Unconditional surrender

Roosevelt announced the formula at a press conference, with Churchill's agreement, and explained that it meant not the destruction of the Axis peoples but of philosophies based on conquest. He wanted to avoid a repeat of 1918, when the legend took hold in Germany that the army had not been beaten in the field but betrayed at home, and to assure the Soviet Union that the Western Allies would not make a separate peace.

Critics argued that the demand helped Goebbels' propaganda persuade Germans to fight to the end and weakened the German opposition. The formula nevertheless held until the end of the war: Italy surrendered in September 1943, Germany in May 1945, and Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration in August 1945 and signed the instrument of surrender on 2 September.