As jef-o posted, attenuators reduce the signal passed through them. Sometimes you do need them between the mic and the preamp. If your preamp has a high minimum gain (like 20db) and the mics send a really hot signal, you can get clipping at the output of the preamp.
This happened to me with the KM184->MV100 at really loud shows (like 9:30 club Mule shows) so I used a 10db inline attenuator between the mics and preamp to drop the input signal and prevent the MV100 outputs from being over driven.