The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

Jesse Glenn Gray

U of Nebraska Press, Jan 1, 1999 - History - 242 pages

"A superb study of modern combat man, and his relationship to death, and his thoughts about it."-Chicago Sunday Tribune. J. Glenn Gray entered the army as a private in May 1941, having been drafted on the same day he was informed of his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. He was discharged as a second lieutenant in October 1945, having been awarded a battlefield commission during fighting in France. Gray saw service in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany in a counter-espionage unit. Fourteen years after his discharge, Gray began to reread his war journals and letters in an attempt to find some meaning in his wartime experiences. The result is The Warriors, a philosophical meditation on what warfare does to us and an examination of the reasons soldiers act as they do. Gray explains the attractions of battle-the adrenaline rush, the esprit de corps-and analyzes the many rationalizations made by combat troops to justify their actions. In the end, Gray notes, "War reveals dimensions of human nature both above and below the acceptable standards for humanity."

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User Review  - librisissimo - LibraryThing

An extrapolative memoir with some research.

Contents

• CHAPTER: 25
• CHAPTER THREE: 59
• CHAPTER FOUR: 97
• CHAPTER FIVE: 131
• CHAPTER: 171
• CONCLUSION: 215

About the author

Born in Hanover, Germany, Hannah Arendt received her doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1928. A victim of naziism, she fled Germany in 1933 for France, where she helped with the resettlement of Jewish children in Palestine. In 1941, she emigrated to the United States. Ten years later she became an American citizen. Arendt held numerous positions in her new country---research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations, chief editor of Schocken Books, and executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in New York City. A visiting professor at several universities, including the University of California, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, and university professor on the graduate faculty of the New School for Social Research, in 1959 she became the first woman appointed to a full professorship at Princeton. She also won a number of grants and fellowships. In 1967 she received the Sigmund Freud Prize of the German Akademie fur Sprache und Dichtung for her fine scholarly writing. Arendt was well equipped to write her superb The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) which David Riesman called "an achievement in historiography." In his view, "such an experience in understanding our times as this book provides is itself a social force not to be underestimated." Arendt's study of Adolf Eichmann at his trial---Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)---part of which appeared originally in The New Yorker, was a painfully searching investigation into what made the Nazi persecutor tick. In it, she states that the trial of this Nazi illustrates the "banality of evil." In 1968, she published Men in Dark Times, which includes essays on Hermann Broch, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht (see Vol. 2), as well as an interesting characterization of Pope John XXIII.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle
• Author: Jesse Glenn Gray
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: U of Nebraska Press, 1999
• ISBN: 0803270763, 9780803270763
• Length: 242 pages
• Subjects: History / Military / World War II