Allies don't demand unconditional surrender in WW2?

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TFSmith121

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Actually, it did... speaking as a "John IV"...

Perhaps you don't understand you don't tell your enemy your plan if it keeps him in the fight and no it wasn't needed to keep Americans in the fight.

The war being just didn't mean giving the Germans a potential not assured reason to undermine their own war effort to try to get peace along with throwing out that evil government you are talking about wasn't a good idea.

We even provided to Japan more leeway in that we allowed them to just unconditionally surrender to us while we made clear Germany had to unconditionally surrender to Stalin as well as us. No half way war is fine and no one is a bigger supporter of that notion then me. But, also don't give the German population no option other then fight to the end, we even gave Japan a way out short of being occupied by the Soviets we weren't willing to give Germany.

Basically we could have separated the Nazi party from the German people and pushed the German people to rid themselves of their government and we didn't do that, we decided to treat them as one in the same and got a war that ended up lasting a year longer then it needed to order to beat any fight out of Germany as a nation for good.

Actually, it did... speaking as the son and grandson of John Jr. and John Sr., as it were, they'd had enough of the old king of the mountain game in Europe.. that whole "Lost Generation" thing with the WW I cohort was not fiction.

The Germans were no more going to rebel than the Japanese; cripes, even the best organized effort by the army took five years to get into place, and it did not fail because of unconditional surrender.

And who is this "we" kemosabe? Were you around in 1941-45?;)

Best,
 
Agreed, the Allies couldn't accept anything less than unconditional surrender from those murderous thugs!

You mistake accepting anything less then unconditional surrender and announcing unconditional surrender. The two things are not the same and there is a reason you make your enemy think he might get something better if he kills his leaders and surrenders even if he doesn't for a similar reason you take POWs even among the worst of the worst Waffen SS because you want them to surrender you don't want them to fight to the end.

Hell I like unconditional surrender at least to the WAllies as an official policy and think announcing it publicly was moronic.

It's not quite as dumb as telling the press the policy is to reduce Germany to a feudal state, but it's up there.
 
You mistake accepting anything less then unconditional surrender and announcing unconditional surrender. The two things are not the same and there is a reason you make your enemy think he might get something better if he kills his leaders and surrenders even if he doesn't for a similar reason you take POWs even among the worst of the worst Waffen SS because you want them to surrender you don't want them to fight to the end.

Hell I like unconditional surrender at least to the WAllies as an official policy and think announcing it publicly was moronic.

It's not quite as dumb as telling the press the policy is to reduce Germany to a feudal state, but it's up there.

You might be right there. Keeping your intentions private might make things easier.
 

BooNZ

Banned
More total nonsense. Had the fact they would have had to surrender unconditionally to the Soviet Union as well as the WAllies been the Germans only worry, then they could have easily sidestepped it by engineering the Western Front to collapse while throwing everything they could have to the East. They did not and instead continued to almost as vigorously resist the WAllies advance as they did the Soviets until it was far too late.

A difficulty was the western allies had tabled the idea it would be a good thing to convert Germany into an agrarian nation - never mind the unworkable practicalities of such an endeavour. That would have sent a very clear signal to all Germans that a deal with the Wallies might not be a soft option and that all Germans were on the hook.

Conversely, if the allies had suggested they would hoist the Japanese royal family from the nearest lamp post, the war in the pacific would likely have cost many more lives.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Presumably they would have been Japanese, however

A difficulty was the western allies had tabled the idea it would be a good thing to convert Germany into an agrarian nation - never mind the unworkable practicalities of such an endeavour. That would have sent a very clear signal to all Germans that a deal with the Wallies might not be a soft option and that all Germans were on the hook.

Conversely, if the allies had suggested they would hoist the Japanese royal family from the nearest lamp post, the war in the pacific would likely have cost many more lives.

Presumably they would have been Japanese, however. "You can't fight tanks with bayonets," after all...

Best,
 
You mistake accepting anything less then unconditional surrender and announcing unconditional surrender.

The two things are not the same and there is a reason you make your enemy think he might get something better if he kills his leaders and surrenders even if he doesn't for a similar reason you take POWs even among the worst of the worst Waffen SS because you want them to surrender you don't want them to fight to the end.
The problem is that after he kills his leaders and comes to you to negotiate, you have to tell him that you are going for unconditional surrender. If we accept your assumption that the only reason the Germans didn't quit fighting earlier was because of the public announcement of unconditional surrender, then at that point you are back to square one.

Again: the reason the Germans resisted extends well beyond the fact that the WAllies publicly announced unconditional surrender or the Morgenthau Plan.

Hell I like unconditional surrender at least to the WAllies as an official policy
Any German unconditional surrender that is to the WAllies is going to also have to be vs the Soviets. For one thing, how could they possibly trust the Germans to not blunt the Soviet thrusts and then unsurrender? The Germans are basically asking that the western allies not turn all those divisions into prisoners, not to roll in as occupiers dismantling the German war machine...it's really less of a surrender, and more of a "okay, you're about to win, but please stop fighting us so maybe we can beat the Soviets."

Furthermore, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe is already guaranteed by the location of Soviet armies compared to the WAllied ones. Germany's ability to wage organized war was already falling apart at this point, and I can't see how decapitating it's entire command structure (which is what your proposed coup would be) would make that better. The Nazi party machine and the army would break up into various factions. They won't be in any more shape to resist the red army than they are the WAllies. There really is nothing the Germans or allies can do that prevent the Soviets from rolling over Eastern and half of Central Europe short of going to war with the USSR (a militarily and politically impossible proposition).

Overall, the WAllies never had a particularly accurate idea on how the Soviets were doing in the late-war period. We flat out didn't believe their claims about deep operations and what they were fielding, chalking a lot of that up to Stalinist propaganda. Likewise, the German explanations for defeats were known to blatantly exaggerate all aspects to make themselves look better, so other than "Germans lost here badly enough to have to admit it in domestic media," that wasn't taken at face value either. Transparent German begging - since they certainly knew how dire it was - at the highest levels of peace talks would clue the Allies in that the Germans aren't facing a mere reversal of fortunes in the USSR. That's not going to encourage the Allies to give them a favorable deal, especially when it comes out as to why the Germans are now so terrified of losing to the Soviets. "Oh hey, so we spent a lot of resources on killing millions of their civilians and now we don't have so much as a coherent front let alone enough troops on it to slow those tank armies down, so how about you cut us a break?"

Basically, your idea requires an attitude which simply did not exist in the WAllied camp at the time... not in the Britain and not in the US. It requires them to view the Soviets as a enemy at a time when they were really viewed as a trustable (which they were not) and valuable (which they really were, in the context of WW2) ally.
The American and British public at the time (and by extension the rank-and-file of their armies) thought of the Russians as those good guys helping them wallop most of the German army. Any attempt to cut them out of the surrender is going to result in a domestic political shitstorm.

You might as well presuppose the WAllies don't announce and/or pursue unconditional surrender for Japan.
 
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What was the Japanese equivalent of the Nuremburg trials and was Horihito invited?
The Japanese equivalent to the Nuremburg trials were the Tokyo trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East Tokyo War Crimes Trials. According to the Wikipedia article, 28 defendants were charged for "Class A" war crimes, of which 9 were civilian officials, 18 were military men, and one was a political philosopher. Of this group, two died of natural causes during the trial, 7 were sentenced to death, and 16 to life imprisonment. This was, of course, only the trial for leading figures of the Militarist regime (and a philosopher). There were other trials as well:
wikipedia said:
5,700 Japanese individuals were indicted for Class B and Class C war crimes. Of this number, 984 were initially condemned to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced. The number of death sentences by country is as follows: the Netherlands 236, Great Britain 223, Australia 153, China 149, United States 140, France 26, and Philippines 17.
Keep in mind that the USSR held its own, separate trials.

As I am sure you know, the Showa Emperor was not indicted on any charges. That decision was made by MacArthur, and possibly Fellers, at the beginning of the occupation of Japan. Personally, I think the Emperor should have been encouraged to abdicate, as indeed even several members of the Imperial Family desired and expected.
However, I do think the retention of the Emperor made the occupation of Japan run more smoothly than it otherwise would have, so I can see MacArthur's reasoning, even if I might well have taken another course in his place.
 
Personally, I think the Emperor should have been encouraged to abdicate, as indeed even several members of the Imperial Family desired and expected.

When you say abdicate, do you mean as in he passes the title to a successor or that the imperial institution is abolished completely?
 
When you say abdicate, do you mean as in he passes the title to a successor or that the imperial institution is abolished completely?
The former, passing the title to a successor. Towards the end of the war, Prince Higashikuni, Prince Asaka, and Prince Takamatsu, and former PM Konoe were plotting something of a palace coup to encourage the Showa Emperor to abdicate and place his minor son (the current Emperor) on the throne, with Prince Higashikuni acting as regent. It should be noted that this is more or less the same group that managed to force Tojo to step down as PM in August 1944, after the loss of Saipan. Prince Higashikuni was a supporter of the war in China (he even personally authorized the use of poison gas there on at least one occasion, which was a war crime). He was also a big supporter of the use of the police to repress leftist political currents. He became PM after the surrender, but resigned in October in protest over the US decision to repeal the Peace Preservation Laws, which (in their later forms) criminalized support of ideologies like communism or anarchism. Needless to say, these laws had been an important part of the rightward political shift in Japan in the 1930s. Despite all of the above, however, Prince Higashikuni had always been something of a pro-Western figure, and had staunchly and steadfastly opposed war against the US and western European powers.

Personally, I feel like this kind of arrangement might have been a good compromise of sorts for the occupation--retaining the institution of the Imperial Family with a legitimate Emperor on the throne, to avoid as much as possible inflaming ultra-conservative or ultra-right-wing opinion, but removing the current Emperor, and replacing him with a child that would be more, ah, malleable. It is impossible to know how it might have worked out if it had been tried, of course. If Prince Higashikuni is regent, I don't know how well he would work with the US forces in Japan. If another person becomes regent, it depends on who that person is. Incidentally, if the current Emperor had taken the throne in 1945, his reign would currently be in its 70th year...:eek:
 
While there was a major racial element in the war on the eastern front, the USSR (led by Stalin or anyone) COULD have had an armistice with the Nazis. After all, the Bolsheviks accepted Brest-Litovsk as a practical matter in WWI, from an ideological standpoint better to give up territory that could be (and would be) regained in the future than to see the destruction of the communist government. The same applies here. Even if the USSR up to the Urals is occupied by Germany (and even Hitler could not have asked fro more simply no way to manage it), the communists "live on" and can rebuild for the future, after all the dialectic of history means if they can survive they will eventually win.

This is actually a "win-win" for both sides. Stalin/USSR survives to fight another day, and if the Western Allies beat Germany the USSR will be restored to the 1939 borders. Who knows, perhaps more. If the Germans win (not the sea mammal but an end to the fighting), well the USSr can build up for the future. For the Germans, they get as big a bite out of the USSR as they can possibly hold for the present, and a lot of industry and resources. They can now turn their full attention to the west, allowing large numbers of men and aircraft to be shifted.

This famous cartoon from 1939 illustrates very well how no matter how much Hitler & Stalin hated each other and what they stood for, practical politics/realities could intervene. Both sides would expect a "round 2" sometime in the future, but an armistice/Brest-Litovsk is not ASB by any means.
Z


LSE2692.jpg
 
I think it´s highly implausible or even ASB, the Nazis and the Bolsheviks weren´t men of compromise after all.
 
While there was a major racial element in the war on the eastern front, the USSR (led by Stalin or anyone) COULD have had an armistice with the Nazis. After all, the Bolsheviks accepted Brest-Litovsk as a practical matter in WWI, from an ideological standpoint better to give up territory that could be (and would be) regained in the future than to see the destruction of the communist government. The same applies here. Even if the USSR up to the Urals is occupied by Germany (and even Hitler could not have asked fro more simply no way to manage it), the communists "live on" and can rebuild for the future, after all the dialectic of history means if they can survive they will eventually win.

This is actually a "win-win" for both sides. Stalin/USSR survives to fight another day, and if the Western Allies beat Germany the USSR will be restored to the 1939 borders. Who knows, perhaps more. If the Germans win (not the sea mammal but an end to the fighting), well the USSr can build up for the future. For the Germans, they get as big a bite out of the USSR as they can possibly hold for the present, and a lot of industry and resources. They can now turn their full attention to the west, allowing large numbers of men and aircraft to be shifted.

This famous cartoon from 1939 illustrates very well how no matter how much Hitler & Stalin hated each other and what they stood for, practical politics/realities could intervene. Both sides would expect a "round 2" sometime in the future, but an armistice/Brest-Litovsk is not ASB by any means.
Z

1942 is not either 1939 or 1918 . In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland not the USSR and no Russians were killed by Germans. In 1942 and later the Germans already invaded Russia and murdered and enslaved millions of Soviet men, women and children. If Stalin proposed peace after that he would have been overthrown by military coup or revolution.

As far as Brest-Litovsk whatever faults the Kasierreich had it was not made up of homicidal, sadistic loons that threw people in death camps.
 
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/Wilhelm_Canaris#World_War_II
Germany would have no chance at all to retain these territories, since they were regarded as products of Nazi aggression. The Sudeten in particular were given to Germany under an agreement that they violated just months later, so it would be a completely unjustified reward to Hitler's policies to allow them to keep it.
 
Hm. These claims are supported by some historians, but I'm ready to accept your judgement.

At most they were scare stories put out by Stalin to get more LL. He wasn't a complete idiot and knew full well the Wallies would want to make sure he was out there fighting the vast majority of Nazi forces. If the tried the odds are extremely likely he would be overthrown and the cease fire would last about as long as it took for a rouge unit to disobey orders and attack the other side claiming it was attacked first IOW not long!
 
At most they were scare stories put out by Stalin to get more LL. He wasn't a complete idiot and knew full well the Wallies would want to make sure he was out there fighting the vast majority of Nazi forces. If the tried the odds are extremely likely he would be overthrown and the cease fire would last about as long as it took for a rouge unit to disobey orders and attack the other side claiming it was attacked first IOW not long!

Ah. So the Red Army soldiers aren't exhausted from three years of war and want to fight it til the end, even if they get a direct peace witht the 1939 borders restored? So the whole Soviet leadership wants to fight a war devasting the Union, instead of getting an instant ceasefire which is basically a status quo ante bellum?

You are assuming that the Soviet government would act as irrational as Hitler and decline everything that isn't a total victory.
 
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