Debellatio

The term "debellatio" or "debellation" (Latin "defeating, or the act of conquering or subduing", literally, "warring (the enemy) down", from Latin bellum "war") designates the end of war caused by complete destruction of a hostile state. According to a certain definition, "One party to a conflict has been totally defeated in war, its national institutions have disintegrated, and none of its allies continue to challenge its enemy militarily on its behalf".[1]

In some cases debellation ends with a complete dissolution and annexation of the defeated state into the victor's national territory, as happened at the end of the Third Punic War with the defeat of Carthage by Rome in the 2nd century BC.[2]

The unconditional surrender of the Third Reich—in the strict sense only the German Armed Forces—at the end of World War II was at the time accepted by most authorities as a case of debellatio as it ended with the complete breakup of the German Reich,[3][4][5][6][7][8] including all offices, and two German states being created in its stead (the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic). Other authorities have argued against that, as most of the territory that made up Germany before the Anschluss was not annexed, and the population still existed, the vestiges of the German state continued to exist even though the Allied Control Council governed the territory; and that eventually a fully sovereign German government resumed over a state that never ceased to exist. The Federal Republic of Germany sees itself as the legal successor of the Third Reich;[3][9][10] and also as having continued identity with 'Germany as whole', conceived as a state entity that had remained in existence, but dormant.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Benvenisti, Eyal (2012), The International Law of Occupation, OUP Oxford, p. 161, ISBN 978-0-19-958889-3
  2. ↑ "No European state had come to an end, as Germany had, with a 'debellatio', with the dissolution of the enemy state by the victor, a term familiar from Roman history: after three terrible wars, Rome completely annihilated Carthage by means of a 'debellatio'." (Press and Information Office of the Federal Government (1995), Deutschland, Societäts-Verlag, p. 84)
  3. 1 2 Eyal Benvenisti, The international law of occupation, Princeton University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-691-12130-3, pp. 92-95
  4. ↑ Breven C. Parsons, (2009), Moving the law of occupation into the twenty-first century, Naval Law Review, published by U.S. Naval Justice School, the pp. 21, 28-30 (PDF page numbers 26, 33-35)
  5. ↑ ICRC Commentaries on the Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War Article 5 "The German capitulation was both political, involving the dissolution of the Government, and military, whereas the Japanese capitulation was only military".
  6. ↑ United Nations War Crimes Commission, Law reports of trials of war criminals: United Nations War Crimes Commission, Wm. S. Hein, 1997, ISBN 1-57588-403-8. p.13
  7. ↑ The human rights dimensions of population (Page 2, paragraph 138) UNHCR web site
  8. ↑ Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1993 Volume II Part Two Archived October 21, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Page 48, paragraph 295 (last paragraph on the page)
  9. ↑ Detlef Junker et al. (2004). The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A Handbook (Vol 2), Cambridge University Press and (Vol. 2) co-published with German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., ISBN 0-521-79112-X p. 104
  10. ↑ Lorenz-Meyer, Martin (2007), Safehaven: The Allied Pursuit of Nazi Assets Abroad, University of Missouri Press, p. 194, ISBN 978-0-8262-6586-9

Further reading

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