Why Do Soldiers Flee the Front? The History of Desertion
How has attitudes toward desertion changed throughout history?
We begin with the armies of antiquity and the Middle Ages: mercenaries, feudal vassals, militias raised from villages. In these armies, neither citizenship nor patriotism in the modern sense existed. There was an order—and there was a stick. Desertion arose constantly and was perceived not as a moral problem, but as a "breakage of an instrument." Runaways were caught, maimed, branded, and hanged by the roads and camps, in the hope that fear would deter others.
The turning point began only in the 19th century, with mass armies and universal military service. But a soldier is not allowed to choose. His job is to go where he is sent and to die when he is ordered.
When millions of ordinary people, rather than professional soldiers, are sent to war, desertion ceases to be an isolated problem of discipline and becomes a social reality. For the first time, states are confronting a question that simply hasn't arisen before: why do people flee?
We trace how, for centuries, states have struggled with the same fact: people don't want to die when they're ordered to.
00:00 What is this video about?
01:40 Before Nation States
03:35 The 19th Century and Napoleon
07:18 World War I
13:30 World War II
19:28 Vietnam and Afghanistan
23:49 The War in Ukraine