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Document Published Aerospace Power Journal - Summer  2000

An Ethos of Casualty Sensitivity

Dr. Daniel R. Mortensen*

*Daniel R. Mortensen is chief of the Research Division, Airpower Research Institute, College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He is the editor of Airpower and Ground Armies: Essays on the Evolution of Anglo-American Air Doctrine, 1940–1943 (Air University Press, 1998).

ONE OF THE greatest battles of World War II, one occasionally considered a failure, is the escape of German army remnants through the Falaise gap in Normandy. The usual argument claims that Gen Bernard Montgomery, the British army commander, and Gen Omar Bradley, the American Army commander, failed to bring their forces together, closing the gap to trap the German army. Part of the German army escaped to prolong the war into 1945. When questioned later, Bradley claimed that he “preferred a solid shoulder at Argentan to the possibility of a broken neck at Falaise.”¹ Bradley believed that German forces were being ground to oblivion by air attack and artillery firing from the shoulders. Why chance a decimating struggle between his soldiers and German remnants in the Falaise gap desperately seeking to escape to their home country?

My reading of history suggests a counterview to the essence of Dr. Jeffrey Record’s essay on “Force-Protection Fetishism” (this issue). Americans have a long-standing cultural characteristic—sensitivity to casualties—and, if not horrified during the heat of the moment, afterwards reflect with revulsion on the human costs of some terrible battles. One can see this in the aftermath of both the American Civil War and the western front in World War I. Coincidentally, one finds a consistent theme in American military history of employing technology—airpower particularly—in exchange for casualties, even when airpower itself precipitates heavy casualties, as it did in World War II. The decision to drop the atomic bomb at Hiroshima fits into this category. There is also a persistent theme of using artillery in place of deadly tactical infantry fighting along the fronts. During the war, the American Army was famous for its profligate employment of guns to “soften” the enemy, preparatory to infantry attack. In short, American casualty sensitivity long predates Vietnam.

Dr. Record is accurate on the point that the air war over Serbia projected dangerous suggestions of American paralysis about combat casualties. This issue needs serious attention if the United States is to be militarily effective in twenty-first-century battles, and, indeed, much has already been written in the press and elsewhere on the subject (including the article by Maj Charles Hyde in this issue). But to consider this fear of casualties a recent fetish is more hype than reality. Take a further look at casualty sensitivity in World War II.

Max Hastings’s study of the Normandy invasion, June–August 1944, captured another sense of America’s traditional casualty-aversion ethos: “The attitude of most Allied soldiers was much influenced by the belief, conscious or unconscious, that they possessed the means to dispense with anything resembling personal fanaticism on the battlefield: their huge weight of fire-power. . . . Artillery and air power accomplished much of the killing of Germans that had to be done sooner or later to make a breakthrough possible.”² Hastings argues persuasively that even in 1944 “an ethos, a mood pervades all armies at all times about what is and is not acceptable, what is expected.”³ Although it is true that the German army, its back to a Russian wall, had to fight with great verve, the Allies at that point were not fearful of losing the war. Their purpose was based on a more ethereal concept—doing a necessary job for the sake of democracy and decency. This did not engender as many fiercely focused combat soldiers. Nonetheless, many American forces learned to fight well in Normandy; many units were unpurposefully weak. As Hastings points out, Montgomery and Bradley understood that they were not there to demonstrate the superiority of their fighting men “but to win the war at tolerable cost.”⁴

Another important World War II example that demonstrates casualty sensitivity was Gen Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to stop Allied forces on the Elbe, short of the important political centers of Berlin and Prague. Ike was critiqued later for not taking into account the Russian menace, political considerations, and acquisition of additional central European territory. As Forrest Pogue put it, “From the purely military viewpoint of the quickest way to end the war in Germany with the fewest number of casualties to our troops . . . his decision was certainly the proper one.”⁵

A couple of other points in Record’s article caught my attention. One is the suggestion that ethnic cleansing accelerated because airpower remained at high altitudes and ground options were denied. The cleansing would have continued regardless of what air did, high or low. And it certainly would not have served a purpose to threaten injection of ground forces. Just how long would it take to get ground forces to the slaughter site? Nothing could have stopped the horrible ethnic killings in short order. The alternative to using airpower was to do nothing, given NATO’s political realities—and that is another issue.

Record is correct about casualty sensitivity, but I disagree that “protection of one’s own troops is top priority.” I doubt that the National Command Authorities or national defense leaders put troop protection before operational effectiveness. And I certainly think Record is extreme in suggesting that we confine our enemies to those incapable of shooting in the air. Nor do I think it sensible to suggest (even if this is tongue-in-cheek) that we do away with casualty-prone ground forces. Even the most rabid airpower advocate does not think the Air Force should take over the Army’s funding, except for “homeland defense tasks and burials at Arlington Cemetery!” Record’s article is stimulating but full of dangerous nonsense that detracts from its inherent instructive value.

Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Notes

1. Omar Nelson Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (New York: Holt, 1951), 377.

2. Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 317.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Forrest Pogue, “The Decision to Halt at the Elbe,” in Command Decisions (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1990), 492.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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