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American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam by Peter S. Kindsvatter
zelanator's review against another edition
4.0
Peter S. Kindsvatter has written an excellent history of American combat soldiers between the First World War and the Vietnam War. His study is pregnant with insights about both the particular experience of soldiers in each war and the universal psychological and physiological factors that affect combatants. He intervenes in numerous debates that currently concern military historians: combat motivation and soldiers' motivational complexes, psychological repercussions of combat, the use of memoir to study combat experience, race relations within the military, the officer-enlisted relationship, and the cultural components of war that can exacerbate or constrain violence.
World War II veteran and writer James Jones once asked "What is it that makes a man go out into dangerous places and get himself shot at with increasing consistency until finally he dies?" Kindsvatter mostly concerns himself with answering this question throughout his wide-ranging study.He argues that soldiers largely fought because they inherently believed in some mixture of cause, comrades, country, and self and adopted various coping mechanisms that sustained them throughout long deployments. However, motives differed depending on class, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, socio-economic class, and a variety of other factors. He remains sensitive to these issues, while cognizant of the general factors that most soldiers identified with in their wartime and post-war writings. African-Americans, for example, commonly fought to demonstrate their commitment to national values (freedom, democracy), social justice, and prove their prowess in battle. By and large, though, Kindsvatter agrees with the primary-group (or buddy) thesis; men fought because they fashioned indelible bonds with the men who fought alongside them.
Kindsvatter suggests that men enlisted for a variety of reasons: social pressure, a sense of duty or obligation to country, a desire to test their manhood, among others. In general, these factors explain the mass turn-out of volunteers at the beginning of most American wars, even during the Vietnam War.
In combat, some men accentuated the positives of war (to perhaps mis-use Paul Fussell's phrase). Men enjoyed the spectacles of combat. Aircraft, artillery, machine guns, and other modern weapons put on a show for soldiers, especially those observing from the sidelines. Others particularly delighted in destruction, or what J. Glenn Gray and Kindsvatter describe as the "soldier-adventurer." These men excelled in different facets of combat and killing, and derived a certain amount of pride and confidence from their abilities; they found delight, or even excitement, in closing with the enemy. However, soldier-adventurers did not find pleasure in killing. Soldier-adventurers compartmentalized killing as simply part of their "job," whereas psychopathic soldiers delighted in killing and actively sought out opportunities to ratchet up their kill tab.
Among the "enduring appeals of war" that J. Glenn Gray identified in his work on the Second World War, Kindsvatter suggests that comradeship exercised the greatest influence on soldiers, in two distinct ways. Historian Richard Kohn argued that "props" sustained soldiers morally and emotionally during war, while "motivators" were factors that compelled men to fight. Kindsvatter argues that comradeship constituted both a "prop" and a "motivator." During lulls in combat, comrades sustained one another emotionally by assuaging the guilt that accompanied killing, and venting frustration through laughter, joking, griping, and spreading rumors. During episodes of combat, the primary group motivated men to kill the enemy by enforcing conformity—those who skulked or were non-firers faced ostracism by their peers. One caveat, however, was that men expressed sympathy with those who broke down after demonstrating their commitment to protect their buddies by fighting honorably in numerous engagements.
Kindsvatter's conclusion offers an important throw-away thesis: men consistently hold roseate imaginations of warfare because war memorialization and mass media advances a glamorized, romanticized portrayal of war. This is a plausible hypothesis that resonates with the writings of numerous Korean War and Vietnam War veterans' remembrances of how John Wayne and other B-movie war icons shaped their ideas of war and influenced their decisions to enlist in the military. There's certainly a dissertation topic to be found here, and perhaps even a comparative element wherein one might study the similarities and differences between popular culture of war during the twentieth century and its influence on soldiers' imaginations of the battlefield. It's difficult to surmise how B-movie images factored into an individual's motivational complex to enlist in the military. Indeed, it would require pure speculation in most cases.
This is a rich book that I've hardly explained in full detail here. It deserves wide readership and exemplifies the interdisciplinary approach to military history. It's also a great book to read alongside Gerald Linderman's The World Within War, J. Glenn Gray's Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, Paul Fussell's Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, and Christian G. Appy's Working-Class War.
World War II veteran and writer James Jones once asked "What is it that makes a man go out into dangerous places and get himself shot at with increasing consistency until finally he dies?" Kindsvatter mostly concerns himself with answering this question throughout his wide-ranging study.He argues that soldiers largely fought because they inherently believed in some mixture of cause, comrades, country, and self and adopted various coping mechanisms that sustained them throughout long deployments. However, motives differed depending on class, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, socio-economic class, and a variety of other factors. He remains sensitive to these issues, while cognizant of the general factors that most soldiers identified with in their wartime and post-war writings. African-Americans, for example, commonly fought to demonstrate their commitment to national values (freedom, democracy), social justice, and prove their prowess in battle. By and large, though, Kindsvatter agrees with the primary-group (or buddy) thesis; men fought because they fashioned indelible bonds with the men who fought alongside them.
Kindsvatter suggests that men enlisted for a variety of reasons: social pressure, a sense of duty or obligation to country, a desire to test their manhood, among others. In general, these factors explain the mass turn-out of volunteers at the beginning of most American wars, even during the Vietnam War.
In combat, some men accentuated the positives of war (to perhaps mis-use Paul Fussell's phrase). Men enjoyed the spectacles of combat. Aircraft, artillery, machine guns, and other modern weapons put on a show for soldiers, especially those observing from the sidelines. Others particularly delighted in destruction, or what J. Glenn Gray and Kindsvatter describe as the "soldier-adventurer." These men excelled in different facets of combat and killing, and derived a certain amount of pride and confidence from their abilities; they found delight, or even excitement, in closing with the enemy. However, soldier-adventurers did not find pleasure in killing. Soldier-adventurers compartmentalized killing as simply part of their "job," whereas psychopathic soldiers delighted in killing and actively sought out opportunities to ratchet up their kill tab.
Among the "enduring appeals of war" that J. Glenn Gray identified in his work on the Second World War, Kindsvatter suggests that comradeship exercised the greatest influence on soldiers, in two distinct ways. Historian Richard Kohn argued that "props" sustained soldiers morally and emotionally during war, while "motivators" were factors that compelled men to fight. Kindsvatter argues that comradeship constituted both a "prop" and a "motivator." During lulls in combat, comrades sustained one another emotionally by assuaging the guilt that accompanied killing, and venting frustration through laughter, joking, griping, and spreading rumors. During episodes of combat, the primary group motivated men to kill the enemy by enforcing conformity—those who skulked or were non-firers faced ostracism by their peers. One caveat, however, was that men expressed sympathy with those who broke down after demonstrating their commitment to protect their buddies by fighting honorably in numerous engagements.
Kindsvatter's conclusion offers an important throw-away thesis: men consistently hold roseate imaginations of warfare because war memorialization and mass media advances a glamorized, romanticized portrayal of war. This is a plausible hypothesis that resonates with the writings of numerous Korean War and Vietnam War veterans' remembrances of how John Wayne and other B-movie war icons shaped their ideas of war and influenced their decisions to enlist in the military. There's certainly a dissertation topic to be found here, and perhaps even a comparative element wherein one might study the similarities and differences between popular culture of war during the twentieth century and its influence on soldiers' imaginations of the battlefield. It's difficult to surmise how B-movie images factored into an individual's motivational complex to enlist in the military. Indeed, it would require pure speculation in most cases.
This is a rich book that I've hardly explained in full detail here. It deserves wide readership and exemplifies the interdisciplinary approach to military history. It's also a great book to read alongside Gerald Linderman's The World Within War, J. Glenn Gray's Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, Paul Fussell's Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, and Christian G. Appy's Working-Class War.
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