Unconditional Surrender and Assessing the Losses

Unconditional Surrender - A New Policy without Precedent

The concept of unconditional surrender was unique in western history, was nearly universally opposed by military and political leaders of the time. According to General Eisenhower, the demand for unconditional surrender extended the war by years and cost countless lives. The destruction of Germany created a power vacuum in Europe that Stalin was portrayed as trying to fill leading to the Cold War for the next several decades (1 p. 406). Further this was strongly influenced by American domestic politics.

The election of 1942 went badly for the Democrats. A relatively unknown Dwight D. Eisenhower had been placed in command of US Army forces and was landing in North Africa. Roosevelt had approved of a deal with French Admiral Darlan of the French Vichy government that saved thousands of American lives and rescued the initial invasion. Because of Darlan’s lack of liberal moral purity, this had hard core new dealers questioning FDR’s credentials as a true liberal (2 p. 172). These were the concerns in the forefront of the President’s mind when he left on a top secret train on January 9, 1943 to Florida from where they would fly to North Africa to meet with Winston Churchill and a group of British diplomats. When Roosevelt briefed reporters on the outcome of the meeting he said that he and Churchill worked out a policy that would bring about victory and a peaceful world for generations to come. “Some of you Britishers know the old story—we had a general called U. S. Grant … His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant but in my, and the Prime Minister’s early days, he was called ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant. The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan” (3) , (2 p. 173).[1] He then went on to say as something of an afterthought: “ It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy or Japan, but it does mean the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people” (2 pp. 173-4). Roosevelt later suggested that Casablanca be called the, “Unconditional Surrender Meeting”. (4)

Prime Minister Churchill had no pre-knowledge of Roosevelt’s announcement and was left to assess the probable impact on the course of the war. Shock and dismay on the part of the other British representatives present was even worse. British secret intelligence service (SIS), General Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, saw this as a disaster to certain secret operations already in progress and would also make the the Germans fight “with the despairing ferocity of cornered rats” (5 p. 248), (2 p. 174). After analyzing FDR’s statements, Lord Hankey could find only one significant example of unconditional surrender in recorded history; other than the ultimatum that the Romans gave to Carthage in the Third Punic War. The Carthaginians rejected this and the Romans razed the city to the ground which was probably what they had intended to do anyway (2 p. 174).

The reaction on the part of the American military leadership was more of the same. General Albert Wedemeyer, who was the man accused of being behind the “big leak” of December 4, 1941 but later vindicated, opposed unconditional surrender from the moment he heard of it saying it would “weld all Germans together” (2 p. 175). Commander of the U.S Eighth Air Force, Major General Ira C. Eaker said:

“Everybody that I knew at that time when they heard this, said: ‘How stupid can you be?’ All the soldiers and the airmen who were fighting this war wanted the Germans to quit tomorrow. . . A child knew that once you said this to the Germans, they were going to fight to the last man. There wasn’t a man who was actually fighting in the war whom I ever met who didn’t think that this was about as stupid an operation as you could find.” (6 p. 132), (2 p. 175)

Major General Eaker also opposed the RAF’s efforts to force the United States to join in nighttime bombing of German civilians.

When Berlin heard of this new policy, Admiral William Canaris, head of the German Intelligence Service said to one of his deputies General Lahousen:

“You know, my dear Lahousen, the students of history will not need to trouble their heads after this war, as they did after the last, to determine who was guilty of starting it. The case is however different when we consider guilt for prolonging the war. I believe that the other side has now disarmed us of the last weapon with which we could have ended it. Unconditional surrender, no, our generals will not swallow that. Now I cannot see any solution”. (5 p. 249), (2 p. 176)

Learning the Wrong Lessons from History

So how did the president arrive at his plan and why? At the press conference where he announced his policy he said the idea just “popped into his head” but he had notes in his lap that he dictated to prepare for the conference with nearly identical content. This policy gave the war a moral rallying cry which it lacked, although the anti-war forces had largely been silenced, and countered his liberal critics (2 p. 180) . The Puritans who became Yankees who became Progressives who became Liberals always required a moral purpose or mission while seeking to eradicate those who do not conform to their views and their culture and this was the latest manifestation of this paradigm. The term was first known to appear in the American government in the spring of 1942 when the State Department set up a committee on post war objectives. Former under Secretary of State in the Wilson administration and J.P. Morgan banker Norman H. Davis was head of the committee and frequent collaborator with Roosevelt on foreign policy. When Davis told Roosevelt that the committee was going to recommend an unconditional surrender policy, the president said he was in total agreement. In a speech on January 6, 1942 he said “There has never been – there can never be a successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, decency, and faith” (2) (3 p. 17). Apparently this policy was supposed to impress Stalin and keep him from reaching a separate peace treaty with Germany. The soviet dictator considered this policy to be foolish making many of the same points as Eisenhower, Wedemeyer, and Eaker (2 p. 270).

FDR’s unconditional surrender policy represented a sort of alternative conclusion to World War I. George Creel’s government financed Committee of Public Information along with many other public voices called for a war of annihilation against Germany. Methodist Bishop William Alfred Quayle, who was typical of most mainstream protestant denominations, stated that Americans fought “not merely Junkers, Prussianism, and the kaiser, but the German people, who were perpetrating “the chief barbarity of history”” (2 p. 182). He had watched the events at the end of World War I destroy the presidency and health of Woodrow Wilson. Theodore Roosevelt and General Pershing had sought a policy of unconditional surrender then which was almost certainly an influence on FDR’s policies (2 p. 182). Although a minority position, there were influential individuals and groups in both the British and American governments that advocated for unconditional policy. The British Foreign Office, was led by Lord Vansittart who said in a speech to the British National Trade Union Club, “The German nation has become in the main a nation of killers because they have become spiritual dope fiends. The fatal drug of militarism has been fed to them for 150 years” (2 p. 179). In 1940 he wrote to a fellow diplomat, “Eighty percent of the German race are political and moral scum of the earth” (2 p. 179). New Deal Insider Henry Morgenthau developed a plan in August 1944 that Roosevelt was favorably disposed to that proposed to divide Germany into four parts. It also recommended destroying all the industry in the Ruhr and Saar basins and turning Central Europe and Germany back into an agricultural region. Dexter White, who worked under Morgenthau and was later found to be a Soviet spy (described by his Soviet handler as “a very nervous cowardly person”) warned Morgenthau this idea was politically risky; it would reduce as many 20 million people to starvation. “I don’t care what happens to the population,” Morgenthau said. (2 p. 428)

Roosevelt’s disdain for Germany and commitment to unconditional surrender failed to acknowledge a large contingent of people within Germany, many of them Prussian military officers, who had worked to overthrow the Nazi’s from before the European war started and had ties to both the British and American Secret Service. They referred to themselves as the “Front of Decent People”. Admiral Canaris was a prominent member of this group and the timing of the Casablanca announcement could not have been worse. The German Army had just been split in half by the Russians with half the army trapped at Stalingrad. The conspirators had been waiting two years for a major defeat which would force the military leadership to recognize the war was lost and to support a coup (2 p. 179). On January 22, 1943, Senior German foreign office official Ulrich Von Hassel wrote in his diary, which is one of a few surviving records from the German resistance, “According to people who . . . have pipelines to the Army both on the battle front and at home, there is now a real possibility for peace. The evil of the situation is revealed in the fact that at this same time there come reports from the ‘enemy’s side’ which give rise to ever-increasing doubts as to whether they are now holding out for the complete destruction of Germany” (2 p. 180), (7 p. 281). Thomas Fleming describes that final attempt at arranging a settlement that would have avoided the final year of war in Europe as follows:

“In France, Admiral Canaris emerged from the shadows to make one last effort to cut a deal. In the months before D day, he leaked vital intelligence to the British and Americans, including the German army’s order of battle, an invaluable insight into the Wehrmacht’s intentions. Through intermediaries, he made a final plea to Stewart Menzies, head of England’s secret intelligence service, offering, among other things, the support of General Rommel for a bloodless conquest of the western front if the Anglo-Americans would give the slightest sign of a disposition for an armistice. In a convent outside Paris, one of Menzies’s most trusted aides delivered the British reply: there was no alternative to unconditional surrender. Canaris gasped with pain as he read the letter. “Finis Germaniae,” he sighed”. (5 pp. 598-9) (2 pp. 372-4)

As the war ground through its final couple of years, the concept of unconditional surrender gained popularity and acceptance with the American public. Polls conducted in the later part of 1943 showed that unconditional surrender had become a popular slogan with the American people that many people identified with a peaceful postwar period (2 p. 278). Still few top people in either government supported this policy except for Roosevelt and his inner circle of new dealers. In Britain, Vansittart never acquired any real following. On March 25, 1944, General George Marshall and the chiefs of staff submitted a memorandum to Roosevelt urging, “that a reassessment of the formula of unconditional surrender should be made . . . at a very early date.” Along with an assurance that the Allies had no intent to, “extinguish the German people or Germany as a nation” (2 p. 371). Roosevelt’s emotional response to this on April 1, 1944 was telling: “A somewhat long and painful experience in and out of Germany leads me to believe that German Philosophy cannot be changed by decree, law or military order. The change must be evolutionary and may take two generations” (2 p. 371). He concluded by saying that he was determined to inflict a “total defeat” on Germany and that he would “stick to what I have already said” (2 pp. 371-2). The root of the problem in Roosevelt’s mind was Prussian Militarism.

There have been many times in history when a fundamental misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of historical events have led to disastrous actions and this is certainly a prime example. As for Prussians leading Europe into three wars, France had declared war and initiated the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. World War I was principally initiated by the British although the matter is still debated today and no one on either side appreciated the gravity of what was about to take place. Prussia and its capital of Berlin was the stronghold of the German Social Democratic Party and the Nazi’s never won an election there and had relatively little support. The Nazi Party was largely from Bavaria and Munich was its spiritual home. The style of Prussian aristocracy was constrained and unassuming as opposed to the gaudy uniforms and regalia of the Nazi’s. Roosevelt’s policy was aimed at a mythical enemy that did not exist (2 p. 269). In this case Roosevelt had fully bought into the Puritan Anglo-file propaganda of World War I and effectively resold it to the American populace. The Prussian professional military was distinctly different from the Nazi Party and were trying to both remove Hitler and bring about an end to the war. This was further biased by his own political posturing to maintain the moral leadership of the New Deal. Millions would pay a very heavy price for this.

This is a period video on the Dresden bombing raid that seemed to grasp the severity of it and was almost boastful about it. The figure of 25K dead may have been significantly higher as between the bombing itself and then the firestorm would have maid many bodies unrecoverable.

This short news video is of a commemoration of the attack that features a British soldier who was a POE in Dresden at the time of the bombing.

This video makes a case against the use of the two atomic bombs against Japan at the end of WWII even in the context of unconditional surrender. It points out that nearly all leading US military figures of the time opposed it including Eisenhower and Nimitz. Eisenhower referred to the bomb as "that awful thing" and Admiral William Halsey said "they had this toy and they wanted to try it out". This also has profiles and quotes from the crew of the Enola Gay.

Assessing the Losses – A War Waged against Civilians

World War II directly resulted in the death of more civilians than combatants. Germany and Japan were responsible for most, maybe the overwhelming majority of this, but in contested neutral areas, many times this can’t be fully assessed. America and the western democracies played a role in this also which is frequently overlooked. Total Deaths from World War II are estimated at between 70 and 85 million people or about 3% of the world’s population in 1940. Between 50 and 65 million were directly caused by the war and the remaining 19 to 28 million by disease and famine. 50 to 55 million of the dead were civilians (8). Counting civilian casualties is somewhat difficult and generally comes down to assessing before and after populations and trying to correlate that to specific events to the extent they can be. The largest number of civilian deaths occurred where the worst fighting was in the Soviet Union, Poland, and China. Countries positioned between Germany and Russia generally had high civilian casualties relative to their populations. The Soviet Union had the highest military losses as well followed by Germany, China, and Japan in that order. Russia lost over 12% of its entire population.

A majority of the fighting had already occurred before the US entered the war at the end of 1941 especially between Germany and Russia. Most of the losses occurred in theaters the western democracies had minimal involvement with. Historian Norman Davies summarized the roles of the participants by saying, “Proportions … are crucial. Since 75%–80% of all German losses were inflicted on the eastern front it follows that the efforts of the western allies accounted for only 20%–25%. Furthermore, since the British army deployed no more than 28 divisions as compared with the American army’s 99, the British contribution to victory must have been in the region of 5%–6%. Britons who imagine that “we won the war” need to think again” (9) . Pat Buchanan added, “Britain surely played an indispensable role in bringing down Hitler and liberating Western Europe, but it was a supporting role. It was the Red Army that tore the guts out of the Wehrmacht. D-Day in France did not come until three years after Hitler’s invasion of Russia” (1 p. 314).

Most civilian deaths were collateral damage of artillery, bombings, blockages, and disruptions of food supplies but the dictatorships did systematically round up and kill people under their jurisdictions. Somewhere between 5 and 6 million Jews and possibly as many as 10 million people in total were killed under the Nazi regime. While the Nazi’s were anti-Semitic from the beginning, the bulk of the slaughter happened from 1942 on and accelerated as the war drew to an end. Both the Russians and Germans killed a significant number of POW’s. As part of the Yalta agreement at the end of the war, the U.S actually returned over a million anti-communist (who could also be considered Fascist in many cases) Russians to Stalin many of whom opted to commit suicide instead (10 p. 188). Some of the returned Russians were actually on American soil at Fort Dix and resisted so vigorously that they eventually had to be drugged by spiking their coffee in order to return them. All of these people, if they survived their initial return at all, would have wound up in the Soviet prison camp system. A notable instance where blame was originally placed on the Germans for a well known incident was the Katyn Massacre. This was a series of mass executions of Polish military officers, totaling app. 22,000, carried out by the Soviets in April and May of 1940. Historical consensus eventually placed the blame for this event on the Soviets although the question is still active with an alternative theory being that Ukrainian SS troops associated with Stephan Bandera committed the massacre.

The British had a long standing practice of directing war measures against civilian populations principally in the form of naval blockades that had a great deal to do with the final outcome of World War I. They advocated a policy of bombing non-military targets in Germany. The Americans didn’t readily adopt these practices but gradually came to rationalize it calling it “radar bombing” which memorandums discussing it determined would “do a good job of de-housing civilians” (2 p. 366). The British initially approached the subject calling it “morale bombing” which extended targeting beyond industrial facilities. This remained a topic of debate within the American command throughout the war. Advocates of morale-bombing admitted the tactics were “repugnant” and “deplorable” but reasoned the Germans deserved to have their women and children killed because they had been “brought up on doctrines of unprecedented cruelty, brutality and disregard of basic human decencies.” This was all very similar to the logic behind unconditional surrender (2 pp. 366-9). The American firebombing of Japan was justified in much the same manner citing “military objectives surrounded by workers’ housing” and this extended to the dropping of the two atomic bombs. Arguments for the use of the atomic bombs deal with the ferocity of the Japanese defense of their home land which could alternatively be seen as fanaticism or heroism depending on one’s perspective. It was reasoned that if American forces were to completely subdue Japan, based on the initial resistance encountered, the losses to US forces would exceed 500,000, which would be greater than U.S losses to that point in the war, with an even greater toll to the Japanese. This, however, was based on the doctrine of unconditional surrender. A negotiated conclusion at that point could have avoided all of this (11). In the end it’s also very questionable as to whether the allied civilian bombing of Germany and Japan had a significant impact on war production and increased civilian resentment and will to resist. Later analysis of the allied bombing of Germany showed that those killed contributed little to the war effort at very high loss of RAF personnel and assets (12 p. 612).

The final question is what happened immediately after the war in Germany? Author James Bacque in two extensively researched books on the post war period, Other Losses which addresses German POWs and Crimes and Mercies focused on German civilians, asserts that, “A whole nation was converted into a starvation prison. At least 7 million civilians died after the war, plus about 1.5 million prisoners of war” (13 p. intro xxiv). He attributes responsibility for this primarily to Eisenhower and De Gaulle in what could be considered a partial implementation of the Morgenthau Plan. His work is controversial but challenges to it, when specified, address responsibility and counts as opposed to the basic events and his conclusions were extensively coordinated before they were published. These events were denied and whitewashed at the time and a key witness, New York Times correspondent Drew Middleton, later admitted that he lied about the camps in stories he wrote in 1945 and wasn’t surprised at Bacque’s findings. (13 p. intro xiv)

The concept of waging war against civilians generally didn’t exist in western civilization prior to the American War between the States. From there it expanded rapidly and, in the war planning and strategies associated with the Cold War, involved extermination of entire societies and possibly civilization itself. Speaking on the distinctions that limited the scope of war Professor Quigley wrote:

“We have already seen the obliteration of the distinctions between combatants and noncombatants and between neutrals and belligerents brought on by British actions in World War I. These began with the blockade of neutrals, like the Netherlands, and the use of floating mines in navigational waters. The Germans retaliated with acts against Belgian civilians and with indiscriminate submarine warfare. These kinds of actions continued in World War II with the British night-bombing effort aimed at destroying civilian morale by the destruction of workers’ housing (Lord Cherwell’s favorite tactic) and the American fire raids against Tokyo. It is generally stated in American accounts of the use of the first atom bomb that target planning was based on selection of military targets, and it is not generally known even today that the official orders from Cabinet level on this matter specifically said “military objectives surrounded by workers’ housing.” The postwar balance of terror reached its peak of total disregard both of noncombatants and of neutrals in the policies of John Foster Dulles, who combined sanctimonious religion with “massive retaliation wherever and whenever we judge fit” to the complete destruction of any non-combatant or neutral status.” Carroll Quigley (12 pp. 629-30)

This table from Pat Buchanan's "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War" shows the dead from the first two world wars for the principal combatants. Note the extremely high Russian losses and this doesn't include the Russian Civil War and the Russian war with Poland that were directly related to WWI.

(14) The chart taken from Wikipedia gives an easy to follow comparison of deaths by country in WWII including a breakdown of civilian vs. military deaths. The blue line shows percent of population.

What If

World War II leaves several strategic “what ifs” that potentially could have avoided a good deal of the death and destruction.

What if France and England hadn’t used the Versailles treaty to impose terms on Germany that effectively couldn’t be met or demanded Germany admit to full responsibility for a war that the British in particular played a major role in starting?

What if the US hadn’t entered WWI on the side of England and France allowing those terms to be imposed?

What if the British had not tried to impose their gold valuation scheme in the 1920’s and simply let market forces determine currency value? (15) (16)

What if the US didn’t support this policy by devaluing their own currency which was a major factor in triggering the Great Depression?

What if the word hadn’t been engulfed in a trade war in the 1930’s and what if the western democracies and the US in particular not considered winning that trade war to be justification enough for a kinetic war on the scale of what was to follow? (17 p. 271) (18)

What if France had blocked the German’s from occupying the Rhineland in 1936?

What if the English Torres hadn’t blocked Russian attempts to form an alliance to defend Europe?

What if the relatively small ethnically German Danzig region of Poland had been given to Germany?

What would the world have been like if western banking interests and governments had never chosen to finance the Bolsheviks and Nazis in the first place?

What if Hitler had realized and acknowledged that the risks to his oil supply weren’t worth the risks and potential costs of invading Russia?

The most obvious question though is what was the cost in blood and treasure for the “unconditional surrender” policy and what did it bring about?

The list can go on but the general answer to most of these questions is that large financial interests outweighed the interests of “ordinary people” and the decisions makers were willing to engage in “brinkmanship” underestimating the other side’s ability and willingness to fight. This is a common theme to all modern wars.

While the Roosevelt administration seemed to have a lot of confidence in Russia, many in the American and British governments had consistently seen them as a threat. In the end Nazism was dead but Russia was increasingly being seen as a new threat. Liberalism would control the west but would eventually evolve into a new liberalism that would resurrect old ghosts.

Footnotes

[1] This referred specifically to the surrender of Fort Donaldson and not the surrender terms for the Confederacy several years later. The surrender at Appomattox was considered by most to be reasonable. Both Lee and Grant seemed to want to avoid further lengthening the conflict.

Bibliography

1. Buchanan, Patrick J. Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. New York, New York : Crown Publishers, 2008.

2. Fleming, Thomas. The New Dealers War. New York, New York : Basic Book, 2001.

3. Armstrong, Anne. Unconditional Surrender. s.l. : Rutgers University Press, 1963.

4. Dallek, Robert. FRanklin D roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-45. New York, New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.

5. Brown, Anthony Cave. Bodygurad of Lies. s.l. : Harper and Rowe, 1975.

6. Eaker, Ira Clearance. Reminiscences of Ira Clarence Eaker : oral history, 1959. New York, New York : Columbia University, 1959.

7. von Hassell, Ulrich. The Urlich von Hassell Diaries. London, England : Frontline Books, 1947.

8. Bureau, US Census. International Programs - Historic Estimateds of World Populations. [Online] March 6, 2013. https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_history.php.

9. Davies, Norman. history News Network. [Online] November 05, 2006. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/31524.

10. Woods, Tom. Lew Rockwell. [Online] October 14, 2009. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/10/thomas-woods/why-youve-never-heard-of-the-depression-of-1920/.

11. Lippincott, Josiah. The American Conservative. [Online] September 2020, 2020. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/wholesale-slaughter-of-japanese-non-combatants-in-wwii-was-evil/.

12. Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope A history of the World in Our Time. New York, New York : Macmillan company, 1966.

13. Bacque, James. Crimes and Mercies. Vancouver, BC : Talon Books, 2007.

14. Wikipedia. World War II Casualities. [Online] September 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties.

15. Rothbard, Murray N. Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. Lew Rockwell. [Online] 1984. https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/wall-street-wars/.

16. —. A History of Money and Banking in the United States. Auburn Alabama : Misses Institute, 2002.

17. Schultze-Rhonhof, Gerd. 1939 - The War the had Many Fathers. Munchen, Germany : Olzag Verlag GmBh, 2011.

18. Roosevelt, Elliott. As He Saw It. New York : Duell, Sloan, & Pierce, 1946.