FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

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Futurist
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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#31

Post by Futurist » 13 Feb 2021, 06:52

OpanaPointer wrote:
12 Feb 2021, 14:44
Carl Schwamberger wrote:
12 Feb 2021, 05:31
OpanaPointer wrote:
11 Feb 2021, 23:42
Carl Schwamberger wrote:
02 Feb 2021, 02:39
I cant say this was a consensus thing, but it was not some whim Roosevelt sprung on Churchill on a night in Morocco. Tho he may have enjoyed ambushing Churchill with it.
He didn't ambush Churchill, WSC knew he was going to announce it.
& I dd not say he didn't. Roosevelt had earlier proposed it to WSC & pressured him into including it as a announced policy form the SYMBOL conference. Like so much else Churchill wanted to keep options open and felt it should have remained on the table for joint discussion.
I didn't say you didn't say he didn't. "Pressured" is a fun word.
What's a better word for this, in your opinion?

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#32

Post by OpanaPointer » 13 Feb 2021, 14:40

Any that doesn't imply arm twisting. The two men regularly made compromises like adults. I do sometimes wish FDR had survived so we could witness the post-war "battle of the memoirs."
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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#33

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 13 Feb 2021, 19:58

Ive seen extensive works on Roosevelts actions in the early years. 'Roosevelt Secret War' for example. Has anyone written tomes on his actions 1942-45, beyond the usual general war histories?

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#34

Post by OpanaPointer » 13 Feb 2021, 21:07

I have a couple of dozen, is there something specific you're inquiring about?
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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#35

Post by Sean Oliver » 14 Feb 2021, 13:53

To get back to the original post about the Italian Campaign, the Allied Italian Campaign was not strictly necessary for the simple reason that the Germans would have to divert troops to defend it anyway - just in case the Allies DID decide to invade. This also relates to the Overlord landings as well. It is always claimed that the Allied deception scheme suggesting a second landing at Calais successfully convinced the Germans to continue defending Calais long after D-Day, and thus supposedly preventing additional German reinforcements against Normandy. But this is baloney: the Germans would've been stupid to leave Calais undefended after D-Day regardless of their intel or Allied "deception" schemes. Historians who blather on about the great "Operation Fortitude" or whatever it's called never seemed to realize this.

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#36

Post by Sid Guttridge » 14 Feb 2021, 14:49

Hi Sean Oliver,

If there had been no Italian Campaign, Italy would presumably have stayed in the war, providing occupation troops in the Balkans and southern France propped up by comparatively few German front-line formations. The Italian campaign knocked Italy out of the war, forcing the Germans to take over the entire defence of southern Europe and pinned down some 20 divisions on an active battlefront. Furthermore, it provided major air bases in southern Italy from where regular air raids could be mounted into southern Germany and the Balkans - notably those that finally destroyed Romanian oil production for Germany.

You post, "....the Germans would've been stupid to leave Calais undefended after D-Day regardless of their intel or Allied "deception" schemes." Firstly nobody, as far as I am aware, has ever suggested that the Pas de Calais should be left "undefended". (If you know better, please tell us who?) Secondly, the discussion is about whether Germany would have had a better chance to defeat the Allied invasion in Normandy if it had immediately released mobile reserves in the area of the Pas de Calais for Normandy. As the Allies had no intention of landing in the Pas de Calais, this was probably true.

Operation Fortitude seems to have been a success in confusing the Germans as to Allied intentions, not just in Normandy and the Pas de Calais. Fictitious Allied formations in Scotland and Iceland may have slowed the Germans in releasing forces from Norway into late 1944.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#37

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 14 Feb 2021, 20:33

OpanaPointer wrote:
13 Feb 2021, 21:07
I have a couple of dozen, is there something specific you're inquiring about?
Nothing specific, but if you named your top recommendations it would be useful down the line :D

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#38

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 14 Feb 2021, 21:03

Sid Guttridge wrote:
14 Feb 2021, 14:49
... If there had been no Italian Campaign, Italy would presumably have stayed in the war, providing occupation troops in the Balkans and southern France propped up by comparatively few German front-line formations. The Italian campaign knocked Italy out of the war, forcing the Germans to take over the entire defence of southern Europe and pinned down some 20 divisions on an active battlefront. Furthermore, it provided major air bases in southern Italy from where regular air raids could be mounted into southern Germany and the Balkans - notably those that finally destroyed Romanian oil production for Germany. ...
There was a extra logistics cost for the Allied Italian campaign. They felt it necessary to provide the population of the liberated regions with essentials. Mostly coal and grain. I've estimated that at the low end the shipping for those deliveries were sufficient to supply a additional Allied Army & slice of tactical air power ashore in Europe. Im unsure if the nazi regime would have bothered providing the same succor to impoverished southern Italy. How the Italian government would have dealt with continued shortages of food, fuel, and other essentials I cant say. Occupied Europe was economically a losing proposition as the Allied blockade tightened. Losing North Africa as a food source in 1943 compounded the problem for the Facist governments. I've not seen a specific study on the problem, but the fragments that have crossed my path suggest Lybia, Tunisia, and Algeria were important in keeping Facist Europe fed 1941-1942.

Aside from a decline in grain available a surviving uninvaded Facist Italy would have to contend with a similar or larger amount of air attack & bombing of its industrial plant/transportation, as it did in 1944. How much longer Italy holds up as viable military power is a open question here.

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#39

Post by OpanaPointer » 14 Feb 2021, 23:01

Carl Schwamberger wrote:
14 Feb 2021, 20:33
OpanaPointer wrote:
13 Feb 2021, 21:07
I have a couple of dozen, is there something specific you're inquiring about?
Nothing specific, but if you named your top recommendations it would be useful down the line :D
If I don't have something up by the next time you visit yell at me.
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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#40

Post by DrG » 15 Feb 2021, 03:52

Carl Schwamberger wrote:
14 Feb 2021, 21:03
There was a extra logistics cost for the Allied Italian campaign. They felt it necessary to provide the population of the liberated regions with essentials. Mostly coal and grain. I've estimated that at the low end the shipping for those deliveries were sufficient to supply a additional Allied Army & slice of tactical air power ashore in Europe. Im unsure if the nazi regime would have bothered providing the same succor to impoverished southern Italy. How the Italian government would have dealt with continued shortages of food, fuel, and other essentials I cant say. Occupied Europe was economically a losing proposition as the Allied blockade tightened. Losing North Africa as a food source in 1943 compounded the problem for the Facist governments. I've not seen a specific study on the problem, but the fragments that have crossed my path suggest Lybia, Tunisia, and Algeria were important in keeping Facist Europe fed 1941-1942.

Aside from a decline in grain available a surviving uninvaded Facist Italy would have to contend with a similar or larger amount of air attack & bombing of its industrial plant/transportation, as it did in 1944. How much longer Italy holds up as viable military power is a open question here.
A few quick notes:
- in 1946 about 47% of Italian sea imports was made by Italian merchantmen. I have not (and I fear that they have never been collected) the data for 1944-45, but surely a sizeable part of imports to Southern Italy were made using Italian ships, both present or transferred to Southern port after the armistice or returned from neutral countries;
- while with seriously declining food production, Italy did not import food before the armistice, on the contrary it was a net exporter towards Germany. Southern Italy was in a dramatic shortage of food under Allied occupation due to the collapse of its already poor agriculture and the destruction of transports, coupled with the separation from the Po Valley and its larger production of some kinds of food (primarily milk, meat, sugar, and some fruits);
- Libya surely did not export food to Europe, while Algerian grain was used to feed Vichy France, but I am not sure that any of it was exported to other European countries (not Italy, anyway).

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#41

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 15 Feb 2021, 19:15

Thanks for the numbers for Italian cargo ships in Allied use. Jeff Lesser may have more complete data for that. He spent some time in the Italian archives studying the question of transport to and from Africa.

Elsewhere I had been told the import of grain and fruit from Lybia had become important for Italy. Perhaps that was wrong. In any case the decline in available calories across Europe 1939-1945 & later is fairly well documented. Part of that was nazi policy/inefficiency in administration, part was the reduction in fuel, horses, machinery, and fertilizer for agriculture, the late war decline in the transportation system. The loss of imports had its effect as well. Policy was aimed at directing food production from the occupied nations to Germany to ensure the citizenry and guest workers were better fed. Directly of indirectly any decline in imports of Algerian grain or fruit & meat to a had its effect across Europe.

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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#42

Post by OpanaPointer » 16 Feb 2021, 01:11

Dupe
Last edited by OpanaPointer on 16 Feb 2021, 01:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#43

Post by OpanaPointer » 16 Feb 2021, 01:22

OpanaPointer wrote:
16 Feb 2021, 01:11
OpanaPointer wrote:
14 Feb 2021, 23:01
If I don't have something up by the next time you visit yell at me.
Okay, to understanding FDR you have to understand his relationship with his subordinates. Several good books on that.

On the road to war:
The Borrowed Years: 1938-1941 America On The Way To War
Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack
Roosevelt & the isolationists, 1932-45
Isolationism and interventionism, 1932-1941
The Literature of Isolationism: Non Interventionist Scholarship 1930-1972
FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America
Back Door To War Roosevelt Foreign Policy - 1933-1941
1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War
The Isolationism Of The Saturday Evening Post
Going to War with Japan, 1937-1941: With a new introduction (World War II: The Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension)
Toward Pearl Harbor : The Diplomatic Exchange Between Japan and the United States 1931-1941
Getting US Into War
The Foreign Office and the Kremlin: British Documents on Anglo-Soviet Relations 1941-45
From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt's America and the Origins of the Second World War (American Ways Series)
Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931-41 (Study of the East Asian Institute)
This is Pearl! The United States and Japan--1941
The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II
No End Save Victory: How FDR Led the Nation into War
Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War a nd into the World
Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War against Nazi Germany
Pearl Harbor Roosevelt and the Coming of the War
Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided America
Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941


The US at large:
The 1940s : Profile of a Nation in Crisis
The End of Isolationism: Facts On File's Reports from the Final Weeks of 1940
United States Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918-1941: The Golden Age of American Diplomatic and Military Complacency (Praeger Series in Political Communication (Hardcover))
Collective Security and American Foreign Policy: From the League of Nations to NATO
The Roots of Isolationism: Congressional Voting and Presidential Leadership in Foreign Policy (Advanced Studies in Political Science)
Should America Go to War? The Debate Over Foreign Policy in Chicago
The Warhawks: American Interventionists Before Pearl Harbor
America First - The Battle Against Intervention 1940-1941
The American diplomatic revolution : a documentary history of the cold war, 1941-1947




At war:
The Borrowed Years: 1938-1941 America On The Way To War
Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman--from World War to Cold War
The War within World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Struggle for Diplomacy



His correspondence with he peers:
Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence (3 Volumes)
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History
Churchill Roosevelt Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought A Diplomatic History of World War II

His subordinates:
Turmoil and Tradition. a Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson
Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945



Books more focused on his job, some peripherally.
THE UNDECLARED WAR 1940 - 1941 The World Crisis and American Foreign Policy
The Grand Alliance (The Second World War)
Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War)
The Gathering Storm (The Second World War)
Their Finest Hour (The Second World War)
War and Peace: FDR's Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945 (3) (FDR at War)
The mantle of command : FDR at war, 1941-1942Their Finest Hour (The Second World War)


(How his legacy affected his successor) Mr. Truman's War:: The Final Victories of World War II and the Birth of the Postwar World (Modern War Studies)
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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#44

Post by OpanaPointer » 16 Feb 2021, 01:22

Dupe.
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Steve
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Re: FDR's Tragic Refusal to Deal with the German Resistance and Abandon "Unconditional Surrender"

#45

Post by Steve » 16 Feb 2021, 01:51

General MacArthur said of Roosevelt that he never told the truth if a lie would suffice

The allied armies in Italy had a huge logistics tail stretching back to the US and UK. This tail also consumed supplies on a large scale and then there was the Italian population. It would be surprising if the Italian campaign was not much costlier for the allies than the Germans.

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