16 Surrenders That Changed the Course of History

The Peloponnesian War, fought between the two most powerful Greek city-states, Athens and Sparta, dragged on for 27 years. Tables finally turned when the Persian empire came to Sparta’s aid, funding the Spartan general Lysander as he destroyed the Athenian naval fleet and besieged Athens. As Athenians faced famine due to the siege, the city surrendered. The Spartans took mercy on Athens and spared its population and infrastructure rather than destroying the city.

The Banu Qurayza were the last Jewish tribe who lived in Yathrib (what is now Medina in Saudi Arabia). To defend their right to remain in the area, the Qurayza had built alliances with the Quraysh of Mecca, who battled with Muslim forces led by Muhammad (the founder of Islam). Muhammad then beseiged the Qurayza for 25 days. In the end they surrendered, but Muhammad’s forces beheaded over 600 men and sold the women and children into slavery. Their defeat ceded influence in the Arabian Peninsula to Islam.

The Emirate of Granada was the last Islamic state in Iberia. A 10-year war between Granada and the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile ended when Sultan Muhammad XII, also known as King Boabdil, surrendered to Castilian forces. Granada was annexed into Castile and both Jews and Muslims were subsequently forced to convert to Christianity or be exiled.

After a decade of tensions between Britain and its American colonies, the American Revolution broke out in 1775. Battles on American soil lasted until late 1781, when American and French troops besieged the British Army for over a month in Yorktown, Virginia. The British general Charles Cornwallis eventually surrendered, leading to an armistice and the end of the war.

Early in the Napoleonic Wars, Austria joined an alliance of European countries known as the Third Coalition against France. As Napoleon threatened to conquer Italy, Germany, and the U.K., Austria attempted to unite with Russian forces to prevent the French from entering Eastern Europe. During a five day battle in Bavaria, Napoleon’s forces surrounded the Austrian army before Russian reinforcements arrived, forcing them to surrender or lose 23,000 men. Napoleon subsequently took Vienna and launched what was to be seen as the most successful year of his career.

Marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the First French Empire, two coalitions of armies from the U.K., the Netherlands, and multiple German states defeated Napoleon’s forces at Waterloo in what is now Belgium. Six weeks after his resounding defeat, Napoleon surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of the HMS Bellerophon in the French port of Rochefort, leading to the former emperor’s exile to Saint Helena and eventual death.

During the Second Franco-Mexican War, imperialist France invaded Mexico in an attempt to install a monarchy amenable to French interests. The Mexican army defeated the French Foreign Legion during the Battle of Camarón, when 65 Legionnaires held their post against a Mexican army force 3,000-strong for 10 hours before finally surrendering with only two Frenchmen remaining alive. The episode was largely responsible for defining the legacy, and creating the myth, of the French Foreign Legion.

In April of 1865, after abandoning the Confederate capital and attempting to flee west and resupply, General Robert E. Lee realized that his army was trapped by Union forces. Rather than sacrifice his men to a certain fate, Lee chose to surrender to Union general Ulysses S. Grant, who allowed the rebel soldiers to lay down their guns and return home, rather than being tried for treason. Lee’s surrender effectively signaled the end of the Civil War.

Soon after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces invaded the Philippines. Poorly supplied American and Filipino forces fought the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy for three months before finally accepting defeat. Major General Edward P. King, Jr. surrendered the province of Bataan against General Douglas MacArthur’s orders, and 78,000 soldiers – 12,000 of them Americans – were incarcerated by the Japanese and forced on a gruelling death march, during which many were tortured and thousands died.

Britain’s military base in Singapore was a crucial defense post in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Japan’s assault on Singapore resulted in the surrender of Lieutenant General Arthur Percival’s force of 90,000 British, Canadian, Indian, and Australian soldiers to a much smaller Japanese contingent. It was the largest British surrender ever recorded and ultimately resulted in the slaughter of civilians and the end of perceptions of European supremacy in warfare.

The Battle of Stalingrad, a strategically vital city in southwestern Russia, which turned out to be the bloodiest battle of World War II, was marked by close-quarters urban combat and direct assaults on civilians. The Soviet Red Army prevailed when they encircled the Germans, who were eventually forced to surrender after five months of fighting. This was the first German surrender and a turning point in the war.

Soon after the execution of Benito Mussolini and the suicide of Adolf Hitler, German forces surrendered in multiple countries. On May 7, 1945, the Chief of Staff of the German Army, General Alfred Jodl, officially signed official documents of unconditional surrender to Allied forces in Reims, France. The next day in Berlin, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Kietel signed additional surrender papers to satisfy Soviet authorities, officially ending World War II.

A week after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender to Allied Powers. The official ceremony took place a few weeks later on September 2 on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending the Pacific Theater of World War II.

At the end of the Bangladesh War of Independence, nearly 95,000 troops from what was then West Pakistan surrendered to Bangladeshi separatists in what was then East Pakistan, in the largest surrender of troops since WWII. The surrender led to the creation of Bangladesh, the eighth most populous country in the world, and shifted the balance of power in South Asia.

On May 1, 2021, twenty years after a U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban regime, American forces initiated their withdrawal from the country. Immediately, the Taliban began an offensive that Afghan armed forces were unable to hold off. On August 15, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the government ceded control to the insurgent group. Their victory led to widespread human rights violations and the relinquishment of many rights for women in the country.