Enduring Battle

February 21, 2011
Hammer, assistant professor of history at George Mason University, addresses changes and continuities in how American infantrymen have been motivated to face battle in the Revolution, the Civil War, and WWII, as technology changed the nature of combat. His major contributions are a discounting of ideology as a motivator, and a significant modification of the group cohesion, or "band of brothers" thesis. Hammer makes a convincing case that across two centuries, while group cohesion, coercion, and the example of a group leader may have induced men into battle, modern technological warfare, with its dispersion of soldiers, required that the irrational abandonment of the instinct of self-preservation be turned into a rational act. Soldiers were taught that despite the chaos and randomness of battle, there was "a series of rational choices that could be mastered to some degree," and those choices could save their lives. In a series of provocative, illuminating chapters, Hammer demonstrates how training, leadership, weaponry, and comradeship each contribute to that sense of agency, which in turn contributes to combat effectiveness.