New book explores why soldiers carry out brutal acts during conflicts, from bayoneting prisoners to death to raping women and murdering families

The atrocities of war: New book explores why soldiers carry out brutal acts during conflicts, from bayoneting prisoners to death to raping women and murdering families

Shocking images capturing the atrocities of war have emerged in a book examining why soldiers carry out brutal acts during conflicts.

The pictures include Chinese prisoners being bayoneted to death, families being rounded up and slaughtered in Vietnam and German victims of rape during the Second World War.

Disturbing images also show Nazi executions in Poland and the Ukraine as well as torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. 

The author of a new book outlines a number of factors that could explain why such atrocities took place - from the way in which soldiers are indoctrinated, to the living conditions they endure and the tactical and military situation on the ground.

Shocking images capturing the atrocities of war have emerged in a book examining brutal acts carried out by soldiers. One shows Japanese soldiers bayoneting prisoners to death in the former Chinese capital of Nanking in 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War

One picture shows Vietnamese women and children huddled together before being killed by American soldiers in the My Lai massacre of March 1968. Several hundred civilians were murdered in the atrocity

Disturbing images also show the horrors of Second World War. They include this harrowing picture of a young Polish girl crying over the body of her dead sister

The pictures also show American guards and their prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraqi in 2004. One shows a detainee being threatened with a dog

Economic and political conditions in the countries involved are also counted among the factors that may have sparked the violent actions.