Unconditional surrender

Could we not arrange for emissaries, perhaps from the Red Cross or a neutral country like Sweden, to meet representatives of Japan and warn them of two things? Firstly, that Russia is set to enter the war against them, and secondly, that this new bomb has terrible, destructive power.

Then together with any assurances you as president might care to make with regard to the emperor following unconditional surrender, it seems to me quite possible that this presents the opportunity the Japs are searching for.

It gives them an out.

An interesting idea.

July 26th.

The time has come for Japan to decide.

Yes, unconditional surrender.

The alternative is prompt and utter destruction.

Yeah.

I think the one thing that we have seen in common with both of us prior to the Lord bringing us together and afterwards as a couple in covenant is unconditional surrender really opens the door-

Yeah

... for God to move in your life.

No.

It was...

I mean, for me, it was an unconditional surrender of my life to the Lord.

I mean, I submitted to the lordship of Christ over my life-

He's vice president of America.

How can he possibly say that the Second World War ended in negotiation? In the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, President Roosevelt, supported by Winston Churchill, directly stated that their war aim was unconditional surrender of Germany.

And that is what happened.

There were no negotiations whatsoever.

They insisted on total surrender.

Were they right to do so? This comes up every August in this country.

We say, oh, if only we hadn't insisted that the Japanese engage in unconditional surrender, we could have negotiated a surrender and spared the world the first use of atomic weapons, for example.

Then why didn't the Japanese immediately surrender after the bomb on Hiroshima? They had a meeting of the Imperial War Council and they decided to fight on.

And I think we covered that pretty completely last episode.

But kind of the final feature, not just in linear terms of what we were talking about, but kind of the... kind of the ultimate kind of the penultimate act of of the new of the new dealers and roosevelt himself was uh the unconditional surrender declaration and incident to that what was called the morganthal plan and the latter did not actually become policy but something like that was perceived by the axis powers as what america's ultimate intention was so We're going to talk about how Germany, Japan, and to a lesser degree, Italy responded to Roosevelt's declarations and American moves and why they didn't, quote-unquote, surrender before they were utterly devastated.

This is fundamentally important to understand.

Okay, there's this common myth that I run into all the time, and Thomas Fleming, who's one of my favorite historians, he's deceased now, but he and David Irving are about the only people historians who really address this directly.

I'm constantly hearing guys who are otherwise learned declare that, oh, well, you know, the Japs were crazy.

They wouldn't surrender.

know it's like okay something happened at the casablanca conference in 1943 roosevelt and churchill and mr stalin although roosevelt made the proclamation declared that nothing short of unconditional surrender would end the second world war like what does unconditional surrender mean people would ask roosevelt this and he said that well you know it means you know total and unconditional capitulation to the allies you know or or face utter annihilation.

Well, America cut off all diplomatic relations with the Axis.

And he is under tremendous pressure from other senior Japanese leaders and younger Japanese leaders to want to fight to the end.

They understand that as the Americans have sort of dictated unconditional surrender for Japan, that to lose this war will bring an end to the Imperial Japanese Army.

And nobody wants to preside over that loss.

And so that is kind of what is facing Inami.

and others in North Africa, planning invasions in Sicily and Italy in the future.

But things don't go well, and FDR made a strong speech calling Ulysses Grant the Battle of Fort Donaldson early in 1862, when Ulysses S.

Grant became Unconditional Surrender Grant.

I propose to move on your works immediately.