Coercion, Battlefield Performance, and Victory in Modern War

• In Event: Military Effectiveness in Modern Wars

Abstract

Existing theories of combat motivation and military effectiveness largely dismiss the utility of coercing one's own soldiers to fight. Yet nearly 20 percent of all belligerents in modern wars fought since 1800 have employed specialized units (``blocking detachments'') authorized to kill faltering or retreating soldiers. What remains unclear, however, is whether these units boost the combat fortunes of armies or merely hasten their battlefield collapse. We marshal two types of evidence to examine whether these units improve battlefield performance and the odds of eventual victory. First, we draw on a new dataset, Project Mars, detailing the nature and deployment of these blocking detachments and their association with broader war outcomes. We then use new microlevel evidence from the personnel records of 30 million Red Army soldiers in World War II, to estimate the effect of blocking detachments on Soviet soldiers' battlefield performance against Nazi Germany.

Authors

• Jason Lyall, Dartmouth College

• Yuri M. Zhukov, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor