Training, morale and modern war Explanations of sustained combat capability prof. dr. H. Strachan* Introduction resilient must therefore be answered, famous article by Morris Janowitz at least in part, in comparative terms. and E.A. Shils,"1 and it has been ermany lost the two world pushed back in time to cover earlier wars, and yet its army contin- armies, including those of the French Gued fighting until the very end The Small Group theory Revolution.51 have argued elsewhere °f both. This is not to deny that there that the elevation of the section or 18 evidence of increased desertion in Since 1945 three generic explanations group in Germany's infantry tactics in 1918, nor is it to sustain the 'stab-in- have been adduced to explain how 1917-18 may have linked best prac- the-back' legend. But most of the dis- morale is sustained in the terrifying tice at the operational level to the ciplinary problems of that year were conditions of industrialised war. The needs of psychology, and so helped concentrated in the rear areas rather first, and dominant one, focuses on the German army to surmount the cri- than at the front.' Moreover, its per- the primacy of the small group. sis of 1917-18." formance in 1944-45 is truly astonish- ing given the fact that the probable Men, it is argued, There are, however, a number of seri- outcome of the Second World War, fight for their mates rather ous difficulties with the prevalence of unlike that of the First, was clear at than for their country. the small group theory. First, it makes least twelve months betbre it ended. no allowance for high casualties, par- Allied planners had confidently This theory is now almost dogma in ticularly over a short period of time. expected a breakdown in the army's the current practices of western On the eastern front between 1941 'nner cohesion in 1944.2 armies. lts intellectual origins are and 1945 the opportunities for the essentially American, and are ground- evolution of small group loyalty were The only major European army with a ed on the work of S.A. Stouffer and few.7 Even in the United States Army, comparable record is that of Britain. others, as well as of S.L.A. Marshall, the fount of the idea, small groups did out it was on the winning side in both in the Second World War.' not survive high intensity infantry *ars and its experience of Continental It was extended to the Wehrmacht in a fighting. From the four U.S. divisions warfare as a mass conscript force was Tiuch more limited, confined essen- Üally to the years 1916-18, 1940, and 1 Christoph Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten. 1943-45. The French army, by con- Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und Kellett, Combat motivation: the behavior of britischen Heer 1914-1918 (Göttingen, 1998); soldiers in battle (Boston, 1982), p. 97. trast, underwent a crisis in morale at 4 l Wilhelm Deist, 'Der militarische Zusam- Edward A. Sils and Morris Janowitz, he end of August 1914, was subject menbruch des Kaiserreichs: zur Realitat der 'Cohesion and disintegration in the Wehr- to widespread mutiny in the summer "Dolchstosslegende"', in Ursula Büttner (ed), macht in World War II', Public Opinion °f 1917, and folded entirely in May Das Unrechtsregime. Internationale For- Quarterly, XII (1948), pp 280-315. 1940. Both the Italian and Russian schung über den Nationalsozialismus (Ham- " John Lynn, Bayonets of the republic: motiva- armies confronted near-dissolution in burg 1986), I. tion and tactics in the army of revolutionary ! F. H. Hinsley, British intelligence in the France, 1791-4 (Urbana, 1984), pp 30-7, 163- 1917, and the Soviet army fractured Second World War: its influence on strategy 4. in 1941. The question as to why the and operations (5 vols, London, 1979-90), " Hew Strachan, 'The Morale of the German fiorale of the German army proved so II1/I, pp 64-5; 1II/2, pp 21, 24, 27, 31, 365. Army, 1917-18', in Hugh Cecil and Peter ' S.A. Stouffer and others, The American Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon: the First Soldier (New York, 1965; Ist editon, World War Experienced (Barnsley, 1996), p. De auteur is hoogleraar moderne geschiede- Princeton, 1949), 2 vols; S.L.A. Marshall, 388. nis aan de Universiteit van Glasgow en Men against fire: the problem of battle com- ' Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, directeur van 'the Scottish Centre for War mand in future war (New York, 1966; Ist edi- and War in the Third Keich (Oxford, 1991), pp Studies'. tion 1947); tbr a corrective, see, Anthony 5, 29-45. JRG170 10-2001 MILITAIRE SPECTATOR 543 which landed on D-Day 1944, 79 per own observations on 'men against mary-group solidarity existed', wrote cent of officers and 73 per cent of fire' point in a very different direction: one commentator, 'more than not it men became casualties within seven The first effect of fire is to dissolve served to foster and reinforce dissent weeks.8 In three months' continuous all appearance of order. Thi.s is the from the goals of military organiza- fighting in the Second World War, an most shocking surprise to troops tion and to organize refusal to per- American infantry regiment could who are experiencing combat for form according to institutional reckon on the loss of its entire the first time. They cannot antici- norms'.14 strength.'' pate the speed with which their own farces become fractionalised or the extent to which the fractions will Ideological Thus the small group argument, become physically divorced from indoctrination which by definition becomes of each other as the movement is increasing importance the more sus- extended and enemy resistance Although, in this respect at least, tained and vicious the fighting, rests stiffens. there is little sign that today's profes- on a paradox: such operations erode sional armed forces in either the the very basis on which the unit's A sense of differente United States or in the United morale is said to rest. It has to absorb Finally, there is the key characteristic Kingdom have digested the potential an increased flow of replacements, of the small group: it identifies itself difficulties of the small-group thesis, many of whom do not survive long by its difference from others. In the historians of the German army have enough to become anybody's buddy, context of an army, that sense of dif- begun to do so. Both Omer Bartov and whose names and backgrounds ference can amount to a divorce from and (albeit in less extreme form) the unit's surviving members struggle the collective goals of the higher Stephen Fritz have argued that, since to recall. organisation which the group is casualty rates in the most bitter and designed to serve. The solidarity of sustained fighting of the twentieth The primacy of the small group is the small group can lead it to refuse to century, the struggle on the eastern itself a reflection of firepower's dom- fight, to disobey orders, and even to front in the Second World War, mean inance of the battlefield. The larger mutiny. Tony Ashworth's description that small group loyalty cannot bodies of eighteenth and early nine- of trench warfare in 1914-18 as a 'live explain combat motivation, then teenth-century warfare, like battalions and let live system', although over- political ideology must.15 or regiments, had to disperse to drawn, makes the point: solidarity at reduce their vulnerability as targets. the front line could work to subvert According to Bartov, morale was sus- But on the twentieth-century battle- the intentions of higher command.'2 tained, and the war became bar- field, even the small group broke In Korea, the U.S. Army discovered barised and unlimited, precisely down if it had to pass through a hail that the longer a unit was in the line because each side was fully comrnit- of fire, and geography - broken 'the more intense buddy relations ted to the cause for which it was fight- ground or areas of dense housing - became': the consequence was that, ing, that of fascism or Bolshevisni. might force dispersal well before con- 'in a crisis, and if forced to make a Bartov's argument is clearly capable tact. 'The company', Marshall wrote, choice, a man would think first of his of extension beyond the eastern front, 'coming under fire, literally begins its loyalty to a buddy and second of his even if in moderated form. Politica' engagement by falling apart'.1" Thus, obligations to an organization'." ideology cements the armed forces to for all Marshall's canonisation as the However, Vietnam was the war that civilian society, and validates the high priest of the small group, his made the tension explicit: 'where pri- strains and sacrifices of the soldier- The First World War, interpreted at the time as a struggle between liberal- * Sam C. Sarkesian (ed), Combat effectiveness: ism and militarism, or Kultur against cohesion, stress, and the volanteer military " Bartov, Hitler's Army, pp 4, 106-78; Stephen civilisation, can be accommodated, at (Beverly Hills, 1980), p. 259. G. Fritz, '"We are trying (...) to change the least in part, within Bartov's thesis. '' Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German face of the world". Ideology and motivation Ludendorff's 1917 program me °f and U.S. Army Performance 1939-1945 in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front: the patriotic instruction is customarily (London, 1983), p. 75. view from below', Journal of Military '" S.L.A. Marshall, Men against fire: the prob- History, LX, 1996, pp 683-710.