![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
A functional conceptualisation of morale is proposed, which focuses its meaning on motivation and the willingness to act rather than mood and group dynamics. Morale, it is argued, emerges from the subtle interrelationships of the many factors known to affect military means. It can be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively, allowing the interaction between morale and policy to be explored in a manner that facilitates insight into the strategic process. A case study from the North African campaign of World War II is presented to explore in detail the relationship between morale and the art of war – strategy.
Notes
1 Samuel A. Stouffer et al., The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life, Volume 1 (London: OUP 1949), 3.
2 Frederick J. Manning, ‘Morale, Cohesion and Esprit de Corps’, in Reuven Gal and A. David Mangelsdorff (eds), Handbook of Military Psychology (Chichester: Wiley 1991), 453.
3 Godfrey Hutchinson, Xenophon and the Art of Command (London: Greenhill Books 2000), 60.
4 Ibid., 191.
5 Letter from Napoleon to his brother Joseph advising him on how to rule Spain, 27 Aug. 1808. Quoted in Trevor N. Dupuy, ‘Theory of Combat’, in Franklin D. Margiotta (ed.), Brassey’s Encyclopaedia of Military History and Biography (London: Brassey 1994), 967.
6 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (London: Everyman’s Library 1993), 216. First published in German in 1832.
7 Col. Ardant du Picq, ‘Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle’, in Curtis Brown (ed.), Roots of Strategy, Book Two: Three Military Classics (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books 1987), 65.
8 David Englander, ‘Mutinies and Military Morale’, in Hew Strachan (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (Oxford: OUP 1998), 191.
9 B.H. Liddell Hart, The Decisive Wars of History: A Study in Strategy (London: G Bell and Sons 1929), 3.
10 Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 (London: Little, Brown 2003), p. 138.
11 General Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane 2005), 241.
12 John Baynes, Morale: A Study of Men and Courage: The Second Scottish Rifles at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, 1915 (London: Cassell 1967), 92.
13 National Archives (NA) War Office (WO) 259/44 Army Morale: Paper by Adjutant General, May 1944.
14 André Loez, ‘Pour en Finir avec le “Moral” des Combattants’, in Michel Houdiard (ed.), Combats: Hommage à Jules Maurin, Historien (Paris: M Houdiard 2010).
15 For some interesting studies on combat effectiveness see: Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray’s three volume study, Military Effectiveness (London: Allen and Unwin 1988); Sam C. Sarkesian (ed.), Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress, and the Volunteer Military (London: Sage 1980); Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton UP 2004).
16 S.J. Motowidlo, B.E. Dowell, W.C. Borman, P.D. Johnson and M.D. Dunnette, Motivation, Satisfaction, and Morale in Army Careers: A Review of Theory and Measurement (Minneapolis: Personnel Decisions Research Inst 1976), 49–52.
17 Robert M. Guion, ‘Industrial Morale (A Symposium): 1. The Problem of Terminology’, Personnel Psychology 11/1 (1958), 60–2.
18 Reuven Gal and Frederick J. Manning, ‘Morale and its Components: A Cross National Comparison’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 17/4 (1987), 369. This tripartite view of morale is, according to Manning, ‘Morale, Cohesion and Esprit de Corps’ in Gal and Mangelsdorff (eds), Handbook of Military Psychology, 455, similar to those of I.N. Evonic, ‘Motivation and Morale in Military Noncombat Organisations’, Proceedings of the NATO Panel VIII Symposium on Motivation and Morale in NATO Forces (Brussels: NATO 1980) and K.R. Smith, ‘Understanding Morale: With Special Reference to the Morale of the Australian Infantryman in Vietnam’, Defence Force Journal 52 (May/June 1985), 53–62.
19 Motowidlo et al., Motivation, Satisfaction, and Morale in Army Careers, 49.
20 Manning, ‘Morale, Cohesion and Esprit de Corps’ in Gal and Mangelsdorff, Handbook of Military Psychology, 455.
21 Thomas W. Britt and James M. Dickinson, ‘Morale during Military Operations: A Positive Psychology Approach’, in Thomas W. Britt, Carl Andrew Castro and Amy B. Adler (eds), Military Life: The Psychology of Serving in Peace and Combat, Volume 1: Military Performance (London: Routledge 2006), 162.
22 John A. Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France (Oxford: Westview 1996), 34–5.
23 Stephen D. Wesbrook, ‘The Potential for Military Disintegration’, in Sam C. Sarkessian (ed.), Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress, and the Volunteer Military (London: Sage 1980), 257.
24 John Keegan, ‘Towards a Theory of Combat Motivation’, in Paul Addison and Angus Calder (eds), Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West 1939–1945 (London: Pimlico 1997), 6.
25 Ibid.
26 Hew Strachan, ‘The Soldier’s Experience in Two World Wars: Some Historiographical Comparisons’, in Paul Addison and Angus Calder (eds), Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West 1939–1945 (London: Pimlico 1997), 374–5.
27 S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York: Morrow 1966), 165.
28 Samuel A. Stouffer et al., The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath (New York: Wiley 1965), 101.
29 NA WO 277/7 A.B. McPherson, ‘The Second World War 1939–1945, Army Discipline’, 2.
30 Imperial War Museum (IWM) 99/1/2 Major-General Raymond Briggs Papers, Paper by Field-Marshal Montgomery, ‘Morale in Battle: Analysis’, 30 April 1946, 43.
31 Ibid., 47–8.
32 Ibid, 51–3.
33 Douglas A. Bernstein, Alison Clarke-Stewart, Edward J. Roy and Christopher D. Wickens, Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1997), 337.
34 In fact, one of Britt’s other studies supports this view. He asked a small sample of soldiers to indicate what they thought were the key characteristics of morale. He found that soldiers were most likely to indicate the attributes of motivation and drive in their views of morale (Quoted in Britt and Dickinson, ‘Morale during Military Operations’, in Britt et al., Military Life, 163).
35 See for example: Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare (Oxford: Macmillan 1985); Lieutenant-Colonel C.D. Daly, ‘A Psychological Analysis of Military Morale’, Army Quarterly 32/1 (April 1936); John Ellis, The Sharp End: The Fighting Man in World War II (London: Pimlico 1993); Stephen G. Fritz, Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II (Kentucky: UP of Kentucky 1995); Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The Behaviour of Men in Battle (London: Cassell 2004); Peter Karsten (ed.), Motivating Soldiers: Morale or Mutiny (London: Garland 1998); Anthony Kellett, Combat Motivation: The Behaviour of Soldiers in Battle (London: Kluwer-Nijhoff 1982); Manning, ‘Morale, Cohesion and Esprit de Corps’ in Gal and Mangelsdorff (eds), Handbook of Military Psychology; Roger R. Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 2011); Edward A. Shils and Morris Janowitz, ‘Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II’, Public Opinion Quarterly 12 (Summer 1948).
36 Strachan, ‘The Soldier’s Experience in Two World Wars’, in Addison and Calder, Time to Kill, 371.
37 Hew Strachan, ‘The Morale of the German Army 1917–18’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle, Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London: Leo Cooper 1996), 388.
38 Strachan, ‘The Soldier’s Experience in Two World Wars’, in Addison and Calder, Time to Kill, 375.
39 J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (London: Yale UP 2005), 393.
40 Marshall, Men Against Fire, 158.
41 Stouffer, Combat and Its Aftermath, 106.
42 Motowidlo et al., Motivation, Satisfaction, and Morale in Army Careers, 49.
43 See for example Janowitz and Shils, ‘Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II’ and the special issue on combat cohesion in Armed Forces and Society 32/4 (2006), and the continuing debate that follows.
44 Guy L. Siebold, ‘The Essence of Military Group Cohesion’, Armed Forces and Society 33/2 (2007), 288.
45 J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts, 393.
46 Marshall, Men Against Fire, 161–2.
47 See for example Britt and Dickinson, ‘Morale during Military Operations’, in Britt et al., Military Life, 160.
48 See for instance, Jonathan Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein (Cambridge: CUP 2011), Chapter 8.
49 Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic, 21.
50 Clausewitz, On War, 83.
51 Hew Strachan, ‘A Clausewitz for Every Season’, American Interest, July/Aug. 2007, 33.
52 Clausewitz, On War, 207.
53 Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: OUP 1999), 17.
54 Basil H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach (London: Faber and Faber 1967), 335.
55 Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War’, Survival 52/5 (Oct.-- Nov. 2010), 158.
56 Hew Strachan, ‘The Lost Meaning of Strategy’, Survival 47/3 (Autumn 2005), 52.
57 Clausewitz, On War, 86.
58 ‘Material capability’ encompasses what current British Defence Doctrine (4th ed., Nov. 2011) refers to as the ‘physical’ and ‘conceptual’ components of fighting power. ‘Will to fight’ equates to the ‘moral’ component of fighting power as set out in British Defence Doctrine.
59 Michael Howard, ‘When are Wars Decisive?’, Survival 41/1 (1999), 128.
60 Gray, Modern Strategy, 18–19.
61 For other studies that have made use of Clausewitz’s perspective on the relationship between ‘means’ and ‘will’, see Mark Clodfelter, ‘Aiming to Break Will: America’s World War II Bombing of German Morale and its Ramifications’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/3 (June 2010); Niall Ferguson, ‘Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat’, War in History 11/2 (2004); Howard, ‘When are Wars Decisive?’.
62 Mao-Tse-tung, Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press 1963), 217–18.
63 See for example, Colin M. Fleming, ‘New or Old Wars? Debating a Clausewitzian Future’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32/2 (April 2009); Bart Shuurman, ‘Clausewitz and the “New Wars” Scholars’, Parameters (Spring 2010).
64 See John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2005).
65 See Fleming, ‘New or Old Wars?’; Shuurman, ‘Clausewitz and the “New Wars” Scholars’.
66 Quoted in Shuurman, ‘Clausewitz and the “New Wars” Scholars’, 92.
67 Colin S. Gray, 'Moral Advantage, Strategic Advantage?’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/3 (June 2010).
68 Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought (London: Frank Cass 2001), 15.
69 Shils and Janowitz, ‘Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II’; Marshall, Men Against Fire; Stouffer et al., Combat and Its Aftermath.
70 Leonard Wong, Thomas A. Kolditz, Raymond A. Millen and Terrence A. Potter, ‘Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War’, Report for the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, July 2003.
71 NA WO 193/453 Assessment of Morale by Statistical Methods (Report by I.S.2), not dated but probably 1942 or 1943.
72 Clausewitz, On War, 698.
73 See Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, Chapter 8.
74 Archives New Zealand (ANZ) WAII/1/DA/508/1 Vol. 1 Middle East Military Censorship Weekly Summary (MEMCWS), No. XXXIX (5 to 11 Aug. 1942), 1.
75 NA WO 177/324 Monthly Report on Health of Eighth Army, March, July, Aug. 1942.
76 NA WO 177/324 Memo ‘Sickness, Army Troops’, by DDMS. Eighth Army, 26 July 1942; Report on tour of Eighth Army, 18 to 24 July 1942 by Consultant in Psychological Medicine (Brig. G.W.B. James), 28 July 1942.
77 NA WO 177/324 Monthly Statistical Report on Health of Eighth Army, July 1942.
78 ANZ WAII/8/Part 2/BBB Freyberg Papers, Morale.
79 Jonathan Fennell, ‘Courage, Cowardice and Combat Performance: Eighth Army and the Crisis in North Africa, 1942’, War in History 20/1 (2013).
80 NA WO 163/89 Executive Committee of the Army Council (ECAC), The Death Penalty for Offences Committed on Active Service, 21 July 1942.
81 Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, Chapter 7.
82 Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Alanbrooke Papers, Auchinleck to Brooke, 25 July 1942.
83 See Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, Chapters 5, 6 and 7.
84 Australian War Memorial (AWM) 54 423/11/43 Middle East Military Censorship Fortnightly Summary (MEMCFS), No. XLIX (21 Oct. to 3 Nov. 1942), 27.
85 Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914–1994 (London: Pimlico 2002), 217; Mark Harrison, Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War (Oxford: OUP 2004), 123.
86 NA WO 177/324 Monthly Statistical Report on Health of Eighth Army, Oct. and Nov. 1942.
87 ANZ WAII/8/Part 2/BBB Freyberg Papers, Morale.
88 NA WO 177/324 Monthly Statistical Report on Health of Eighth Army, July 1942.
89 Niall Barr, Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein (London: Pimlico 2005), 397.
90 Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, 252–6.
91 B.L. Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery of Alamein (London: Collins 1958), 89.
92 Martin Kitchen, Rommel’s Desert War: Waging World War II in North Africa, 1941–1943 (Cambridge: CUP 2009), 309.
93 Walter Warlimont, ‘The Decision in the Mediterranean 1942’, in Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Jürgen Rohwer (eds), The Decisive Battles of World War II: The German View (London: A. Deutsch 1965), 203.
94 Kitchen, Rommel’s Desert War, 341.
95 Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, see Chapter 1.
96 NA WO 201/2596 Lessons from Operations: Training, Preliminary Draft Lessons from Operations October and November 1942, 24.
97 Shelford Bidwell, Modern Warfare: A Study of Men, Weapons and Theories (London: Allen Lane 1973), 156–7.
98 NA WO 291/904 Army Operational Research Group Memorandum No. 635, ‘The Morale Effect of Bombardment’, 6.
99 ANZ WAII/11/20 German – Italian Forces in Africa 23 Oct. 1942 to 23 Feb. 1943, From German War Narrative, 2 Nov. 1942.
100 Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, 89–94.
101 Stephen Budiansky, Air Power: The Men, Machines, and Ideas That Revolutionised War, from Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II (London: Viking 2004), 305; Richard P. Hallion, Storm Over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press 1992), 283; Jonathan Fennell, ‘Air Power and Morale in the North African Campaign of the Second World War’, Air Power Review 15/2 (Summer 2012).
102 Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, Chapter 2.
103 Derived from statistics quoted by Stephen Bungay, Alamein (London: Aurum 2002), 196–7.
104 Kitchen, Rommel’s Desert War, 312, 323, 346.
105 Harrison, Medicine and Victory, 88–9.
106 Kitchen, Rommel’s Desert War, 264, 292.
107 Ibid., 323–4.
108 For a critique of the literature on primary group cohesion and the role played by the primary group in maintaining Eighth Army’s morale in the desert please see Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, Chapter 8.
109 See Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, for a more detailed analysis of the role of morale in the Battle of El Alamein.
110 NA WO 277/16 Sparrow, ‘Morale’, 2.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jonathan Fennell
Jonathan Fennell is a Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London. He was awarded a Doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2008 and his first book, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign, was published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press. He has addressed conferences in the UK, Europe and North America and has had papers published in War in History, The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies and Air Power Review. His current research, which will be published in a second book for Cambridge University Press, has as its main objective the investigation of how, not only economic, technological and logistical factors, but also political, social, institutional and cultural ones, affected the performance and experience of the British and Commonwealth Armies in World War II.