Editing Unconditional surrender

{{short description|Type of surrender}}
{{other uses}}
An '''unconditional surrender''' is a [[surrender (military)|surrender]] in which no guarantees, reassurances, or promises (i.e., conditions) are given to the surrendering party. It is often demanded with the threat of complete destruction, extermination or annihilation.

Announcing that only unconditional surrender is acceptable puts [[psychological warfare|psychological pressure]] on a weaker adversary, but it may also prolong [[belligerent|hostilities]]. A party typically only demands unconditional surrender when it has a significant advantage over their adversaries, when victory is thought to be inevitable.

In modern times, unconditional surrenders most often include guarantees provided by [[international law]]. In some cases, surrender is truly accepted unconditionally; while in other cases terms are offered and accepted, but forces are declared to be subject to "unconditional surrender" for symbolic purposes. This type of surrender may also be accepted by the surrendering party under the expectation of guarantees agreed to informally.

==Examples==

===Banu Qurayza during Muhammad's era===
{{Main|Banu Qurayza}}
After the [[Battle of the Trench]], in which the Muslims tactically overcame their opponents while suffering very few casualties, efforts to defeat the Muslims failed, and [[Islam]] became influential in the region. As a consequence, the Muslim army besieged the neighbourhood of the [[Siege of the Banu Qurayza|Banu Qurayza tribe]], leading to their unconditional surrender.<ref
  name="Watt, pp. 167–174"
>Watt, ''Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman'', pp. 167–174.</ref
>    All the men, apart from a few who converted to [[Islam]], were executed, while the women and children were [[Ma malakat aymanukum|enslaved]].<ref
  name="Peterson"
>Peterson, ''Muhammad: the prophet of God'', pp. 125–127.</ref
><ref
  name="Ramadan140"
>Ramadan, ''In the Footsteps of the Prophet'', pp. 140f.</ref
><ref
>Hodgson, ''The Venture of Islam'', vol. 1, p. 191.</ref
><ref
  name="Brown, p. 81"
>Brown, ''A New Introduction to Islam'', p. 81.</ref
><ref
 name="Lings229"
>Lings, ''Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources'', pp. 229–233.</ref
>    The historicity of the incident has been questioned.<ref
>  For details and references see [[ Banu Qurayza #Doubts about the historicity of the event |discussion]] in [[ Banu Qurayza |main article]].  </ref>

===Napoleon Bonaparte===
When [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] escaped from his enforced exile on the island of [[Elba]], one of the steps that the delegates of the European powers at the [[Congress of Vienna]] took was to issue a statement on 13 March 1815 [[s:Declaration at the Congress of Vienna|declaring Napoleon Bonaparte]] to be an outlaw. The text includes the following paragraphs:

{{quotation|
By thus breaking [[Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814)|the convention]] which had established him in the island of Elba, Bonaparte destroys the only legal title on which his existence depended, and by appearing again in France, with projects of confusion and disorder, he has deprived himself of the protection of the law, and has manifested to the universe that there can be neither peace nor truce with him.

The powers consequently declare, that Napoleon Bonaparte has placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations; and that, as an enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, he has rendered himself liable to public vengeance.|Plenipotentiaries of the high powers who signed the [[Treaty of Paris (1814)]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Edward |last=Baines |year=1818 |title=History of the Wars of the French Revolution, from the breaking out of the wars in 1792, to, the restoration of general peace in 1815 (of II)|volume=II |publisher=Longman, Rees, Orme and Brown |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=GMxLAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA3-PA433 433]}}</ref> }}

Consequently, as Napoleon was considered an [[outlaw]] when he surrendered to [[Frederick Lewis Maitland (Rear Admiral)|Captain Maitland]] of {{HMS|Bellerophon|1786|6}} at the end of the [[Hundred Days]], he was not protected by military law or international law as a head of state and so the British were under no legal obligation to either accept his surrender or to spare his life.<ref>{{cite book|last=MacDonald |first=John |year=1823 |chapter=Character of Bonaparte |editor-last=Urban |editor-first=Sylvanus |title=The Gentleman's magazine (part 1) |volume=93 |series=16th of the New Series |publisher=F. Jefferies  |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=IAEVHuU8IxIC&pg=PA596 569]}}</ref> However, they did so to prevent him from being a [[martyr]] and exiled him to the remote [[South Atlantic]] island of [[Saint Helena]].{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

===American Civil War===
The most famous early use of the phrase in the [[American Civil War]] occurred during the 1862 [[Battle of Fort Donelson]]. [[Brigadier general (United States)|Brigadier General]] [[Ulysses S. Grant]] of the [[Union Army]] received a request for terms from [[Confederate Army|Confederate]] Brigadier General [[Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr.]], the fort's commanding officer. Grant's reply was that "no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." When news of Grant's victory, one of the Union's first in the war, was received in [[Washington, DC]], newspapers remarked (and [[President of the United States|President]] [[Abraham Lincoln]] endorsed) that Grant's first two initials, "U.S.," stood for "Unconditional Surrender," which would later become his nickname.

However, subsequent surrenders to Grant were not unconditional. When [[Robert E. Lee]] surrendered his [[Army of Northern Virginia]] at [[Appomattox Court House National Historical Park|Appomattox Court House]] in 1865, Grant agreed to allow the men under Lee's command to go home under parole and to keep sidearms and private horses. Generous terms were also offered to [[John C. Pemberton]] at [[Battle of Vicksburg|Vicksburg]] and, by Grant's subordinate, [[William Tecumseh Sherman]], to [[Joseph E. Johnston]] in [[North Carolina]].<ref>Silkenat, David. ''Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. {{ISBN|978-1-4696-4972-6}}.</ref>

Grant was not the first officer in the Civil War to use the phrase.  The first instance came some days earlier, when Confederate Brigadier General [[Lloyd Tilghman]] asked for terms of surrender during the [[Battle of Fort Henry]]. Flag Officer [[Andrew H. Foote]] replied, "no sir, your surrender will be unconditional." Even at Fort Donelson, earlier in the day, a Confederate messenger approached Brigadier General [[Charles Ferguson Smith]], Grant's subordinate, for terms of surrender, and Smith stated, "I'll have no terms with Rebels with guns in their hands, my terms are unconditional and immediate surrender." The messenger was passed along to Grant, but there is no evidence that either Foote or Smith influenced Grant's choice of words.

In 1863, [[Ambrose Burnside]] forced an unconditional [[Battle of the Cumberland Gap (1863)|surrender of the Cumberland Gap]] and 2,300 Confederate soldiers,<ref>[http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?frames=1&coll=moa&view=50&root=%2Fmoa%2Fwaro%2Fwaro0052%2F&tif=00509.TIF&cite=http%3A%2F%2Fcdl.library.cornell.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmoa%2Fmoa-cgi%3Fnotisid%3DANU4519-0052 Burnside's Official Report]</ref> and in 1864, Union General [[Gordon Granger]] forced an unconditional surrender of [[Fort Morgan (Alabama)|Fort Morgan]].

===World War II===
{{see also|German Instrument of Surrender|Japanese Instrument of Surrender}}
[[File:Surrender of Japan - USS Missouri.jpg|right|thumb| The Japanese delegation, headed by [[Mamoru Shigemitsu]], prepares to sign the instrument of surrender aboard the [[USS Missouri (BB-63)|USS ''Missouri'']] in [[Tokyo Bay]], 2 September 1945.]]
[[File:Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945 - Restoration.jpg|right|thumb|[[Wilhelm Keitel|Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel]] signing the definitive act of unconditional surrender for the German military in Berlin, 8 May 1945]]
The use of the term was revived during [[World War II]] at the [[Casablanca conference]] in January 1943 when American President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] stated it to the press as the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of [[Nazi Germany|Germany]], [[Kingdom of Italy|Italy]], and [[Empire of Japan|Japan]]. When Roosevelt made the announcement at Casablanca, he referred to General Grant's use of the term during the American Civil War.

The term was also used in the [[Potsdam Declaration]] issued to Japan on July 26, 1945. Near the end of the declaration, it said, "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces" and warned that the alternative was "prompt and utter destruction."

It has been claimed that it prolonged the war in Europe by its usefulness to [[Themes in Nazi propaganda#War|German domestic propaganda]], which used it to encourage further resistance against the Allied armies, and by its suppressive effect on the [[German resistance to Nazism|German resistance]] movement since even after a coup against [[Adolf Hitler]]:
{{quotation| "those Germans – and particularly those German generals – who might have been ready to throw Hitler over, and were able to do so, were discouraged from making the attempt by their inability to extract from the Allies any sort of assurance that such action would improve the treatment meted out to their country."<ref name="balfour1970">Michael Balfour, "[https://www.jstor.org/pss/2614534 Another Look at 'Unconditional Surrender'"], ''International Affairs'' (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944–), Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct., 1970), pp. 719–736</ref>}} It has also been argued that without the demand for unconditional surrender, [[Central Europe]] might not have fallen behind the [[Iron Curtain]].<ref name="balfour1970"/> "It was a policy that the [[Soviet Union]] accepted with alacrity, probably because a completely destroyed Germany would facilitate Russia's postwar expansion program."<ref>Deane, John R.  1947.  The Strange Alliance, The Story of our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. The Viking Press.</ref> It has also been claimed to have prolonged the war with Japan or to be a cause of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (see [[debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]]).

One reason for the policy was that the Allies wished to avoid a repetition of the [[stab-in-the-back myth]], which had arisen in Germany after [[World War I]] and attributed Germany's loss to betrayal by Jews, Bolsheviks, and Socialists, as well as the fact that the war ended before the [[Allies of World War I|Allies]] had reached Germany. The myth was used by the Nazis in their propaganda. An unconditional surrender was felt to ensure that the Germans knew that they had lost the war themselves.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wheeler-Bennett |first=John W. |title=The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945 |year=1954 |location=London |publisher=Macmillan |page=559}}</ref>

===Bangladesh War of Independence===
[[File:1971 Instrument of Surrender.jpg|thumb|right|Signing of [[Pakistani Instrument of Surrender]] by Lt.Gen. [[A. A. K. Niazi]] in the presence of Indian military officers]]
{{Unreferenced section|date=December 2021}}
On 16 December 1971, Lt. Gen [[A. A. K. Niazi]], [[Commanding Officer|CO]] of Pakistan Armed Forces located in [[East Pakistan]] (now [[Bangladesh]]) signed the [[Instrument of Surrender (1971)|Instrument of Surrender]] handing over the command of his forces stationed in East Pakistan to the Indian Army under [[Jagjit Singh Aurora|General Jagjit Singh Aurora]]. This led to the surrender of 93,000 personnel including families of the Pakistan's East Command and cessation of hostilities between the Pakistani Armed Forces and the Indian Armed Forces along with the guerrilla forces, the [[Mukti Bahini]].

The signing of this unconditional surrender document gave [[ Geneva convention |Geneva Convention]] guarantees for the safety of the surrendered soldiers and completed the [[Bangladesh War of Independence|independence of Bangladesh]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2021}}

===Afghanistan War===
On [[Fall of Kabul (2021)|15 August 2021]], the government of the [[Islamic Republic of Afghanistan]] and the [[Afghan National Security Forces]] unconditionally surrendered to the [[Taliban]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Fall of Afghanistan: Taliban seek unconditional surrender at palace |url=https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/fall-of-afghanistan-taliban-seek-unconditional-surrender-at-palace/2FT2AHXOGNJV4EB3INLKCN3NCU/ |website=[[The New Zealand Herald]] |language=en-NZ |date=15 August 2021}}</ref><ref name="14 September 2021">{{cite web |last1=Gabriel Hernandez |first1=Michael |title=Blinken on Afghanistan withdrawal: 'We inherited a deadline,' not plan |url=https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/blinken-on-afghanistan-withdrawal-we-inherited-a-deadline-not-plan/2363913 |website=www.aa.com.tr}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Whitlock |first1=Craig |title=Afghan security forces' wholesale collapse was years in the making |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/afghan-security-forces-capabilities/2021/08/15/052a45e2-fdc7-11eb-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html |newspaper=Washington Post |date=16 August 2021 |quote=Those fears, rarely expressed in public, were ultimately borne out by the sudden collapse this month of the Afghan security forces, whose wholesale and unconditional surrender to the Taliban will go down as perhaps the worst debacle in the history}}</ref> The unconditional surrender brought an end to the [[War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)|conflict]] and allowed the Taliban to take over Afghanistan and establish their government in the country.<ref>{{cite web |title=Taliban Seizes Power, Says 'War is Over'; President Ghani Flees Afghanistan |url=https://www.thequint.com/news/world/taliban-takeover-of-afghanistan-live-updates |website=TheQuint |language=en |date=14 August 2021}}</ref>

==Surrender at discretion==<!-- The redirect [[surrender at discretion]] redirects to this section header. If it is changed, please change the redirect.-->
In [[siege warfare]], the demand for the garrison to surrender unconditionally to the besiegers is traditionally phrased as "surrender at discretion." If there are negotiations with mutually agreed conditions, the garrison is said to have "surrendered on terms."<ref>{{citation |last=Bradbury |first=Jim |year=1992 |title=The Medieval Siege |publisher=Boydell & Brewer |isbn=978-0-85115-357-5 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=fKFRvUiLEQYC&pg=PA325 325]}}</ref><ref>{{citation |last1=Afflerbach |first1=Holger |last2=Strachan |first2=Hew |date=2012 |title=How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-969362-7|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=gh6VIodYxNMC&pg=PA107 107]}}</ref> One example was at the [[Siege of Stirling Castle (1746)|Siege of Stirling]], during the 1745 [[Jacobite rising of 1745|Jacobite Rebellion]]:
{{quotation|[[Bonnie Prince Charlie|Charles]], thereupon, sent a verbal message to the magistrates, requiring them instantly to surrender the town; but, at their solicitation, they obtained till ten o'clock next day to make up their minds. The message was taken into consideration at a public meeting of the inhabitants, and anxiously debated. The majority having come to the resolution that it was impossible to defend the town with the handful of men within, two deputies were sent to [[Bannockburn]], the headquarters of the Highland army, who offered to surrender to terms; stating that, rather than surrender at discretion, as required, they would defend the town to the last extremity. After a negotiation, which occupied the greater part of Tuesday, the following terms of capitulation were agreed upon:...<ref>[http://www.electricscotland.com/history/charles/49.htm Prince Charles at Glasgow and surrender of Stirling], [http://www.electricscotland.com/ electricscotland.com]</ref>}}

Surrender at discretion was also used at the [[Battle of the Alamo]], when [[Antonio López de Santa Anna]] asked [[Jim Bowie]] and [[William B. Travis]] for unconditional surrender. Even though Bowie wished to surrender unconditionally, Travis refused, fired a cannon at Santa Anna's army, and wrote in his final dispatches:
{{quotation|The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion otherwise the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken &ndash; I have answered their demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls &ndash; I shall never surrender or retreat.<ref>{{citation |first=Walter |last=Lord |year=1978 |title=A Time to Stand: The Epic of the Alamo |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-0-8032-7902-5 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=T_CY1o6aihIC&pg=PA14 14]}}</ref>}}

The phrase surrender at discretion is still used in treaties. For example, the [[Rome Statute]], in force since July 1, 2002, specifies under "Article 8 war crimes, Paragraph 2.b:"
{{quotation|Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts:
<blockquote>
...

(vi) Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;<ref>[[s:Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court#Article 8 – War crimes]]</ref></blockquote>}}

The wording in the Rome Statute is taken almost word for word from Article 23 of the 1907 [[Hague Conventions (1907)|IV Hague Convention]] ''The Laws and Customs of War on Land'': "...it is especially forbidden – ... To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion",<ref>[[Hague Conventions (1907)|IV Hague Convention]] ''The Laws and Customs of War on Land'' October 18, 1907. [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm#art23 Article 23] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150525082008/http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm#art23 |date=2015-05-25 }}</ref> and it is part of the customary [[laws of war]].<ref>The [[Nuremberg Trials|Nuremberg War Trial]] judgment on ''The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity'' held, "The rules of land warfare expressed in the [Hague Convention of 1907] undoubtedly represented an advance over existing international law at the time of their adoption. But the Convention expressly stated that it was an attempt 'to revise the general laws and customs of war,' which it thus recognised to be then existing, but by 1939 these rules laid down in the Convention were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war....", ([https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judlawre.asp Judgement: The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity] contained in the [[Avalon Project]] archive at [[Yale Law School]]).</ref>

==See also==
*[[Surrender (military)]]
*[[Debellatio]] designates the end of a war caused by complete destruction of a hostile state.
*[[Military occupation]]
*Giving [[no quarter]], refusal by the victor to spare the lives of surrendered foes
*[[Suing for peace]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070517235645/http://www.law.ou.edu/ushistory/germsurr.shtml German Surrender Documents of WWII] (US Historical Documents)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Unconditional Surrender}}
[[Category:Surrenders]]
[[Category:Military strategy]]