Abstract: Though there is relatively little work on how states manage victory, the conventional wisdom in international relations scholarship is that moderation in victory is the only approach that will provide post-war stability. That is, defeated states should not be restricted in the post-war era, nor should the gains made by victors be too large. Otherwise, post-war stability is jeopardized. I argue that restrictive war-ending settlements tend to provide postwar stability when there is a large postwar gap in capabilities favoring the victors and those states actively enforce the settlement. When these conditions hold, postwar stability, defined as no or only minor alterations to the settlement attempted by the vanquished nation, can follow two pathways. The first is the acceptance of the restrictive settlement by the vanquished based on simple coercion, or where the defeated state is unable to challenge the settlement and thus grudgingly endures its treatment as long as the power gap favors the victors. The second, coercion plus socialization, is acceptance of the restrictive settlement by the defeated state based on legitimacy, or where the defeated state is eventually socialized to the settlement such that it no longer desires to challenge or alter the settlement even if the opportunity arises to do so. When the gap in capabilities between the victors and vanquished is not large or cannot be perpetuated because of lack of enforcement, a less restrictive settlement is more likely to provide postwar stability. To test my arguments against the conventional wisdom, I conduct a comparative analysis of all great power war-ending settlements since 1815. I find that restrictive settlements do in fact lead to postwar stability at least as often as lenient ones. Moreover, the comparative analysis demonstrates that the coercion and coercion plus socialization both enjoy strong support. To further probe the coercion plus socialization model, I conduct an in-depth case study of West Germany after the Second World War. The case demonstrates very clearly that the victorious states instigated a process of socialization in West Germany by constructing a restrictive settlement. By doing so, the war-ending settlement proved remarkably stable.