Unconditional surrender is a surrender without conditions, in which no guarantees are given to the surrendering party. In modern times unconditional surrenders most often include guarantees provided by international law. Announcing that only unconditional surrender is acceptable puts psychological pressure on a weaker adversary. Perhaps the most notable unconditional surrender was by the Axis powers in World War II.
Contents |
The most famous early use of the phrase occurred during the 1862 Battle of Fort Donelson in the American Civil War. Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army received a request for terms from the fort's commanding officer, Confederate Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Grant's reply was that "no terms except 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 Civil War—was received in Washington, D.C., newspapers remarked (and President Abraham Lincoln endorsed) that Ulysses S. 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 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 Vicksburg and (by Grant's subordinate, William Tecumseh Sherman) to Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina.
Grant was not the first and only officer in the Civil War to use such a term. The first instance came when 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, when a Confederate messenger first approached Brig. Gen. Charles F. Smith, Grant's subordinate, for terms of surrender, 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 decision later on that day. In 1863 Ambrose Burnside forced an unconditional surrender of the Cumberland Gap and 2,300 Confederate soldiers.[1]
The use of the term was revived during World War II at the Casablanca conference when American President Franklin D. Roosevelt sprang it on the other Allies and the press as the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.[2] The term was also used at the end of World War II when Japan surrendered to the Allies. Both Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin disapproved of the demand for unconditional surrender, as did most senior U.S. officials (except General Dwight D. Eisenhower). It has been estimated that it helped prolong the war in Europe through its usefulness to German domestic propaganda that used it to encourage further resistance against the Allied armies, and its suppressive effect on the German resistance movement since even after a coup against Adolf Hitler:
"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."[3]
It has also been argued that without the demand for unconditional surrender Central Europe might not have fallen behind the Iron curtain.[3]
In siege warfare, the demand that the garrison unconditionally surrender to the besiegers is traditionally phrased as "surrender at discretion." For example, at the siege of Stirling during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion:
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 head-quarters 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: . .[4]
It was also seen at the Battle of the Alamo, when Santa Anna asked Jim Bowie and William B. Travis for unconditional surrender. Even though Bowie wished to surrender unconditionally, Travis refused, retaliated by firing a cannon at Santa Anna's army, and wrote in his final dispatches:
The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion otherwise the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken — I have answered their demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls — I shall never surrender or retreat.[5]
The phrase surrender at discretion is still used in treaties, for example the Rome Statute that entered into force on July 1, 2002, specifies under "Article 8 war crimes, Paragraph 2.b" that:
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:
- ...
- (vi) Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;[6]
This wording in the Rome Statute is taken almost word for word from Article 23 of the 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",[7] and is part of the customary laws of war.[8]