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".
Examples
Carthage
In some cases debellation ends with a complete dissolution and
annexation
Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...
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
The 2nd century BC started the first day of 200 BC and ended the last day of 101 BC. It is considered part of the Classical era, although depending on the region being studied, other terms may be more suitable. It is also considered to be ...
.
Nazi Germany
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:
* There was a complete dissolution of the
German Reich,
[Eyal Benvenisti, ''The international law of occupation'', Princeton University Press, 2004, ]
pp. 92-95
/ref> including all offices.
* The Allied Control Council
The Allied Control Council or Allied Control Authority (german: Alliierter Kontrollrat) and also referred to as the Four Powers (), was the governing body of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany and Allied-occupied Austria after the end of Wo ...
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
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
).
* The Federal Republic of Germany sees itself as the legal continuation of the German Reich.[
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.]
Others
* Republic of Venice. See Fall of the Republic of Venice.
* Confederate States of America. See Conclusion of the American Civil War.
* Austria-Hungary. See Treaty of Trianon and Treaty of Saint Germain.
* South Vietnam. See Fall of Saigon
See also
*Disarmed Enemy Forces
Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF, less commonly, Surrendered Enemy Forces) was a US designation for soldiers who surrendered to an adversary after hostilities ended, and for those POWs who had already surrendered and were held in camps in occupied Ger ...
* Laws of war
* Legal status of Germany
* Total war
* War termination
References
Further reading
*
*
*
* ICRC
Commentary on Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts
' (Protocol I
Protocol I (sometimes referred to as Additional Protocol I or AP 1) is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims of ''international conflicts'', extending to "armed conflicts in which peoples are ...
), 8 June 1977. Commenting on the term "The general close of military operations" in Article 3.b of Protocol I the ICRC states in their commentary in footnote 5 "Some of the literature refers to this situation ['The general close of military operations' when the occupation of the whole territory of a Party is completed, accompanied by the effective cessation of all hostilities, without the necessity of a legal instrument of any kind] as 'debellatio', but this is a narrower interpretation of the term than other publicists ascribe to it. On the concept of 'debellatio' and the various definitions of this term, cf. K.U. Meyn, 'Debellatio', in R. Bernhardt (ed.) 'Encyclopaedia of Public International Law'' Instalment 3, p. 145;"
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*
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External links
* {{wiktionary-inline, debellation
International law
Law of war
Latin legal terminology
Latin political words and phrases