“As U.S. military planners had feared, the invasion of North Africa in November 1942 was followed by agreement at an Anglo-American summit in Casablanca in January 1943 to invade Sicily and then Italy.  Since operations in North Africa and the Pacific were absorbing increasing volumes of supplies, the British now argued that the Allies lacked sufficient resources to mount a successful invasion of France and insisted that they follow up victories in the Mediterranean.  Divided among themselves, U.S. military planners were no match for their British counterparts.  ‘We came, we listened, and we were conquered,’ one officer bitterly complained.  The harsh reality was that as long as the British resisted a cross-Channel attack and the United States lacked the means to do it alone, there was no other way to stay on the offensive.  In any event, logistical limitations likely prevented a successful invasion of France prior to 1944.  As a way of palliating Stalin’s Russia, the ‘ghost in the attic,’ at Casablanca, in Kimball’s apt words, Roosevelt and Churchill proclaimed that they would accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the Axis.  The statement also reflected FDR’s determination to avoid repeating the mistakes of World War I, as well as his firm belief that Germany had been ‘Prussianized’ and needed a complete political makeover.” –George Herring, From Colony to Superpower, pp. 552-53

Discussion Questions

  • How to do you summarize the three-way dynamics of Allied strategic debates during World War II?  What does Casablanca illustrate about the competing views of the Americans, British, and Soviets?
  • Why was the call for “unconditional surrender” an attempt to avoid the “mistakes” of World War I?