Defining Surrender ... and making it stick

[TheCurmudgeon]

Personally I don't think it was a surrender, although Portugal scuttled out rapidly once it became a democracy and Rhodesia / South Africa (inc. SW Africa) were rather protracted political accommodations. At the time much was written and discussed about the successes.

Nearby is Ireland, first the emergence of the Irish Republic (which promptly had a far more vicious civil war) and more recently the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 on power-sharing in Northern Ireland. The later was hyped a lot by all those involved as the way forward; not to overlook the role of the USA either.

Giving India independence after WW2 was a momentous decision, more a negotiated transfer of power than a surrender. Much was written on this, not much recently.

I have looked at South Africa as a democracy lately. They have a interesting power sharing deal with the traditional tribal leaders, essentially paying them and allowing them to remain the de facto local authority despite their non-elected status and paying them to do that ... but they also have the funding from natural resources to make such a plan work.

Ireland is interesting. Funny how transitions to a republican form of government is often followed by a civil war. It seems to take a while for the idea of democratic power sharing and accommodation to minorities to really take hold. This is kind of the essence of my question. If a democracy is granted power from the people, then surrender must come from the people. If the political leader acquiesces that is not a guarantee that the people will cease to continue to fight. There was a fairly active resistance in France during WWII. Once you establish democracy (or where you are trying to establish one), you automatically decentralize power, making the idea of surrender more difficult to define.

India I am not as familiar with. And it also separated after independence along religious lines rather than finding common ground.

If we assume a war between two democracies, how would surrender work?

[davidbfpo]

If we assume a war between two democracies, how would surrender work?

I can only immediately think of the ending of WW1 on the Western Front, between Imperial Germany - which had an elected democratic government, although waging war appeared to be directed by the military - and the Western Allies. IIRC the government clinging to domestic power decided that continued fighting was not in the national interest, negotiations began with a joint civil-military delegation sent to meet the allies.

In 1918 Germany was exhausted, the military offensives in the spring had failed to break the Western Front, defeats were regular, the USA was building up, the navy faced several mutinies, discipline in the the army was deteriorating and civil order was under severe strain. All these factors needed to coincide for the government to decide the war had to be ended.

Both the civil and military parts of the state knew discipline and order could easily be lost. I am not sure if the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had much impact then, although in time it would.

You can hardly conduct negotiations if the state crumbles and any agreement will not be fulfilled.

Making it - surrender - stick?

In this example Germany withdrew from occupied France and Belgium, the army demobilised, the navy was interned @ Scapa Flow, the Rhineland was occupied by the allies and much more. The Treaty of Versailles was to follow. How Germany was to govern itself was left to them.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Both the civil and military parts of the state knew discipline and order could easily be lost. I am not sure if the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had much impact then, although in time it would.


Making it - surrender - stick?

In this example Germany withdrew from occupied France and Belgium, the army demobilised, the navy was interned @ Scapa Flow, the Rhineland was occupied by the allies and much more. The Treaty of Versailles was to follow. How Germany was to govern itself was left to them.

Probably a pretty good example. It took total capitulation and a recognition by all elements in the society that the war was lost.

[Fuchs]

If a democracy is granted power from the people, then surrender must come from the people. If the political leader acquiesces that is not a guarantee that the people will cease to continue to fight. There was a fairly active resistance in France during WWII. Once you establish democracy (or where you are trying to establish one), you automatically decentralize power, making the idea of surrender more difficult to define.

(1) The French "Résistance" was hyped and was really not a big deal, but rather a nuisance in areas where it was really important. They made landlines unreliable and thus provoked use of radio messages which were intercepted and deciphered, and that was probably the biggest achievement. It's telling how much Soviet partisans appear in German wartime memories and documents and how it takes a substantial search effort to find any reference to the "Résistance" in the same.

The vast majority of "Rsistance" fighters seem to have joined in June/July '44 only. The whole "Résistance" thing is ~95% face-saving French mythology.

(2) Very different was the French reaction to the (mixed) German occupation in 1871. The emperor Napoleon III (=dictator, dictatorship) was captured and had surrendered in 1870, but the real mess only began afterwards with Franc Tireurs, levée en masse all over again etc etc. Hundreds of thousands of riflemen appeared and fought actual battles.
The Résistance was probably the trouble and fighting power equivalent of the couriers used by the French post-surrender forces, certainly not much more.
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So I suppose you have a nice story there which would be pleasant to believe, but it falls flat in face of military history.

[TheCurmudgeon]

(2) Very different was the French reaction to the (mixed) German occupation in 1871. The emperor Napoleon III (=dictator, dictatorship) was captured and had surrendered in 1870, but the real mess only began afterwards with Franc Tireurs, leve en masse all over again etc etc. Hundreds of thousands of riflemen appeared and fought actual battles.
The Rsistance was probably the trouble and fighting power equivalent of the couriers used by the French post-surrender forces, certainly not much more.
____________

So I suppose you have a nice story there which would be pleasant to believe, but it falls flat in face of military history.

Actually, your second example is more what I am interested in. Post conflict activities do not seem to be a something that gets a lot of attention.

Thanks for the example.

Any thoughts on Germany after WWI? Does it require a total breaking of the spirit of a democratically minded people to be able to declare victory? Or was Germany really that democratic at the time?

[TheCurmudgeon]

Fuchs?

Would it be fair to say that the history you describe between France and Germany in 1870 makes a good example of a pre-democratic situation where the king or emperor surrendered(and possibly pledged fidelity to the victorious lord or ceded some disputed territory) which ended the conflict juxtaposition against a new post-democratic political reality where, if the population was not ready to surrender (and their being the true source of political will in the state) they would continue the fight on their own, or am I only seeing what I want to see?

[Fuchs]

1870/71 was really more about nationalism on both sides than about governments or states. The latter were the players, but once the war was set in motion, they were floating on a current and only capable of minor corrections.
The French government surrendered, but the French simply kept going.



WW2 was everywhere about pushing so far that organised (and thus effective) resistance became impossible.

The Italians knew there was no way to resist any more if the enemies can even invade your country like that.

The Japanese leadership understood it couldn't go on after losing the ability to import material, with obviously determined enemies readying for invasion. The Japanese people knew their cities were ashes and obeyed the emperor (whose voice they heard for the first time when he told them to stop fighting).

The Germans of 1945 were really first and foremost fighting for comrades and fleeing civilians, or simply because fighting was deemed less horrible than being caught and executed by MP or taken POW by Russians. Especially the resistance in the East in '45 was more of a screening operation for fleeing civilians or an attempt to keep some escape route open for almost cut-off comrades than anything else.


I'm obviously not into theorising about breaking spirit (or "will") any more, not even about Clausewitzian disarmament; instead, it was quite often the loss of the foundations for successful organised overt resistance which meant ultimate and acknowledged defeat during WW2.
The will to resist with organised, overt violence was regularly broken when said violence served no purpose any more for want of a scenario how it could lead to a more acceptable outcome.

[davidbfpo]

The exchange prompted me to think again. It may not fit your terms of reference as it was not a surrender.

I refer to the public and political reaction in Yugoslavia in 1941, when the national government signed a treaty with Germany and were deposed:

Following agreements with Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria that they would join the Axis, Hitler put pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Tripartite Pact. The Regent, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, succumbed to this pressure on 25 March 1941. However, this move was deeply unpopular amongst the anti-Axis Serbian public and military. A coup d'tat was launched on 27 March 1941 by anti-Paul Serbian military officers, and the Regent was replaced on the throne by King Peter II of Yugoslavia.

Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Yugoslavia

[TheCurmudgeon]

The exchange prompted me to think again. It may not fit your terms of reference as it was not a surrender.

Perhaps that is my problem. I am looking for examples that don't fit the accepted idea of surrender.

I just have to be careful that I am not twisting them too far.