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Combat Psychology: Learning To Kill In The U.S. Military, 1947-2012, Patrick Mckinnie
Combat Psychology: Learning To Kill In The U.S. Military, 1947-2012, Patrick Mckinnie
Graduate Theses
In his 1947 work Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, historian S. L. A. Marshall convinced the U.S. government and military of the critical need for improved techniques in combat psychology. However, his more fundamental assertion that soldiers needed to be trained to overcome an innate psychological resistance to killing would prompt some in the military as well as scholars and medical experts to examine the heart and mind of the soldier in combat. As a result, an emergent science called killology became a critical component in the U.S. military’s quest to better train soldiers for the …