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". 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. 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, 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).