[QUOTE=MEBuckner]
Many wars have ended without either side surrendering. (The War of 1812 or the Iran-Iraq War to name two.)
Many other wars have ended with a conditional surrender; one side makes concessions (such as territory) to end the war, but isn’t necessarily occupied, annexed, or massacred by the victorious side.
[/QUOTE]
If you back through history, I’d be really surprised if more wars weren’t ended by either the attacker withdrawing (such as how the US ended it’s participation in Vietnam) or with a conditional surrender, such as the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American War, to name a few which America has been involved with.
However, the OP is talking about a situation where there isn’t hope for surrender with terms.
If you are the top, it really depends on what the other side intends. If you’re a Hitler then you’re basically SOL. Since you would likely be an egomaniac, if not right insane, then you destroy your country in the vain hope that someone things will turn around.
If you are a Hirohito-type of emperor, then you make a personal deal to save yourself while remaining with lessened powers. You could try to save yourself by going into exile, e.g. Napoleon or what Saddam is reported to have tried.
It depends on your bargaining skills, the relative strengths of the countries and how much the other side is committed to getting you personally as part of their desired outcome. There isn’t a solution which would have allowed Hitler to have remained free, even in exile. OTOH, the US accepted a slightly less than unconditional surrender of Japan, by allowing Hirohito to remain a figurehead. Tojo and the others were screwed, but not everyone gets to go free.
Hirohito was allowed to remain in order to shorten the end, finish things before the USSR joined, and spare the expected large number of expected casualties, among other reasons. OTOH, Iraq wasn’t expected to put up with enough resistance and the US was expecting an easy victory so there wasn’t as much room for negations for personal gain.
Is you are a top general, then you have the option to try a coup, such as the July 20 Plot against Hitler. Difficult to pull off; with a higher personal price for failure. I can’t speak from personal experience, but putting together a coup is a risky business and dictators spend part of their time ensuring that they don’t succeed.
If you do succeed, you may be able to negotiate better with the enemy, which would be more likely to agree to terms with you where they wouldn’t with the government you replaced. With a coup, you would want to replace the previous administration and jail a bunch of the same people the enemy would want to, so you would be on the same side there.
As a grunt, then you keep your head down and hope for the best, or surrender if you believe you’ll get a reasonable chance of not being mistreated.