Unconditional Surrender and a Unilateral Declaration of Peace

On January 24, 1943, the last day of the conference at Casablanca, the President of the United States, in a press conference, referred to the sessions as the “Unconditional Surrender” Conference. The official statement on the Crimea Conference of February 11, 1945, reiterated the formula of unconditional surrender as the only one acceptable to the Allies by pointing to “the unconditional surrender terms which we shall impose together on Nazi Germany after German armed resistance has been finally crushed.” This statement gave rise to the objection that the very concept of “unconditional” obviously excludes terms of any kind. The most recent comment on the subject, in President Roosevelt's address to Congress on March 1, 1945, was apparently not intended to give a definition of “unconditional surrender,” but rather an enumeration of the policies to be followed in dealing with Germany, once “the German people, as well as the German soldier,” have given up and surrendered. Thus an official interpretation of the formula is still lacking. The following analysis attempts to clarify the meaning of unconditional surrender, and its factual and juristic-political implications.