President Roosevelt announced that the Allies intended to achieve the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan. Churchill then stated that Britain was in full agreement, even though he had been taken by surprise that Roosevelt had decided to make the aim public. In his view, the implications had not been fully thought through, even though he had obtained the War Cabinet’s agreement in advance. Yet this declaration, which would go some way towards reassuring the suspicious Stalin, probably did not make that great a difference to the outcome of the war. Both the Nazi and the Japanese
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