Killing officers

[Restitvtvs]

This sounds more like a "hypothesis" rather than a "theory", and even much less of an almost "universal law".

Military history records, like other historic records, are often unavoidably inaccurate, incomplete, etc. Especially older records, e.g., Roman military records. This makes statistical analysis more difficult, and the results more questionable. :?

Was the unit casualty percentage (rather than the absolute number of casualties) during one battle, one month, one year, several years? This make big difference if you are doing multivariate statistical analysis to account for *all* relevant factors/variables.

Military history records during the past few centuries show that some officers have been killed by their men for lesser reasons, and other were not killed despite much heavier casualties. More "confounding" factors, often undocumented, difficult to measure accurately (too much subjectivity with some variables), etc. :?

Of course a common scientific/statistical maxim is "correlation does not prove causation." At most, the best multivariate statistical analysis may show some correlation(s) (measured as "R" values), i.e. a general/rough rule of thumb. "Predictive" models are limited, can have little or no real value.. Ultimately, each situation can be very unique in many ways.

(I'm former military, ~10 years service (~5 years enlisted to NCO, then ~5 years officer); Cold War period along Iron Curtain; some terrorist bomb threats & bombings, but no combat; many more military history studies than I care to remember. Two of my uncles served in WWII. One was Marine Corps infantry, much Pacific island combat, earned Silver Star, etc. His various units had medium to heavy casualties at times, yet no soldiers killed their officers. Of course, his experiences are only a very small subset of the complete set of combat experiences.)

[Felix]

I agree that the hypothesis sounds incomplete at best. Numerous cases have already been cited where cases suffered more casualties than 17% without discipline breaking down.

Another non-trivial condition should probably be mentioned: success. The ability of a unit to remain cohesive varies with the results the soldiers have achieved. One similarity in the Nivelles offensive and some situations in Vietnam is the perceived futility of the fighting. To fight and risk death and injury may be tolerable if you have succeeded in doing something (however you define it: this may be killing many enemies, taking territory, holding ground, etc.). If you can't see any positive result of the struggle, it becomes much harder to tolerate.

[Jona Lendering]

Yes, I think that the idea must be dropped.

The missing factor may be reinforcement. If a platoon or a company remains at full strength by adding new men, social networks continue to renew itself; if, on the other hand, the losses remain clearly visible, things must be rather demoralizing.

It may be that French morale broke because of this reason; the closest that I can get to establishing my source (Eksteins' Rites of Spring) explicitly refers to logistical and organizational problems, without referring to the 17%-rule, if 17% it was.

[floofthegoof]

It also probably makes a difference whether one is attacking or defending. One has really no choice whether to defend oneself.

The choice involved is when you are one of the ones to go 'over the top' and you expect you won't survive. In that case, you might prefer to attack the guy giving orders.

[A_Volpe]

Ralph - I think you're right on the mark with your thoughts.

The information is so thin, and may be even biased by the author(s) and perhaps more muddled/messed up over the centuries...That Roman Propoganda Monster was a nasty beast as well.

[Tarbicus]

It also probably makes a difference whether one is attacking or defending. One has really no choice whether to defend oneself.

The choice involved is when you are one of the ones to go 'over the top' and you expect you won't survive. In that case, you might prefer to attack the guy giving orders.

Could be quite the opposite. There is a definite episode where the Romans were beseiged, the tribunes ordered the men to stay inside for safety but were threatened with death by the men and centurions if they weren't allowed to make a sortie out and attack the beseigers. As it happened, the sortie was successful. Can't find the details right now, perhaps someone else knows offhand?

[Crispvs]

My great great uncle Walter was killed during the rearguard action by the 2nd Bttn. 66th (Berkshire) Regt. at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880. On that occasion the 66th had taken up a defensive position in a walled garden. After some time only eleven men, including two officers, were still able to keep fighting. The two officers then took the decision to lead the other nine men out of the garden (which meant certain death for all of them) and all eleven then fought on together until they were all killed.

So here we have an example of a whole battalion whittled down to just eleven men in just a few hours and yet the men followed their officers right to the bitter end.

Crispvs

[john m roberts]

I was in Vietnam in 1970 and we had a fragging incident in my unit. Late one night a ChiCom grenade was tossed into the First Sergeant's hooch. He wasn't harmed. It was a Hitler bomb plot thing, the grenade rolled behind a concrete post. The whole hooch was destroyed, but the 1st Sgt, who was sacked out in his bunk, was untouched, though it must have been a hell of a way to wake up. But this had nothing to do with casualties. The fact was that a lot of units like ours held men who should have been in prison. This was because in 1970 the in-country stockade, the Long Binh jail, known to one and all as the LBJ, was so jammed they were only accepting convicted 1st degree murderers. Lesser offenders stayed with their units. We had a psycho who had killed some Vietnamese for no good reason, but nobody could prove murder in the first. And he had a grudge against the 1st Sgt (nobody else liked him either).
I think that combat killing of officers by their own men only happens when an officer has repeatedly demonstrated incompetence and is getting his men killed needlessly. In such a case, the men have no other way to protect themselves. It can even be done by a malicious superior. Note that King David had Uriah the Hittite fragged three thousand years ago.

[Mitra]

I don't think is possible to generalize on the basis of french militaries strikes of '17. Much depends by social and political background, military tradition, units rotation policy, ecc... . The german army don't had the same problem of french army in WWI.

Much roman military revolts have the economic motivations or sometime the exact contrary of modern considerations (commander with low warlike attitude). The only case of army refuse to combat for war's exhaustion that i can remember now are that of Alexander's army in India.

[Primitivus]

This is a very interesting forum discussion. The point's been well made that there is no magical thresh-hold that is built into the human being or the military unit (regardless of locale or era) which would inevitably precipitate a revolt. Different cultures possess vastly different understandings of such things. For example, a band of cutthroats might actually have as one of their mutual understandings that an unsuccessful leader would be deposed. Traditional armies, however, require a bit higher expectation of obedience and good order, for the most part.

We've discussed revolts and fragging, which are, of course, quite different things. Revolts require that you reach a "critical mass", which can either be individuals as a percentage of the total force, or a smaller number of people in particularly critical positions. An example of the latter would have been the plot against Hitler. The men who attempted to assassinate him gambled their lives that (1) they would succeed in killing him and (2) that because they would be in key positions during the initial aftermath, they could shift the momentum of the aftermath in a direction that furthered their ultimate goals.

As for fragging... yes, it happens. Even happened in 2003 when an American troop, Asan Akbar, killed two (one outright, and another who was one of 15 wounded, I believe). In his case, religion may have been one of the reasons. However, most fragging has traditionally been done "anonymously", with an assumption that the killer has an avenue of escape (e.g. to blend back into the ranks). Most "fragging" murderers do not set out to be martyrs.

So, if people are not simply insane, there needs to be some kind of payoff. It could be that in a revolt we contravene an order that could have cost us our safety or lives. We may even throw our lot in with the enemy (not necessarily a terrible thing in a civil war where our allegiance may simply have been due to a geographic accident). As an individual who takes the life of a senior member of our unit, it could simply be due to personal dislike or anger arising from a perceived injustice. In an environment where constant exposure to death has hardened/desensitized the soldiers, the taking of the life of a "bastard" who deserves to die (whatever uniform he's wearing) may be less of a stretch than it seems to those of us who have never been in combat.

[Tarbicus]

For example, a band of cutthroats might actually have as one of their mutual understandings that an unsuccessful leader would be deposed.

Pirates - a democratic group who elected their captain, and he could only have full and unquestioned command when they went into action. Or so I believe. No wonder the establishment hated them so much considering the era.

It could be that in a revolt we contravene an order that could have cost us our safety or lives.

Perhaps this was the case, but in an opposite sense, when Primius Pilus Cnaeus Petreius gutted the officer who refused to give the order to attack at Vercellae, and then led the legion to victory for which he was rewarded greatly. Must have been something in the genes as his son, Marcus, became a legate and secured victory against Catiline. However, he chose the losing side in the Civil Wars and died after Thapsus, by entering into a suicide pact with King Juba of Numidia, both men fighting a more honourable duel to the death rather than be executed by Caesar's men.