Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars

by Leo Murray

An extraordinary examination of the psychology of warfare. Three stories run through this book. One story comes from a collection of eyewitness accounts of combat. Intense, personal and often laced with dark humour, this story ties readers to the experience of combat. It encourages readers to see war through a soldier's eyes. The main body tells the second story. This describes the hard science of tactical psychology, from its basic components to its most compelling effects. Each chapter comes with a key fact: the strength of aversion to killing; how many artillery shells or rifle bullets are needed to pin down a unit; the extent to which combat degrades rational thought. These facts are linked to build through the book. Together, they provide a complete picture of how soldiers react to combat and how wars can be won by understanding the way enemy soldiers think. The third story is woven through the scientific themes and tied to the eyewitness accounts. It tells how the author was sucked into a secretive world of fighters and thinkers. Brains and Bullets is a fascinating insight into how the human mind operates in combat situations.

Genres: Psychology, History, Nonfiction, War, Military History, Military Fiction, Science

292 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2013

Reviews

[Charlie Bradbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great summary on tactical psychology, the final chapter with recommendations and rough stats is the best part and something that's easily digestible for soldiers to incorporate into training.

[Saboor Raja · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent way adopted to explain the psychological effects on a war

[Martin Samuels · Rating 4 out of 5]

When studying warfare, it is very easy to become fixated with either the technology of combat (how many more books do we really need about the comparative armour protection of tanks, the range of anti-tank missiles, or the muzzle velocity of handguns??) or the practice of generalship (both issues of grand strategy and 'leadership habits' of the great commanders). This can often come at the expense of a recognition that warfare does ultimately come down to the action of individual soldiers, using their tactical weapons. This is the subject of this book by 'Leo Murray', the pseudonym of a British military psychologist.

The book takes the form of a narrative, describing Leo's experience as he grappled with various issues about combat in which the 'system' had only passing interest, yet which seemed to him of central importance. On his journey, he encounters various others searching in similar territory, some with the same perspective as him, others with different views. Given the sensitivity of the topic, most of these individuals are identified only by nicknames - Tank Colonel, Austrian General, and Gobby Scouser. This approach is both engaging, in that it gives a sense of progression to the story and of the reader learning something hidden, and yet also frustrating, as the key points within the book about combat psychology are never set out especially clearly. There is a contrast with Jim Storr's excellent 'Human Face of War', which does home in on the evidence and data behind the concepts he discusses.

That said, Murray's argument is both relatively simple and convincing. In essence, he notes that there tends to be a huge gulf between the performance of units in theory (or on exercise) and that in actual combat, and that the latter may vary wildly for the same unit between one day and the next. To explain this, he draws on a range of psychological factors, such as people's natural aversion to killing, the impact of fear on behaviour (which he defines as 'flee, freeze, fuss, or fight'), the effect of unit cohesion and officer compulsion, the contribution of efficacy (the sense of the comparative effectiveness of my pea-shooter against your flamethrower), physical proximity to the enemy, and the sheer ability of soldiers to think quickly when under huge pressure. Together, these various factors provide a means by which to understand why soldiers fight - or not.

Murray's book must be rated as one of the most important works on combat to have appeared in recent years, and should be required reading of everyone interested in the reality of combat. That said, it provokes as many questions as it answers and there is significant scope for a more analytical study to explore these issues in more detail.

[James Kemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up.

This is an excellent work on what happens in combat and why. It is very readable, structured into bite sized chunks on each of the key phenomena and then some joining up when it has all been explained. Each chapter opens with an account from a real soldier who experienced that psychological effect in combat. This is then analysed and explained, pulling in other examples as required to show that it isn't an isolated incident but a general effect. Those examples range from the Napoleonic Wars right up to operations in Afghanistan, and they're the products of proper scientific research not just a collection of war stories from unreliable sources.

That said there is no need to be an operational researcher, or scientist to understand the book. The language used is straightforward and direct, each of the concepts is very well explained and it forms an excellent introductory work as well as being well researched. The target audience is ordinary people without a technical or military background (although the author hopes that many military officers and civil servants will read it and think about it). Here's my favourite line from the end of the book "if you are paid to be a military analyst, don’t forget that you work for the Crown (or the people) and for soldiers. You owe no allegiance to your cost centre manager. Crack on."

If you do have a serious interest then it is worth saying that this isn't fluffy pop psychology (I like those as light reading, having read Psychology at uni). All the conclusions are backed up with hard numbers from years of solid operational research. The author is hoping to influence army officers to use tactical psychology to make them more effective, so for example "even the hardest-fought flank attack seized ground with a smaller force, captured more of the enemy and caused fewer fatalities on both sides. flanking attack was six times more effective than a frontal attack."

I'm not going to summarise this book like I did for Stress of Battle, it's way more available and affordable. Go buy it yourself (or borrow from the Library) and enjoy it. I certainly did.

[Joshua Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for all Officers.

A cracking read for any aspiring young officer.

From Korea to Helmand the explanation provide to explain how and why psychology and an understanding of psychology can win battles and wars for you before a shot is ever fired. Easy to digest and follow this book is also part guide, historical debate and amusing anecdotes. A must read.