out by groups, secretly promote the “wealth, power, or vanity of a specific leader” (214). For this reason, they are not acts of senseless violence but have a perverted purpose. Atrocities tend to generate disbelief among those who have not witnessed them.

As a policy, committing atrocities is typically self-destructive, but not in time to save its victims. Once a group experiences the process of bonding and empowerment via atrocities, its members are entrapped by it. All other forces, which are aware of the atrocities, will oppose them. The members of the group have burned the proverbial bridge and there is no turning back.

Grossman cites the case of the Nazis after the occupation of Ukraine. Given their racist ideology, they considered non-Aryans subhuman and therefore could not convert the Ukrainians to their cause. Their mindset was self-destructive.

Grossman recounts a story of an atrocity in the Congo in 1963, reported by a Canadian officer who was part of a United Nations Peacekeeping force. Hearing cries, Canadian soldiers entered a church where two naked Black men were torturing a naked young white nun. She was being burned. Soon, the soldiers would find another nun murdered and butchered. The soldiers ordered the men to surrender. Instead, each one went for their weapons. The Canadian officer hesitated to shoot and was ordered to do so. He did, and both men died.

Grossman explains that the two committing the atrocities were trapped by them. They had no option but to fight to the death. Otherwise, they would have faced execution.

The most significant toll for the perpetrators of atrocities is the psychological trauma of living with those actions. When defeated, those who committed atrocities must answer for them. Grossman stipulates that he is in no way comparing the trauma of the victims to that of the perpetrators. Instead, he is seeking to understand the processes associated with the commitment of atrocities.

Grossman considers the costs of compliance and non-compliance with atrocities. Group absolution (especially in a tightly bonded unit), peer pressure, and the diffusion of responsibility make compliance more likely. Terrorism and self-preservation become powerful motivators for participation as well. To defy orders is to make oneself a likely victim of the atrocity. However, some have done just that. The fact that people did resist demonstrates the “potential for goodness that exists in all human beings” (228).

Grossman concludes the section by noting a paradox. When soldiers refuse to kill, they demonstrate the inherent goodness in humankind. However, those good soldiers who are “not willing to overcome […] resistance to killing in the face of an undeniable ‘evil’ may be ultimately destined for destruction” (228). Atrocity represents the most repulsive act of war. Its attraction must be prevented, and to do so, it cannot be ignored.