While the idea of a single person ending their own life is heartbreaking, the stark reality is that wartime mass suicides have occurred when desperation reaches a fever pitch.
Understanding Wartime Mass Suicides
10 Pilenai
On February 25, 1336, the castle of Pilenai (now in modern‑day Lithuania) was under siege by Teutonic Knights. The castle’s army, led by Duke Margiris, fought valiantly, but with roughly 4,000 soldiers left defending the walls, the Duke recognized that he could not win the war. Knowing his subjects would be turned into slaves, he ordered the troops to set the castle alight, destroy all their possessions, and then commit mass suicide. The opera Pilenai by Vytautas Klova tells the story of the tragic siege.
9 Saipan
The battle of the island of Saipan is most remembered as an amazing show of US military defiance, but there was another act of defiance which took place during that bloody battle: mass suicide. Fearing the US troops would torture and murder them—mainly due to propaganda laid out by the Japanese army—the citizens of Saipan walked into the sea, or jumped off the cliffs and drowned themselves. The most notorious scene of the mass suicide was Marpi Point, a steep 250‑meter (800 ft) precipice where American soldiers witnessed entire families fling themselves into the waves. First the older children pushed the younger children over the edge, then the mothers pushed the eldest children, and finally the fathers pushed their wives, before jumping over the edge themselves. An estimated 22,000 civilians died this way.
8 The Fort Of Chittorgarh
Jauhar is an old Indian act of mass self‑immolation performed by women and children within the walls of besieged castles or towns when the outcome favored the enemy. Men didn’t get off scot‑free either: in an act known as “shaka,” they would band together and charge into battle one last time to die honorably.
The most famous act of jauhar in Indian history happened in 1303. Chittorgarh was the capital of the Rajputs and a revered fort. When Alauddin Khilji laid siege to the fort, he eventually broke down the resistance. The quarry was the beautiful Rajput queen, Rani Padmini of Chittorgarh. Once the battle was won, the queen, rather than fall into Khilji’s hands, committed suicide along with all the other women of Chittorgarh. The fort suffered further sieges in 1535 and 1567, and each time the defeated army’s women and children performed jauhar.
7 Puputan Of Badung
On September 20, 1906, the Dutch army attacked Bali and met little resistance. When they reached the town of Badung, they found that the people there had taken their fate into their own hands. The Balinese royal family had foreseen the arrival of the Dutch and, knowing they were completely outnumbered and their resistance futile, the kings, their families, and hundreds of their followers all took their own lives.
The Balinese ritual of puputan, which roughly translates into English as “finishing,” required men and women to stab themselves and their children (from newborns to the eldest) in an act of suicide. Although this is the most famous example of puputan, a series of puputan had taken place throughout Bali in the years leading up to the events at Badung.
6 Teutonic Women
The Teutons were a Germanic tribe roaming the European continent about 200 years before the birth of Christ. “Germanic” was a descriptor given by Greek and Roman authors to any tribe from Northern Europe. Around 100 B.C., the Teutons decided to migrate south and west, hoping for easier farming land. What they didn’t anticipate was running into the fast‑expanding Roman Empire.
By the time the Teutons arrived on the border of the Roman colonies, their pillaging had gone before them. Roman general Gaius Marius met them at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae; nearly 90,000 Teutons were killed and their king, Teutobod, was captured. As a condition of surrender, Marius ordered the king to hand over 300 married women, intending to give them to his Roman soldiers. The women pleaded with Marius to be released for service in the temples of Ceres and Venus. When the Romans went to awaken their women the next morning, they found every single one dead.
5 The Numantines
Numantia was a small town in northern Spain that existed in the second century B.C. It entered folklore after an eight‑month resistance against a Roman army. The town eventually fell in 133 B.C. to General Scipio Aemilianus.
The Numantines were a proud people, and rather than give up their bodies, they committed mass suicide. Their story was preserved by Miguel de Cervantes, who penned El cerco de Numancia (“The Destruction of Numantia”) in the 1580s, based on the events at Numantia. The tale was later invoked during the Spanish Civil War, when both Republican and Nationalist forces used the image of Numantia to motivate their followers and promote the idea of death over dishonor.
4 Dance Of Zalongo
The Souliote War of 1803 was a battle between the Souli and the Ottoman‑Albanian army. After it became obvious that defeat was unavoidable, the Souli began to evacuate, but a small group of Souliot women and their children were pinned down on the mountain of Zalongo. In an act that has become known as the Dance of Zalongo, the women threw their children off the cliff first and then followed shortly after. Legend says they leapt while singing and dancing.
Many works of art have been based on the event. French artist Ary Scheffer created two paintings, and a monument has stood on the site of Mount Zalongo since 1950 to commemorate the sacrifice. The Dance of Zalongo is also a popular folk song and dance practiced throughout Greece to this day.
3 Demmin
On May 1, 1945, about 1,000 residents of the town of Demmin in Germany committed mass suicide. The event came after the Russian army started to sack the town. Demmin was located between the Peene and Tollense rivers; once the Russians pushed the Nazis back, high command ordered the bridges blown, halting the Russian advance but trapping the citizens inside the city with no escape.
Survivors claimed that once the Russian army stumbled upon a warehouse of booze, they fell into a rage and began to rape and pillage throughout the town. Anyone who tried to stop the assaults was shot in cold blood. Eventually, the Russians torched the town and two‑thirds of the city went up in flames. As the city burned, between 1,200 and 2,500 Demmin residents committed suicide; some records even suggest mothers threw their children into the freezing waters of the two rivers before jumping in after them.
2 Masada
Masada is a mountain fortress overlooking the Dead Sea. An apt setting if ever there was one, because Masada is the backdrop of one of the most horrific scenes the world has ever seen. The archaeological dig of Masada in the 1960s is considered the biggest excavation since the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb.
In A.D. 73, the Jewish community living there was surrounded by a Roman army. In what became known as an astounding act of Jewish defiance, commander Elazar Ben‑Yair ordered each man to kill his wife and children before turning their swords on one another—effectively ordering the execution of 960 citizens. Masada has such a place in Jewish folklore that it was still used as the place to swear in new soldiers for the Israeli army until recently.
Considering that this happened 2,000 years ago, facts are sketchy. The first dig took place in 1963‑65, conducted by Professor Yigael Yadin—an archaeologist and former chief of staff of the Israeli army. He reported the myth as above: a heroic act denying the Romans victory by sacrificing themselves. But in the 1990s, another dig gave contradictory evidence: some of the skeletons within the complex were revealed as Roman (they had had their hair sliced from their scalp as was common for captives), and the siege was hypothesized as a six‑week affair rather than the year‑long standoff that was reported earlier. No one will ever truly know what happened, and the Masada myth, to many, will always be a mystery.
1 The 47 Ronin
The tale of the 47 Ronin is ingrained in Japanese culture. But unlike the stories of Aesop or the Brothers Grimm, this one is true.
During the Tokugawa era, Japan was ruled by a military official known as a shogun. Beneath the shogun were several regional lords, called the daimyo, each of whom had a small army of samurai. To be a samurai was to accept the code of bushido—the “way of the warrior”—including, above all else, loyalty to one’s master and a refusal to fear death.
In 1701, Emperor Higashiyama (who only held a ceremonial role under the shogun) sent envoys from Kyoto to the shogun’s court in Edo (modern‑day Tokyo). Kara Yoshinaka, one of the shogun’s officials, oversaw the event, giving two young daimyo—Asano Naganori of Ako and Kamei Sama of Tsumano—the job of looking after the emperor’s envoys.
For unknown reasons, Kira didn’t like Asano and Kamei very much, and bullied them throughout their work. While Kamei never rose to the bait, Asano was a different story. When Kira called Asano a “country bumpkin without manners,” it was the final straw. He drew his sword on the shogun’s official. Kira took a blow to the head, but the fracas was quickly stubbed out. Asano, having broken the strict law by drawing his sword within the Edo palace, was ordered to take his own life in the samurai act known as seppuku: disemboweling oneself with a short blade.
Kira didn’t stop there. He confiscated Asano’s domain, cast out the dead daimyo’s family, and reduced his army of samurai to the status of ronin (“masterless”). Despite the bushido decree that masterless samurai should take their own lives due to dishonor, 47 of the 320 warriors refused. Instead they exiled themselves and waited for the perfect time to avenge their master.
Two years later, the ronin gathered and descended upon Kira’s home. In the middle of the night they stormed his manor, killing his 40 guards without a single ronin dying in the battle. They found Kira hiding in a coal shed and ordered him to kill himself with the same blade Asano had used for seppuku. He refused, and the leader of the ronin beheaded Kira then and there.
After the assault, the ronin marched to the nearby Sengakuji Temple where Asano was buried and presented the head of Kira to their fallen master. By now, news of the assault had spread across the land, and the ronin were ordered to kill themselves. They complied, committing mass seppuku right there in the temple.