How fighting ends

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Holger Afflerbach suggests surrender is the single biggest contributor to the containment of violence in warfare and a key element in understanding the cultural history of warfare.

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Institution: University of Leeds

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Holger Afflerbach suggests surrender is the single biggest contributor to the containment of violence in warfare and a key element in understanding the cultural history of warfare.

Image courtesy of interviewee. January 25, 2024

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The speaker discusses their book titled "Stan the Art of Defeat: A History of Surrender," which analyzes the dynamics of warfare, particularly the cessation of fighting and the concept of surrender. The book is available in German and Italian, with no English translation.

The speaker emphasizes that the book primarily focuses on the nature of battles and how they conclude, rather than peace conferences or political histories. They explore why soldiers fight, what motivates surrender, and the circumstances relating to it, arguing that the act of surrender is often tied to saving lives, though it's not the sole reason wars end.

The narrative recounts historical examples, including the high casualty rates at battles like the First Battle of the Somme, to highlight the willingness of soldiers to risk their lives. The author draws a distinction between systemic and non-systemic wars; the former adhere to certain rules that allow for a formal acknowledgment of defeat, while in non-systemic wars, the lack of rules often results in total annihilation of the losing side.

The speaker elaborates on the evolution of the rules of surrender from early warfare practices to the codified rules across different eras, citing examples such as the ransom practices of the Middle Ages and the Geneva Conventions. They contend that despite the inherent violence of war, the establishment and adherence to rules can reduce suffering and fatalities, thereby humanizing the chaotic nature of war.

Overall, the book aims to provide insight into the complexities of surrender within historical contexts, affirming the importance of rules in mitigating the brutality of warfare.

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It's a pleasure for me to talk to you about my book,

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which was published a few years ago.

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And, I wanted only to hold it, in front of me

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so that, the audience can see the books.

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It's, it's a German

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and unfortunately, there's also a, there not unfortunately,

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there's a translation,

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but unfortunately into Italian, not into English.

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So the book is available in German and, and English,

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and it is called, Stan the Art of Defeat.

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And the subtitle is A History of surrender.

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History of surrender kind of does not capture

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fully what it is about.

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And for that reason, it's only the subtitle

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because the book is about fighting

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and it is about how fighting ends, how battles end

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and how, fighting.

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And it, it's kind of analyzing the acumenical point

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of, of any war will say how and why battles and,

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and why do battles and before the vanquished dies in battle.

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So I take a Roman saying by Ro who said, out,

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out, or win or die, I take that literally

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and just say, this is now how wars end.

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Because normally the vanish stays alive.

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And it is also not a book about peace conference.

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So it is not about, the conference of yen in 1815,

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or it is about Versailles in 1919

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or the piece of Australia in 1648.

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That is not what it's about. It is not a political history.

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It is really, a book about the

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battle and soldiers in battle and why fighting

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and when fighting ends, and how can we explain that?

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And all of us know, of course, that,

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soldiers risk their lives for course.

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Let's take the battle of the song.

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Most famous example in British history.

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1st of July, 1916, the English,

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the British troops attack,

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and in a few hours they have 57,100 losses.

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At 19,000 of them are dead in a few hours.

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So we, we know soldiers risk their lives,

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absolutely, but this now surrender

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and stopping to fight only about saving lives.

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And my answer for that is no,

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because if saving lives would be the argument,

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there would be no wars

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because, you know, you, you would not even start that big if

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everybody would be afraid to lose, his or her life.

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And we can, you may know, Joseph Hellas, catch 22,

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probably most famous,

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in second World War, American War novel.

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There's this hero, Ian, who does not want to fight,

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and he's completely absurd, but he's only completely absurd

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because everybody else is fighting

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and he tries to extract himself from fighting.

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And if everybody would be like your Syrian,

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there would be no army and no war,

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because the people would run away.

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My book starts in prehistoric times, really

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asks, is there a,

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can we say something about surrender and stone age?

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And it ends up with suicide. Bombas.

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Yeah, it was written before this,

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things in Ukraine happened and so on.

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And this is not included,

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but, it's going, deep into the 21st century.

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And if we cover this ground,

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I cannot do everything by myself on,

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based on archival research,

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and I have to rely on the work of others.

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For example, I used books on prehistoric warfare

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by American, pre historians, anthropologists, and so on.

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But I did also research by myself.

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I went, for example to the

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National Archives in Q Gardens.

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I went to the German military archives,

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and I, made in my field,

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which is mainly the first World War, also a lot

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of research on, the concrete circumstances of surrender.

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I would compare that now,

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or I would approach the answer, with a kind

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of slight detour if you permit,

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because, war is,

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is is a term similar like cancer.

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It is an utterly negative phenomenon,

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but it is a headline

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for things which have the principle in common.

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But there are very different,

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if you look towards the details

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and how they work in the case of war, we can say,

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for example, there is interstate war, there is civil war,

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there are religious wars, there's partisan or gore war

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or, the war of terrorists or piracy and naval war.

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And very important, often forgotten siege warfare,

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which is always famous

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for the most bloody outcome possible.

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And we see something like that right now in Gaza,

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which is a kind of siege warfare.

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It's normal that siege warfare, completely degenerates

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and we can say cessation of hostilities

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and how fighting ends is different in

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Every single case.

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And a book which now tries to define

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how fighting ends in all these different forms

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of work would become very unhand

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because history normally is not the signs of, of,

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of common rules.

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It's a, it's, it's a art

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of the single case, so to say.

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And every historical circumstances is particular

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and it's not comparable and so on.

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And for that reason, I boil it down to two

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wars only systemic wars which accept rules

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and non-systemic wars, which don't.

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And you can follow that through the history

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of war from the beginning to the end.

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And the sample argument of, of, of a systemic war is

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that the loser gives up at some point,

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vanish gives up at some point,

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and the victor enables him doing so,

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which is in the systemic war, the key rule.

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And in the non-systemic war,

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which was already a phenomenon in the Middle Ages,

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in the middle ages,

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medieval lawyers called non-systemic war.

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This means in be you have no rules.

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The only rule is violence

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and who wins, kills the vanish on the spot.

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That is the only rule you could calculate with.

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And, you are wiped out if you lose.

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And I go then through the development

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because, you know, describing non-systemic war, it's,

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it's always something very similar

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in systemic war.

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We see a very significant development over time.

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So it starts in, ant cultures, so Greece

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and Rome, and it goes,

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and there was pretty much this victus we'll say,

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who who loses is done.

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It's, very many cases of very brutal, treatment

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of the vanished there enslaved, killed,

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brought into quarries and so on.

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And, entire cities were wiped out population wise.

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And then in the Middle Ages, surprisingly, we had a kind

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of progress in that

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because at least in a social class of a, of,

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of noble man, you know, the, some shire,

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they started to take each other prisoner

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and they invented a ransom system.

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And that is, the important thing because it's not

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because they were good human beings,

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but if you made, a high ranking

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prisoner, you could get a very, a very,

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very good ransom for the person.

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And so it started to establish itself

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because the vanish stayed alive and the victor became rich.

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So both sides had something of that.

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And in early modern times, this rule

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was extended to entire armies.

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And we had ransom lists from the private to the general.

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So this was how it worked in early modern times.

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And then from the French Revolution onwards in the 19th

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century, there were tons of codifications which made,

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p Ws and prisoners of war

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and captivity and surrender

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and rules of surrender always more precise.

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The Liba code in American, law book in 1863,

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or the Geneva Conventions, which started in 1864

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or The Hague in 1899 and 1907,

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and then the Geneva Codes in 1949, you know,

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there it became always more codified.

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And now you can say, did it really matter?

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And the answer is, I make now an example from

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the Second World War.

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The Germany Alterna, Nazi Germany was a member

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of the Geneva Convention, and so were the western powers.

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The Soviet Union was not.

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And if you look towards who survived, captivity,

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57% of the Russian, of the Soviet

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POWs died in German captivity.

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And only 3.5% of the British

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will say, rules matter.

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And in this case, we are talking about millions of people

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who were saved by these rules.

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And, that is basically what this book is about.

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It is a central rule of war.

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So at least I don't see a more important one that,

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a war ends, with a possibility to survive it.

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Because war I will not say war is a game,

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but war has, some, comparable aspects

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of a deadly game, which is also, for example, the view

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of the Israeli military story, Martin, fun and so on.

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Um, so that we have rules.

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And, a game without rule, as I said,

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is a non-systemic war where people get only killed.

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And that's it. And,

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because it is the most important rule of war,

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it found my interest from the start.

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And also because it is linked with a code of honor,

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which was my real incentive

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for myself when I started the research because I saw it

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Many from the perspective of the vanished.

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When is the vanished allowed to host the white flag?

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When and what hinders him from doing it earlier

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or, or during it at all?

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Of course, you have always the examples, of the Japanese

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and the Second World War who prefer to die,

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and if they, don't die on the battlefield,

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they commit suicide.

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And you have then, examples from Ivo Jima

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where more than 20,000, Japanese soldiers perished.

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And, and I think, less than a hundred survived

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because the code of honor did not allow them to surrender,

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and they killed themselves instead.

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And, we have even in some niches

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of European military history, very similar things

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and these similar things.

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I localized, for example, in sea warfare,

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especially in the 20th century when something went wrong,

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then normally ships went down with waving flags

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and, the number of,

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crew members saved was minimal.

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And if you say, give me an example, I'll tell you

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for example, the thinking of the Bismarck.

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Bismarck was, got a torpedo hit in, in the ru

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and put only circle.

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And the next morning, entire British, fleet

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came to destroy the ship.

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What the hell were they making?

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Why did they not surrender

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and save the crew of more than 2000 men?

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No, they didn't. They they went down with waving flags

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and not only waving flags, also,

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nearly 2000 men perished on the ship,

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and only 130 were saved.

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And the same happened

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with the German battleship shown horse, which San San in,

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around Christmas, 1943

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and the barren sea, where of the crew of nearly 2000, only

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around 35 were saved.

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No wonder in p night, what do you expect if you sink the bar

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and polar night, you are done.

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And, and also a British example,

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the auxiliary cruise rubber pindi, instead of surrendering

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for against two battleships,

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German battleships Mc now

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and Charland went also down with great loss of life.

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And I say there was in the German,

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in the European na in the 20th century, kind of

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obsession which go was go about going dark

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with waving flags.

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And this obsession caused

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A a lot of life

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and is kind of comparable with what the Japanese did.

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Of course, you can explain that

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and you can explain that the crew could not intervene.

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So the, if you have a, a captain of a ship

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who's obsessed with going down with waving flag

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and not being a coward, then probably he takes his crew

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with him, even if he does not want

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was a law in the German Navy until the 1960s.

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This means don't surrender.

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So there was, it was, it was

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for forbidden to surrender.

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And if we go, go now from sea welfare, which is a kind

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of extreme example, which has also reasons,

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the original reasons probably you did not want that a ship

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is taken by the enemy.

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So you want that the enemy does not get

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possession of your ship.

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And so this developed

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and the code of honor developed in the, in the time

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of the sailing ship

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and did not transform when ships were looking completely

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different in the 20th century Ahed monsters

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with 2000 man crew and so on.

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So, but everywhere

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and every army has no interest in lowering,

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the level

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because they don't want that, soldiers give up easily.

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And the moment that, they hear

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that somebody is shooting at them, that they drop the weapon

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and hold their hands up, they don't want that.

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They want that you fight and fight means risk your life.

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And it is very different, difficult to draw their line.

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When do you, are you allowed to, to stop fighting

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because you are in danger of dying

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in any moment if you are in iron battle?

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And military authorities are, I would say,

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more interested in diehards than in people who

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have no fighting will.

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This is, actually what the book is about.

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There are all the rules of surrender and

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and, you know, there is a honorable surrender.

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There are rules, and especially I would say there are

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codified rules and non codified rules for,

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for vulnerable surrender.

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And there's also a difference between, forced

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and un unforced surrender.

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And I'll give you an example for forced surrender.

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Forced surrender would mean, a cavalry soldier

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is trapped under his dead horse, you know, the guy,

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if he tries to continue to fight his dad,

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and, it's absolutely

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In this case to surrender.

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But if you are, surrendering despite the fact

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that you are, you, you have ammunition, food,

18:01.095 --> 18:03.005
everything is still plenty,

18:03.825 --> 18:08.365
and you, you stop fighting like,

18:08.835 --> 18:13.805
something they, the Austro-Hungarian, pretended

18:13.805 --> 18:15.725
to experience with Czech regiments

18:16.445 --> 18:18.205
fighting against the Russian that I said,

18:18.205 --> 18:21.205
the Czech regiments are, have no fighting will,

18:21.205 --> 18:23.165
and the, the entire regiment surrendered

18:23.165 --> 18:24.805
and went over to the Russians.

18:25.315 --> 18:28.765
This is considered to be, dishonorable

18:29.065 --> 18:32.645
or for example, if you have a fortress, which has plenty of,

18:32.945 --> 18:35.805
ammunition, food and so on,

18:35.825 --> 18:38.445
and hoist the white flag, despite the fact

18:38.445 --> 18:39.605
that they could hang on.

18:40.445 --> 18:44.785
And, in the pre, revolutionary, French case,

18:45.895 --> 18:47.715
the French had even tables

18:49.245 --> 18:52.705
for when a fortress was allowed to surrender so

18:52.705 --> 18:55.705
that you could measure it, that you met,

18:55.725 --> 18:57.025
met the criteria.

18:57.885 --> 18:59.865
The ransom practice in the middle Ages

18:59.865 --> 19:01.225
started in the 11th century.

19:02.285 --> 19:05.745
And, and then, first it was only

19:05.885 --> 19:08.375
for, for noble men.

19:09.755 --> 19:12.695
And, it worked only in a group of noble men.

19:13.315 --> 19:15.335
For example, if in a medieval battle,

19:15.995 --> 19:20.015
people from a different social background met each other,

19:20.795 --> 19:24.935
the noble man trampled, the peasant to death.

19:25.035 --> 19:26.895
And he had no regard for him,

19:27.475 --> 19:32.015
but, tried to, to capture for ransom,

19:32.115 --> 19:35.175
the person of the same social status like himself,

19:35.175 --> 19:37.135
another noble man to get the ransom.

19:37.835 --> 19:42.365
The, the peasant, again, had no interest

19:42.385 --> 19:43.805
to capture the nobleman

19:43.805 --> 19:48.365
because he had not the means to keep the person POW

19:48.665 --> 19:52.525
for years and the complicated negotiations for the ransom.

19:52.525 --> 19:55.045
And so, and it was much better to kill the guy on the spot

19:55.665 --> 19:58.325
and to get his, expensive arm more.

19:59.145 --> 20:02.085
And, so you could see

20:02.085 --> 20:04.685
that rules developed over time.

20:04.745 --> 20:08.685
And the rule was, the ransom in this case

20:09.065 --> 20:12.205
and the ransom, which then in early modern times

20:12.825 --> 20:15.525
was extended to everybody on the battlefield.

20:16.655 --> 20:19.275
And, this made a heck of a difference.

20:21.005 --> 20:23.785
And so, and, you know, do you see that?

20:23.965 --> 20:27.505
And you see also examples which I did not mention is,

20:27.605 --> 20:29.025
for example, in sea warfare

20:29.165 --> 20:32.865
and ancient times were entire cities

20:34.415 --> 20:39.265
were wiped out because there are rules for surrender.

20:39.325 --> 20:43.145
And if a city did not surrender, the Macon, a siege is

20:43.205 --> 20:46.505
so coastally for, for, for,

20:47.225 --> 20:49.245
For, for the Army who tries to conquer.

20:49.305 --> 20:52.285
It takes so long, makes people so bitter

20:52.285 --> 20:55.565
because too much money that if the fortress holds on

20:55.625 --> 20:59.975
for too long, they, they were wrapped out.

21:00.075 --> 21:01.935
And there are countless examples for that,

21:01.935 --> 21:03.775
especially in ant times.

21:06.065 --> 21:10.205
I put that down. There are developments in war.

21:10.905 --> 21:14.325
And, this links also to a broader context.

21:14.395 --> 21:17.445
There's a broader context, for example, of the role

21:17.465 --> 21:19.125
of violence in human history.

21:19.505 --> 21:23.685
One example is Stephen Pinker, the Better Angels of,

21:24.105 --> 21:25.165
our nature.

21:25.755 --> 21:28.685
It's, it has a very bold claim,

21:28.705 --> 21:30.845
and the bold claim is that violence

21:32.005 --> 21:35.465
is a receding phenomenon in war.

21:35.605 --> 21:37.705
Uh, it is kind of counterintuitive

21:37.705 --> 21:41.145
because you say, well, look to the 20th century

21:41.405 --> 21:44.825
and, the, the War Second World War

21:44.825 --> 21:46.545
and the Holocaust, and,

21:46.885 --> 21:49.785
and never ever we saw so many dead people.

21:50.245 --> 21:52.785
And Pinker says, well look towards the number

21:52.785 --> 21:55.505
of the world population in the 20th century.

21:56.805 --> 21:59.385
And if you take this not an absolute,

21:59.485 --> 22:00.985
but in relative numbers,

22:02.455 --> 22:05.145
then you find many events which were worse.

22:06.245 --> 22:08.785
So he, of course, it's a stretch,

22:09.005 --> 22:13.785
but there is a thesis that violence is, is receding.

22:14.645 --> 22:18.765
And if we take now, my book,

22:20.065 --> 22:22.485
it is going in a similar direction

22:22.595 --> 22:25.845
that I think there is a certain progress

22:26.785 --> 22:29.605
and the certain progress is linked to rules.

22:31.125 --> 22:33.945
And, this book is about the rules

22:34.485 --> 22:36.505
and how the rules developed.

22:37.245 --> 22:42.185
And we can also say there is a famous quotation by,

22:42.735 --> 22:46.265
Admiral Fisher, who was a very important British admiral

22:46.265 --> 22:47.465
before the first World war,

22:47.765 --> 22:50.305
who invented the dread battleship and so on.

22:50.805 --> 22:54.345
And, Fisher said, at some point, humanized war,

22:54.815 --> 22:59.145
then you may, might as well talk about humanizing hell,

22:59.295 --> 23:01.785
basically saying, war is violence.

23:02.755 --> 23:07.065
Let's make it pure and simple, and rules do not matter.

23:07.565 --> 23:09.665
And they even falsify the principle.

23:09.725 --> 23:13.145
You can say that, but I personally think it's wrong

23:13.145 --> 23:17.385
because there is no rule of abandoning war,

23:17.385 --> 23:20.425
which was, successful so far.

23:20.845 --> 23:22.505
So we have to live with war.

23:22.605 --> 23:27.425
And so the only way to make that work better

23:28.165 --> 23:31.825
is to have rules which mitigate the,

23:31.925 --> 23:33.265
the violence in war.

23:33.565 --> 23:38.025
And this is about the development of one of these rules.

The Dynamics of Surrender and Warfare

00:00:00 - It's a pleasure for me to talk to you about my book, which was published a few years ago. And, I wanted only to hold it, in front of me so that, the audience can see the books. It's, it's a German and unfortunately, there's also a, there not unfortunately, there's a translation, but unfortunately into Italian, not into English. So the book is available in German and, and English,
00:00:36 - And the subtitle is A History of surrender. History of surrender kind of does not capture fully what it is about. And for that reason, it's only the subtitle because the book is about fighting and it is about how fighting ends, how battles end and how, fighting. And it, it's kind of analyzing the acumenical point
00:01:07 - and why do battles and before the vanquished dies in battle. So I take a Roman saying by Ro who said, out, out, or win or die, I take that literally and just say, this is now how wars end. Because normally the vanish stays alive. And it is also not a book about peace conference. So it is not about, the conference of yen in 1815,
00:01:40 - or the piece of Australia in 1648. That is not what it's about. It is not a political history. It is really, a book about the battle and soldiers in battle and why fighting and when fighting ends, and how can we explain that? And all of us know, of course, that, soldiers risk their lives for course.
00:02:11 - Most famous example in British history. 1st of July, 1916, the English, the British troops attack, and in a few hours they have 57,100 losses. At 19,000 of them are dead in a few hours. So we, we know soldiers risk their lives, absolutely, but this now surrender
00:02:43 - And my answer for that is no, because if saving lives would be the argument, there would be no wars because, you know, you, you would not even start that big if everybody would be afraid to lose, his or her life. And we can, you may know, Joseph Hellas, catch 22, probably most famous, in second World War, American War novel.

Exploring the Nature of War and Surrender

00:03:14 - and he's completely absurd, but he's only completely absurd because everybody else is fighting and he tries to extract himself from fighting. And if everybody would be like your Syrian, there would be no army and no war, because the people would run away. My book starts in prehistoric times, really asks, is there a,
00:03:43 - And it ends up with suicide. Bombas. Yeah, it was written before this, things in Ukraine happened and so on. And this is not included, but, it's going, deep into the 21st century. And if we cover this ground, I cannot do everything by myself on, based on archival research, and I have to rely on the work of others.
00:04:16 - by American, pre historians, anthropologists, and so on. But I did also research by myself. I went, for example to the National Archives in Q Gardens. I went to the German military archives, and I, made in my field, which is mainly the first World War, also a lot of research on, the concrete circumstances of surrender.
00:04:47 - or I would approach the answer, with a kind of slight detour if you permit, because, war is, is is a term similar like cancer. It is an utterly negative phenomenon, but it is a headline for things which have the principle in common. But there are very different, if you look towards the details and how they work in the case of war, we can say,
00:05:20 - there are religious wars, there's partisan or gore war or, the war of terrorists or piracy and naval war. And very important, often forgotten siege warfare, which is always famous for the most bloody outcome possible. And we see something like that right now in Gaza, which is a kind of siege warfare. It's normal that siege warfare, completely degenerates
00:05:54 - and how fighting ends is different in Every single case. And a book which now tries to define how fighting ends in all these different forms of work would become very unhand because history normally is not the signs of, of, of common rules. It's a, it's, it's a art of the single case, so to say.

Systemic vs. Non-Systemic Wars: A Comparison

00:06:24 - and it's not comparable and so on. And for that reason, I boil it down to two wars only systemic wars which accept rules and non-systemic wars, which don't. And you can follow that through the history of war from the beginning to the end. And the sample argument of, of, of a systemic war is that the loser gives up at some point,
00:06:55 - and the victor enables him doing so, which is in the systemic war, the key rule. And in the non-systemic war, which was already a phenomenon in the Middle Ages, in the middle ages, medieval lawyers called non-systemic war. This means in be you have no rules. The only rule is violence and who wins, kills the vanish on the spot.
00:07:27 - And, you are wiped out if you lose. And I go then through the development because, you know, describing non-systemic war, it's, it's always something very similar in systemic war. We see a very significant development over time. So it starts in, ant cultures, so Greece
00:07:57 - and there was pretty much this victus we'll say, who who loses is done. It's, very many cases of very brutal, treatment of the vanished there enslaved, killed, brought into quarries and so on. And, entire cities were wiped out population wise. And then in the Middle Ages, surprisingly, we had a kind
00:08:27 - because at least in a social class of a, of, of noble man, you know, the, some shire, they started to take each other prisoner and they invented a ransom system. And that is, the important thing because it's not because they were good human beings, but if you made, a high ranking
00:09:01 - very good ransom for the person. And so it started to establish itself because the vanish stayed alive and the victor became rich. So both sides had something of that. And in early modern times, this rule was extended to entire armies. And we had ransom lists from the private to the general. So this was how it worked in early modern times. And then from the French Revolution onwards in the 19th

War Rules and Survival: A Historical Analysis

00:09:33 - p Ws and prisoners of war and captivity and surrender and rules of surrender always more precise. The Liba code in American, law book in 1863, or the Geneva Conventions, which started in 1864 or The Hague in 1899 and 1907, and then the Geneva Codes in 1949, you know,
00:10:04 - And now you can say, did it really matter? And the answer is, I make now an example from the Second World War. The Germany Alterna, Nazi Germany was a member of the Geneva Convention, and so were the western powers. The Soviet Union was not. And if you look towards who survived, captivity, 57% of the Russian, of the Soviet
00:10:35 - And only 3.5% of the British will say, rules matter. And in this case, we are talking about millions of people who were saved by these rules. And, that is basically what this book is about. It is a central rule of war. So at least I don't see a more important one that, a war ends, with a possibility to survive it.
00:11:08 - but war has, some, comparable aspects of a deadly game, which is also, for example, the view of the Israeli military story, Martin, fun and so on. so that we have rules. And, a game without rule, as I said, is a non-systemic war where people get only killed. And that's it. And,
00:11:39 - it found my interest from the start. And also because it is linked with a code of honor, which was my real incentive for myself when I started the research because I saw it Many from the perspective of the vanished. When is the vanished allowed to host the white flag? When and what hinders him from doing it earlier
00:12:09 - Of course, you have always the examples, of the Japanese and the Second World War who prefer to die, and if they, don't die on the battlefield, they commit suicide. And you have then, examples from Ivo Jima where more than 20,000, Japanese soldiers perished. And, and I think, less than a hundred survived

Obsession with Honor in Naval Warfare

00:12:42 - and they killed themselves instead. And, we have even in some niches of European military history, very similar things and these similar things. I localized, for example, in sea warfare, especially in the 20th century when something went wrong, then normally ships went down with waving flags
00:13:12 - crew members saved was minimal. And if you say, give me an example, I'll tell you for example, the thinking of the Bismarck. Bismarck was, got a torpedo hit in, in the ru and put only circle. And the next morning, entire British, fleet came to destroy the ship. What the hell were they making? Why did they not surrender and save the crew of more than 2000 men?
00:13:45 - and not only waving flags, also, nearly 2000 men perished on the ship, and only 130 were saved. And the same happened with the German battleship shown horse, which San San in, around Christmas, 1943 and the barren sea, where of the crew of nearly 2000, only around 35 were saved. No wonder in p night, what do you expect if you sink the bar
00:14:16 - And, and also a British example, the auxiliary cruise rubber pindi, instead of surrendering for against two battleships, German battleships Mc now and Charland went also down with great loss of life. And I say there was in the German, in the European na in the 20th century, kind of obsession which go was go about going dark
00:14:48 - And this obsession caused A a lot of life and is kind of comparable with what the Japanese did. Of course, you can explain that and you can explain that the crew could not intervene. So the, if you have a, a captain of a ship who's obsessed with going down with waving flag and not being a coward, then probably he takes his crew
00:15:20 - was a law in the German Navy until the 1960s. This means don't surrender. So there was, it was, it was for forbidden to surrender. And if we go, go now from sea welfare, which is a kind of extreme example, which has also reasons, the original reasons probably you did not want that a ship

Honor and Rules in Warfare Surrender

00:15:51 - So you want that the enemy does not get possession of your ship. And so this developed and the code of honor developed in the, in the time of the sailing ship and did not transform when ships were looking completely different in the 20th century Ahed monsters with 2000 man crew and so on. So, but everywhere and every army has no interest in lowering, the level because they don't want that, soldiers give up easily.
00:16:26 - that somebody is shooting at them, that they drop the weapon and hold their hands up, they don't want that. They want that you fight and fight means risk your life. And it is very different, difficult to draw their line. When do you, are you allowed to, to stop fighting because you are in danger of dying in any moment if you are in iron battle? And military authorities are, I would say,
00:17:01 - have no fighting will. This is, actually what the book is about. There are all the rules of surrender and and, you know, there is a honorable surrender. There are rules, and especially I would say there are codified rules and non codified rules for, for vulnerable surrender. And there's also a difference between, forced
00:17:30 - And I'll give you an example for forced surrender. Forced surrender would mean, a cavalry soldier is trapped under his dead horse, you know, the guy, if he tries to continue to fight his dad, and, it's absolutely In this case to surrender. But if you are, surrendering despite the fact that you are, you, you have ammunition, food,
00:18:03 - and you, you stop fighting like, something they, the Austro-Hungarian, pretended to experience with Czech regiments fighting against the Russian that I said, the Czech regiments are, have no fighting will, and the, the entire regiment surrendered and went over to the Russians. This is considered to be, dishonorable or for example, if you have a fortress, which has plenty of,
00:18:35 - and hoist the white flag, despite the fact that they could hang on. And, in the pre, revolutionary, French case, the French had even tables for when a fortress was allowed to surrender so that you could measure it, that you met, met the criteria. The ransom practice in the middle Ages started in the 11th century. And, and then, first it was only

Ransom and Rules in Medieval Warfare

00:19:09 - And, it worked only in a group of noble men. For example, if in a medieval battle, people from a different social background met each other, the noble man trampled, the peasant to death. And he had no regard for him, but, tried to, to capture for ransom, the person of the same social status like himself, another noble man to get the ransom.
00:19:42 - to capture the nobleman because he had not the means to keep the person POW for years and the complicated negotiations for the ransom. And so, and it was much better to kill the guy on the spot and to get his, expensive arm more. And, so you could see that rules developed over time. And the rule was, the ransom in this case
00:20:12 - was extended to everybody on the battlefield. And, this made a heck of a difference. And so, and, you know, do you see that? And you see also examples which I did not mention is, for example, in sea warfare and ancient times were entire cities were wiped out because there are rules for surrender.
00:20:43 - so coastally for, for, for, For, for the Army who tries to conquer. It takes so long, makes people so bitter because too much money that if the fortress holds on for too long, they, they were wrapped out. And there are countless examples for that, especially in ant times. I put that down. There are developments in war.
00:21:14 - There's a broader context, for example, of the role of violence in human history. One example is Stephen Pinker, the Better Angels of, our nature. It's, it has a very bold claim, and the bold claim is that violence is a receding phenomenon in war. it is kind of counterintuitive because you say, well, look to the 20th century
00:21:44 - and the Holocaust, and, and never ever we saw so many dead people. And Pinker says, well look towards the number of the world population in the 20th century. And if you take this not an absolute, but in relative numbers, then you find many events which were worse. So he, of course, it's a stretch, but there is a thesis that violence is, is receding.

Progress Through Rules in Warfare

00:22:20 - it is going in a similar direction that I think there is a certain progress and the certain progress is linked to rules. And, this book is about the rules and how the rules developed. And we can also say there is a famous quotation by, Admiral Fisher, who was a very important British admiral
00:22:47 - who invented the dread battleship and so on. And, Fisher said, at some point, humanized war, then you may, might as well talk about humanizing hell, basically saying, war is violence. Let's make it pure and simple, and rules do not matter. And they even falsify the principle. You can say that, but I personally think it's wrong because there is no rule of abandoning war,
00:23:33 - So we have to live with war. And so the only way to make that work better is to have rules which mitigate the, the violence in war. And this is about the development of one of these rules.

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