26. The Three Key Motivations That Get Soldiers to Fight
Of John Keegan’s three motivations that explain why soldiers could be made to fight, the first, inducement, is about positive motivation. Things like pay, plunder, and the promise of revenge against a hated enemy. The second factor, coercion is about negative motivation. Military campaigns and battles are scary. It is thus understandable that most rational human beings would instinctively wish to avoid such hardships and hazards. To counter that human instinct, armies often sought to convince their soldiers that their commanders were scarier than the enemy.
Military commanders accomplished the goal of coercion with harsh punishments for cowardice, and for those who failed to give their all. The idea was and remains to present the warriors with a straightforward proposition: if they fought, they might live, or they might die. If they did not fight, they would certainly die, because their commanders would execute them. Keegan’s third method, narcosis, was to simply dope or liquor up the men so that, even if they lacked super courage, they could at least forget their fears long enough to endure combat. As seen below, armies went about that in a variety of ways.
