Video: '179 - Time to Fire Rommel? - WW2 - January 29, 1943' (Jan. 24, 1943, at 6:04)
(Sunday, January 24, 1943, 1:05 p.m. Western European Summer Time; during the Casablanca Conference, part of World War II) — U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluded a wartime conference today in Casablanca, Morocco, announcing to the few correspondents permitted to go along on the secret trip that the Allies would accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers.
Roosevelt had borrowed the term from U.S. Army General Ulysses S. Grant (known as “Unconditional Surrender” Grant), who had communicated that stance to the Confederate States Army commander during the American Civil War.
So Roosevelt stated at the conference’s concluding press conference today that the Allies were demanding “unconditional surrender” from the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese.
Video: 'The President's Historic Trip to North Africa'
In a Feb. 12, 1943 radio address, Roosevelt explained what he meant by unconditional surrender: “We mean no harm to the common people of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution upon their guilty, barbaric leaders.”
It has been claimed that behind the scenes, the United States and the United Kingdom were divided in the commitment to see the war through to Germany’s capitulation and “unconditional surrender.” But Churchill was consulted and had agreed in advance about “unconditional surrender;” he had cabled the War Cabinet four days earlier and they had not objected.
However, some source material contradicts the officially reported accord between Churchill and Roosevelt, claiming that Churchill did not fully subscribe to the doctrine of “unconditional surrender.”
Video: 'The World at War: Whirlwind: Bombing Germany - September 1939-April 1944 (12 of 26)' (Jan. 24, 1943, at 29:26)
The New York Times correspondent Drew Middleton, who was in Casablanca at the conference, later revealed in his book, Retreat From Victory, that Churchill had been “startled by the [public] announcement [of unconditional surrender]. I tried to hide my surprise. But I was his [Roosevelt’s] ardent lieutenant.”
According to former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union Charles Bohlen, “Responsibility for this unconditional surrender doctrine rests almost exclusively with President Roosevelt”. He guessed that Roosevelt made the announcement “to keep Soviet forces engaged with Germany on the Russian front, thus depleting German munitions and troops” and also “to prevent Stalin from negotiating a separate peace with the Nazi regime.”
That the war would be fought by the Allies until the total annihilation of enemy forces was not universally welcomed. Diplomatic insiders were critical that such a stance was too unequivocal and inflexible, would prevent any opportunity for political maneuvering, and would be morally debilitating to French and German resistance groups.
Video: 'The World At War Episode 13 HD - Tough Old Gut: Italy (November 1942 – June 1944)' (Casablanca Conference at 2:50)
The British felt that arriving at some accommodation with Germany would allow the German Army to help fight off a Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe. To Churchill and the other Allied leaders, the real obstacle to realizing that mutual strategy with Germany was the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
Allen Dulles, the chief of OSS intelligence in Bern, Switzerland, maintained that the Casablanca Declaration was “merely a piece of paper to be scrapped without further ado if Germany would sue for peace. Hitler had to go.”
There is evidence that German resistance forces, highly placed anti-Nazi government officials, were working with British intelligence, MI6, to eliminate Hitler and negotiate peace with the Allies. One such man was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German intelligence, the Abwehr. His persistent overtures for support from the United States were ignored by Roosevelt.
