What were the advantages and disadvantages of the wartime policy of unconditional surrender?

Unconditional surrender meant that there was
no ambiguity as to the precise moment the war ended. This gave all parties to the conflict a
much-needed degree of certainty, allowing them to plan for the post-war future. Isolated pockets
of resistance would doubtless remain in such a scenario, but they would be easily contained. At
the very least, the insistence on unconditional surrender would make it abundantly clear to all
concerned what was expected of them, and this was surely its main advantage.

On the downside, the demand for unconditional surrender, at least in the context of the
East Asian theater of war, merely served to encourage further resistance. The Japanese felt they
had nothing to lose by continuing to fight, even though it was obvious that they could never
actually win the war. The Japanese felt they were fighting for their civilization, which they
believed was under threat if they capitulated on America's terms. It was only after the United
States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the Japanese finally acceded to
demands for unconditional surrender. But in the meantime, loss of life on both sides continued
to mount.