Debellatio

Debellatio (also debellation) (Latin "defeating, or the act of conquering or subduing", literally "warring (the enemy) down", from Latin bellum "war") designates the end of a war caused by complete destruction of a hostile state.

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.^[1]

In practical terms, the end of the American Civil War could be described as debellation, in that the attempt to establish the Confederate States of America as an independent state was completely defeated, and the area and people involved were taken back into the Union. Another case from the same era is Prussia's annexation of the Kingdom of Hannover as a result of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.

The unconditional surrender of the Third Reich—in the strict sense only the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht)—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,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} including all offices, and two German states being created in its stead (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.^[2][8]

See also

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

References

1. ^ 2004 Scripps National Spelling Bee Consolidated Word List Page 8
2. ^ ^{a b} Eyal Benvenisti, The international law of occupation, Princeton University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-691-12130-3, pp. 92-95
3. ^ Breven C. Parsons, (2009), Moving the law of occupation into the twenty-first century, Naval Law Review, published by US Naval Justice School, the pp. 21, 28-30 (PDF page numbers 26, 33-35)
4. ^ 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".
5. ^ 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
6. ^ The human rights dimensions of population (Page 2, paragraph 138) UNHCR web site
7. ^ Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1993 Volume II Part Two Page 48, paragraph 295 (last paragraph on the page)
8. ^ 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

Further reading

• Anne Armstrong. "Unconditional Surrender: The Impact of the Casablanca Policy upon World War II", Greenwood Pub Group 1974, ISBN 0-8371-7042-7
• Brett H. McGurk A Lawyer in Baghdad(PDF) Footnote I on Page 3: argues that "The unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan supported the application of debellatio, a concept that is discredited in the international legal community and would not easily transfer to Iraq. No Coalition member, in any event, argued that debellatio applied in Iraq."
• Max Rheinstein. The Legal Status of Occupied Germany Michigan Law Review, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Nov., 1948), pp. 23–40 doi:10.2307/1284507
• Gerry Everding U.S. rules Iraq under international law doctrine of 'debellatio' and will until stable government is formed reprints an article by Victor T. Le Vine in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sunday, February 22, 2003.
• Sir Robert Jennings presiding over a public sitting held on 22 June 1993 in the International Court of Justice for the case Territorial Dispute (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya/Chad) Professor Bowett speaking for Libya states "debellatio — the end of hostilities brought about by the complete subjugation of the enemy"
• 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), 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;"
• Melissa Patterson. Who’s Got the Title? or, The Remnants of Debellatio in Post-Invasion Iraq, Harvard International Law Journal Volume 47, Number 2, Summer 2006
• Adam Roberts. Transformative military occupation: applying the laws of war and human rights, 100 The American Journal of International Law. vol 100 pp. 580–622 (2006)
• Ruth Wedgwood. Judicial Overreach(PDF) Wall Street Journal November 16, 2004