The Loose Association of Wargamers

How does anyone account for massacres? The Japanese in Nanking, the Pol Pot genocide or the Rwanda business with the
mass slaughter of Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutu etc?

I know this isn't strictly combat but large numbers of soldiers/warriors participated somewhat gleefully in these horrors.

I like to think people are nice but stuff like this makes me think I'm a delusional optimist.

donald

I think you're back to looking at different people as "other" which makes it easier to kill them. One of the things that a recent* programme brought out was that the Nazis moved towards remote mass killing of Jews etc because killing them individually with a bullet to the head was actually upsetting the troops ordered to carry it out - even some of the SS.

[* When I say "recent" I mean that I watched it recently; it was probably first broadcast anything from 5-10 years ago! ]

One of the theories advanced on high ptsd in Oz from Vietnam, was that unlike the previous 2 wars, there were a lot fewer of them went, so fewer comrades to share the burden when they got home.

I’m a lover not a fighter

FreddBloggs wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 7:33 am One of the theories advanced on high ptsd in Oz from Vietnam, was that unlike the previous 2 wars, there were a lot fewer of them went, so fewer comrades to share the burden when they got home.

They weren't exactly welcomed home with open arms at the time either, something that still rankles with a lot of the Vietnam vets today. It was & is a messy business.

One other factor that I've seen described with regards to the US in Vietnam was that due to their policy of individual tours of duty, the soldiers basically got on the 'plane & 24 hours later were back in the USA on R & R, away from their mates, with no debriefing sessions, some survivor guilt & a lot of 'culture shock' upon returning. In previous wars it took weeks to months to get home, not 24 hours, so there was more time to re-adjust. This didn't apply so much to Australian troops, who rotated by unit.

Yes, there was always a decompression gap between leaving combat zone and back into the normal world.

It is also not helped by watching things you did and places you were, live on the news, just keeping being reminded means it was harder to just let settle.

I think Hobbes and Rosseau were looking at a bigger picture. It is easy to get a crowd to march off to an execution, the mood can be quite festive. Get one of them up in front of everybody and tell them to stone someone to death and you have to make some pretty wild threats to actually get them to do the business.

Both the shining path and the Taliban would get teenagers, and tell them, if you don't throw the stone, we'll tie you up alongside the victim. A lot of the seemingly foolish propaganda is all about convincing them that:
a) it wasn't a big deal;
b) the people they stoned weren't really human.

You see the same thing in tribal fights in PNG. 50 people a side will be shouting at each other just out of spear range. Every so often someone from one side or another rushes forward, and either throws a spear or flashes his arse before running back to the ranks of his mates, dodging the volley of spears thrown at him. When they get drunk enough, or bored enough, they get into what I imagine a shieldwall fight looked like,, until one or two guys with axes just wade in looking to kill. Now spearmen in formation can get three on one axeman and kill hem with ease, but they rarely did, once the axemen put the stakes on the table, they would break and run.

Sounds a bit like the dynamics of a football hooligan fight.

I was caught up in a Maoist raid on a police post north-east of Pokhara in Nepal a couple of decades ago. just over an hour of exchanging gunfire, total casualties one goat (died of fright) and an old Hillman Imp. We got stopped by a Maoist patrol the next day and I got talking to them about the raid and they said it was better for morale to go in and assert their ability to take the post down rather than actually do it and have to deal with grieving widows. For terrorists they were quite pleasant people.

I've met some charming terrorists, the Shining path, less so. If that's what Red Guards were like, I can understand why the Cultural Revolution was so traumatic. Of the three encounters with them (once with them, twice with their old boys' associations, someone was injured at all three and people killed at two.

The Organizaci Papua Merdeka were lovely chaps. Met them both sides of the border and we got along famously.