Source: TW
Alright team, quick thread tonight on “morale.” I’ll get back to obstacle breaching tomorrow. Amateur military enthusiasts bandy the term about constantly. But what is morale, really? Like most things in the military it’s both far more and far less than it’s cracked up to be.
“Far more” because morale can be shorthand for unit cohesion, which is extremely important. However, most amateurs use the term in the sense of “how happy are the troops right now?” That’s generally quite unimportant. Let’s consult Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to explain why. Soldiers in combat generally exist at the rock bottom of the pyramid of needs. They are primarily going to be concerned with their basic physiological needs - food, water, warmth, and sleep. All of those get put on the back burner in combat. This is not a recipe for happiness. Troops in the field are basically homeless people with guns.(5) Being hungry, cold, tired, sleeping in uncomfortable places way too close to people you don’t particularly like, and in constant danger is part of the job.
Furthermore, soldiers - up to even extremely senior officers in command - are necessarily going to have a very “stovepiped” view of the war. They’re living day to day looking down their gunsights or staring at a map table, not reading whatever bullshit the news is putting out. As such they’re not going to care about events on the other side of the map.
Morale among the troops is meaningfully affected by how well their physiological needs are being met and how likely they are to die (particularly pointlessly) in the immediate future.(4) Soldiers’ physical needs can be looked after by proper supplies, and their needs for “safety” (inasmuch as that exists in combat) can be met by proper training, equipment and leadership they have confidence in. It’s important to realize that militaries put a lot of time and effort into training and conditioning their troops. Most units have a surprisingly deep bench of potential leaders. Some US Army units in the Hurtgenwald kept attacking after losing every NCO in the ranks. As such general collapses of morale and mass surrenders generally only happen when an army is well and truly beaten and further resistance is pointless.(4)
Armies also have considerable coercive powers to keep the troops in line moving forward regardless of whatever they’d personally like to be doing. This can get extremely brutal - the Germans put some 14,000 of their own soldiers in front of firing squads in WWII.(4) As such a “collapse in morale” is really a point at which things become so awful that even the full, awful force of military discipline cannot keep the troops in the fight. Personal happiness and vague notions of patriotism and military glory don’t even come into it.