unconditional surrender

unconditional surrender, Allied policy first enunciated by Roosevelt at the press conference after the Anglo-American summit meeting at Casablanca in January 1943 (see SYMBOL). The phrase did not appear in the communiqué of the conference, and both Roosevelt and Churchill later tried to claim that its use was unpremeditated. It is now known that Roosevelt had discussed the matter with his staff before leaving Washington, and that Churchill had had the opportunity to consult the war cabinet in London. The absence of the phrase from the communiqué, and its subsequent use by Roosevelt, suggest disagreement between the two leaders, and at that stage in the war the likely cause of the difference was the treatment of Italy. Although the invasion of Sicily was agreed at Casablanca, the invasion of the mainland was still under discussion. Churchill hoped for some way of easing Italy out of the war; Roosevelt thought it more important to restate Allied war aims firmly and unambiguously. He did so not, as has sometimes been suggested, in order to reassure Stalin, restive over continuing delay in mounting the Second Front, but in order to reassure American public opinion, unhappy with Eisenhower's deal with the Vichy French authorities in Algiers which had eased the American landings at the start of the North African campaign.

Although the phrase ‘unconditional surrender’ was indeed used for the first time at Casablanca, other phrases implying no less had been common enough. What other meaning can be attached to ‘complete victory’, for example? After the entry into the war of the USA it was clear that there was no possibility of Allied defeat and no doubt that the war could be fought to the unconditional surrender of the Axis, if that was what the Allies chose to do. The demand was even extended to the Allies' lesser opponents during the Moscow conference later in 1943. On the other side, the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations Declaration had already attempted to sketch at least the western view of the post-war order, making it clear that the world would have a place for vanquished as for victors. In longer perspective the important question is not why the policy was announced at Casablanca, but rather whether it was a wise one. Did it either lengthen the war or contribute to preventing a satisfactory settlement—satisfactory, by implication, to the western Allies? In answering such questions it is important to remember how different the circumstances and interests of the three major Axis powers were, and how little co-operation there was among them.

The lesser states of eastern Europe can be ignored. They were necessarily overrun as the Soviets fought their way towards Germany, and Soviet policy determined their later fate. The first of the Allies' major opponents to come under consideration was also the least, Italy. Some historians have tried to argue that Italy might have been removed from the war earlier and at less cost had an offer of terms been made. That is hard to sustain because by September 1943 Italy was in effect an occupied country. The Italians' surrender to the Allies was in form only, for in practice they had already surrendered to the Germans. If the Italian armistice could have led to the quick and painless occupation of Italy, it would have been worth paying a price to get it. It was not, however, an Italian army that the Allies faced in Italy but a German one. Italy became a battleground rather than either an opponent or a conquered territory. It remains a moot point whether the time and effort expended on driving the German forces out of Italy were well spent by the Allies, but the debate need take no account of Italian considerations. It may be that the last stages of the war did some damage to future Italian politics that might have been avoided in other circumstances, but it was the Germans and not the Allies who controlled those circumstances. The Allies gave no great thought to the political future of Italy, and indeed they differed over such matters as whether the monarchy should be retained or not (see Victor Emmanuel).

The case of Germany was the central case, recognized by all to be so. Of the Axis powers, only Germany had been an opponent of the UK and the USA in the First World War, and the defects of the Versailles settlement were widely regarded as an important contributory factor to the coming of the Second World War. It was important that mistakes then made, whatever they were, should not be repeated. It was common ground that the Nazi regime must be overthrown. There could be no bargaining with Hitler or his followers. If he were overthrown by the Germans themselves, the successor regime must surrender. But what should follow? It was easy to argue that Hitler could never have succeeded without support from the barons of German heavy industry and from many ordinary Germans, so that the establishment of German democracy was no matter of form but one requiring a prolonged period of re-education. Beyond that, however, there were those who argued that the essence of the problem was one of German power, so that its solution required the limitation of that power, either by constraints on Germany or by permanent partition.

The partition of Germany as a permanent solution was abandoned, even if reluctantly before the end of the war (see Morgenthau Plan). However convenient in other respects, it was thought likely to be a cause of permanent German resentment, unless perhaps particularism were to revive in the historic provinces such as Bavaria. The post-war division of Germany was along artificial lines and was never intended to be lasting, as the arrangements for four-power control made clear (see Allied Control Commissions). Yet in spite of much thought and hard work, it proved impossible either to decide in advance what the Allies should do in Germany, or to devise any formula which might be broadcast before or shortly after the Normandy landings (see OVERLORD) to encourage the Germans to give in. That difficulty did not derive from a foolish commitment to the doctrine of unconditional surrender. The more the effort was made to find some other formulation, the more clear it became that any statement was open to misinterpretation both by Germany and by the USSR and that, if it came to competition among the Allies, it was the Soviets and not the western Allies who had real concessions to offer—for example, over the eastern frontiers of post-war Germany (see Oder–Neisse Line).

Once Germany had surrendered, it was clear that the surrender of Japan was no more than a matter of time, but time and the cost in Allied lives, chiefly American, were none the less matters of great concern. In historical discussion of the Japanese case, a great deal of attention has naturally been given to the decision to drop the atomic bomb. The Soviets had undertaken to enter the war against Japan, in which they had not hitherto been engaged, once Germany was defeated. Some historians have therefore argued that the use of the bomb was no longer justifiable on grounds of military necessity and so must have had some concealed purpose, such as denying the USSR a voice in the peace settlement with Japan, or even modifying Soviet policy elsewhere. The argument can hardly be settled, but may be over-ingenious. Recent Pacific island battles such as Iwo Jima had shown just how costly it would be for the Allies to fight their way into Japan, and there is some evidence that the atomic bomb gave the Japanese peace party their most compelling argument in their struggle against the diehards, and may at least have saved the lives of prisoners-of-war in Japanese hands. Nevertheless, it was the Japanese who succeeded in laying down one condition of surrender, the continued rule of Emperor Hirohito, in spite of the fact that many in the west regarded him as a war criminal. Military considerations overrode political ones in that instance at least.

The experience of the Second World War suggests several general conclusions. First, in a war presented from the start as a necessary war of good against evil, not as a conflict of national interests, and a war in which, after the entry of the USA, the Allies had the capacity for complete victory, any war aim other than unconditional surrender would have been inappropriate. Second, that same nature of the war determined what could be done by the victorious Allies after it. Moral constraints proved as compelling as national interests might have been. The demand for unconditional surrender neither lengthened the war needlessly nor did anything much to determine the shape of the post-war world. The rivalries of the major Allies after the war served to maintain an international balance quite as well as any agreement among them that balance was desirable could have done. It also allowed, over time, for the return of the defeated states into the international system. Ideological rivalries are not easily accommodated in systemic analysis, yet an international system of considerable stability proved possible.

A. E. Campbell

Bibliography

Campbell, A. E. , ‘Franklin Roosevelt and Unconditional Surrender’, in R. T. B. Langhorne (ed.), Diplomacy and Intelligence during the Second World War. Essays in Honour of F. H. Hinsley (Cambridge, 1985).
O'Connor, R. G. , Diplomacy for Victory. FDR and Unconditional Surrender (New York, 1971).
Villa, B. L. , ‘The US Army, Unconditional Surrender and the Potsdam Proclamation’, Journal of American History, 63:1 ( June 1976).