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Russian soldiers ‘blow themselves up’ to avoid capture
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026
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Okay. So, is there a common law ruling that you can point to which defines acceptable conditions for surrender on personal initiative? Otherwise, the distinction between common law and civil law is irrelevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Lonsdale
But every case can be different, that's the whole point. A standard or rule is set and the circumstances of each event are evaluated. Later events can refer to earlier rulings.
I think this counts as a superior ordering him to surrender given the context. Almost certainly played in his favor. Still got the discharge for it.
While I was not particularly clear before, I was primarily referring to enlisted infantry surrendering. Officers, especially those faced with annihilation of their command, likely have a lot more rights to order a surrender when there is no meaningful ability to continue fighting.
Edit: This, again, goes back to the politics of surrender. An official policy of death before surrender would likely crater morale and recruitment efforts, but a captured soldier is potent political leverage. So while no militaries to my knowledge (knowledge updated, some do, see edit2) have a stated no surrender policy (even Stalin's famous "no steps back" quote is so stripped of context that is is pretty much propaganda), I also don't see any militaries with written policies describing proper surrender procedures. It's effectively a ban by omission.
Edit2: appreciate the link, btw. I have done some more reading. While I still stand by my original position, described in the edit, I have learned that some military forces worldwide do have an official policy of suicide before surrender in modern times. I kinda figured that died out in the 40s.
He didn't receive the message lol. As far as he knew he was not given the order to surrender.
Correct, he did not receive the order. But the order was given, and like I said, I expect that the court martial would have gone a different way if that last order read "surrender is not an option".
That's right, he surrendered using his own initiative.
Yes, and plenty of soldiers do. Many of them are then shot for cowardice.
Now, did he surrender thinking "This is clearly legitimate and I will not face serious penalties" or did he surrender thinking "Either we all die to the Germans, or I am found guilty of cowardice and executed, but at least my men will live"? This is not a question we can really answer, unless the dude did some writing on the topic which I am unaware of.
While digging further, I have not found any examples of stare decisis resulting from this decision. However, I did find that military courts in the UK do not follow common law. So that may be a fool's errand.
Either way, I don't find the idea of soldiers dying rather than surrendering particularly far-fetched. Although, based on previous conflicts, countries that carry out more executions for surrender/desertions/cowardice tend to be the ones that lose wars. Like I said earlier, not great for morale.
I'd hazard a guess individuals being punished for surrender was not a common theme since WW1, at least for the allies.
Cowardice on the other hand was an issue. Do you have some data to backup your claims on the losing side executing more people?
Ya know I was thinking about it some more, and I wonder how this ties in with Umberto Eco's 11th point. "Heroic" death on the battlefield.
I found this: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=222008 claiming around 15k germans executed for desertion. Disclaimer: I am VERY skeptical of any forums that focus on axis military history. Same reason that I'm EXTREMELY skeptical of dudes that are "really into history" but only WWII and the roman empire. However, the books they mention do in fact exist.
Whenever I search for allies executing soldiers for desertion, I get a shitload of articles about Eddie Slovak, and that is making it difficult to find specific numbers for other allied nations. Similarly, the focus on the wehrmacht makes it difficult to find exact numbers for Italy and Japan, although Japan had the shattered jewel policy.
Basically I'm extrapolating from the magnitude of those numbers. Although, WWI numbers do seem to show the opposite--More british and french soldiers executed than germans. That being said, the official count of 49 german executions seems. Undercounted.