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. Israeli law-school professor Eyal Benvenisti defines it as "a situation in which a party to a conflict has been totally defeated in war, its national institutions have disintegrated, and none of its allies continue to challenge the enemy militarily on its behalf."^[1]

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signing the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht.

Examples

Carthage

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]

Nazi Germany

The unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, 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:

• There was a complete dissolution of the German Reich,^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} including all offices.
• The Allied Control Council held sovereignty over the territory of Germany.
• Much of the territory of the German Reich was annexed (see former eastern territories of Germany)
• No unitary German state remained, the German Reich being succeeded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.

Other authorities, supported in the judgements of the German Federal Constitutional Court, have argued that a German state remained in existence from 1945 to 1949, albeit dormant and without any institutional or organisational component, on the basis that:

• Most of the territory that made up Germany before the Anschluss was not annexed.
• A German population still existed and was recognised as having German nationality.
• German institutions such as courts never ceased to exist even though the Allied Control Council governed the territory.
• Eventually, a German government regained full sovereignty over all German territory that had not been annexed (see German reunification).
• The Federal Republic of Germany sees itself as the legal continuation of the German Reich.^[3][9][10]

The official position of the Allied-occupied government as well all subsequent German governments since has been and remains that the Nazi regime was "illegal"; with laws and verdicts imposed during the Third Reich regularly being declared facially invalid. The Allies did not consider the German people and the Nazis indistinguishable, rather the opposite.^[11][12][13] Following the surrender, the Nazi party was and remains to this day outlawed; various restrictions were imposed on former Nazi party members including bans on running for or holding public office, though these laws were later scaled back. Following the end of the Allied occupation, West Germany assumed a certain degree of responsibility for the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and agreed to make major reparation payments to its victims.^[14][15]

Others

• Republic of Venice
• Papal States
• Austria-Hungary (see Treaty of Trianon and Treaty of Saint Germain)
• South Vietnam

See also

• Disarmed Enemy Forces
• Laws of war
• Legal status of Germany
• Total war
• War termination