The Popular Army of the Republic, Fall 1936–39

This chapter investigates the militia summer of 1936, which had been a summer of both chaos and valor in the defense of the Republic. It describes the militias that arose to fight the rebels, which varied widely in their insistence that combatants send costly signals of commitment to fight. It also clarifies how the Republic transformed its armed forces to regularize them and put power back in the hands of the state by imposing military discipline and a single command structure on its militia forces. The chapter argues that the new discipline rules imposed costly signals of commitment on volunteers, requiring that they sign on to more demanding forms of warfare. It discusses the Republic's recruitment of less-committed troops by imposing conscription at the same time.

Studying Desertion in the spanish Civil War

This chapter develops the account of desertion primarily in the context of the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, which clarifies the role of several variables through Spain. It looks at many different organizations on both the rebel side and the Republican side in order to examine the impact of different armed group characteristics on desertion. It uses the Spain case study to understand desertion dynamics in a particularly fascinating civil conflict. The chapter focuses on the Republican side, analyzing the dynamics of its relatively high rate of desertion at various points in the conflict. It demonstrates norms of cooperation and coercion at the micro level to statistically assess individual soldiers' decisions to fight or to flee.

Conclusion

This chapter explains desertion in civil wars in terms of the complicated and counterintuitive dynamics of trust and mistrust at the heart of military units in times that tear countries apart. It bridges a long-running theoretical debate about how to understand people's motivations in civil wars. It also elaborates the grand causes of civil wars that matter through the interaction of combatants, which accepts that civil wars are both political and personal. The chapter pays attention to relations among combatants as key mechanisms driving armies forward and suggests a new theoretical extension that goes beyond interactions among armed groups. It focuses on signals, trust, and desertion that proposes arguments about when armed groups are likely to adopt the practices that are important for fostering trust and limiting desertion.

Trust, Mistrust, and Desertion in Civil Wars

This chapter mentions Viet Cong (VC) companies in South Vietnam that developed serious morale and motivation problems, which pose a major risk of desertion and defection. It investigates where trust and cooperation will come from if soldiers look for their chance to desert and put up a false front of enthusiasm and conviction. It also proposes a crucial way of keeping soldiers fighting through a norm of cooperation in a military unit, emphasizing a social rule saying that each will fight if others do. The chapter discusses whether an armed group can rely simply on the threat of punishment to keep combatants fighting, even if trust is not in the cards. It describes deeply mistrustful armed groups that use factional memberships or stereotypes to assess soldiers' loyalties, showing coercion as arbitrary persecution.

Slipping Away

This chapter explains how armed groups in civil wars are able, or not, to prevent desertion as combatants often leave in some wars to go home, switch sides, or flee the war zone altogether. It analyses how some armed groups keep their soldiers fighting over long periods of time and explains why other groups fall apart from desertion and defection. It also explores the world of combatants in military units, with their comrades and commanders. The chapter discusses bonds of trust among combatants that keep them fighting, mistrust that pushes them to leave, and beliefs about political commitments and the motivation to fight. It clarifies how trust and mistrust depend on what soldiers perceive about others' motivations, both political and military.

Coercion and Soldiers’ Decisions

This chapter recounts a critical instance of coercion in Spain, covering the execution for disloyalty of over a thousand members of the regular officer corps on the Republican side. It discusses the war that started with a failed coup attempt on July 18, 1936, which split the officer corps and cast a shroud of suspicion on the officers who remained on the Republican side. It also emphasizes how deep fear drove the executions of many of the officers in uncontrolled and local violence. The chapter shows how violence provoked many defections, particularly in those units where the violence seemed to be driven by the stereotype of traitorous officers. It explores the Cuerpo de Ejército de Santander to determine the impact of an influx of conscripts.

Militias in the Spanish Republic, Summer–Fall 1936

This chapter begins an analysis at the macro level, which shows how soldiers are less likely to desert when surrounded by committed compatriots. It explains how the efforts to punish ostensible deserters provoke desertion when there is severe mistrust, differentiating units and armed groups from each other. It also describes the summer of 1936 in the Republic, where civilian militias experimented in the military organization. The chapter determines the capacity to effectively deter desertion by accurately detecting and punishing as the state power is shattered and confusion reigned. It talks about combatants in many units who did not trust each other to fight, did not develop strong norms of cooperation, and suffered pervasive desertion problems.

The Crumbling of Armies in Contemporary Syria

This chapter talks about the Syrian Civil War that has been ongoing since 2011, comparing the regime's Syrian Arab Army, the Free Syrian Army umbrella, Jabhat al-Nusra, Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and the Kurdish People's and Women's Protection Units. It discusses how the forces of the Syrian Civil War was able to maintain their cohesion like their counterparts in Spain's militias that grew out of long-standing armed networks and maintained tight standards for recruitment. It also uses the Syrian case to demonstrate the ambiguous effects of threats of punishment to keep soldiers fighting. The chapter argues that problems of fighting desertion while fighting a civil war are neither particularly new nor particularly old. It reframes an important debate about why soldiers keep on fighting against the odds.

The Nationalist Army, 1936–39

This chapter refers to Ramón Salas Larrazábal, who estimates a ratio of five Republican deserters for every Nationalist deserter. It examines the frequency of Republican analyses of desertion, requests for information about deserters, and punishments issued for desertion compared with the lack of punishment on the Nationalist side. It also includes the lack of factional competition, equivalence within the Nationalist army, and intense mistrust of army officers on the Republican side as key differences in the effectiveness of coercive control. The chapter underlines and seeks to explain the significant variation among different Nationalist forces. It discusses the conscript forces and volunteer forces with low recruiting standards that experienced problems of desertion similar to those of their Republican enemies.

Cooperation and Soldiers’ Decisions

This chapter delves into the evolution of recruitment over time in the Spanish Republic, covering volunteers, conscripts, and soldiers who sent little signals that they wanted to fight because they had been forced to do so. It uses the evolution to put volunteers and conscripts together in different proportions and units. It also points out that soldiers were more likely to desert to the extent that the other soldiers in their units were conscripts rather than volunteers. The chapter assesses how unit-mates mattered just as much as the soldier's own characteristics, clarifying that groups of volunteers built up norms of cooperation more strongly than groups of conscripts did. It elaborates how the composition of military units affected desertion rates in Republican forces in Santander province in northern Spain in 1937.