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Background

A few months ago the Swedish government sent a small booklet to all Swedish households titled "If crisis or war comes" which contains official information on how to prepare for and react to crisis or war. One part that stuck out to me was this:

If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will
never give up. All information to the effect that
resistance is to cease is false.

To me this seems like a dangerous thing to say. In case of an invasion there may very well be a time where it would be best to just surrender, war is rarely fought to the bitter end and allowing a way out could very well save many lives that might be lost in a futile resistance.

Questions

1. Why might a country have such a policy?




2. Do other countries have similar policies?

I am tagging this with the Sweden tag but I am interested in similar policies and their justifications from around the world.

We will never surrender! has a pretty famous history.

The obvious advantage of such a policy is that it makes invasion less likely. Let's assume that Russia invades Sweden. A natural step would be to kill politicians until they find one that is willing to say that people should not resist and should instead return to their homes. So plans that Russia might make now would include such a step. But Sweden has already sent out this pamphlet explaining that that's not what to do. So in an actual invasion, many Swedes would ignore the politicians calling for submission. Russia may choose a more amenable invasion target.

As you note, once invaded, such a policy is less helpful.

In terms of other countries, I would point out that there is a small but significant group of people in the United States who believe that it is important to stockpile weapons in case of potential invasion. The movie Red Dawn was about such a scenario.

The obvious cases would be countries such as Israel, where surrender would most likely mean genocide. (If so minded, insert long digression on how European Jews mostly went unresisting to extermination camps.) A more recent example would be ISIS and the Yazidis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidis#By_the_Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant_(ISIL)

Other examples would be where the invading country intends to inflict practices that many people find so abhorrent that fighting to the death would seem preferrable, e.g. Communism during the Cold War, or Islamists today. (Insert your own opinions re what's abhorrent if you like.)