On Killing

a deep atavistic fear in human beings. Through atrocity the oppressed population can be numbed into a learned helplessness state of submission and compliance. The effect on the atrocity-committing soldiers appears to be very similar. Human life is profoundly cheapened by these acts, and the soldier realizes that one of the lives that has been cheapened is his own.

At some level the soldier says, “There but for the grace of God go I,” and he recognizes with a deep gut- level empathy that one of those screaming, twitching, flopping, bleeding, horror-struck human bodies could very easily be his.

…And the Cost of Noncompliance

Glenn Gray notes what may have been one of the most remarkable refusals to participate in an atrocity in recorded history:

In the Netherlands, the Dutch tell of a German soldier who was a member of an execution squad ordered to shoot innocent hostages. Suddenly he stepped out of rank and refused to participate in the execution. On the spot he was charged with treason by the officer in charge and was placed with the hostages, where he was promptly executed by his comrades. In an act the soldier has abandoned once and for all the security of the group and exposed himself to the ultimate demands of freedom. He responded in the crucial moment to the voice of conscience and was no longer driven by external commands… we can only guess what must have been the influence of his deed on slayers and slain. At all events, it was surely not slight, and those who hear of the episode cannot fail to be inspired.

Here, in its finest form, we see the potential for goodness that exists in all human beings. Overcoming group pressure, obedience-demanding authority, and the instinct of self-preservation, this German soldier gives us hope for mankind and makes us just a little proud to be of the same race. This, ultimately, may be the price of noncompliance for those men of conscience trapped in a group or nation that is, itself, trapped in the dead-end horror of the atrocity cycle.

The Greatest Challenge of All: To Pay the Price of Freedom

Let us set for ourselves a standard so high that it will be a glory to live up to it, and then let us live up to it and add a new laurel to the crown of America.

— Woodrow Wilson

In the same way, every soldier who refuses to kill in combat, secretly or openly, represents the latent potential for nobility in mankind. And yet it is a paradoxically dangerous potential if the forces of freedom and humanity must face those whose unrestrained killing is empowered by atrocities.

The “good” that is not willing to overcome its resistance to killing in the face of an undeniable “evil” may be ultimately destined for destruction. Those who cherish liberty, justice, and truth must recognize that there is another force at large in this world. There is a twisted logic and power resident in the forces of oppression, injustice, and deceit, but those who claim this power are trapped in a spiral of destruction and denial that must ultimately destroy them and any victims they can pull with them into the abyss.

Those who value individual human life and dignity must recognize from whence they draw their strength, and if they are forced to make war they must do so with as much concern for innocent lives as humanly possible. They must not be tempted or antagonized into treading the treacherous and counterproductive path of atrocities. For, as Gray put it, “their brutality made fighting the Germans much easier, whereas ours weakened the will and confused the intellect.” Unless a group is prepared to totally dedicate itself to the twisted logic of atrocity, it will not gain even the shortsighted advantages of that logic, but will instead be immediately weakened and confused by its own inconsistency and hypocrisy. There are no half measures when one sells one’s soul.

Atrocity — this close-range murder of the innocent and helpless — is the most repulsive aspect of war, and that which resides within man and permits him to perform these acts is the most repulsive aspect of mankind. We must not permit ourselves to be attracted to it. Nor can we, in our revulsion, ignore it. Ultimately the purpose of this section, and of this study, has been to look at this ugliest aspect of war, that we might know it, name it, and confront it.

This let us pray for, this implore:
That all base dreams thrust out at door,

We may in loftier aims excel
And, like men waking from a spell,

Grow stronger, nobler, than before,
When there is Peace.

— Austin Dobson, World War I veteran

“When There Is Peace”

SECTION VI The Killing Response Stages: What Does It Feel Like to Kill?

CHAPTER ONE The Killing Response Stages

What Does It Feel Like to Kill?

In the 1970s Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published her famous research on death which revealed that when people are dying they often go through a series of emotional stages, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In the historical narratives I have read, and in my interviews with veterans over the last two decades, I have found a similar series of emotional response stages to killing in combat.

The basic response stages to killing in combat are concern about killing, the actual kill, exhilaration, remorse, and rationalization and acceptance. Like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s famous stages in response to death and