FDRs demand for unconditional surrender by Germany
During the 1943 conference of Allied leaders in Casablanca, Winston Churchill was stunned when his friend and compatriot Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued his demand for unconditional surrender by the Germans, and the Allies unwillingness to accept anything else. FDR removed the possibility of any form of negotiated peace from the table. In doing so Roosevelt handed another propaganda coup to the Germans, and German Minister Joseph Goebbels used the president’s statement to urge the Germans to fight on, since the alternative was defeat and enslavement by the British, Americans, and Soviets.
Allen Foster Dulles initially supported Roosevelt’s demand, but he quickly came to oppose it when he saw the advantage it had handed Goebbels, and through him Hitler, as they opposed the factions in Germany which had quietly backed the idea of a negotiated peace, at least with the western Allies. The American president had in fact consulted Churchill, at least according to Churchill’s memoirs, but Churchill had been left with the belief that the issue was still under discussion. The fanatical resistance of the Germans as their cities were destroyed by Allied bombing before being overrun by allied troops was in large measure fortified by the belief that the German nation would become a vassal state of the Allies if defeated in the war.