How soldiers deal with the job of killing

[JMA]

JMA, by your measure the Wehrmacht was a terrible military force.

Its officers were falling apart quite often, turned into walking dead, many became alcoholics (especially in rear or flying units).

They did send their officers into vacation, into especially healthy and relaxing Kurorte", sent them away from combat on staff or training assignments and so on or simply insisted that they recovered fully after injuries, requiring weeks of recovery from combat.

Methinks you misunderstand me.

An officer falling apart in combat is the worst case scenario. Panic spreads faster than lightning (I'm told). Therefore all efforts must be made to prevent that happening. When it happens, and it will, act quickly to remove and replace he person.

Two problems. In peacetime there is less importance attached to careful officer selection (based on the martial requirements of soldiering) so those with gregarious sociability (but often little backbone) seem to slip through the selection net. As the war progresses the standard of candidates for officer selection starts to drop and the demand for 'numbers' allows weaker candidates to slip through.

While this is happening with the officers the NCOs are having their own problems (read recent post by Ken White on the matter). So at the end of the day you hope and pray your enemy are having greater problems than you are in this regard... because in the end it is the least incompetent military that wins the fighting war (of course the politicians are bound to screw that up as well).

Rotations are a good thing if they can be maintained (which as the war drags on they probably can't). The system which I agreed with was based on three years as a platoon/troop commander and thereafter 18 months/two years per posting.

The 'route' followed by an officer would be determined by his performance and not some egalitarian ticket punching requirement. That's as I see it.