Is It Really That Hard To Kill? -- Thoughts on Marshall's Assertion That Only 25% Of WWII Soldiers Would Fire On The Enemy

"British Advance with Fixed Bayonets" from Peterborough During The First World War

       I'll will say up front that, although I have read John Keegan's The Face of Battle, I have not read S.L.A. Marshall's Men Against Fire, nor Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's On Killing. But I'm familiar with Marshall's conclusions from references in other books and articles, and, from similar sources, have an idea of Grossman's basic thesis (as well as his reliance on Marshall's works from WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War).

       Marshall's claim to fame was his conclusion, based on after-action interviews of U.S. troops during World War II, that only 25% of soldiers would actually use their weapon against the enemy (he later revised this down to 15%); and, furthermore, that killing was so anathema to most soldiers, that they would never willingly take the life of another person. He believed that the only way to overcome this reluctance was by training out this reverence for human life.

       Marshall's work was influential on military training in subsequent conflicts. Marshall later buttressed his theory because, based on his interviews of troops in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, he found that the number of soldiers willing to use their weapons against an enemy rose to half and three-quarters, respectively. Marshall's ideas also influenced a number of other authors/researchers , such as Keegan and Grossman, to look at the psychological and sociological motivations of the individual troops involved in combat. And this research continues to influence not only military training, but also training for law enforcement. And, in fact, you still see Marshall's original 25% figure bandied about (see, e.g., "Why Shooting To Kill Is A Twenty-First Century Problem").

       The problem with all of this is that Marshall's "research" was pure hokum. John Whiteclay Chambers discusses the fundamental flaws of Marshall's research in his article "S. L. A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire: New Evidence Regarding Fire Ratios" published in Parameters, Autumn 2003. (PDF version here; web version here). Other articles discussing Marshall and his research can be found here (History News Network) and here (Newsweek).  Essentially, though, Marshall's interviews were not well documented, he didn't specifically ask about weapons use, he didn't interview all of the troops involved in an action (for instance, he didn't visit wounded troops), and (at least for the troops fighting in Europe in World War II), he didn't interview them until a year later. Also, there is no evidence that he interviewed as many troops as he claimed, nor is there any evidence that Marshall applied any statistical analysis to the accounts he had recorded. One of Marshall's supporters, John Westover, defended Marshall's lack of technique by claiming that Marshall was an "intuitive thinker" and that he was essentially correct, which is just a round about way of saying that Marshall made up his 25% figure. For instance, from the Newsweek article cited above:

Over the years hundreds of journalists have quoted Marshall's famous study—including me, in the pages of NEWSWEEK. But last month a reader sent me a copy of a March 1989 article from American Heritage magazine that set me straight. In fact, there is no real evidence that so few soldiers open fire, writes Frederick Smoler in "The Secret of the Soldiers Who Don't Shoot." "It just may be," concludes Smoler, "that Samuel Lyman Marshall made the whole thing up." Smoler reports on the digging of Harold P. (Bud) Leinbaugh, an Army infantryman who saw a lot of combat in Europe during the war, and a military historian named Roger Spiller. Both men were skeptical about Marshall's claim, and they decided to look into his research. They discovered that among the soldiers Marshall interviewed at Makin Island, a battle in the Pacific, there was a tendency to fire too much, not too little—to blaze away for no good reason. Marshall seems to have just invented his interviews in the European theater.

Even Marshall's account of his combat experience in World War I was made up--his unit never served on the front lines, but was involved in road construction and building delousing facilities. Thomas J. Aveni has also reviewed Marshall's work, and finds even within Marshall's work evidence that contradicts or provides a different explanation than that arrived at by Marshall. I recommend that you read Aveni's thoughts on the matter.

       So why are so many people willing to buy into Marshall's study. The articles discuss some reasons, but in my mind, I think there are two reasons. First, as one of the articles mentioned, is intellectual sloth--it is easier to copy someone else's work than to perform the research or question it. But a second issue which I strongly suspect has played a part is that all of these authors would have been strongly influenced by the myth of the "noble savage." That is, according to the myth, people in nature are typically peaceful, and it is only through the "corruption" of civilization that people become hostile and violent. Of course, as we now know, this is completely backward. As Lawrence Keely's shows through physical evidence and anthropological and ethnographic research, in his book, War Before Civilization, primitive cultures are, in fact, the most violent of cultures. It is only through structured societies and civilizations that even a modicum of peace is established. And the unprecedented low violent crime rates of Westerners is, according to Steven Pinker, the result not only of civilization, but a series of events unique to Western Civilization.

       Consequently, the problem really is not motivating people to kill, but motivating people not to kill.

       I had a psychology professor whose research why people are violent at some times, but peaceable in others. His conclusion (at least as communicated to the class) was that people will, in most cases, make a cost-benefit or risk analysis before engaging in violence. If the risk of punishment is high, and the cost (i.e., the punishment) is perceived to be greater than the benefit, even an otherwise aggressive person will control their violence. Of course, there are always "crime of passion" or true insanity, but that is the exception. This rational decision making would explain, for instance, why police are more likely to shoot a white person than a black person, why a person may perfectly peaceful toward their boss, but violent or abusive toward his or her spouse or children, and so on. From what I've read about the combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, the willingness of the troops to use their weapons seem to have been driven more by the rules of engagement and fear of punishment than any actual reluctance to kill the enemy. This suggests that the conundrum of people not using their weapons, if in fact it is not a complete fallacy, may be governed more by a lack of understanding of when it is okay to use deadly force, or fear of the consequences of using deadly force, rather than a reluctance to injure or kill another person. This fear of consequences need not be wholly legal; for instance, if a person is not confident in their shooting abilities, they may be more reluctant to take a shot than someone more skilled.

       Anyway, that is my 2 cents on the issue. If you feel different, chime in below.

Update (9/22/2017): Thank you to Greg Ellifritz for the link. Also, another article on the subject is "S.L.A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire: History, Interpretation, and the Canadian Experience" (PDF) by Robert Engen published in the journal of Canadian Military History.