WWII: Why did the Allies require an "unconditional surrender" when it prolonged the war?

Factual Questions
1

This is brought to light by my recent thread about the why the Japanese home islands weren’t blockaded instead of nuked.

Why did the allies decide to force an unconditional surrender of Germany & Japan, when they must have known it would prolong the war and cost many additional lives?

I understand that the war had become ideological and the axis ideological governments were considered an evil, but even so, unconditional surrender had not been a demand in WWI or in previous European struggles, at least that I know of.

If nothing else, why not pull a ‘switch-a-roo’, and allow the axis governments asylum in return for surrender. Then when Hitler is vacationing in early retirement in Zurich circa 1944, nab him on international violations then, hauling him before a war crimes court once he lost command of his army?

2

I don’t think the Soviets would have been very fond of such a solution.

3

I think this might be part of the reason. They wanted to be able to impose sufficient restrictions that the countries involved couldn’t rebuild their armies and be ready for WWIII in another 20 years.

That’s just my guess, however.

4

Then you can’t pull a switch-a-roo the next time, because nobody would be gullible enough to fall for it after the first one. And since you’re clever enough to think of it in advance, odds are that folks who run countries for a living are clever enough to likewise think of it in advance, they probably won’t fall for it the first time either.

5

There is plenty of evidence that, at least in part, we essentially prolonged the war in this way in order to give the Manhattan Project folks time to make two atom bombs, which we could then use to show the Russians who would have the upper hand after the war was over.

Sec. of State James Byrnes was particularly adamant that we should not clarify the surrender terms to the Japanese, even just to ensure that the emperor would not be harmed – even though, in the end, that’s what we did anyway, once the bombs were “successfully” used.

A related part of the evidence for this was Truman’s deliberate delaying of the Potsdam meeting, with the lame excuse that he had some unfinished business in Washington related to the “end of the fiscal year”.

I won’t say any more about this, to avoid transforming this thread to something which better belongs in Great Debates. I’ll just direct interested Dopers to historian Gar Alperowitz’ book The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.

6

Quite simply there was no way in hell the Allies would accept the existing governments in Germany and Japan to continue. Any conditional surrender those governments would demand some sort of ongoing existence else they’d agree to nothing. Leaving them in place would just set them up to get into mischief in the future (and there is zero reason to think they’d get all nice all of a sudden…these were ideological militaristic dictatorships).

They quite simply had to go. Anything less was unthinkable. Hell, the American public (and pretty sure the British as well) would not let their leaders stop short of getting Hitler and Tojo’s head on a platter (just for starters).

When you have your nemesis on the ropes you deliver the killing blow. You do not let them go rest awhile.

7

:rolleyes:

Ok, the Japanese wanted to be allowed to keep their government intact, and no allied occupation. This would have continued in power the same militaristic nuts that started the war (in the Pacific). They would have built back up and done it again.

And, it would not have allowed us to find and try the Japanese for the extremely horrible war crimes they had committed- Mass killings, Human experimentation and biological warfare, Use of chemical weapons, Torture, Cannibalism, Slavery, “Comfort women”, and many more.

Finally, the Big Three had made an agreement on what sort of Surrender they’d agree to. This was important, as not having one would allow the bad guys to shop around for surrender terms among the allies- which is exactly what was tried.

Thus, the demand for Unconditional Surrender saved lives, and allowed justice to prevail.

8

It came about because the most convincing argument Hitler made to come INTO power was the fact that, according to him at least, it wasn’t the German people who lost WWI it was the Jews, the Communists, and all the others who sold Germany down the river.

Hitler’s speeches constantly drove home the fact that, again according to him, Germany could’ve won WWI had it not been for traitors who sold the country out and negotiated a treaty. And then what a treaty it was, according to him. The Treaty of Versailles, was a very convenient scapegoat for all of Germany’s post WWI woes

Without the help of the USA, the Allies in WWI could’ve at best gotten a stalemate, and a negotiated settlement would’ve put Germany, at worst back where it had started, probably left it better off.

After the Germans negotiated “Versailles” (or in Hitler’s opinion, had it dictated to them) they attempted to reneg on it, only to find by that time the British Navy had a stranglehold on Germans food and would simply starve Germany to accept it.

So while the war went on, the Allies were demanding the Germans must not simply sign a paper admitting responsiblity for the war, as was done in WWI, the German people had to completely give up and have their will broken.

Add to this was an organized effort to “de-Nazi” people, and mass movements of German populations out of non-German areas. Now-a-days, that would be poltically incorrect but it worked, very well.

Japan on the other hand was a bit of a difference. Only China and the USA were any big players in the Pacific War. The British helped through their navy but most British action involved India (part of the Empire) and defending it from Japan. The USSR was not even involved right till the end.

Japan did get a few conditions like the ability to decide for itself whether or not the emperor stayed on.

This is a bit oversimplified but you can see it today as the Japanese still have refused to come to terms with their war crimes in WWII while the Germans admitted it and moved on.

So unconditional surrender was aimed at assuring that defeated people KNEW they were defeated. In war to win you have to break a person’s will, without this it just goes on and on. This is why you still have problems in Israel / Palestine. This is why the Napoleonic War went on so long. The Boer War was a guerrila war that was won by the British through the use of concentration camps. Cruel but it worked.

Was it effective? No, France surrendered even though they had an agreement with Britian to fight on. (This was different from the Unconditional Surrender of the Allies but still). Stalin on twice tried to open negotiations with Hitler after 1942. Hitler thought he could win and laughed them off. “Unconditional Surrender” was nothing to Stalin.

Too many people look at WWII through today’s politically correct ways and don’t fully see, WWII was fought because negotiations and promises were not kept and were a joke.

Look at Iraq, Afghanistand and Lebanon, these are wars fought ON THE ENEMY’S TERMS. You can’t win a war like that.

The object of WWII was never to save lives, it was to bring total defeat on the enemy so he could never do it again. When the USSR is losing tens of millions of people through combat, disease, famine and forced labor a few more lost because of “Unconditional Surrender” hardly matter.

9

It’s worth noting that unconditional surrender has been a traditional objective in US warmaking. That doesn’t explain everything about its use in WWII, but that has something to do with it. The US often demanded unconditional surrender in the past and was somewhat used to the idea.

10

One of the prime reasons for unconditional surrender was to make sure that no one made a separate peace with Germany. We didn’t want the Soviets to back out of the war (after all, before the invation of the USSR, the Germans and Soviets were allies), and the Soviets didn’t want the U.S. and Britain ganging up with Germany on them.

By insisting on unconditional surrender, you make sure your allies don’t back out when they feel their war aims were met.

11

WWII: Why did the Allies require an “unconditional surrender” when it prolonged the war?
Because this time it was going to be clear to everyone who the winners and losers were. It was obvious to everyone even in 1939 WWII followed because of how WWI ended.

12

Since Germany (together with Austria, Hungary and Russia) was excluded from the negotiations Hitler was probably right on that point.
And the British blockade had already been successful since early in the war (thus the need for the Haber–Bosch process and food rationing), so I don’t know if “by that time” is very accurate.

It is true that the inability to deny defeat was an important difference in comparison to WWI, but imo the Germans were forced to accept this primarily by the fact that their cities lay in ruins and the wehrmacht had retreated to a few remote pockets in the north and south.

If you can blame someone for surrendering while still gaining some concessions, shouldn’t it be even easier to call someone traitorous for unconditional surrender?

13

This nonsense of refusing to kill the loser’s king is just asking for trouble. e.g., Napoleon.

14

Nice example.

15

General U.S. Grant was often referred to “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. Based on his favorite terms of surrender. (Except at Appomatox, when he was quite generous to R.E. Lee.)

16

Most of the pertinent ansewers have already been given, one that i would like to add is that a conditional surrender is usually based on the opponent having enough of a war fighting capability to make a conflict messy, a conditional surrender is usually cheaper.

By 1944 ,Germany did not have the were withal to force a political solution, the soviets were out for blood and the western powers did not want a repeat twenty years later , it would be settled one way or the other.

Declan

17

It is widely accepted that the Versailles treaty was indeed dictated, and was in fact a “complete surrender”, even if the German government was allowed to stay in place. This part of the wikipedia article states that the German delegation was not allowed to negociate.

In addition, as a comment on the OP, one can point out that the Japanese emperor was allowed to stay in place. This was a “condition” since the Japanses would never have accepted the destitution of the emperor.

18

I don’t think that’s the case. Grant did become famous for demanding “unconditional surrender” at the tactical level during the Civil War, and at the strategic/political level the Union was clearly seeking “unconditional surrender” from the Confederacy–the annihilation of the Confederate States as an institution and the elimination of its army as a military force. That was rather a special case, though, being a civil war.

During the Revolution the colonies obviously weren’t seeking Great Britain’s “unconditional surrender”, only its recognition of their independence. In the War of 1812, neither side got “unconditional surrender”; the war ended with a treaty restoring the status quo before the war (and the Americans for their part clearly were never seeking the “unconditional surrender” of Britain and its empire, only the redress of what they saw as their grievances). The Mexican War might come closest, as Mexico was decisively defeated and had its capital city occupied. Nonetheless, the war was ended by a treaty, albeit a pretty lopsided one, with Mexico ceding large areas of its territory, though the United States did pay Mexico for the lands that were ceded (not that Mexico’s decision to sell half its territory was exactly voluntary). In the Spanish-American War, neither side directly threatened the other’s homeland or national existence; Spain lost, and had to agree to a negotiated settlement in which they gave up various colonies to U.S. control or nominal independence, but it’s not like Spain itself was subjected to military occupation, the disbanding of its armed forces, partition, or anything like that. And of course World War I didn’t end in “unconditional surrender” the way the World War II did. World War II and the demand for the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers does seem to have been a special case.

Although the end of World War II does seem to have affected the way Americans view wars and what constitutes victory, subsequent wars haven’t lived up to the standard of VE-Day and VJ-Day either. The U.S. arguably went for total victory in the Korean War when it not only counter-attacked following the North’s invasion of the South but almost totally overran the North, but of course the Chinese pushed the U.S. back to about where the line of division had been before the war, and the war ended in truce and stalemate. The U.S. never sought “unconditional surrender” in Vietnam, and of course, while the South Vietnamese lost totally, the U.S. did not (the old article in The Onion about President Ford being led off to a North Vietnamese re-education camp notwithstanding). The first Persian Gulf War ended in a negotiated cease-fire. In the war in Afghanistan and the initial invasion of Iraq the U.S. seemed to achieve something closer to a World War II-style victory, with entire countries occupied (and Saddam Hussein eventually captured, put on trial, and executed). However, even if the U.S. achieves victory of any kind in the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it doesn’t seem likely (to say the least) that either will end with the sort of American victory of the sort won in Germany and Japan, where the U.S. is able to impose its values and significantly restructure the defeated societies in its own image.

19

One of the main reasons the Allies refused to settle was fear that German militarists would revive the “stab in the back” theory they had postulated after WW1. Many far rightist Germans claimed that since the Germans still occupied French and Belgian soil at the end of the war, that the army would have won the war had it not been for socialists and Jews undermining the war effort. Never mind that Germany had lost all its allies, was unable to undertake an offensive, and had no answer to the American buildup or naval blockade; it was highly effective in Germany between the wars. Unconditional surrender was a brutal but obvious way to show Germany their power was hopelessly destroyed.
Also to have a peace settlement you need to have governments willing to negociate. In WW1, the allies either negociated with the liberal minister Prince Max or Ebert’s socialist government. Obviously no negociations were possible with Hitler, and considering how his internal enemies were unable to overthrow him even in early 1945 it’s hard to see how they could have been carried out even if the Allies wanted a peace settlement. If only the atom bombs and a promise to keep Hirohito prevented a last ditch fight on home soil by the Japanese, why would they settle before then?

20

WWII was a new kind of war, especially for Britain, who was used to fighting on other peoples’ territory with minimal damage to the civillian population. From the British point of view a degree of vindictiveness was required.

The USSR would not have tolerated an Armistice.

The end of WWI was partly influenced by the Russian Revolution.
The USA, the UK, French and German Establishments were all nervous of a ‘Communist’ uprising, somewhere in my memory is some stuff about German Communist rebellions - both soldiers and sailors.
Also WWI was a lot more limited in scope, it was unpleasant for those on the Fronts, but was positively civilized compared with WWII.

The real clincher is that no Absolute Surrender in WWI did not work out, and only a fool would repeat a mistake of that magnitude so soon.

As for the British contribution against the Japanese, well rather a lot of Japanese mothers never saw their sons again due to strategy in Burma - my uncle was out there, what little he would say about events were not pleasant. The Japanese might not have had much regard for the Allies, but the Allies (hearsay) regarded the Japanese as vermin.