The title is a reference to the Allied demand for an Unconditional Surrender of the Axis, made in the same period in which the plot is set, but which gets an ironical meaning when applied to the protagonist's tangled personal life.

In the previous volume, Officers and Gentlemen, Ludovic had deserted from his unit in Crete, and in the process murdered two men, one while escaping from the island by boat.

Despite being incorrectly suspected of pro-Axis sympathies because of his time in pre-war Italy and his Catholicism, Guy is posted to Yugoslavia where he is appalled by the Partisans, befriends a small group of Jews and finds out that his former friend de Souza's loyalties are with Communism rather than with England.

On his late father's advice, Guy attempts individual acts of salvation, but these ultimately make matters worse for the recipients.

In Waugh's first version of the novel's conclusion, Guy and his second wife produce further children who are ironically to be disinherited by Trimmer's son.

Waugh altered this ending to an uncompromisingly childless marriage in the revised text, after realising that some readers interpreted such a conclusion as hopeful.