Description
Book SynopsisTheodore McLauchlin''s Desertion examines the personal and political factors behind soldiers'' choices to stay in their unit or abandon their cause. He explores what might spur widespread desertion in a given group, how some armed groups manage to keep their soldiers fighting over long periods, and how committed soldiers are to their causes and their comrades.
To answer these questions, McLauchlin focuses on combatants in military units during the Spanish Civil War. He pushes against the preconception that individual soldiers'' motivations are either personal or political, either selfish or ideological. Instead, he draws together the personal and the political, showing how soldiers come to trust each otheror not. Desertion demonstrates how the armed groups that hold together and survive are those that foster interpersonal connections, allowing soldiers the opportunity to prove their commitment to the fight.
McLauchlin argues that trust keeps soldiers in the
Trade Review
McLauchlin's book is a study in military sociology based on a rigorous quantitative methodology. It poses a central research question about trust and desertion in civil wars, outlines the current state of the field and the spectrum of factors pursued in understanding the subject. In clear and accessible prose, Theodore McLauchlin makes a persuasive, subtle, and well supported case.
* Michigan War Studies Review *
Table of Contents1. Slipping Away
2. Trust, Mistrust, and Desertion in Civil Wars
3. Studying Desertion in the Spanish Civil War
4. Cooperation and Soldiers' Decisions
5. Coercion and Soldiers' Decisions
6. Militias in the Spanish Republic, Summer–Fall 1936
7. The Popular Army of the Republic, Fall 1936–39
8. The Nationalist Army, 1936–39
9. The Crumbling of Armies in Contemporary Syria
Conclusion: Desertion, Armed Groups, and Civil Wars
