I know this differs depending on how the end of the war done. High ranking officers may be executed or brought to trial for their transgressions against the opposing force, but what about the rank and file foot soldiers? They can’t (or can they?) be kept as POWs once there’s no war. And it would be murder to kill someone once there’s no declared war. So what do they do? Just holster their weapons, turn around and walk away from each other? Do they shake hands after spending possibly years ready to kill the enemy on sight?
What if the victors are in an enemy’s city or town. Just say, “Sorry for blowing it up, wish you the best?”
It depends on how the war ends. If there’s a ceasefire or a truce, the troops on both sides generally hold their positions unless there’s an agreement under which one or both sides fall back, e.g. to reduce tensions. Commanders on both sides talk to one another as required, but in general interaction between the troops on both sides is avoided if possible, lest High Feelings give rise to Unfortunate Incidents.
If there’s a peace treaty, that will usually deal with things like any boundary adjustments, return of prisoners-of-war, etc. In general once the war is over both sides are keen to return POWs, because they are expensive and troublesome to hold. But note that after the Second World War, the Soviet Union held onto large numbers of POWs from Axis countries until (I think) 1955, employing them as forced labour in the Gulag system. (The Germans had of course done the same to Soviet POWs during the war, and I think the Soviets saw the extraction of labour from German POWs after the war had ended as a form of reparations for the damage inflicted by Germany in its invasion of the Soviet Union.)
The Soviets were not alone. The US exploited POW labour until the end of 1946, and then POWs were returned not to Germany, but to the UK or France, where many of them were required to work for longer. The UK didn’t repatriate all POWs until the end of 1948, and I’m not sure when the French completed repatriation.
I know about rebuilding and economic efforts. But I’m curious about general interactions of soldiers. I’ve seen documentaries of soldiers becoming friends after the war, but suspect those stories are the exception rather than the norm.
I had a friend who served in Vietnam and he talked about how beautiful the countryside was and how he wanted to return there. And my Dad went to Italy in 1945 and talked about how he wanted to take my Mom there.
Only if they committed war crimes, i.e., fought the war in a manner that is incompatible with the rules of war. As long as they stayed within those rules, they did not commit a crime. In other words, it is legally permissible to kill enemy soldiers in a war, as long as you do it in accordance with the rules of war, and you can’t be tried for it. This is a principle of international law known as combatant’s privilege that applies to prosecution both by your own and by the enemy’s side, and it applies to rank and file soldiers just as much as to officers.
I don’t know what the latest iterations of the Geneva Conventions allow, but in WW2 POWs other than officers could be made to work (my father was put to work in railway yards and down a coal mine), and this continued for some years after the war for the German POWs in Britain - to the point that eventually the UK government offered to allow them to stay freely, and many did so. Famously, Bert Trautmann took up professional football and became a local hero as Manchester United’s goalkeeper when it was realised that he had played out a key match with a broken bone in his neck. The USSR hung on to its German prisoners until 1955. Liberated Russian POWs were sent back whether they wanted to go or not, to a much grimmer fate.
Both then and now the Geneva Conventions required, and require, repatriation with the least possible delay after the temination of active hostilities. There are genuine questions to be asked about the legality of the Allied retention of Axis POWs for so many years after May 1945. On the one hand, conditions in defeated Germany were such that immediate repatriation of such large numbers would have been impossible, plus there were other demands on the transport and logistical capacity of the Allied forces. On the other hand, the Allies were quite open about the fact that their continued detention of POWs was motivated at least in part by their own need for labour or, in the case of the Soviet Union, by a desire for redress for injuries inflicted on them. To the extent that POWs were held for those reasons after it would have been practicable to return them, that was likely a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The Geneva Conventions are great ideas and it’s a good thing when they are kept, but there has never been a war where there weren’t violations of them. There’s theory, there’s reality, and there is usually a substantial gap between them.
There were several POW and internment camps in Arkansas. The center of the country, where could they go if they escaped? There was an article of a Japanese POW who either requested to stay, or returned and took up farming on a large scale.
Smithsonian Magazine some years back did an article on Germans held in POW camps in the US. I think there may have been some interviews with those who chose to stay in the US.
There is an old Vietnam buddy who came on this board just to find me after 40-some years. He ended up going back to Vietnam years later and building houses and living there (or something similar). The war was the war, and the aftermath. . .isn’t. I haven’t been back to Vietnam, but it wouldn’t bother me, other than the heat, humidity and bugs, but that applies to a lot of tropical places.
Most soldiers either go back to civilian life and carry on, or reenlist for a peacetime hitch. In addition, the military force may conduct a draw-down to reduce the number of active duty personnel, offering early separations.
During WW2, Italian POWs in particular were offered work in agriculture. It was not as far as I know compulsory, but since many of them came from an agricultural background, they saw it as an escape from the dreary monotony of a camp.
I used to work in a factory in Birmingham, and one day, we had an Italian truck driver, with no English and a problem with his truck. There was a guy in the paint shop with an Italian name and we asked him to translate, but he hardly spoke any Italian as his father, who had stayed behind after the war, had decided that he should be “English” and did not teach him any Italian.
and some soldiers are shanghaied in the winner’s army.
France drafted German (and even SS) soldiers in the Foreign Legion in 1945 and they were sent to Indochina.
Japanese soldiers were used to fight Malaysian and Indonesian “rebels” by British and Netherlander governments after WW2. The irony being that Japanese liberated these countries just before peace treaty.
And sometimes soldiers are just let go; as US did in Irak in 2003…
If ever there was a “it depends” answer it was this one.
Some of the options off the top of my head:
All the soldiers of the losing side become prisoners of war (e.g. WW2). They are then repatriated (or die in captivity) based on the whims and timetable of the victorious powers (as others have pointed out even the western Allies kept Axis POWs for a long time after the war and put them to work, and only a small percentage of the POWs captured by the Soviets ever made it home)
The soldiers of both sides stop fighting, and stay wherever they were when the war ended (e.g. WW1). They then withdraw to the lines drawn by the peace treaty that ended the war, and (in the modern “total wars” where huge percentage of the population are called up) they are demobilized and return home. Of course the solders have no knowledge of the peace treaty negotiations and the overall strategic situation, so this is where the “stabbed in the back” myth comes in (“we didn’t lose the war, everything was going fine and then those weasily politicians negotiated it all away”)
They carry on fighting as they don’t receive word that the war has ended, and fight major battles (e.g. War of 1812 and battle of New Orleans)
A civil war ends with the death of one of the claimants to the throne. His mercenary army then has to find their way back to Greece from Persia (Ten Thousand - Wikipedia).
A Roman army under Sulla wins victory in the East, but has to come to a quick peace settlement, fight another Roman army sent to both fight the same war and capture Sulla, and then return home so their Sulla can defeat his domestic opponents and make himself dictator (: First Mithridatic War - Wikipedia) The soldiers themselves were then settled in the land confiscated from the victims of Sulla’s purges IIRC.
This is a little too close to a “just google it” type of response, which is forbidden in this forum.
Instead of just saying how easily the question could be answered, answer with something useful instead. For example, you could point them towards some links or materials that would provide them with this basic research.
Generally (if done correctly) there is a fairly significant bit of work that takes place after hostilities end. The troops don’t just give each other a hearty handshake and catch the next available flight home. Deploying thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of personal and their equipment is a pretty sizable operation that may have taken place over years. Redeploying them back home and figuring out what to do with all that equipment can be equally complex.
There is also the matter of figuring out what to do with the country you just defeated. Keeping in mind, not everyone in the country might agree that the war is “over”.
I mean look what happened in Afghanistan. The USA basically said “peace out homies” and up and left.
Also AFAIK the idea of capturing common soldiers en masse and holding them as prisoners of war, is a fairly new one. Historically the rich officers and aristocrats were captured and ransomed (this was half the point of waging war in the first place), everyone else was either killed, let go (sometimes having being mutilated so they could not fight again), or in some eras sold into slavery.