Deleted member 1487
Supposedly the demand for unconditional surrender extended the war to the bitter end and kept the German resistance from launching an earlier and more widely supported coup against Hitler. Say if in 1943 there isn't the unconditional surrender demand, which apparently Roosevelt demanded against the wishes of Stalin and Churchill, could there have been a more serious effort to topple Hitler and if it happened in 1943 or early 1944, with Churchill telling Canaris via back channels that a negotiated peace could be worked out in 1943 provided the Nazis were removed, what then? What terms could be worked out that the German resistance would accept? They'd have to accept occupation, reparations, disarmament, and probably a lot more. Surely the Allies would want to pull out the ruling class of even the resistance by its roots. Maybe could Germany then keep Austria and the Sudetenland, lose East Prussia, and be disarmed/neutral like Austria was with Allied occupation bases in the country to ensure its compliance?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_surrender#World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_surrender#World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris#World_War_IIThe use of the term was revived during World War II at the Casablanca conference when American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) sprang it on the other Allies and the press as the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.[10] And, when President Roosevelt suddenly announced this surrender condition at Casablanca, he did so referencing U.S. Grant and the fact that the famous general's initials, since the Civil War, had also come to stand for "Unconditional Surrender".
The term was also used at the end of World War II when Japan surrendered to the Allies. Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin disapproved of the demand for unconditional surrender, as did most senior U.S. officials.[citation needed] It has been estimated that it helped prolong the war in Europe through its usefulness to German domestic propaganda that used it to encourage further resistance against the Allied armies, and its suppressive effect on the German resistance movement since even after a coup against Adolf Hitler:"those Germans — and particularly those German generals — who might have been ready to throw Hitler over, and were able to do so, were discouraged from making the attempt by their inability to extract from the Allies any sort of assurance that such action would improve the treatment meted out to their country."[11]It has also been argued that without the demand for unconditional surrender Central Europe might not have fallen behind the Iron Curtain.[11] "It was a policy that the Soviet Union accepted with alacrity, probably because a completely destroyed Germany would facilitate Russia's postwar expansion program."[12]
After 1942, Canaris visited Spain frequently and was probably in contact with British agents from Gibraltar. In 1943, while in occupied France, Canaris is said to have made contact with British agents. He was conducted blindfolded to the Convent of the Nuns of the Passion of our Blessed Lord, 127 Rue de la Santé, where he met the local head of the British Intelligence Services, code name "Jade Amicol", in reality Colonel Claude Olivier. Canaris wanted to know the terms for peace if Germany got rid of Hitler. Churchill's reply, sent to him two weeks later, was simple: "Unconditional surrender".[13]