Announcement of ‚unconditional surrender‘ policy, Casablanca

The Allied Casablanca Conference was held in Morocco from the 14th to the 24th of January 1943. There, the American President F.D. Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill coordinated military strategy and began to discuss the post-war world order. Stalin declined to attend due to the precarious military situation in Russia. However, the Moroccan Sovereign and Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free France movement were present at the conference. The thus resulting Casablanca Declaration established that the Allies would not accept a negotiated surrender, but rather fight the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan until they had surrendered unconditionally. The surrender would be followed by a restructuring of the Axis nations’ political systems, demobilization of their military, loss of territory and war crime trials. Roosevelt stated that unconditional surrender “does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy or Japan, but it does mean the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and subjugation of other people.” The name of the policy had its origins in the American Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant had demanded the unconditional surrender of Confederate troops during one of the first Union victories, the Battle of Fort Donelson. (Josef Mlejnek)