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One of the most questionable and contested political decisions of the second World War is the demand by the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the unconditional surrender of the principal Axis powers at the Casablanca conference in January, 1943. Although the term "unconditional surrender" was initially considered only as a political demand, increasing significance under international law was attached to it during Anglo-American planning. It is doubtful whether the motives guiding Roosevelt and his advisors to this proclamation mitigate the wrongfulness of this decision. Moreover, it was based heavily on prejudices and misjudgement; it seriously violated the foundations of the international conventions of war. The discussions at American and British planning headquarters show not least of all that unconditional surrender had suddenly been harnessed to the established international law so as to create a legal vacuum in which the freedom of political manoeuvre was not hindered by the constraints of international law. The negation of international law was made easier by German policy in the immediate post-war period because the majority was not willing to demand that the occupying powers adhere to international law. The fundamental political decision to demand unconditional surrender, based on confrontation and submission, was displaced within a few years in Anglo-American relations by the decision to cooperate as essentially equal power; but this decision was not founded on the reanimation of international legal principles, but by the outbreak of the East-West conflict which the Casablanca concord had, among other things, helped to disguise. (Der Staat / AuD)

Völkerrechtlicher Tatbestand der Seepiraterie - Eingriffsrechte auf Grundlage des Seerechtsübereinkommens der Vereinten Nationen (SRÜ) - Völkerrechtliche und staatsrechtliche Erwägungen beim Schutz von Handelsschiffen - Individueller und staatlicher Schutz von Handelsschiffen gegen Angriffe von Piraten

Verhältnis zwischen Völker- und Verfassungsrecht - völkerrechtlich erlaubte Gewaltanwendung - Kampfführung nach den Regeln des ius in bello - Grundrechte des Grundgesetzes im bewaffneten Konflikt - (mangelnde) Notwendigkeit eines Auslandseinsatzgesetzes - Reformbedürftigkeit der Wehrverfassung