Did the concept of Unconditional Surrender announced by President Roosevelt at the conclusion of the Casablanca conference in 1943 actually prolong the Second World War?
No question about Allied policy and conduct of the war has produced more debate, more expression of emotional and political bias—and less dispassionate judgment based upon the facts. This has been so partly because we have not had access to all the facts. In spite of the remarkable coverage of the war given us at the time by our newspapers and our radio reporters and subsequently by historians, we have lacked detailed, authoritative documentation of the impact of Unconditional Surrender upon the people who experienced it at first hand—the Axis powers, their governments and their citizens.
Here is a comprehensive and penetrating examination of this controversial policy from its inception as an idea to its utilization as a major Allied propaganda weapon and its imposition upon our enemies as the penalty for aggression and war.
In particular, here is the story of what it was like to be part of the other side of the war, to experience developments as members of the German military establishment. Drawing upon hitherto unpublished diaries and letters and upon interviews with leading German generals and members of the anti-Nazi resistance movement, Anne Armstrong presents a vivid picture of the effect of wartime demands for unconditional surrender on those elements in the enemy camp which Allied policy could and should have influenced most decisively—those German leaders with the ability and inclination to terminate the war.