Unconditional surrender

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With an unconditional surrender , the losing party gives the victor of a war the right to regulate all political and social affairs in its territory . An older expression for this was the phrase surrender to mercy or disgrace .

The demand for unconditional surrender generally has the effect of prolonging the war, since it excludes negotiations on an early armistice , the terms of which, according to the Hague Land Warfare Regulations , could be accepted as a compromise by both sides. Normally a warring party only agrees to unconditional surrender if it is no longer able to continue the war or if the continuation of the war threatens to bring more disadvantages than advantages.

Examples

German Wehrmacht - May 1945

→  Main article: Unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht

The demand for unconditional surrender ( unconditional surrender ) of the Axis powers was by the Western Allies on the Casablanca conference raised at the beginning of the 1,943th

US Commander-in-Chief Dwight D. Eisenhower was not prepared in 1945 to renounce the total surrender to the Soviet High Command either. Thereupon Dönitz instructed and authorized Colonel General Jodl , the chief of the Wehrmacht command staff , who was originally only authorized to “conclude an armistice agreement with General Eisenhower's headquarters” , to sign an unconditional surrender of the German troops by radio. This happened on May 7th from 2:39 a.m. to 2:41 a.m.

Japan surrender in 1945

Japan's Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the deed of surrender.

Emperor Hirohito announced on August 15, 1945, the VJ Day , on the radio in the Gyokuon-hōsō the “Imperial Decree about the end of the war” of the previous day and thus the unconditional surrender of Japan , which ended the Second World War in Asia. The document of surrender was formally signed on September 2 on board the US battleship USS Missouri - on the Japanese side by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu .

Surrender of South Vietnam in 1975

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese troops took Saigon , the capital of South Vietnam . South Vietnam unconditionally surrendered. The Vietnam War was over and the southern state was dissolved a year later.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German Surrender Documents of WWII ( Memento of May 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), second document (incorrectly titled {Reichspresident Donitz's authorization to Colonel General Jodl} {to conclude a general surrender:} )
  2. ↑ Katja Gerhartz: "Minutes of the last moments" , in: Die Welt from May 7, 2005.

Web links

Japan