The Folly of ‘Unconditional Surrender’

From January 14th to 24th, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in the sunny resort of Anfa, a collection of luxurious villas around a hotel some three miles south of Casablanca. On the last day, reporters gathered in the courtyard of Roosevelt’s villa to hear the two leaders sum up the historic conclave. A beaming FDR declared that the allies had reached ‘complete agreement’ on the future conduct of the war. He and the prime minister, Roosevelt continued, had also hammered out a policy that would guarantee both victory and a peaceful world for generations to come – ‘the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan’.

Winston Churchill chimed in with a hearty endorsement of their ‘unconquerable will’ to pursue total victory over the ‘criminal forces’ that had plunged the world into war. It may well have been his finest hour as a political performer. He later admitted, however, that he had been ‘dumbfounded’ by Roosevelt’s announcement – and dismayed by its probable impact on the conduct of the war.