Reassessing Unconditional Surrender

The Western insistence on the unconditional surrender of its military opponents has its roots in a World War II strategy that backfired, making peace more difficult to achieve . . .

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Comments (9)

Can it be argued from a right wing perspective that the end result of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe was worse than the end result of American rule in Western Europe?

March 6, 2023 Bob Reply

Unconditional surrender was dumb. Even many in the German military questioned the wisdom of Hitler‘s leadership. So was dropping the Atomic bombs on Japan which General MacArthur thought was unnecessary at that point since he thought Japan was already broken. While Oliver Stone’s UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES falls into ideological New Leftist drivel in later episodes, the earlier parts about the World Wars presented very interesting perspectives including General MacArthur’s own views which MacArthur communicated to the White House, but were obviously ignored.

March 7, 2023 Louis Reply

In his book “The History of The Second World War”, famed British military historian Sir Basil Liddell Hart argued that the Anglo-American alliance’s insistence upon unconditional surrender on the part of the Germans in fact stiffened their resistance and only prolonged the war unnecessarily.

March 7, 2023 Hans Bosse Reply

Stalin and the Soviets were demonstrably worse that Hitler and the Nazis. The fact that the US acted as if the opposite were true shows the true nature of many in the US federal government. If the US was going to ally with the USSR a second priority should have been to leave them weakened and demoralized at the end of the war. Instead the US provided over half the war materiel the Soviets used in the war. On the other side the US had to commit the greatest evil in military history to force unconditional surrender on the Japanese. Many in the US military leadership were against using atom bombs. But Truman wanted to flex muscles. Now in the world’s eyes their is an obvious stain on the American reputation.

https://thecrosssectionrmb.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-ethics-of-liberty-punishment-and.html

March 8, 2023 RMB Reply

Why should Americans choose between competing Left-wing ideologies? Soviet rule may have lasted a lot longer than Nazi rule and therefore could be called “worse.” No one knows how bad Nazi rule would have been had they not been removed, but they did plenty of damage and killed 21,000,000 in the time they did rule. We should only be choosing the real Right against all ideologies. Holding Nazis up as Right-wing is a suckers choice that Marxists always present. No different would be choosing Trotskyite ideology over Mao’s ideology or Mao’s ideology over Che Guevara’s ideology. That’s an insane exercise for conservatives. Nazis did and do represent BULLSHIT as do Communists to any person actually on the Right.

March 8, 2023 Louis Reply

Unconditional surrender was the only way to defeat the evils of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire.

March 8, 2023 Michael Reply

Also, I just found your website. It was mentioned in a story in the John Birch Society magazine “The New American”. Thus far I like what I’m reading.

March 8, 2023 Michael Skaggs Reply

As both the US and Britain are essentially maritime powers, fighting continental-wide wars is not these countries’ forte. In other words, the Allied success against Germany would have been impossible without the huge war effort made by the Soviets, against whom the Germans were forced to dispatch the bulk of their army.

My point can easily by illustrated by an example also used by you in the article, namely the inability of the Allies to make good of their Sicilian landing and to quickly overwhelm the German troops from Italy. Thus, the penetration power of maritime powers’ armies fighting inland is and always will be limited to maybe a few hundred kilometres from the landing point. This is the main reason why the American forces were better suited for operations against insular Japan, where distances from the shore to the main industrial areas and military installations of the Japanese are much shorter than the ones in Europe.

To be sure, no continental war against a major military power from Europe – such as the French or the Germans – was ever won without the esential military efforts of the Russians and later the Soviets. It is no accident, therefore, that after the fall of Napoleon , Paris was occupied by Tsarist , not Austrian or British troops. Likewise, the Soviets occupied the best part of Berlin in 1945 and unlike their former allies, their armies left Germany after 1991.

At present, the plans and hopes of hawks in Washington to wage war against both Russia and China in Eurasia are doomed to failure from the start, as the Western powers are lacking this time around its former traditional ally, Russia.

March 8, 2023 Florian Pantazi Reply

Surely you’re joining

March 8, 2023 HUGH Reply

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