Editing Total war (section)

=====Unconditional surrender=====
{{off topic|date=January 2020}}{{Main|Unconditional surrender}}
{{Blockquote|Actually [[Bombing of Dresden in World War II|Dresden]] was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.|source=Air Chief Marshal [[Arthur Harris]], in a memo to the [[Air Ministry]] on 29 March 1945<ref>Longmate, Norman; ''The Bombers'', Hutchins & Co, (1983), {{ISBN|978-0-09-151580-5}} p. 346</ref>}}

After the United States entered World War II, [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] declared at [[Casablanca conference]] to the other Allies and the press that [[unconditional surrender]] was the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.<ref name="SOSCasablanca">{{cite web|title=The Casablanca Conference, 1943|url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/casablanca|website=Office of the Historian|publisher=United States Department of State|access-date=19 January 2017}}</ref> Prior to this declaration, the individual regimes of the Axis Powers could have negotiated an [[armistice]] similar to that at the end of World War I and then a conditional surrender when they perceived that the war was lost.

The unconditional surrender of the major Axis powers caused a legal problem at the post-war [[Nuremberg Trials]], because the trials appeared to be in conflict with Articles 63 and 64 of the [[Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (1929)|Geneva Convention of 1929]]. Usually if such trials are held, they would be held under the auspices of the defeated power's own legal system as happened with some of the minor Axis powers, for example in the post World War II [[Romanian People's Tribunals]]. To circumvent this, the Allies argued that the major [[war criminals]] were captured after the end of the war, so they were not prisoners of war and the Geneva Conventions did not cover them. Further, the collapse of the Axis regimes created a legal condition of total defeat (''[[debellatio]]'') so the provisions of the [[Hague Convention of 1907|1907 Hague Convention]] over [[military occupation]] were not applicable.<ref>Ruth Wedgwood {{cite web |url=http://www.sais-jhu.edu/pubaffairs/SAISarticles04/Wedgwood_WSJ_111604.pdf |title=Judicial Overreach |access-date=29 May 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080308191908/http://www.sais-jhu.edu/pubaffairs/SAISarticles04/Wedgwood_WSJ_111604.pdf |archive-date=8 March 2008 }} [[The Wall Street Journal]] 16 November 2004</ref>