Banu Qurayza during Muhammad's era 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
Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe, leading to their unconditional surrender. All the men, apart from a few who converted to
Islam, were executed, while the women and children were
enslaved.
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
declaring Napoleon Bonaparte to be an outlaw. The text includes the following paragraphs: Consequently, as Napoleon was considered an
outlaw when he surrendered to Captain
Frederick Maitland of 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. However, they did so to prevent him from being a
martyr and exiled him to the remote
South Atlantic island of
Saint Helena.
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 Ulysses S. Grant of the
Union Army received a request for terms from
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 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 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 only 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
surrender of the Cumberland Gap and 2,300 Confederate soldiers, and in 1864, Union General
Gordon Granger forced an unconditional surrender of
Fort Morgan.
World War II , prepares to sign the instrument of surrender aboard the
USS Missouri in
Tokyo Bay, 2 September 1945. 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
Germany,
Italy, and
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
German domestic propaganda, which used it to encourage further resistance against the Allied armies, and by its suppressive effect on the
German resistance movement since even after a coup against
Adolf Hitler: It has also been argued that without the demand for unconditional surrender,
Central Europe might not have fallen behind the
Iron Curtain. 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 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.
Bangladesh War of Independence by Lt.Gen.
A. A. K. Niazi in the presence of Indian military officers On 16 December 1971, Lt. Gen
A. A. K. Niazi,
CO of Pakistan Armed Forces located in
East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh) signed the
Instrument of Surrender handing over the command of his forces stationed in East Pakistan to the Indian Army under
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 guarantees for the safety of the surrendered soldiers and completed the
independence of Bangladesh.
Afghanistan War On
15 August 2021, the government of the
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the
Afghan National Security Forces unconditionally surrendered to the
Taliban. The unconditional surrender brought an end to the
conflict and allowed the Taliban to take over Afghanistan and establish their government in the country. ==Surrender at discretion== 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." One example was at the
Siege of Stirling, during the 1745
Jacobite Rebellion: 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: 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:" The 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", and it is part of the customary
laws of war. ==See also==