Surrender in a War of Extremes, 1937–1945

The great facts of World War II include the Allied insistence on the declared unconditional surrender of the Axis powers and the American unleashing of atomic bombs to bring an end to the war in the Pacific. Some scholars charge that the demand for unconditional surrender lengthened the war, but this misinterprets the situation. Neither Hitler nor the Japanese leadership were open to a considering any surrender until the very end.

German cities were reduced to rubble and Hitler’s armed forces destroyed before he recognized that the war was lost. Japanese leadership accepted surrender only in August 1945, with the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Russian invasion of Manchuria. The treatment of prisoners of war by the belligerents varied.

On the European Western Front, it essentially conformed to the humane standards set by the 1929 Geneva Conventions. On the Russian front, it was a war of extermination. Of the 5.7 million Soviet military taken prisoner by the Germans, 3.3 million died.

In the Pacific War after April 1942, the Japanese took few prisoners. Once Americans realized the murderous fate that awaited those whom the Japanese overcame in combat, the Americans gave no quarter to the Japanese.