Day 23 – Psychological Warfare
The Summer of Love and the Psychology of War: Did Australia Train Its Soldiers to Hate?
The 1960s stand in stark historical contrast. On one hand, it was the era of the counter-culture, defined by the rallying cry of ‘peace and love.’ On the other hand, it was the brutal age of the Vietnam War, and for Australia, it was the era of conscription, where thousands of young men were pulled from their civilian lives and thrust into the machinery of combat.
This juxtaposition raises a profound question about the ethics and psychology of military training: If society preached peace, and conscripts were barely out of their teens, how did the Australian military prepare them psychologically for the act of killing?
The central, challenging question is this: Did the Australian government or the Defence Department leverage psychologists to devise systematic ways to deliberately instil a hatred of the enemy, making the ultimate act of combat—taking a life—easier?
The Barrier to Killing: Overcoming the Instinct for Peace
The belief that humans kill easily is a myth. Extensive psychological research, particularly notable work done by military historian Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman (author of On Killing), confirms that the vast majority of soldiers in historical conflicts actively resisted firing their weapons directly at the enemy.
The act of taking a human life runs counter to nearly all natural human social programming. For young Australian recruits in the 1960s—many drafted, living in a world listening to protest songs and demanding disarmament—this psychological barrier would have been immensely high.
The military’s challenge was not just to teach marksmanship, but to fundamentally rewire human moral and social instincts. This is where psychology, whether formally acknowledged or merely applied through rote training techniques, becomes crucial.
Hatred vs. Dehumanisation: The Military Psychology Playbook
While it’s difficult to find specific, declassified documents from the 1960s outlining “Operation Instil Hatred,” we know that modern military training across Western nations has long relied on psychological techniques to overcome combat inhibition.
The goal wasn’t always raw, emotional hatred—which can be unstable and distract the soldier—but rather efficient dehumanisation and conditioning.
1. Classical Conditioning and Repetition
The most immediate change soldiers faced was conditioning. Drill sergeants use relentless repetition, noise, and sleep deprivation to break down the civilian identity and replace it with a collective, obedient military identity.
In the 1960s, a major shift occurred in small-arms training. Rather than training soldiers to fire at static, circular targets, training transitioned to using human-shaped silhouettes that “fell down” when hit. This seemingly small change used operant conditioning to reward the action of shooting a human-like figure, dramatically reducing the psychological barrier to firing in actual combat. The enemy becomes a target, not a person.
2. The Power of Group Identity
Hatred for the enemy is often less effective than intense love and loyalty for the comrade. Training focuses on forging an unbreakable bond within the unit. When a soldier fires their weapon, they are often doing it less for political ideology and more to protect the person standing next to them.
Psychologists would certainly advise—or military training intuitively discovered—that fostering unit cohesion (the “us vs. them” mentality) is the strongest motivator in combat. The enemy is therefore characterised as the ultimate threat to the safety and survival of the cohesive unit.
3. The Absence of Individuality
In training environments, the enemy is rarely referred to by a human name or given complex motivations. Whether the enemy was a ‘Communist aggressor’ or simply the ‘digger’ standing opposite during a sparring match, they were stripped of individual humanity. This simplification makes the ethical boundary easier to cross.
It is highly likely that Australian Defence psychologists, or those advising the high command, recognised the necessity of these tactics. They may not have explicitly codified them under the banner of “instilling hatred,” but the practical application of military training achieves the same end: overcoming the inherent moral resistance to killing.
The Legacy of the Conscript
The young man of the 1960s, who went from listening to The Beatles to carrying an SLR rifle, was a product of intense psychological manipulation necessary for effective modern warfare.
If the Australian military used psychologists to find ways to make killing easier, they were not unique; they were simply engaging in the necessary, if ethically murky, requirements of running a modern fighting force. The goal was practical: to ensure that when facing life-or-death situations, the natural human urge to retreat or freeze was overridden by immediate, trained reaction.
The method was efficient; the result was often the same as if hatred had been explicitly taught. By dehumanising the objective (the ‘target’) and elevating the emotional bond with the unit (the ‘comrade’), the military ensured that the peace-and-love generation could, when duty called, pull the trigger.
The true legacy of this training lies with the veterans. For many, that psychological conditioning—designed to be effective and immediate—was incredibly difficult to undo upon returning home, contributing to the lifelong struggle of integrating the combat experience with the values of the society they were drafted to protect.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 