After an introduction showing three examples of military disintegration, the author examines six historical occurrences in depth: The India Mutiny of 1857; the 1917 French Army mutinies; the depredations following the British siege of San Sebastian, 1813; the surrender of the U.S. 106th Infantry Division in 1944; the Sand Creek Indian Massacre, 1864; and the My Lai massacre in 1968. The final chapter begins with a recapitulation of the four processes shown to be the foundations of disintegration-leadership failure, collapse of the units’ internal primary groups, alienation, and desperation among the troops-and continues with an analysis of the crowd behaviors to which these processes give rise.
The book ends with a brief discussion of the moral dilemma that disintegration imposes on military institutions.