[split] Psychology of the Roman soldier

[Bryan]

It has nothing to do with fear, just that combat elicits a biological response in people who have been trained and exposed to years of combat.

Most infantrymen probably knew nothing about the concentration camps, or really the full extent of what had been done until after the war had ended.    By calling their actions evil we're demonizing the Germans, instead when we should be more concerned how a sophisticated, modern society could fall to that level of depravity.  If the Germans are capable of committing acts like this, then we are as well.  Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that human nature doesn't have a darkness that can be exploited for political or economic purposes.

The United States has never fought a war for humanitarian reasons.  WW2 wasn't fought on humanitarian grounds.

The answer is that Americans across the political spectrum believed they were fighting to defend their inalienable rights, which included the freedom of the seas.

This is why I worry that the nature of warfare is less organic than we think.  Both sides are usually convinced think they're fighting for the "right" reasons, and are irreconcilable with one another.

This has nothing to do with WWII. You were already alluding to dehumanizing the enemy. What do you think it appears as? It appears exactly how I wrote it, like in WWII accounts when veterans describe the enemy as evil, as bad men worthy of death. Descriptions like that help take the sting away from the after effects of killing them, because the veteran is not afraid to describe what they did. They can be proud of killing the SS, most people wouldn't think to question them. But if they were to describe killing some poor conscripted soldiers they'd be less likely to discuss it after because of the threat that some bleeding heart would start telling me that "they were people too." Its the same with killing women and children too. In the ancient world it was customary to enslave them at the very least, army wide orders to exterminate male populations, occasionally all living things in a town, that too was common enough that there was no stigma attached if the enemy "deserved it" by resisting. Could you see Mrs. American Mom, wearing her apron after cooking a fresh apple pie, finding out her son slaughtered a village worth of men, women, and children? People have changed but as you said, and I agree, the human ability for great violence, brutality, is always there, just need to scratch the surface to reach it. 

Duty dictates that soldiers fight whomever their told to with equal vigor. A concept that was heavily part of the Roman military culture of virtus. Besides, all peoples have enough negative qualities that dehumanizing the ones you have to kill is never too hard to do.