The usual recording of information and data to outline the "logic" of a war is not the subject of this book. Such an endeavor requires the presentation, combination, and analysis of documents and evidence, as they are shaped at the leadership level, at the level of decision-making.

This book, on the contrary, deals with the soldier on the battlefield, the professional of war, as he is "formed" from the moment of enlistment and systematic learning and conditioning to kill mercilessly until the moment of the horrific extraction of pleasure from the pain and mutilation of the other, the enemy who is treated as subhuman, human waste, a nothing.

(. . .) [Excerpt from the text of the preface]