Unless you provide some sort of guarantee that a surrender in late 1942 or early 1943 would have resulted in the deaths of all the top Nazis, the top SS officers, and still allowed trials for the loons like Mengele, then I'm with FDR.

The problems the US ran into after the war were caused more by FDR's mushiness towards Stalin than by the doctrine of unconditional surrender.

Besides, the Germans thought they had won WWI until about August of 1918. Who's to say they didn't feel the same way in early 1942? They needed to be decisively beaten, just like the Japanese.

Who would have governed Germany after the coup? Rommel? Guderian? Himmler?

Prior to May 1942, the answer would have been Reinhard Heydrich, so be very careful in your speculation.

Unconditional surrender was an absolutely essential policy for the conclusion of the war. First, the Soviet Union was constantly afraid that the western Allies (US, UK) would negotiate a separate peace with Germany and hang them out to dry (against a much larger Nazi army that could dedicate itself to fighting on the eastern front). FDR's policy of unconditional surrender was meant to reassure the USSR that the other Allies would not leave them hanging.

Second, it was to prevent the growing of another "stab in the back" myth like the one that originated after WWI--that the Germans had won on the battlefield, but were betrayed by cowardly politicians and Jews at home.

Unconditional surrender was to make 100% clear to the German people that they had lost the war. They would look at their devastated countryside and see American and Soviet troops patrolling their streets and know they were beaten.

The Germans (and Japanese) have learned this lesson well. Because they did not learn the price of aggression after the first World War, they started the second. But there has been no third, and the policy of unconditional surrender (plus the atom bomb)is the reason.

Not requiring unconditional surrender (before the development of the bomb) would have wasted far more lives in new, more costly wars later on.

All's well that ends well.

But it ended badly, indeed, it's not over yet. The Islamicism and the authoritarian regimes we face today are a function of not finishing WWI & WWII well.

Mr. Lange:

What was good about not stabbing Stalin in the back?

OJ: You are woefully wrong here. Unconditional surrender is what we got with the Germans and the Japanese. Look at them now: so docile as to complain about U.S. bellicosity.

What happens when you don't demand unconditional surrender? Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, just to name a few in recent history.

What happens when a people do not unconditionally surrender but also simultaneously attempt to control highly valuable natural resources? The plight of the Native Americans is what happens -- simply genocide.

Would that our politicians had the will to demand unconditional surrender of every enemy. It's better for us and certainly better for the enemy.

50 years of Cold War, trillions of dollars, tens of millions dead, the Gulag, the Killing Fields, Cuba, the 60s, the 70s, terrorism... Worth it?

      The phrase "unconditional surrender" may have just popped into FDR's head that day.  The policy didn't, as the article shows.

      But that policy was pursued for a reason.  In WWI, the Germans lost, and were on their way to disintegration.  They were allowed to surrender on terms, without stating that they had been defeated on the field of battle.  The result was the 'stab in the back' myth, and WWII.

      FDR made a conscious choice that we would not have to fight WWIII against Germany or Japan.  They would have to surrender, unconditionally, as a result of being beaten on the battlefield.  Yes, it caused more deaths in the short run.  But it did what it was supposed to do -- create non-agressive German and Japanese societies.

THE SAUDS MUST BE DESTROYED!

OJ: When you are ridding a horse and it dies. get off.

If the German High Command did not shoot Hitler, when he gave them the order to invade Russia, they were not going to overthrow him at some convenient time in 42 or 43. They must have known that only madness and eventual destruction lay in that invasion plan. The fact that they willingly undertook it means that they did not have a sufficent spark of self-preservation.

The history of the World would have been quite different if they had killed Hitler in 1941 and negotiated an end to the European War.

Who knows? Maybe demanding unconditional surrender was in fact the wrong approach.

But if it made Josef Goebbels---whose credentials as an FDR despiser cannot seriously be impugned---wax euphoric, perhaps there is something to say for the policy after all.

Stephen:

This is off-topic, but don't you think your little signature about the Sauds undermines the seriousness of your points somehat?

Maybe it's just me, but it brings to mind that little percussional "ba-boom tish!" that you get on chat-shows after the host makes a wisecrack.

"The Islamicism and the authoritarian regimes we face today are a function of not finishing WWI & WWII well."

Even if taken as stipulated, what would have been the costs of finishing WWII the way you advocate?

Letting the German High Command believe that they had acted honorably by killing Hitler and negotiating the terms of surrender in 42 or 43 would have been disasterously stupid.

I'm usually a "pull the bandaid off quickly" kind of guy, but the actual outcome of the 20th century was so good that it's hard to imagine any other course of action likely to improve upon it.

David:

Good unless you're among the needless dead.

Jeff:

Lower than not finishing it.

Robert:

If the Russians didn't overthrow the czar when he led them into war with Germany they weren't going to when he started losing the war.

Stephen:

Ever notice how none of the Germans of that time ever mention the "stab in the back"? It's only New Deal historians.

David C. has is right. The FDR-Pacelli policy of having the totalitarians grind each other up was the right one. The Papacy and the United States have played the World like a violin, with Poland as the bow, of course. The millions who died would have died in any case. This is 2004: who is the last man standing now? Not Nazism, not Communism, not secular Europe.

OJ,

As I mentioned in a previous post, there was an attempt in 1943 to negotiate a separate peace between the Reich and the Soviet Union. Had FDR not pledged us to "unconditional surrender", the paranoid and suspicious Stalin would have cut a deal with Hitler in anticipation of being betrayed by his western Allies. Stalin would have suspected that the Allies were planning to let the Soviets bleed themselves white, doing the bulk of the fighting and dying, while they reaped the rewards of a separate peace with a post-Hitler junta. Such a deal with Hitler would have left Germany in control of large chunks of the Baltic States, White Russia and the Ukraine. But it would have left the Soviet Union intact under Stalin.

Since neither dictator trusted the other, Hitler would not have moved his entire eastern armies west to meet the Allied invasion threat. But he could have sent enough troops (and diverted enough suppplies, petrol, ammunition and aircraft) to the west in time to smash the Allied landings at Anzio and destroy the Allied invasion at Normandy.

In summary:

1. Without a Russian front consuming the bulk of German military resources, there is no way for the Allies to invade Europe.

2. Without FDR's pledge to "unconditional surrender" there would be no Russian front.

3. Without the prospect of defeat by the Russians and the Allies there would be no anti-Hitler coup attempt.

Which leaves Europe under Nazi control and the Soviet Union battered but recovering. FDR's "unconditional surrender" pledge was both wise and necessary.

dan:

The peace could not have held--Hitler hated Slavs and Communists as much as Jews and gypsies.

And why invade Europe so long as those two were going at it.

Your fundamental mistake lies in believing Communism could recover. It didn't work.

Another point. You make the same mistake that von Stauffenberg and his fellow plotters made. You underestimated Hitler's popularity with the GFerman masses.

Make no mistake about it, the German people loved and adored Hitler right up until the end. Most mourned his death. It was a popular superstition that a portrati of the Fuhrer hanging on the kitchen wall would keep allied bombs from destroying the house.

The German people would not have followed, and would have turned on, any coup plotters who killed their beloved Fuhrer and siezed power. Furthermore, the Party, the SS and the pro-Nazi military branches (Goering's Luftwaffe and Doentiz's Kriegsmarine) would have opposed any such coup. There is no way the plotters could have eliminated the entire heirarchy or the Reich in one blow.

So even if the plotter's siezed power they would not have survivied for long and someone like Himmler would become the new Fuhrer. The war would have gone on and would have been harder to win since Hitler's amateurish control of the armed forces (and his idiotic "stand or die" orders) would have been removed.

In summary, any coup was doomed to failure and even a successful assassination of Hitler would have resulted in a longer and harder war.

OJ,

The peace would have held long enough for the Germans to smash the Allied landings at Normandy. It would take at least a year to organize another invasion attempt. If Stalin wanted to restart the war in 1945 the Germans could shift all but a skeleton force from France to the east and stop the Soviets cold (do a Google on Zhukov's greatest defeat, "Operation Mars").

By this stage of the game, a tie was as good as a win for the Germans.

Dan:

That may have been true in '38, but no leader is popular once he starts losing wars. Hitler's rise was fueled more by hatred of Communists than of Jews and fear of the USSR would have made the Germans fairly pliant.

OJ,

One other point. You seem to tie in FDR's "unconditional surrender" demand (and subsequent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the Cold War) with Communist victories in China and Indochina (and the resultant attrocities). The two are not related in the slightest.

Mao was advised by Stalin not to try to defeat Chiang. Mao ignored Stalin's advice and proceeded to defeat the corrupt and incompetent Nationists on his own. Granted that Commuist rule in China was a horrible thing, but events in Europe had nothing to do with it.

OJ,

It would have been easier to knock of Hitler in 1938 (actually there was such an attempt before the Sudatenland Crisis), since the German masses had yet to be subject to half a generation of Nazi indoctrination.

OJ,

As for communism not working, it worked perfectly well as a war time economy designed to produce tanks, aircraft and artillery. With a continuing German threat as an excuse, the Soviets could have squeezed the Russian people even harder - and in their patriotic love of the Rodina they would have gladly shouldered the burden.

OJ,

To sum it all up, if FDR had not demanded "unconditional surrender" the result would have been a Nazi dominated Europe, and an intact Soviet Union. And whatever the situation in Europe, Mao would have defeated Chiang.

Dan:

Hitler and Stalin couldn't live together. But, at any rate, that would have been better than what we got with WWII and the Cold War.

Dan:

They're tied directly together because U.S. enabled the USSR to emerge from the war a victor.

What landing at Normandy? We lost the war on June 6th.

OJ,

Let me repeat - the USSR had nothing to to with Mao's victory in China. He did that on his own, easily defeating the corrupt and incompetent Nationalist regime.

OJ,

Please explain to why a Europe completely dominated by the Nazis is better than a Europe half dominated by the Communists.

And what do you mean we lost the war on June 6? Are you somehow nostalgic for Nazi Germany?

They couldn't have dominated Europe. Nazism doesn't work either.

Dan:

Had we gotten rid of the Soviet Union, Communism would have been a spent force in history as Nazism was once Hitler was crushed. We tuirned Communism into a victor in WWII and made it attractive.

Orrin:

It was already very, very attractive. If it had been defeated in WW 11, it almost certainly would have come back in Europe and remained a powerful force among American intellectuals. Indeed, one could argue that it was only the public association of communism with Russian hoardes that kept it in check.

Ever notice how none of the Germans of that time ever mention the "stab in the back"? It's only New Deal historians

Orrin,

That is B.S.

$1000 says I can find dozens of widely disseminated documents from the era that talk about the "stab in the back".

Put your money where your mouth is.

Or just shut it when you don't know the facts, instead of making them up out of thin air.

Eugene:

Go ahead. Here's a good starting point:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1176/

OJ,

You keep assuming that Germany could have defeated Russia. That is a logistical fantasy. Barbarossa in 41, Case Blue in 42 and Citadelle in 43 all fell far short of their operational goals and resulted in significant defeats for the Whermacht. The best the Germans could have hoped for was a favorable stalemate.

Let me repeat - it was never physically possible for Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, especially after they missed their one chance outside Moscow in December 1941.

Had the Allies refrained from invading France, one of two things would have happened. Either the Germans would have shifted enough forces east to stop the Soviet steamroller, or Stalin (feeling betrayed by his Allies) would have signed a peace of exhaustion with Hitler. Again, let me remind you that this nearly happened in 43.

Either way, the result is a stalemate leaving Germany dominant in continental Europe and the USSR intact. And without the spectre of defeat, there would have been no anti-Hitler conspiracy and no attempted coup. No Wehrmacht field marshall would have joined von Stauffenberg so long as German arms remained victorious. Rommel, for example, didn't turn on Hitler until after the succesful Allied invasion.

Neither regime would have lasted forever, but both would have lasted at least as long as the USSR did in reality - about another half century. Perhaps there would have been a Round 2 after both sides had recovered and regrouped either in the late 40s or early 50s. Maybe the next round would have involved atomics. Who's to say?

And there is one more possiblity you are ignoring. While it is logistically impossible for the Nazis to defeat the Soviets, it is quite possible for Russian tanks to take Berlin and keep going until they crossed the Rhine or reached the English Channel. There they would have been met by French Communists loyal to Moscow.

So wrap your mind around the possibility of a world where Europe is completely dominated by Communism and a victorious USSR.

Peter:

No one adopts a losing ideology.

Dan:

No, I assume they couldn't have. Nor could the Soviets defeat Germany. And neither could dominate the continent should it happen to win.

The Soviets only lasted as long as they did because we saved them and then opposed them.

OJ,

You contradict yourself. If you assume that the Germans could not have defeated the Soviets, how is it that we "saved" them? And how did our opposition to the Soviet Union prolong their regime?

You're not making any sense.

And yes, the Soviets could have defeated the Germans all by themselves due to their preponderance of metal and manpower. They made it to the Elbe on their own. The Rhine and the Ruhr industrial basin are a stone's throw away. It is unlikely that coordinated German resistance would have continued after the fall of Berlin.

Before the end of 1945 Soviet spearheads would have linked up with pro-Communist resistance fighters throughout Western Europe. The resultant French Communist government might be as independent of Moscow as Tito's Yugoslavia, but it's still a Communist dominated Europe all the way to the English Channel. Post war British elections would have resulted in a much more left wing government eager to accomodate the USSR.

Instead of viewing FDR's "unconditional surrender" demand resulting in HALF of Europe going Communist, you should see it as a means of preventing ALL of Europe from going Communist.

Dan:

They made it only with our help. Left to themselves neiother would ever have won and both governments would have fallen.

No Lend-Lease, no USSR

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/soviet_german_war_03.shtml

Orrin.

I am familiar with Haffner's writings. In any case, nothing in the review backs up your claim that the "stab in the back" myth was an invention of New Deal historians.

You have lost the bet. I owe you $1000 for the intellectual stimulation I get from participating in this web site, so we're even.

Also, I apologize for my tone in the previous comment. Wish I could adopt the inhuman patience shown by Mr. Duffy.

OJ,

According to your website:

The chief explanation lies not in resources, which Germany was more generously supplied with than the Soviet Union, during the two central years of the war before American and British economic power was fully exerted. It lies instead in the remarkable reform of the Red Army and the Russian air force, undertaken slowly in 1942.

And without Lend Lease the Soviets enter Berlin in 46 instead of 45. The end result is the same - a completely communist Europe.

OJ is wrong when he said that the Germans of that time ever mention the "stab in the back." There are many, many, many primary documents in German that mention it. I know - I read some of them in German when I studied there.

There are plenty of news editorials, political speeches, and memoirs written in the 1920's all explaining how liberals and Jews betrayed the Fatherland.

If Nazism was to be totally discredited, then it had to be completely defeated. If unconditional surrender was not pursued, I am convinced that within 10 years of any negotiated peace the Nazis would've gotten back in power by complaining that Germany was once again stabbed in the back. How could Germany have been defeated when they were still the masters of Europe and we had all these wonder weapons that were coming up...

Eugene:

the stab in the back wasn't a myth, just unimportant to the rise or duration of Nazism, especially to support from regular conservatives, who were driven almost exclusively by anti-communism. I'd be happy to look at any evidence you can offer to the contrary.

Dan:

"After the German attack, Soviet steel production fell to eight million tons in 1942, while German production was 28 million tons. In the same year, Soviet coal output was 75 million tons, while German output was 317 million. The USSR nevertheless out-produced Germany in the quantity (though seldom in the quality) of most major weapons, from this much smaller industrial base.

The impressive production of weapons was achieved by turning the whole of the remaining Soviet area into what Stalin called 'a single armed camp', focusing all efforts on military production and extorting maximum labour from a workforce whose only guarantee of food was to turn up at the factory and work the arduous 12-hour shifts. Without Lend-Lease aid, however, from the United States and Britain, both of whom supplied a high proportion of food and raw materials for the Soviet war effort, the high output of weapons would still not have been possible."

Chris:

Yes, it vwas prevalent right after WWI and Hitler tried peddling, there's no evidence that the conservatives and the military topok it seriously.

Orrin,

(1) Fire up Google.

(2) Enter "Dolchstosslegende" as your search string.

(3) Click on "I'm Feeling Lucky"

(4) The cover page illustration in the upper left should be clear enough even to German-challenged readers.

(5) Return to Google Start page.

(6) Same search string but this time click on "Google Search".

(7) Count the number of hits.

(8) If still not satisfied, click on link that says "Search for English results only."

(9) Admit defeat.

(9) Admit defeat.

Let's not get crazy. This is oj we're conversing with.

Expect a pithy one-liner any minute now.

"Lower than not finishing it."

Classic example of your own fallacious post-hoc reasoning.

All of the other posters here do a far superior job at discussing very likely, and costly, knock-on effects.

They do miss one, though. The complete, utter, destruction of European Jewry.

So I guess you would be right about two upsides: no annoying Holocaust deniers, and, no need to put up with the appalling specter of European anti-Semitic/anti-Isreal appeasers.

Perhaps you can do the calculus required to demonstrate that saving the remainder of European Jewry was worth the 60 million Chinese. I can't.

Let's not get crazy

Ali,

Too late. If anyone asks for me, I'm in Room 112B at Bellevue (Bedlam for Her Majesty's subjects.)

Eugene:

Yes, it was important in the '20s. By the 30s there was open war between Right and Left in the German streets. Conservative businessmen, clergy, military, etc. turned a blind eye to Hitler coming to power because they shared his hatred of the Communists, not to rerun WWI.

I eagerly await your cite to a single German conservative who dwelt on the stab in the back in the late 30s/early 40s and required Unconditional Surrender to be disabused of the notion.

"turned a blind eye to Hitler coming to power because they shared his hatred of the Communists, not to rerun WWI."

Nope. Read Paul "Spanky" Johnson's Modern Times. They were pissed they didn't get their hands on White Russia.

Ali:

Yes, Russia mattered most.

OJ,

As I mentioned,the lack of Lend Lease would have delayed Soviet victory - not prevented it. And how is it that both regimes would not survive a stalemate peace?

Perhaps you can do the calculus required to demonstrate that saving the remainder of European Jewry was worth the 60 million Chinese. I can't.

OJ, for the last time, the situation in Europe had nothing (nada, zilch, zip) to do with Mao's victory in China. No matter how the war in Europe ended up, Mao would have defeated the corrupt and incompetent Nationalists all by himself. Which is exactly what he did in reality. Mao didn't need the USSR to win. Any defeat and/or discrediting of Soviet communism would have had no affect on the outcome in China.

What part of this are you having trouble with?

All of it.

Dan:

The peace couldn't last and neither could their systems.

"Spanky" Johnson? That's funny.

Orrin,

Yes, it was important in the '20s.

We're making progress.

Conservative businessmen, clergy, military, etc. turned a blind eye to Hitler coming to power because they shared his hatred of the Communists,

That too.

not to rerun WWI.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Popular songs in the 1920s and 1930s: "Gen Ostland wollen wir reiten" (On Horseback to Eastern Lands), "Denn wir fahren gegen Engeland" (For We Ride Against Albion), "Siegreich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen" (Victors We Shall Be Over France), and of course, "Heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt" (Today Germany, Tomorrow The World).

I eagerly await your cite to a single German conservative who dwelt on the stab in the back in the late 30s/early 40s and required Unconditional Surrender to be disabused of the notion.

Sigh. You're moving the goalposts. Earlier you wrote, "Ever notice how none of the Germans of that time ever mention the 'stab in the back'?"

As I told you in a previous discussion, FDR was a student of history and had a difficult choice to make. He believed -- with plenty of reason -- that unless the German forces were utterly defeated and/or surrendered unconditionally, history (the "stab in the back" myth --> revanchism --> a new war) would repeat itself. I believe he was right. You cannot prove him wrong, except by spinning out your alternative-history scenarios that exist only in your own mind.

Of course talk of the "stab in the back" myth had died down in the late 30s / early 40s. Germans were drunk at the prospect, and subsequently actualization, of stunning military victories. So naturally they were not mentioning the "stab in the back" anymore.

No one who wants to be taken seriously would try to reinforce his point by quoting the likes of Slessor that bombing was going to win the war all by itself. This guy is not serious.

All of these scenarios of what might have happened are beside the point. :There was never any German conservative resistance to Hitlerism. The German conservatives despised Hiter the man but they loved Hitlerism.

We can ask ourselves, if there was genuine resistance to Hitler, when would it have manifested?

In 1934, when it was clear Hitler would not govern constitutionally?

In 1938, when his reckless adventurism exposed the undefended western borders to French attack?

How about 1939, when according to Orrin, these German conservatives who were concerned about nothing so much as communism, sat quietly while Hitler allied with Stalin?

Or 1941, when Hitler opened a 2-front war, which every German knew was equivalent to national suicide -- accurate knowledge that was, however, overriden by their mystical belief in Hitler's invincibility.

If they weren't going to overthrow Hitler for any of these reasons, then there was never going to be any reason to do so.

When the sap Stauffenburg did act to overthrow Hitler -- the only noncommunist German who ever lifted a finger in that direction -- the antiHitlerites must have known they had to act, whether they wanted to or not, whatever FDR said or didn't say.

Not one acted.

Most of them ended up choking in piano wire nooses anyhow.

If you don't act when you have nothing to lose, then you're a non-actor.

All of it.

OJ,

Then be so kind as to explain how the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany and post-war occupation of eastern Europe inevitably resulted in Communist victory in China.

A victory won by Mao without Stalin's help and contrary to Stalin's advise.

Why don't you just taked your man-pill and admit you were wrong?

Eugene:

FDR wasn't a historian, just a racist. He hated Germans and so squandered a chance to be rid of the Nazis and stop the Soviets. No one talked of the stab in the back in the '40s except New Dealers and Brits trying to justify Total War.

Dan:

Assume Soviet defeat or mere prostration in the mid-40s--whjo adopts a system that failed in just twenty years? Instead, we helped them prevail and gave them any land they conquered while excusing their crimes, who wouldn't adopt such a system?

we did something similar, though not as bad, in Afghanistan where we hjelped create the illusion that Islamicism had beaten the USSR rather than U.S. supplied munitions. It made Islamicism seem workable, when it isn't.

Harry:

We know you thionk the Communists were the good guys, but Canaris wasn't a Communist, nor Rommel, nor Bonhoeffer, nor....

Assume Soviet defeat or mere prostration in the mid-40s

Didn't you agre that the Soviets could not be defeated by Germany? Please make up your mind.

who adopts a system that failed in just twenty years?

Mao. Only he calls it "Maoism", which is what he actually did. Nobody in China "adopted" Communism, it was forced on them by Mao's victory - a victory (one more time) achieved without Soviet help.

Without our help they'd have been prostrate, even if the Germans couldn't take over the whole country.

Mao would not have followed such a spectacularly failed model or at least not gotten many others to follow it.

Without our help they'd have been prostrate, even if the Germans couldn't take over the whole country

Then you are assuming a victorious Germany dominant over most of continental Europe. Being a capitalist based economy (albiet with inefficiencies created by defacto monopolies and severe state controls) the Reich was more rationally organized economically than the USSR. As such, it is probable that a completely Nazi Europe would have lasted longer than the half Communist Europe of reality.

Why would this be a good thing?

Mao would not have followed such a spectacularly failed model or at least not gotten many others to follow it.

Mao was a true believer, and like any other fundy, he would not have had his faith in Communism diminshed by mere facts. "This time we'll make it work!" would be the rallying cry.

Besides, Mao would have won the Chinese Civil War in any case. Are you suggesting that the prostration of the USSR would have moderated or in some way mitigated Mao's totalitarian blood lust?

FDR wasn't a historian, just a racist. He hated Germans

OJ,

What is the source of your claim that FDR was a racist who hated Germans (despite the fact that he and they were of the same race). I would like to check your source(s).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465024653/juddsbookreviews

You're aware he interned the Japs too, right? And told American Jews to shut up? And covered up Katyn? And joked with Stalin about how many Germans should be murdered after the war?

Nazism wasn't capitalist and there weren't enough Germans to adminster and police the whole continent. It would have collapsed just fromn overextension.

Sorry OJ, but whenever someone says "revisionist historian" (whether its Fleming's FDR or Gore Vidal's Lincoln) I reach for my pistol.

Or for a really large grain of salt. When Fleming's views become mainstream, I'll give them credence.

The issue now before the Big Three was what was to be done with Germany in the postwar period. On the second day of the conference, Stalin asked if it was their joint intention to dismember Germany. He reminded FDR and Churchill that each had presented a dismemberment plan at their meeting at Teheran in November 1943. At Teheran, on the final day of the conference, Roosevelt proposed a radical plan. Germany would be divided into five separate states. A truncated Prussia would be divided into two states, comprising north-central and northwestern Germany. The third state would be in central Germany. The fourth state would be in southern Germany, including Bavaria. And the fifth state would be carved out of western Germany. The Kiel Canal and Hamburg in the north and the Ruhr Valley and the Saarland in the west would be under permanent international control.

What Roosevelt had presented was territorially a variation of a plan put together in 1943 by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to permanently deindustrialize Germany. The Morgenthau Plan called for a political dismemberment of Germany, the stripping of Germany of all its industrial equipment and capabilities, and the forced "pastoralization" of the German population.

William Henry Chamberlain, in America's Second Crusade (1950), summarized the consequences, if the plan had been implemented:

It is no exaggeration to say that the Morgenthau Plan, if applied in its full rigor, would have been an undiscriminating sentence of death for millions of Germans. The area in which it was proposed to forbid all heavy industries and mining is one of the most urbanized and thickly settled in Europe. It would have been impossible to turn millions of city dwellers, accustomed to earning their living in factories, offices, and shops, into self-supporting farmers, even if land had been available. . . . The avowed purpose of the Morgenthau Plan was to turn Germany into a predominantly agricultural and pastoral country. But there was no unused reserves of land for this purpose in thickly settled, industrial Germany."

After FDR finished outlining his plan for German dismemberment at Teheran, Churchill said, "The President had said a mouthful." But he himself had no problems with the basic idea. Churchill wanted a vengeful peace. According to his private secretary, already in September 1940, Churchill had called for taking German males and "castrating the lot." He told his Cabinet that it might be a good idea to figure out a way for "segregating three or four million German males for some years" to prevent them from breeding.

At Teheran, Churchill offered his own dismemberment plan. Prussia would be cut off from the rest of Germany as a separate state. The southern provinces of Germany would be forced into a Danubian confederation. Stalin said that he much preferred Roosevelt's plan. Germany had to be permanently broken up into five or six separate states. "It was far better to break up and scatter the German tribes," he said. Furthermore, said Stalin, as part of the dismemberment of Germany, "Poland should extend [west] to the Oder [River]. . . . The Russians would help the Poles obtain a frontier on the Oder." Roosevelt agreed with Stalin; it had been far safer in the past, FDR said, when Germany had been splintered into 107 tiny principalities.

Stalin was adamant that unless the Allies dealt forcefully with Germany, in fifteen or twenty years, the Germans would start another war. Only two conditions would prevent this: the execution of 50,000 to 100,000 German officers; and the Big Three's retaining control of certain strategic points around Germany. This suddenly bothered Churchill, who said that the liquidation of 50,000 German officers would sully his honor as well as the honor of his country. "I would rather be taken out into the garden here and now and be shot myself," Churchill declared.

Roosevelt tried to calm Churchill down by suggesting that only 49,000 be executed. When Churchill finally stormed out of the room, Stalin had to go and get him; putting his arm around the prime minister, Stalin assured him it was all a joke. But the mass murder of potential enemies was nothing new for Stalin. In 1940, he had ordered the execution of 14,000 captured Polish officers in the Katyn Forest.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0795b.asp

Dan:

they never will. The Left writes the conventional wisdom. But your acknowledgement of close-mindedness suffices.

Nazism wasn't capitalist

But the German economy was.

and there weren't enough Germans to adminster and police the whole continent.

They didn't have to, the continent administered itself for the benefit of the Germans. For example, the total number of German administrators in occupied Belgium numbered in the dozens. The Belgian beauracracy hummed along under German direction at the behest of the pro-German king. Vichy remained responsible for the civil administration of of even occupied France. Quisling ran things for the Nazis in Norway. The Danish royal family stayed in Copenhagen and the Germans even let the Danes hold free elections during the war. Nazi rule in western Europe was so successful (and profitable) that the so-called "Resistance" was largely a myth.

Eastern Europe of course was ruled with an iron hand, although Heydrich's administration of Bohemia-Moravia cleverly pacified the Czechs. But Nazi aims in eastern Europe were different than in the west. The goal wasn't to milk occupied economies, it was to conduct ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.

So when you rightfully denounce the 10s of millions killed by Chinese communists, etc., you forget that Hitler planned to kill 10s of millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and other Slavs and reduce the remnant to helot status in order to make way for German colonization. This would be accomplished just as soon as he was done with Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped and other undesirables.

Why should only the commenters on this weblog (myself included) be allowed to indulge in venting, irresponsible talk, and bigotry?

When decision time came, Roosevelt and Churchill acted like the sane statesmen they were.

Tell it to Eastern Europe.

Oh and while we're tossing out book references, may I suggest "Hitler's War Aims, Vol I (Ideology,the Nazi State and the Course of Expansion) and Vol II (The Establishment of the New Order), by Norman Rich? A few used copies are still available at Amazon. Inside you'll find Hitler's blueporint for post-war mass murder by a victorious Nazi Reich. Makes Mao look like an amateur.

The only difference between Hitler and Mao is that Hitler never got a chance to bring his vision to full fruition.

Dan:

No it wasn't. It was a command economy.

So you think they could have controlled Russia too?

You've an awful lot of faith in Nazism.

The Left writes the conventional wisdom.

So the critics of Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" were lefties?

I don't think so.

It was a novel.

Dan:

The questyion isn't whether there was a diffedrence between Hitler and Mao, but why we thought they were different than Stalin. who we helped take possession of Eastern Europe.

OK, then let me rephrase:

The only difference between Hitler and Stalin is that Hitler never got a chance to bring his vision to full fruition.

Oh and OJ, every economy during WWII was command economy, America's included.

Dan:

Sorry, stopped listening when you said you never question conventional wisdom....

OJ's right. It shocks the conscience that normally intelligent readers of this list can't see it.

Once you've won, you have provide some "out", some "face" for the enemy to regain some dignity.

I didn't read all 86 posts, but only scanned after reading how "docile" Germany & Japan were. Leaving aside all the nuances around whether this is even true, the gracelessness of it all is shocking.

And what linked Bonhoeffer, Rommel etc.?

None of them ever lifted a finger against Hitler, not after Roosevelt's diktat, and not before either.

The only Germans who acted against Hitler were communists.

That does not make them 'good,' but it does make them the only Germans who ever acted against Hitler.

80-some posts about what might have happened had history been other than it was are interesting but cannot prove anything.

The fact that no non-communist Germans ever did anything against Hitler is not speculation.

Harry:

It's a scurrilous falsehood.

BB,

A fair number of people have put a good deal of thought into this discussion.

For you to jump in and not pay us the courtesy of reading our comments before you shoot off your mouth does not speak well of you.

This discussion of "what ifs" is facinating.

Circa 2034...

The PAX EUROPASIA came crashing down in the 1990's as the economies of the 3rd Reich and the USSR collapsed under the weight of wide-spread government corruption and runaway military spending. These two ideological and political foes had finally, after 50 years, succeeded in destroying the other. The resulting blood-baths throughout Europe and Asia made World War III inevitable.

The army of the United Arab Republic moved into the Balkins and Central Asia on September 11, 1996, calling the move a "jihad for peace and sanity." The Asian Collective of Nations quickly mobilized its forces. On January 20, 1997, the collective's Supreme Military Council ordered its combined armies to march into Central and Northern Asia stating, " the humanitarian crisis facing Asia, brought about by the collapse of the USSR compels us to act." World War III had begun.

The leaders of Free Pacific Alliance and North American Alliances nations had been in close contact as the situation in Eurasia worsened. During the now famous face to face meeting of of these leaders in October of 2001 at Panama City, Panama, American President, George Bush made his historic "Dawn of Freedom's Century" speech. It was indeed a decisive moment for freedom, democracy, and justice. World War III had been joined.

You think Nazism could have lasted a hundred years and Bolshevism a hundred and twenty? You have more faith in them than I.

USSR 1918-1996 (78 years)
Third Reich 1934-1996 (62 years)

I was writing as one from the mid-2030's looking back @ WW III.

Evenm the USSR with our help couldn't make it that far.

Name names, dates, actions, Orrin.

Harry:

You can read, right? Ever try anything not written by someone trying to justify your prejudices?

Look for stuff, for example, about Black Orchestra:

http://www.oxfordreference.com/pages/samplep06.html

Or read about Bonhoeffer, you'll hate him.

I've read about it. They didn't do anything.

An assassination and a coup are something. With even a little Allied help who knows what they might have achieved. Or, had FDR not been as hate filled as you, and unable to accept that it had been serious, we might at least have exploited the attempt for propaganda purposes. But, of course, the resistance of Christian Germans to the Nazis ruins the story line y'all sold yourselves.

I credited Stauffenberg for the assassination. But my point is proved because after he acted, not a single one of the alleged antiHitler German Christians also acted.

There was no coup attempt. There were a lot of stripy-pants fakes sitting around drinking stolen wine. They never did anything.

(I was amused to be directed by you to Michael Foot to reinforce your fantasies. I bet that never happens again.)

http://www.joric.com/Conspiracy/Center.htm