Seminar Week 4 – Soldiers and Motivation
What made the vast majority of Allied soldiers carry on fighting, though they faced
daily the twin prospects of killing other human beings and themselves being killed?
Were they fighting for ‘king and country’, ‘mom and apple pie’, and ‘liberal
democratic principles’ as contemporary propaganda suggested, or was it for some
less lofty, even mundane principle? John Ellis, an accomplished military historian,
takes up this question in the final chapter of his 1980 book the Sharp End: The
Fighting Man in World War II. In his book, Ellis turned his back on traditional
military history, which examined for the most part leading strategists, politicians,
and generals, to examine the average combat soldier, and asked what made him tick.
Discussion Questions:
pp. 281-286 According to Ellis, what sort of transformation did soldiers undergo
once they were in combat?
pp. 286-288 What did combat soldiers hope would happen once the war ended?
pp. 288-292 How does the author describe the alienation combat soldiers felt?
pp. 292-302 What role did nationality, race, and what the author calls ‘caste’ play
in the combat soldier’s mind?
pp. 302-305 What was the attitude of combat soldiers to replacement troops?
pp. 306-319 What were the consequences of the camaraderie that developed
among combat soldiers?
Overall question: What are the implications of Ellis’s findings on the
motivations of combat soldiers? How does they influence our understanding
of why World War II was fought?