Sage Publications, Ltd.

Introduction
Author(s): Catherine Merridale
Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 203-209
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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@ 2006 SAGEPublications,
London,ThousandOaks,CAand
of Contemporary
Journal
History
Copyright
New Delhi,Vol41(2),203-209. ISSN0022-0094.
DOI:10.1177/0022009406062053

CatherineMerridale

Introduction

If the number of yards of shelf space that bookshops devote to military, as

opposed to social or economic, history is an indicator of public interest, combat soldiers are surely fascinating. They have also become the subject of a wide
range of types of study, commanding the attention of psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and cultural specialists as well as
that of historians. War as a theme recurs in university teaching programmes
across the world, and it occupies academic seminars as well as the strategic
debates of government think tanks. Largely as a result of the explosion of
research and masters' courses that deal with memory, war studies themselves
seem set to be promoted to serious intellectual respectability from what John
Keegan once described as 'the academic equivalent of the sports pages'.'
Despite the weight of interest at all levels, however, and even despite the
presence of large numbers of battlefield veterans in contemporary societies,
combat itself remains somewhat mysterious.2
Memory, as opposed to action, has provided an important focus for much
new research because it is inclusive, allowing even the least military of academics and their students to involve themselves in highly-charged debate. It is
easier, too, to think about memorials, or even about trauma and forgetfulness,
than it is to reconstruct the surreal field of battle. As many of the contributors
to this special edition of the Journal of Contemporary History have shown,
however, memory has many shortcomings when the time comes to revisit
combat itself. Few true participants (and not many observers) can reassemble
a coherent account of events. Time moves differently in the extreme world of
fighting, space is organized in new, specific ways. The moments of extremest
danger, if not unrecoverable, are certainly remote from the kind of rational
and measured exposition that most academic prose requires. 'War', as Samuel
Hynes observes, 'is not a place we could travel to.'3
It was combat itself, as opposed to its recollection and commemoration, that
1 The rueful remark was part of the introduction to John Keegan, The Face of Battle (London
1977).
2 There are so many recent accounts of warfare that it would be invidious to single out specific
titles. However, the problem of combat - of soldiers' real lives - is a particular focus of John
Keegan's book, cited above, and also of John Ellis, The Sharp End. The Fighting Man in World
War II (London 1980). Our own conference was much informed by the papers collected in Paul
Addison and Angus Calder (eds), Time to Kill. The Soldier's Experience of War in the West,
1939-1945 (London 1997). For the difficulty of narrating combat, see Samuel Hynes, The
Soldier's Tale. Bearing Witness to Modern War (London 1998).
3 Hynes, op. cit., 8.
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204

Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 41 No 2

broughtthis group of specialiststogether.Theirtask was to discusswhat can

be known about the reasonswhy soldiersfight. As the initialorganizerof the
meeting, my own startingpoint had been surpriseat the answers Russian
respondentsgave to a question about Red Army performancein the second
world war. When I asked formerSovietveteransto tell me what kind of person made the best soldier,their unanimousanswer,given despitethe fact that
I had mentionedneithernationalitynor politics, was 'Russians'.4Intrigued,
and puzzled by the ideas that culture might influencecombat motivation, I
decided to invite a group of specialiststo reflect on the problem.After two
meetingsand much debate,we agreedto work on our findingswith a view to
publication.'By that stage, too, we had also drawn up a range of working
questions.
The motivationof soldiers,as everyoneagrees,is not a constant.The idealism (or the economic need) that impels a volunteerto sign up for military
serviceis very differentfrom the motives that drive him (or, less frequently,
her)to fight and remainin the field aftera firstexperienceof combat.Our discussions exploredall forms of motivation,and severalarticlesin this volume,
includingthose by Josie McLellan,Tarak Barkawiand myself, describethe
ways in which soldiers'imaginationschangewith each exposureto real war.
Beyond that universalissue, however, we also wanted to know what might
make some types of soldier performbetter than others, and what might lie
behindthe reputationthat some national or ethnic groupsenjoy for military
prowesswhile othersare bywordsfor cowardiceor failure.Werethese stereotypes, we asked, no more than myths, or might there be some aspectsof culture or history that influencedthe performanceof troops?Do beliefsmatter,
perhaps,or do culture,historyor even individualphysiologyand character?
Thesequestionsarenot new to scholarship,but they have beenneglectedfor
decades.Partof the problemis that one answer,a highlysuggestiveand influential one, has dominatedthe field since the 1950s. It was in the wake of the
second world war that a generationof sociologists- themselvesadherentsof
a pioneeringdiscipline- set out to explore combat motivation,using techniques that included qualitative interviews, questionnairesand historical
comparisons.The answerthat they formulatedwas that men fought for their
mates. Close friendshipsand relationshipsof mutualtrust were more important to soldiers' morale, they concluded, than abstract notions such as
patriotism,religiousfaith or regimentalloyalty. This conclusionhas not been
discardedsince those formativedays. The classic texts, beginningwith the
pathbreakingwork of EdwardA. Shils and MorrisJanowitz,remaincentral
4 This question was one of many that I put to Soviet veterans as part of an ESRC-sponsored
project on the Red Army at war. For more information, see my Ivan's War. The Red Army,
1939-45 (London 2005).
5 The project was organized and sponsored by the Centre for History and Economics, King's
College, Cambridge. I am grateful to the directors, their staff, and postgraduate students at the
Centre for their support, encouragement and efficient help throughout.
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Merridale:
Introduction

205

for students of combat almost everywhere.6 The crucial element in soldiers'

motivation, state the classic texts, is loyalty towards the primary group, the
men's circle of comrades, brothers in arms.
No one has yet proposed that this idea is simply wrong. Instead, arguments
have developed in parallel, exploring other sources of motivation, including
ideology or deconstructing the notion of the primary group to see exactly what
kinds of relationship and what circumstances affect soldiers with different
specialisms, from different ranks or in specific types of war.7 Some of the
articles in this issue take this broad approach, for the question of group loyalty
was a constant theme in our discussions of soldiers' motivation. Among the
objections that contributors raised to the simple idea of the primary group was
that it provides an incomplete answer. As Hew Strachan pointed out, for
instance, tightly-knit groups of comrades are as capable of fomenting a mutiny
or conspiring to desert as they are of fighting heroically together. Even where
the model seems to work, so many other factors seem to bear on battlefield
performance that it seems perverse to focus on this single one, especially as it
relates principally to American and British troops and mainly to the second
world war. Might it not also matter whether soldiers think that they are fighting for a just cause? Does it matter if they consider that they have solid support
from people at home? What about the probability of victory? Do soldiers not
fight with greater energy when they expect to win, or even if their own side
might, whatever their own personal fate? And what happens when so many
soldiers are killed that small groups never remain together for more than a
week or two?
Our discussions involved people with expertise in a range of geographical
areas and types of culture. A number of academic disciplines were represented,
too, including psychiatry and anthropology as well as history. We were fortunate to be joined by several former members of the armed forces, including the
psychiatrist Professor Ian Palmer, and the historian and former member of the
French Foreign Legion Alan Fitzgerald. For all our diverse interests and backgrounds, however, the articles that have reached this final stage are focused on
one specific historical era, the century from 1870 to 1970, a period in which
large nationally-based armies fought using technologies such as the machine
gun, heavy artillery, tanks and bombers. The past two or three decades have
seen changes in the face of war. It will remain for others to debate the human
impact of those changes from the soldiers' point of view.
The first article in this broadly chronological collection suggests an alterna6 Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, 'Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World
War II', Public Opinion Quarterly, 12, 2 (1948). See also S.L.A. Marshall, Men against Fire. The
Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York 1947); Samuel Stouffer et al. (eds), The
American Soldier. Combat and its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ 1949).
7 Omer Bartov's pathbreaking work on the Wehrmacht, for example, privileged ideology at the
expense of close networks of friends. See The Eastern Front, 1941-45. German Troops and the
Barbarisation of Warfare (London 1985) and Hitler's Army. Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third
Reich (New York and Oxford 1991).
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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 41 No 2

tiveto theprimarygroupin lookingforthekeyto soldiers'effectiveness.

Hew
Strachan's
which
is
based
on
from
information
the
contribution,
principally
BritishandGermanarmiesin thefirstworldwar,emphasizes
of
therole training. As he explains,trainingprovedcrucialfor buildingmoralein twentiethand,through
centurywars,creatingbothindividualandcollectiveconfidence,
repetitivedrill, reducingthe shock and confusionassociatedwith combat
itself.Shareddrillroutinesmayalso havereducedthe importanceof ethnic,
culturalandotherdifferences
withinarmies,goingsomewayto achievingthe
andfashioningthemintoefficient,loyal
dream
of
raw
recruits
military
taking
membersof the regiment.A well-trained
andteam-spirited
groupof soldiers
has the capacityto withstandthe shockof battlebecausefrequentdrillhas
madethe necessaryactionsalmostautomatic.Suchtroopswill also act in
unison becauseeffectivegroup cohesionis somethingthey have learned.
Finally,the mutualtrust- andfaithin theirofficers- thatsoldiershaveto
the
buildwill havedevelopedovermonthsof effort.Trainingencompasses
primarygroup,for suchsoldiershavedrilled,workedandlivedtogether,but
only throughstructuredexercisescan buddiesbe turnedinto professional
soldiers,as opposedto doomedromanticheroes.
Menmayfightmosteffectively,
then,whentheyhavebeentrainedto actin
certainways,whentheirresponseto terrifyingandconfusingcircumstances
can be almostreflexin its speedand accuracy.But trainingcan neverbe
to fightdespitethe
enough.Positivereasonsforfighting- andforcontinuing
risk and horrorof combat- may also play a part.Theseare issueswhich
few of whomhaveany experienceof battle,let alone
academicresearchers,
muchtastefor it, tendto overlook.Butinterviewswithveteranssuggestthat
waris not alwaysall bad.Thepossibilityarisesthatsomesoldiersenjoytheir
This idea has beenexploredin
work, that killingcan even be pleasurable.
severalrecentworks,includingexcellentstudiesbyNiallFergusonandJoanna
discussedthe questionat somepoint,and
Mostof ourcontributors
Bourke.8
two of thearticleshereaddressit directly.
EdgarJonesrevisitswhathe callsthe revisionisttheoryof combatmotivaarchival
tion by applyinghis trainingas a psychiatristto newly-released
material.He remainsscepticalaboutthenotionthatsoldiersenjoykilling,and
in particularaboutthe idea that such violenceis an inbornaspectof the
humanmale.He alsodoubtsthatkillingitself(asopposedto action)mayhelp
protectagainstshellshock.Mostsoldiers,he argues,areinspiredby a desireto
surviveratherthan an urgeto kill. He does not disputethat war involves
momentsof euphoria,but arguesthat thesecome fromthe intensecamaraderieof the front,thoseclose-knitgroups,and also fromthe intoxicating
thatsomeyoungmendidreport.In discussion,his article
senseof adventure
drew lively debate about the contrast between the extreme passions of combat

8 Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London 1998); Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of
Killing (London 1999).
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Merridale:
Introduction

207

itself and the pleasure experienced vicariously by those who write about and
study it.
Alexander Watson, whose work also focuses on the first world war, takes a
slightly different line. Trench warfare, he insists, was not awful all the time.
More hours were spent in boredom, in waiting and talking, than were ever
passed under fire, let alone in real combat. The men survived their circumstances by making the trenches into a way of life. They had no choice, of
course, and few would have opted for the mud, the cold, the drill or danger.
But given that these things were unavoidable, soldiers managed to customize
their world in such a way as to make it habitable. Humour played a major part
here, as did songs, tobacco and booze. These things helped to reduce the war
to a size that men could contemplate, and certainly worked to defuse their
fears. Individually, too, they had their ways of handling an apparently arbitrary and terrifying universe, and in particular of dealing with the unpredictability of death. Many cherished totems and amulets to protect themselves,
and systems of portents and taboos, either private or shared, were widely
believed to predict - and thus, in a way, control - the next move of the hand
of fate. If men do not necessarily glory in killing, in other words, they do have
ways of coping with the misery of front-line service. Their memories, for that
reason, are not all black.
Whatever strategies they use to help them cope, however, some soldiers will
always find repeated stress unbearable. Turning the question of motivation on
its head, psychiatrist Simon Wessely reviews the problem of soldiers who cease
to fight and the ways in which their plight has been treated or punished in the
century since the first world war. As he explains, drawing on material from the
British and American armies, attitudes to battle stress have varied over time, as
have the ways in which the symptoms have been identified and even presented
by sufferers in the field. There is no stable absolute answer, in other words, to
the problem of men ceasing to be fit, in psychological terms, to fight. Even
trauma, to a large extent, needs to be understood in terms of the prevailing
culture. The treatment of psychiatric casualties, too, even more than their
diagnosis, depends on politics and military culture. Such a conclusion must
support the view that what Martin van Creveld called an army's fighting
power depends in large measure on factors like culture, language and the
choices made by the political, as well as the military, leadership.'
While the first articles in this issue are largely based on English-language
sources, the second group deals with soldiers in other cultures and in less
familiar settings. Taking up the question of ideology as a motivating factor,
my own article and that of Josie McLellan both describe soldiers who fought,
ostensibly at least, for communism. McLellan's subjects are the German
volunteers who fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Her
account of their reasons for enlisting goes beyond the usual range, for these
9 Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power. German and US Army Performance, 1939-1945
(London 1983).
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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryVol 41 No 2

were people who alreadyfelt that they were ostracizedat home, outlawedby a
nazi regimethat regardedcommunistsas criminals.For them, the chance to
advance a cause was almost as crucial as the opportunityof adventurein a
foreignand exotic land. Only combat itself would changetheir view, dissolving their idealism in a hail of fire and death. Thenceforth,as McLellan
suggests,other motivations,includingtheir desirenot to appearcowardlyor
to betraytheirmates,took over whereideology,theirillusions,brokeoff. Like
formal religiouspractice,ideology is more importantto the states that make
war, and also to the officersthey place in chargeof theirarmies'morale,than
it is to infantrymenas they face enemy fire. After the fact, as they begin to
reconcilethemselvesto episodesof surrealityand violence,some soldiersmay
well find that the storiestheirleaderstell them about the war help to createa
justifyingnarrative,but at the time abstractideas, and certainlythose that
come from outsidethe men's own world, do not seemto play a decisiverole.
Citizensof Stalin'sSovietUnion may or may not have sharedthe German
communists'idealism,but what markedthem out was the fact that they had
no choice. Like that of McLellan'sInternationalBrigaders,the mentalitiesof
Red Army soldierschangedradicallyas the war progressed,but in this case
part of the transformationwas a shift of generations.The first Soviet army,
that of 1941, was destroyed- dead or captured- within six months of the
Germaninvasion. Cynics and callow idealistsalike were killed. The next 18
months of war would see the forging of a new mentality, stiffened by a
renewedinterestin militaryprofessionalism,as opposedto declamatorypatriotism, and renderedimplacableby the soldiers'hatredand thirst for revenge.
By the war's end, this new army, the second wave, had also been destroyed
and replaced,for few survivedas front-linefightersfor longerthan a matterof
months.
The very brutality of Stalin's war also shaped motivation in the field.
Surrender,as early captiveswould learn, was not an option. Prisonerswere
almostcertainto perishand cowardswere shot. Bloodystruggle(or, occasionally, desertion)was the only route to individualsecurityand peace. Group
loyalty undoubtedlyplayeda part for the men, but it bearsemphasizingthat,
with mortality rates exceeding Germanones by three to one, many of the
strongestties soldiersmight feel were with the dead. I chartthe development
of these front-linementalities,assessingsuch issuesas hatredof the enemy,the
desire for loot and the absence of alternatives.In the end, for an invaded
people threatenedwith annihilation,the latterprovedthe only universaltruth.
Tarak Barkawi'sessay on ethnic identitiesin the Indianarmy affirmsthat
the natureof the enemymust play a centralpart.Warswhereno prisonersare
taken will have very differenteffects on rivalryand ambitionamong soldiers
than wars where surrender (and even joining the enemy against one's original
side) is an option for disaffected troops. The paradox of the Indian regiments
was their loyalty to an empire - the British Raj - whose yoke they were
determined to throw off. As Barkawi explains, it was the experience of war
against Japan, the confrontation with an enemy whose reputation for cruelty
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Merridale:
Introduction

209

grew with each passing week, that generated the strongest feelings of loyalty
and group cohesiveness in multi-ethnic formations. This hatred was not a
primary motivation (training had played its part among the Indian regiments
before the war); it was a consequence of battlefield conduct. Like many other
responses to atrocity, too, it was also shaped by enemy treatment of civilians.
This helpful perception suggests that other insights might be gained by looking at the justifications for individual wars. Antonius Robben originally set out
to compare two successive types of conflict in Argentina, the so-called 'dirty
war' of the 1970s and the 1980s conflict over the Falkland Islands. As he
points out, and as several other articles show, soldiers' own explanations for
their actions depend partly on the type of war that they are called upon to fight
and also on its place in a specific sequence of historical events. In cultures
where honour and shame are crucial, too, the language in which men and
officers describe their actions will reflect the specific nature of their collective
universe. Robben's perceptions as an anthropologist enrich our understanding
of military culture and practice. They also remind us to take the men's own
words seriously, listening for the specific meanings that each gives to terms
that might seem equivalent but are always open to local interpretation and the
influence of history.
The reasons why soldiers join up may be susceptible to social scientific
research. Ideology, economics, peer pressure and romantic dreams all play
their parts, as - in wartime - do patriotism and the desire to defend both
family and home. When it comes to combat, however, there remains a great
deal to be learned, not just about the reasons why men fight, but also about
resilience, effectiveness and the limits of both. These aspects of human activity,
so commonly experienced and yet so hard to recollect, remain enigmatic. War
is changing, too, and the empty battlefield of the twenty-first century (empty,
that is, except for millions of civilians) will pose new problems for the troops
involved. So, too, do local wars, guerrilla wars, the many wars for land, power
and resources that continue to rage beyond Europe and the English-speaking
world. Despite our efforts, we were unable to persuade fieldworkers from
Africa or Afghanistan to contribute to this volume, although some were
present for our deliberations. If their comments showed anything, it was to
reassert that the articles collected here provide only partial answers to questions framed about a certain type of war. It will remain to extend the debate in
future.

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