Reply #175: Unconditional surrender kept the Nazis in power. [View All]

They were plotting, primarily through the Abwehr, to kill or remove Hitler and sue for peace as early as 1940.

This early effort was flustered by the Abwehr's rapid loss of power due to widespread operational failures (many engineered ironically by Stalinist super spy Kim Philby & his Iberian section of British intelligence).

The invasion of Russia in 1941 created an even greater anti-Hitler movement in the Wehrmacht.

The clear thinking officers knew that if the war ran to its conclusion it would mean the total destruction of Germany.

When FDR stunned the world with his call for unconditional surrender it took the wind out of the renewed anti-Nazi movement.

They lost support because potential co-conspirators reasoned that even if they killed Hitler & removed the Nazis they would still have to fight the war because the Allies insisted in unconditional surrender & had rebuffed any overture at negotiation.

I'm firmly convinced that without the unconditional surrender demands Hitler would've been killed by elements of Wehrmacht and the war would've ended favorably for the Allies as early as the beginning of 1944.