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Britain's hard-won victory, paradoxically, added to the woes of a U.S. Administration preoccupied with the new conflict in the Middle East. Some Latin Americans, and especially Argentines, were blaming Washington more severely than London for the Falklands debacle. They claimed that Britain had won only because it had received extensive support from the U.S., notably in the form of sophisticated, high-tech weapons—a view that was promptly dismissed in London and Washington (see box). Latin American bitterness was already beginning to undermine U.S. efforts to create a non-Communist consensus in the Western Hemisphere, and, in the long run, might offer significant opportunities to the Soviet Union. Officials in Washington were deeply concerned that U.S. relations with all of Latin America would be severely harmed unless, as Secretary of State Alexander Haig has put it, Thatcher was "magnanimous" in victory.
But with Britain's loss of 255 lives in the recapture of the Falklands, Thatcher was in no mood to compromise. She insisted that Britain would "uphold its commitment to the security of the islands, if necessary, alone." Brushing aside suggestions that the Falklands be handed over to some form of international administration, such as a United Nations trusteeship, the Prime Minister said, "I cannot agree that [British troops] risked their lives in any way to have a United Nations trusteeship. They risked their lives to defend British sovereign territory, the British way of life and the rights of British people to determine their own future." Thatcher announced that Rex Hunt, the islands' former governor, would return to Port Stanley as "civil commissioner" to administer the territory with the victorious British field commander, Major General John Jeremy Moore.
Moore's victory in the final battle for Port Stanley came with unexpected swiftness. British troops, who had been poised atop Mount Kent, ten miles outside the capital, began closing in on the Argentine garrison that had formed a defensive horseshoe around Port Stanley. The combat was fierce. Said Moore: "It was a bloody battle, with hand-to-hand fighting. It was fighting with bayonets in the end." The British advance was punctuated by a heavy Royal Navy bombardment of the last Argentine positions on the heights outside the Falklands capital. The combination of artillery pounding and determined British pressure on the ground was too much for the Argentines. Suddenly, they broke and ran. Said British Journalist Max Hastings, who traveled with the attacking troops: "I think their soldiers had simply decided that they had had enough. The Argentine generals had to recognize that their men no longer had the will to carry on the fight."
From their commanding positions, the British could see hundreds of Argentine soldiers streaming back into Port Stanley. Within hours, the Argentine commander, General Mario Benjamin Menéndez, was in contact with General Moore, offering a temporary ceasefire. Moore agreed to talk, ordering his troops to hold their fire unless attacked. The rival commanders met in a government building in the center of Port Stanley. There, Menéndez agreed to capitulate. Said Moore: "I feel absolutely great. Now, happily, the killing stops."