On this episode of Our American Stories, why did the capitalist United States ally with the Soviet Union and its dictator, Stalin? The late, great Stephen Ambrose answers that question and shares a World War II story that begins in January 1943 and ends with the Allies' decision to pursue unconditional surrender.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And we love hearing stories from you, our listeners. Send
them to our American Stories dot com. That's our American
Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites. Stephen Ambrose
was one of America's leading biographers and historians. At the
(00:31):
core of Ambrose's phenomenal success is his simple and straightforward
belief that history is biography, history is about people, he
would always say. Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here
at Our American Stories thanks to those who run as
his state. Today we'll be hearing the story from early
(00:55):
nineteen forty three during World War II. Let's jump right
in with the so victory over the Nazis at the
Battle of Stalingrad.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Nineteen forty three got off to a great start for
the Allied cause because at the end of January General
von Pavas surrendered at Stalingrad. The Red Army took a
bag of two hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, had probably
killed a killed and wounded another half million German soldiers
(01:26):
in this Titanic struggle at Stalingrad and had lost themselves
the Red Army a million men. But of course the
Red Army could make up those man power losses in
a way that the Germans could not, So Stalingrad was
the pivot point of the war. After Stalingrad, there really
(01:49):
was not much, if any question as to who was
going to win this war. The questions now were how
long is it going to take, what price is.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Gonna have to be paid?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And increasingly among the allies Britain in the United States
and the Soviet Union in this very strange alliance, who's
gonna get what at the end of the war. But Stalingrad,
for they from the military side in the secraral war
was the great battle and the decisive battle. After Stalingrad,
(02:26):
the Germans never again took the offense of the Eastern Front.
Having said all that, and adding to that, the Americans
need to remember always that eight out of every ten
Wehrmacht soldiers killed in the Second World War were killed.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
By the Red Army.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That doesn't mean by any stretch that the Red Army
won the war by itself, but it does mean that
they made a contribution without which Britain and America could
never have won the war. Indeed, the truth of the
Second World War is that no two of the three
Great Allies were sufficiently strong to defeat Germany. Britain and
(03:09):
the Soviet Union together couldn't have done it. The United
States and the Soviet Union without.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Britain couldn't have done it. It took all three.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
January nineteen forty three also saw the Great Wartime Conference,
the second of them. The first had been the Arcadia
Conference at the end of nineteen forty one. At the
beginning of nineteen forty three, the second Great Conference between
the Western Allies took place at Casablanca in Morocco. Roosevelt
and his staff met with Churchill and his staff to
(03:44):
plan operations for nineteen forty three. At these meetings, the
first thing the Americans said to the British was, well,
of course, you understand that having mounted Torch and put
all of this strength that we have into North Africa,
the nineteen forty three invasion of France is definitely off.
(04:04):
We don't have the resources to do that. Churchill was astonished,
or said he was to hear this, and whether he
was telling the truth or not, can't be said. The
announcement to Stale that there was not going to be
a second front in nineteen forty three left the Soviet
(04:25):
dictator shaking with rage. He had been demanding a second
front ever since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June
of nineteen forty one. Now, and you meet Russians today,
and who will talk about why was there this terrible
long delay before the second front was mounted? And of
(04:46):
course we won the war, the Russians will tell you,
and more or less by ourselves. And you guys didn't
even dare come in until we had utterly defeated the Verrmacht,
and there was just a shell of the force that
Hitler bragged was an army sections of the world was
never seen by the time you guys came into the
real war in nineteen forty four. But here I can't
(05:07):
forbear saying that it really came hard to hear Stalin
begging for a second front nineteen forty two, in nineteen
forty three, and you know, the French could have said, well,
where the hell was the second front in nineteen forty
when Hitler was overrunning France, what were you guys doing?
That's when the Second Front should have been launched. You
(05:27):
should have been attacking the Germans instead of cooperating with him,
instead of entering into an alliance with him. Well, leaving
that aside, Stalin obviously he wasn't going to be embarrassed
by his past action. Stalin was in a desperate situation.
The Soviet Union was taking horrendous casualties the Germans that
occupied very large parts of the Soviet Empire, and Stalin
(05:53):
desperately needed to have the pressure taken off him. He
was fighting up to two hundred German and Allied divisions
on the Eastern Front, and so naturally he demanded the
opening of the Second Front.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Churchill had tried.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
To persuade Stalin that the campaign in North Africa was
a genuine opening of the Second Front, uh but to Stalin.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
That it was utterly unacceptable.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
The Germans never had more than three divisions in North Africa.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
North Africa was.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Clearly not going to be a decisive theater in this war.
Russia very much still had her back against the wall.
Even after the victory at Stalingrad. The Soviet Union was
not i and and no longer on its last legs.
But the price of taking on the Wehrmacht by themselves
(06:50):
was gonna be very high, and he was desperate to
get a Stalin, was to get a second front opened
in France to force the Germans to transfer divisions from
their Eastern front order to France to take the pressure
off the Rusters.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And you're listening to Stephen Ambrose tell the story of
a year nineteen forty three, a critical year in World
War Two. When we come back, more of Steven Ambrose
here on our American Stories, Lee Hubib here, and I'd
(07:31):
like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you
get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to
hear again can be found there daily again, Please subscribe
to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the
(07:51):
iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps
us keep these great American stories coming. And we continue
with our American Stories. And we last left off with
(08:14):
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill meeting for a second
time during the war in January of nineteen forty three
in Casablanca in Morocco to plan operations for that year.
Let's pick up where we last left off with Stephen Ambrose.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Now a combination of things came together here at this
Cox Black meeting. First of all, the decision we're not
going to have a second front nineteen forty three, and
somebody's got to explain this to Stalin. And I pause
there to make this point. What I say, had to
explain it to Stalin. What I mean is the great
there on the part of the Western Allies in World
(08:53):
War Two was always that Stalin would make a separate peace,
and you would go back to the situation that prevailed
before June of nineteen forty one.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
That is, I I in to.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
All practical purposes, Germany and the Soviet Union would be allies.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
If that happened.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
There wasn't a chance in the world that the United
States and Britain could invade France against.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
All of Hitler's strength.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And there and there were some uh fears came out
from Berlin in the fall of nineteen forty two as
the Stalingrad Battle was beginning, and they continued through the
winner of forty two. Forty three of the Germans wondering
if Stalin would be interested in a separate peace and
it had a certain appeal to Stalin, especially if he felt,
(09:44):
as he was beginning to feel, or increasingly was feeling,
that the Western Allies were willing to sell the Soviet
Union down the river, or more precisely, if the Western
Allies were perfectly happy to watch Nazis killing Communists and
Communis killing Nazis. And he was right to feel that way,
(10:05):
because an awful lot of people in the Western world
did think exactly that.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Not however, the leaders.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Either, especially not the military leaders, all of whom realize
that if you tried to play that game, the Nazis
would very likely win the war, and if they did,
they would then take over the world. And if they didn't,
the Communists were going to win the war, and they
(10:34):
would end up with all the resources, especially the human resources,
of Western Europe under their control.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And that wouldn't be a world that we would want
to live in either.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
But as between the two dangers, a Nazi dominated Europe
or a Communist dominated Europe, Roosevelt and Churchill and Marshall
and Allen Brook and Eisenhower and all of the leaders
of the of the Great Alliance of Britain in the
United States, we're in agreement that the.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Nazi victory would be worse.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I think in retrospect the time has proven them right.
We now reached the point in world history and where
both of those isms are in the act can of history.
Nazism has been gone since nineteen forty five, and now
Communism is gone. If World War II had turned out
(11:26):
the other way with the Nazis victorious in Europe, I
don't know how we ever gotten rid of the Nazis.
I don't think that they would have withered on the
vine in the way that the Communists did, or that
they would have their own people would have turned against him.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, that's a lot of speculation. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Stalin in nineteen forty three one or a second front,
and he wasn't going to get one. And this was
a tough one to explain to him. And that fear
that he would make a separate peace was very real.
Oh and I should add that Stalin also had complaints
about the Darlaon deal. His attitude was the first time
(12:07):
the Americans go to the offensive in this war. Within
a day of the attack, they've cut a deal with
a fascist general or in this case admiral. Admiral Darlat,
and Stalin wondered aloud to the American ambassador, what does
this mean that when you get into Germany you're going
to cut a deal with the German Germany's generals. I
(12:31):
don't like the smell of this at all. To reassure
Stalin both as to America's determination to stay in this
war to the end an America's commitment to the Soviet
Union as an ally, and more specifically, to guarantee to
Stalin that there would be no more Darlon deals, that
(12:52):
we would not get into a cooperative mode with the
German generals. Orge them to overthrow Hitler and then we'll
deal with you. Roosevelt came up with a wholly new
concept in war. That decision, and that concept also came
(13:16):
from it had many many parents that also came out
of avoiding the mistake the Allies and particularly Woodrow Wilson
made in nineteen eighteen. Roosevelt wanted to make certain that
the Germans would never again be able to claim that
they were stabbed in the back. He wanted the Germans
to understand that they had been beaten, and he came
(13:39):
up with the formula called unconditional surrender from Casablaca, he
issued a pronouncement seconded.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
By Churchill, calling on.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Or setting as the objective for the Allies and the
Second World War, the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers
Germany and Japan. Now what this meant nobody knew. Nobody'd
ever asked for an unconditional surrender before. It raised a
(14:11):
lot of questions, Who's going to be running Germany after
she surrenders, where's the government going to come from, what
kind of a system do you intend to impose on her?
And of course the strange alliance. It could be that
the Russians would get a part of Germany and this
unconditional surrender from Germany with me and the Russians could
impose on the Germans or at least that part of
(14:33):
Germany if they occupied their system. Presumably the Americans of
the British would impose their system on the other part
of Germany. How could that whatever work out well? Nobody
had an answer to that at the time. Unconditional surrender
has received a lot of criticism because of its vagueness
and because of the argument that it forced the Germans
(14:54):
and the Japanese to fight on when the fight was hopeless.
So that it cost a lot of a American and
British lives that it. Had a formula for a surrender
been worked out, you could have had a much earlier
surrender and to saved a great deal of the destruction
of the Second World War. The problem with that argument is,
(15:18):
how can anyone imagine a scenario in which the German
generals managed to get rid of Hitler. So long as
Hilary was around, there was no possibility of dealing with him,
And in fact, Roosevelt, in the unconditional surrender announcement, made
it clear that he and there's something else that Wilson
hadn't done, that we were going to put war criminals
(15:39):
on trial. There was going to be punishment for the
guilty Nazis. Now, that of course made the guilty Nazis
fight all that much harder, and it made all Germans
fight that much harder because unconditional surrender gave to Garbles,
the propaganda minister, an ideal.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Tool with which to whip up.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Sentiment within German to get the old men to tuck
their beards into their shirts and pick up a rifle
and go out and fight, and to get the young
boys to do the same because there was a lot
of loose talk in the United States. There were a
couple of sentators who were talking about we got to
castrate all German males, and Gables was able to pick
up on that and tell the German people, that's what
(16:20):
unconditional surrender is going to mean. Well, it sure makes
a man fight when you hear something like that. The
other side of it, though, is unconditional surrender had a
clearness to it, a wiping the slate clean, so that
when it was all over, you could start to rebuild
a new Germany, whether in the Russian on the Russian
(16:42):
model or on the American model, you could start to
build a new Germany. And it also had a positive
effect on morale within the United States. But most of all,
the audience for unconditional surrender wasn't the American people, and
it wasn't even so much policy towards the German people,
as it was a reassurance to Stalin We're not going
to deal with any more fascist and we're in this
(17:04):
to the bitter end.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And a great job editing that piece by Greg Hengler,
and a special thanks to the Ambrose Estate for allowing
us to use the audio of their father, and he
died in two thousand and two, but we had our
American Stories want to keep his voice alive. It is
such an important voice. By the way, the World War
Two Museum Steven Ambrose helped start that. It's in New Orleans.
(17:28):
Pay a visit, go online, listen to the stories. It
is hands down the best museum in this country. Stephen
Ambrose the story of nineteen forty three and unconditional surrender
terms fashioned by Roosevelt. The pros and the cons here
on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And we love hearing stories from you, our listeners. Send
them to our American Stories dot com. That's our American
Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites. Stephen Ambrose
was one of America's leading biographers and historians. At the
(00:31):
core of Ambrose's phenomenal success is his simple and straightforward
belief that history is biography, history is about people, he
would always say. Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here
at Our American Stories thanks to those who run as
his state. Today we'll be hearing the story from early
(00:55):
nineteen forty three during World War II. Let's jump right
in with the so victory over the Nazis at the
Battle of Stalingrad.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Nineteen forty three got off to a great start for
the Allied cause because at the end of January General
von Pavas surrendered at Stalingrad. The Red Army took a
bag of two hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, had probably
killed a killed and wounded another half million German soldiers
(01:26):
in this Titanic struggle at Stalingrad and had lost themselves
the Red Army a million men. But of course the
Red Army could make up those man power losses in
a way that the Germans could not, So Stalingrad was
the pivot point of the war. After Stalingrad, there really
(01:49):
was not much, if any question as to who was
going to win this war. The questions now were how
long is it going to take, what price is.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Gonna have to be paid?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And increasingly among the allies Britain in the United States
and the Soviet Union in this very strange alliance, who's
gonna get what at the end of the war. But Stalingrad,
for they from the military side in the secraral war
was the great battle and the decisive battle. After Stalingrad,
(02:26):
the Germans never again took the offense of the Eastern Front.
Having said all that, and adding to that, the Americans
need to remember always that eight out of every ten
Wehrmacht soldiers killed in the Second World War were killed.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
By the Red Army.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That doesn't mean by any stretch that the Red Army
won the war by itself, but it does mean that
they made a contribution without which Britain and America could
never have won the war. Indeed, the truth of the
Second World War is that no two of the three
Great Allies were sufficiently strong to defeat Germany. Britain and
(03:09):
the Soviet Union together couldn't have done it. The United
States and the Soviet Union without.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Britain couldn't have done it. It took all three.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
January nineteen forty three also saw the Great Wartime Conference,
the second of them. The first had been the Arcadia
Conference at the end of nineteen forty one. At the
beginning of nineteen forty three, the second Great Conference between
the Western Allies took place at Casablanca in Morocco. Roosevelt
and his staff met with Churchill and his staff to
(03:44):
plan operations for nineteen forty three. At these meetings, the
first thing the Americans said to the British was, well,
of course, you understand that having mounted Torch and put
all of this strength that we have into North Africa,
the nineteen forty three invasion of France is definitely off.
(04:04):
We don't have the resources to do that. Churchill was astonished,
or said he was to hear this, and whether he
was telling the truth or not, can't be said. The
announcement to Stale that there was not going to be
a second front in nineteen forty three left the Soviet
(04:25):
dictator shaking with rage. He had been demanding a second
front ever since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June
of nineteen forty one. Now, and you meet Russians today,
and who will talk about why was there this terrible
long delay before the second front was mounted? And of
(04:46):
course we won the war, the Russians will tell you,
and more or less by ourselves. And you guys didn't
even dare come in until we had utterly defeated the Verrmacht,
and there was just a shell of the force that
Hitler bragged was an army sections of the world was
never seen by the time you guys came into the
real war in nineteen forty four. But here I can't
(05:07):
forbear saying that it really came hard to hear Stalin
begging for a second front nineteen forty two, in nineteen
forty three, and you know, the French could have said, well,
where the hell was the second front in nineteen forty
when Hitler was overrunning France, what were you guys doing?
That's when the Second Front should have been launched. You
(05:27):
should have been attacking the Germans instead of cooperating with him,
instead of entering into an alliance with him. Well, leaving
that aside, Stalin obviously he wasn't going to be embarrassed
by his past action. Stalin was in a desperate situation.
The Soviet Union was taking horrendous casualties the Germans that
occupied very large parts of the Soviet Empire, and Stalin
(05:53):
desperately needed to have the pressure taken off him. He
was fighting up to two hundred German and Allied divisions
on the Eastern Front, and so naturally he demanded the
opening of the Second Front.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Churchill had tried.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
To persuade Stalin that the campaign in North Africa was
a genuine opening of the Second Front, uh but to Stalin.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
That it was utterly unacceptable.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
The Germans never had more than three divisions in North Africa.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
North Africa was.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Clearly not going to be a decisive theater in this war.
Russia very much still had her back against the wall.
Even after the victory at Stalingrad. The Soviet Union was
not i and and no longer on its last legs.
But the price of taking on the Wehrmacht by themselves
(06:50):
was gonna be very high, and he was desperate to
get a Stalin, was to get a second front opened
in France to force the Germans to transfer divisions from
their Eastern front order to France to take the pressure
off the Rusters.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And you're listening to Stephen Ambrose tell the story of
a year nineteen forty three, a critical year in World
War Two. When we come back, more of Steven Ambrose
here on our American Stories, Lee Hubib here, and I'd
(07:31):
like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you
get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to
hear again can be found there daily again, Please subscribe
to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the
(07:51):
iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps
us keep these great American stories coming. And we continue
with our American Stories. And we last left off with
(08:14):
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill meeting for a second
time during the war in January of nineteen forty three
in Casablanca in Morocco to plan operations for that year.
Let's pick up where we last left off with Stephen Ambrose.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Now a combination of things came together here at this
Cox Black meeting. First of all, the decision we're not
going to have a second front nineteen forty three, and
somebody's got to explain this to Stalin. And I pause
there to make this point. What I say, had to
explain it to Stalin. What I mean is the great
there on the part of the Western Allies in World
(08:53):
War Two was always that Stalin would make a separate peace,
and you would go back to the situation that prevailed
before June of nineteen forty one.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
That is, I I in to.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
All practical purposes, Germany and the Soviet Union would be allies.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
If that happened.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
There wasn't a chance in the world that the United
States and Britain could invade France against.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
All of Hitler's strength.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And there and there were some uh fears came out
from Berlin in the fall of nineteen forty two as
the Stalingrad Battle was beginning, and they continued through the
winner of forty two. Forty three of the Germans wondering
if Stalin would be interested in a separate peace and
it had a certain appeal to Stalin, especially if he felt,
(09:44):
as he was beginning to feel, or increasingly was feeling,
that the Western Allies were willing to sell the Soviet
Union down the river, or more precisely, if the Western
Allies were perfectly happy to watch Nazis killing Communists and
Communis killing Nazis. And he was right to feel that way,
(10:05):
because an awful lot of people in the Western world
did think exactly that.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Not however, the leaders.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Either, especially not the military leaders, all of whom realize
that if you tried to play that game, the Nazis
would very likely win the war, and if they did,
they would then take over the world. And if they didn't,
the Communists were going to win the war, and they
(10:34):
would end up with all the resources, especially the human resources,
of Western Europe under their control.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And that wouldn't be a world that we would want
to live in either.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
But as between the two dangers, a Nazi dominated Europe
or a Communist dominated Europe, Roosevelt and Churchill and Marshall
and Allen Brook and Eisenhower and all of the leaders
of the of the Great Alliance of Britain in the
United States, we're in agreement that the.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Nazi victory would be worse.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I think in retrospect the time has proven them right.
We now reached the point in world history and where
both of those isms are in the act can of history.
Nazism has been gone since nineteen forty five, and now
Communism is gone. If World War II had turned out
(11:26):
the other way with the Nazis victorious in Europe, I
don't know how we ever gotten rid of the Nazis.
I don't think that they would have withered on the
vine in the way that the Communists did, or that
they would have their own people would have turned against him.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, that's a lot of speculation. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Stalin in nineteen forty three one or a second front,
and he wasn't going to get one. And this was
a tough one to explain to him. And that fear
that he would make a separate peace was very real.
Oh and I should add that Stalin also had complaints
about the Darlaon deal. His attitude was the first time
(12:07):
the Americans go to the offensive in this war. Within
a day of the attack, they've cut a deal with
a fascist general or in this case admiral. Admiral Darlat,
and Stalin wondered aloud to the American ambassador, what does
this mean that when you get into Germany you're going
to cut a deal with the German Germany's generals. I
(12:31):
don't like the smell of this at all. To reassure
Stalin both as to America's determination to stay in this
war to the end an America's commitment to the Soviet
Union as an ally, and more specifically, to guarantee to
Stalin that there would be no more Darlon deals, that
(12:52):
we would not get into a cooperative mode with the
German generals. Orge them to overthrow Hitler and then we'll
deal with you. Roosevelt came up with a wholly new
concept in war. That decision, and that concept also came
(13:16):
from it had many many parents that also came out
of avoiding the mistake the Allies and particularly Woodrow Wilson
made in nineteen eighteen. Roosevelt wanted to make certain that
the Germans would never again be able to claim that
they were stabbed in the back. He wanted the Germans
to understand that they had been beaten, and he came
(13:39):
up with the formula called unconditional surrender from Casablaca, he
issued a pronouncement seconded.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
By Churchill, calling on.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Or setting as the objective for the Allies and the
Second World War, the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers
Germany and Japan. Now what this meant nobody knew. Nobody'd
ever asked for an unconditional surrender before. It raised a
(14:11):
lot of questions, Who's going to be running Germany after
she surrenders, where's the government going to come from, what
kind of a system do you intend to impose on her?
And of course the strange alliance. It could be that
the Russians would get a part of Germany and this
unconditional surrender from Germany with me and the Russians could
impose on the Germans or at least that part of
(14:33):
Germany if they occupied their system. Presumably the Americans of
the British would impose their system on the other part
of Germany. How could that whatever work out well? Nobody
had an answer to that at the time. Unconditional surrender
has received a lot of criticism because of its vagueness
and because of the argument that it forced the Germans
(14:54):
and the Japanese to fight on when the fight was hopeless.
So that it cost a lot of a American and
British lives that it. Had a formula for a surrender
been worked out, you could have had a much earlier
surrender and to saved a great deal of the destruction
of the Second World War. The problem with that argument is,
(15:18):
how can anyone imagine a scenario in which the German
generals managed to get rid of Hitler. So long as
Hilary was around, there was no possibility of dealing with him,
And in fact, Roosevelt, in the unconditional surrender announcement, made
it clear that he and there's something else that Wilson
hadn't done, that we were going to put war criminals
(15:39):
on trial. There was going to be punishment for the
guilty Nazis. Now, that of course made the guilty Nazis
fight all that much harder, and it made all Germans
fight that much harder because unconditional surrender gave to Garbles,
the propaganda minister, an ideal.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Tool with which to whip up.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Sentiment within German to get the old men to tuck
their beards into their shirts and pick up a rifle
and go out and fight, and to get the young
boys to do the same because there was a lot
of loose talk in the United States. There were a
couple of sentators who were talking about we got to
castrate all German males, and Gables was able to pick
up on that and tell the German people, that's what
(16:20):
unconditional surrender is going to mean. Well, it sure makes
a man fight when you hear something like that. The
other side of it, though, is unconditional surrender had a
clearness to it, a wiping the slate clean, so that
when it was all over, you could start to rebuild
a new Germany, whether in the Russian on the Russian
(16:42):
model or on the American model, you could start to
build a new Germany. And it also had a positive
effect on morale within the United States. But most of all,
the audience for unconditional surrender wasn't the American people, and
it wasn't even so much policy towards the German people,
as it was a reassurance to Stalin We're not going
to deal with any more fascist and we're in this
(17:04):
to the bitter end.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And a great job editing that piece by Greg Hengler,
and a special thanks to the Ambrose Estate for allowing
us to use the audio of their father, and he
died in two thousand and two, but we had our
American Stories want to keep his voice alive. It is
such an important voice. By the way, the World War
Two Museum Steven Ambrose helped start that. It's in New Orleans.
(17:28):
Pay a visit, go online, listen to the stories. It
is hands down the best museum in this country. Stephen
Ambrose the story of nineteen forty three and unconditional surrender
terms fashioned by Roosevelt. The pros and the cons here
on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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