Why did the Allies demand an unconditional surrender?

Why didn't the Allied give Germany an option other than continuing the hopeless military struggle.

 

My guess would be so that nothing like this would ever happen again... So germany would bever again start a world war... So the Nazi regime would never again rise...

You say hopeless...... why out of curiosity?? And who exactly was continuing a hopeless miltary struggle..?

 

If you think about it the answer for this becomes quickly rather obvious. World War I ended with an armistice, not with unconditional surrender. The result of that type of surrender was World War II. You cannot understand World War II without understanding how World War I ended. The Allies were so exhausted themselves by November 1918 that they gladly accepted the armistice. However, the humiliating terms of the armistice and the economic and social upheavals that followed made Germany ripe for the rise of extremist groups, including the Nazis. If the Allies had not demanded unconditional surrender there is no way they could have guaranteed the denazification process that was critical to securing a lasting peace in Europe.

So, the reason why the Allies demanded unconditional surrender is that they had learned their lesson from the First World War. They didn't want to have to fight another war against Germany a few decades down the road. They wanted to extinguish the militaristic part of the German character and that could only be done with complete control of the country.

And they were phenomenally successful. While Germany is an economically strong country today it is a country so wracked by self-loathing and guilt that no one needs fear it militaristically anymore. Those who claim we need to keep the pressure on Germany to prevent it from throwing off the war guilt are simply doing so for their own selfish purposes. And there's no need. Germans are as hard on themselves today for their history as anyone else.

 

The reasons mentioned above and the fact that due to unconditional surrender they were able to put the men in charge to court.Otherwise there would have been no Nuremberg. After WW1 the "guilty ones" got away.

 

Because the Germans started the war and invaded countries for no other reason than territorial aggresion.

 

A little simplistic answer, don't you think? See my response above.

 

It was from the legacy of the Versailles Treaty introduced by FDR at the Casablanca conference with Winston Churchill.

http://www.casablancaconference.com/ch3.asp#Surrender

 

I would say that no one is harder on them than they themselves are. I think it is very important to remember though that the Nazi Party was only a percentage of the German population. Most of the military weren't even members of the party, and many actually disliked the Nazis. The regular troops were just regular soldiers following orders, the same as our troops. their only mistake was that they were fighting for a regime of tyranny. I believe it is even wrong to say that Germany voted for the Nazis; Hitler was able to take advantage of Proportional representation and gain a footing in the Reichstag and then took power with the Enabling Act. That was rather out of the control of an average German. Similarly how were they to overthrow the regime when all opposition was very quickly suppressed in the most brutal manner imagineable?
Germany should never forget her past, but it is now surely a time to draw a line under that chapter. They are now a hugely successful nation, and one of the most peaceful on earth, I am very pleased that Britain and Germany have been allies for such a long time.

 

If Germany had a will to end the hopeless military struggle then she could have surrendered.
Seems to me that AH and his cronies would not surrender due to pride and the fact that they had plenty to hide.

 

The Allies would never allow surrender without the ability to prosecute the Nazis for the war and attrocities. The Nazis knew this and could never agree to those terms.

 

If we in the west in 1944 said to Germany we agree to your surrender and in the mean time all those German troops started to move east, I'm sure Stalin would feel he has been stabbed in the back. Or so visa versa, Germany had to surrender to all the Allied forces and the result which has been pointed out we got the Nuremberg.

 

I´d say 90% of Germans knew by 1944 the war was lost. Maybe more. However they were forced to fight because they were told by the Allied that they would be destroyed once the war was over. The country would be divided. If there had been a possibility of some kind of peace Hitler would have been killed , perhaps after Stalingrad, and also his main chorus line incl Bormann, Himmler etc. I say this because on July 20th 1944 the coup could have succeeded if all the soldiers taking part would have done their part until the end. Now, once there was a rumour that Hitler was alive, they retreated ( and were shot/hanged in the end anyway ) and left Stauffenberg etc alone and the coup failed.

So in a sense I don´t understand the decision of unconditional surrender because you just continued the war and as well made the Germans fight harder.

 

In my opinion, the west wanted to change the culture of the German people, or their hegemony. Today, the Germans are harmless and "western". Culture identifies a race, now the Germans have lost it. What more is there to say.

 

I would not say that. They are still known for their methodical and organizational skills. They are still nationalistic. The only characteristic I can see as they having lost is their aggressive tendacy to wage war. Do you think the Germans are unhappy with the pro war results of their culture?

 

I agree with the other likely reasons about why the Allies wanted total surrender. But I agree with Ironcross about Germans being harmless. It used to cause me to scratch my head as to why the smaller German states came across looking like flatter versions of Switzerland at various times in their history, and, especially now, and yet how Germany managed to put up such a good fight in WWI and WWII. But the truth simply was that what made Germany great in war was Prussia. Prussia is what welded the goofy German states into the first Reich and infused it with the Prussian school system. Prussia, along with Britain, is really what dented Napoleon's European dreams, and it is what got the ball always rolling over the top of France in the 1870s. Hitler was right about this: France did not want the goofy German states to unite into a single nation. I keep saying goofy, because that is how they all seemed without Prussia at their helm. As a scattered mess for hundreds of years, it was Prussia that turned this Balkan-like assemblage into a single nation. It also infused it with Prussian militarism, methods, and a Kaiser. The height of this process was marked by Bismarck.

The allies had planned to destroy the Prussian aristocracy and military system after WWI, but never completed the job. WWII, was really just WWI-reloaded. But WWII ended with the Soviets invading Prussia and Germany being sliced in half. The Prussian system is indeed dead today. Germany has been returned to it pre-Prussian banal self. Sure, today the German trains run as usual, the sidewalks are mainly clean and wide, the parks are well groomed, you still can’t get ice on a hot day, the same barbaric food is served, and the yards are neat and tidy – like a giant flat Switzerland. But gone is that Blood and Iron that once flowed throw the blue blooded Prussians. Hitler himself helped to kill that. The Waffen SS was about as anti-Prussian as you could get – with its nix on ‘Herr’ and the old titles. Prussia had much the same force with Germany as the state of Virginia had with the old USA, which produced more than its share of military and political talent in America: Washington, Lee, and the Patton clan – though George S. Patton was born in California – just to name a few. Without the old Prussian system it is doubtful Germany will threaten Europe as it once did – for the aged link to the Teutonic Knights is cut. The policy of the Soviets after 1945 was to seek out all that system and break it up. Now Germany, besides being listed as the most boring place for a vacation – has little left to it of its old soul (look up boring and Germany on the net). Even its last firebrand (Hitler) came from outside of it. And let's not forget what Hitler told Albert Speer as the Russians were approaching Berlin - that the best blood of Germany had already been destroyed in the war.

 

The way you speak about the old Prussian system almost sounds like adulation.The Prussian system was an old archaic system that was bound to die out even before Hitler permanently killed it. The reason being is that it was elitist, royalist, and tied too closely to old feudal ideals of unity for the greater good of the elite. These things all have a way of coming apart at the seams because the world was innovating and evolving too quickly. In WW1 a lot of common blue collar workers in just about every major nation in Europe..including Germany were leaning towards socialism. A lot of the worker strikers and other incidents showed that the winds of change were coming soon. The old European society was incompatible with the realities of industrialization and the new living standard changes and opportunities for the average person. The only thing that offset the inevitable back in 1914 was Germany's mobilization for war.

The biggest flaw of the Prussian tradition it has to be in a perpetual state of war to continue its flawed existance. All the pomp, tradition, and dressing is just preparing society for the next eventual war. As you can see as nations become more industrialized, living standards rise up and information is readily available this type of thing isn't feasible anymore.

 

It was FDR not Churchill who demanded it. Churchill was surprised, then against his Cabinet's advice, made a statement supporting it.

And both Staffs, Brit and Yank, were against it start to finish.

It was a huge mistake.

Btw, Versailles WAS unconditional surrender(though the Central Powers assumed they'd be treated better), that's exactly why the Nazis were able to maintain control even when peace was obviously preferable to the Germans.

Some say it was because FDR really didn't have as much support for the war, at least against Germany, as you might think. So he had to commit them to a contract they couldn't back out of.

After Stalingrad, Hitler knew alot of Germans wanted to negotiate peace with Stalin, so to prevent that option, he declared Total War, that on their behalf, he swore Germans would never make conditional terms with the Soviets.

We even tried those people who tried to get rid of the Nazis, assassinate Hitler as war criminals. Though Lord Halifax did speak out against this and even spoke out at their trials. Halifax and now released Secrecy files confirm that the German Underground felt that 'unconditional surrender demands' prevented them from gathering supporters. After all, what's the point of overthrowing the Nazis if Versailles is going to happen all over again?

If we had recinded Unconditional Surrender then the Germans would've more apt to resist even over-throw the Nazis under the hope that then their new leaders would be able to end the war with the Allies without suffering as they did after WW1 again.

Same thing with Japan. We ended up letting them keep the Emperor anyways, the only thing they insisted was preventing them from surrendering before the bombs, before Russia got its foot in the door in Asia. If we had made conditional peace with Japan, with a scheduled pull out of China, we wouldn't have lost China to communism, no Korean War, no Vietnam War, no Trillions of dollars and decades of Cold War in Asia.

If you are going to be punished just as bad no matter what better leader you replace the present one with, what's the point of trying to replace him?

If you are going to lose everything all over again no matter what you do? why stop fighting?

Hitler never got the majority of votes, most Germans were never Nazis.
The majority of voters in the USA didn't vote for Bush, the majority of legal voters didn't EVEN VOTE.

The reason a people stand by their unpopular leader the way the Germans did, was because we left them no choice.

 

After WW1 the so-called war criminals were not put in court after all, because the Versailles treaty was not an unconditional surrender truly. So the most improtant reason why this action was taken in WW2 was to get the war criminals to court for sure. At least this is the best reason I have seen.

Also the Morgenthau plan was mentioned widely which gave Göbbels alot of extra fuel for his propaganda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

 

Sorry Balderdasher, greatest respect and all that but I can't agree.
The disastrous terms were those at Versailles, an ending to the First War that provided no real ending at all and left far too much scope for conflict to boil under for 20 years, until breaking out again.

Unconditional surrender was the only option that could be offered to Germany, this war had to be finished, and finished to the bitter end with the total destruction of Nazi Germany's structural cohesion as a nation. The disastrous lesson of a botched Versailles had been learnt well and could not be repeated.

There was also the factor of the advancing Soviets, the Western powers were quite aware that the closing stages of the war would form the geography of the future Europe. No way would the Soviets ever even consider a negotiated surrender, and any such attempt by the Western allies would only hand even more territory over to the postwar Communists. The Iron curtain along the Rhine... or even the Seine?

Much is made of the German people rising up against Hitler, they didn't & couldn't, and I suspect wouldn't. The White Rose and the like were sadly little more than tragic and naive gestures by a handful of very brave individuals, they don't really reflect the activities of the vast bulk of an indoctrinated and propaganda controlled population. In the last year of the war there was still plenty of internal security apparatus in place across the Reich to supress any such activity. Even large uprisings would be unlikely to stand in the face of comparatively small units of SS and other groups, both military and paramilitary, that stayed devoted to Hitler until the bitter end.

I would also counter the assertion that the British Staff was against unconditional surrender. Alanbrooke (who to all intents is the British staff) was certainly most firm that surrender terms were not at all what he was interested in.

I feel the philosophy right across the Allies was that Germany had sown the wind and would reap the whirlwind. The policy was far from disastrous as the postwar Germany integrated more succesfully back into the Western 'family' far more completely than after WW1. The militaristic & aggressive cancer had been thoroughly cut out rather than allowed to fester.

Apologies for rambling on,
Cheers,
Adam.

 

Well said Von