Talk:Casablanca Conference

Tactical procedure?

From the opening paragraph: "addressed the specifics of tactical procedure" ... surely you mean strategic 'procedure'. I doubt Churchill and Roosevelt discussed small unit tactics! --99.248.246.39 (talk)

Question

Why did Stalin decline to attend this conference?

Most likely because of the long, dangerous journey. Bastie 23:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Another reason for his absent : at that time Stalingrad Battle was going on and it is dangerous for him to leave the high command and attend it.Hiens 12:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Stalin didn't attend because at the time he wasn't sure he'd be "welcomed" back home given how badly the war was going under his direction.Awotter (talk) 21:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Declaration of Unconditional Surrender - the Prolongation of the War

One of the agreed term in that conference was to only accept from the Axis the Unconditional Surrender , This however considered one of the reasons to prolong the war as it has great impact on German moral and determination to forcedly push them into fight till the last drop of Blood! British Historian General J.F.C. Fuller in his Book The Second World War wrote "The effect of unconditional ....... I think there are many sources I mentioned which recognize the title of that paragraph !

J.F.C Fuller Book The Second World War , [George N. Crocker] (Chicago, 1959, p. 182), Colonel F. C. Miksche, Unconditional Surrender (London, 1952, p. 255), George N. Crocker, Roosevelt's Road to Russia (Chicago, 1959, p. 182) noted that the Germans fought on with the courage of despair, and that "Roosevelt's words hung like a putrefying albatross around the necks of America and Britain."

I wonder why Cuchullain ‎ remove it.--Hiens 04:14, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

For the reasons I gave in my edit summaries, and more. First, it's poorly written and improperly formatted. Also, the sourcing was problematic, and in some places nonexistant. It was also not neutrally written; it consisted of quotes from fascists and George M. Crocker, famous as a critic of Roosevelt, and pushed a point of view. It might be okay to mention that point of view, but it took up far, far too much space in the article. Perhaps if you said "critics of Roosevelt and Churchill, such as (JFC Fuller, Crocker, etc.) blamed the outcome of the Casablanca Conference for prolonging the war. And then included other historian's views on the conferences' importance. It could use some expanding, but it has to be neutral and verifiable first.--Cúchullain ^t/c 05:01, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Unconditional Surrender a vital missing part

The demand by the Allies for unconditional surrender announced at the Casablanca Conference is arguably the single biggest result of the conference and MUST be highlighted, and I think the consensus would be, made the center piece of this article.

FDR's remarks viz. the Jewish percentages are interesting but more of a footnote; to spend a paragraph on that without mentioning the Unconditional Surrender issue would be tantamount to writing an article on the World Cup Final and then spend a paragraph discussing the hot-dogs being served and neglecting to mention who was playing and what the score of the match was! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.102.64.209 (talk) 19:07, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

While disturbing, FDR's quote about percentages does not deserve such a large percentage of the article. 170.37.244.11 (talk) 15:21, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Needs revision

The whole section on 'Other Decisions' is strange to say the least. The part about the 'Western Betrayal' is not factual and is an interpretation of history used by anti-Communists in Poland and other eastern European states; it should be presented as such. It is a particular point of view, a particular interpretation of the meaning of events, and should not be presented the way that it is. We might argue that, with the absence of Stalin, it is highly unlikely that the Western powers would have been deliberately turning over Eastern Europe to him. However, that would also be conjecture and should not be in the article. It needs to be re-written to show this as a controversy that has emerged subsequently, which means that some writers (who should be quoted) have seen the conference as a betrayal of Eastern Europe to the Red Army. Anything else is POV.

The part about FDR apparently being antisemitic does not seem to have any part of the article either and would surely have more relevance in a page on FDR and his opinions. Here, it is not germane to the subject, which is the conference and the decisions taken. I will check back in due course, and if nothing has happened, or if there is no convincing counter-argument, I will make alterations to the text to make it more like a proper article and less of a POV insert.Iain1917 (talk) 21:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Revising entry

I've been working on revising the entire entry on the Conference, addressing the multiple, valid issues brought up by commenters. The lack of sourced references was an obvious deficiency. I agree that the keystone of the Conference was the doctrine of "unconditional surrender," a strategy which raised controversy in diplomatic circles at the time, and in light of its historical ramifications has become a topic of scholarly re-evaluation.

Churchill's and Roosevelt's "anti-Semitism" is a contentious topic, but one that merits recognition. Scholars of inter-war diplomacy and WWII have examined this in context of the progression of world events. Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of the Beasts,” makes a solid case for the egregious counsel Roosevelt’s Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd provided Roosevelt. Dodd, who served during the rise of Hitler, was one of a cadre of advisers and State Department officers whose evaluations of conditions in Germany were in sympathy with Nazi anti-Semitism, influencing Roosevelt’s policy decisions in subsequent years. That Roosevelt (and Churchill) took these internalized beliefs to Casablanca with them in planning the next phase, and after-math, of WWII----is not a peripheral, but important factor. A salient point is that both men, members of the society elite, were products of the often reflexive, unfortunate prejudices expressed by those of their class.

My work goes on! Betempte (talk) 19:18, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Interchangability or not

I have changed 'England' to 'Great Britain' to avoid offending people in the rest of the UK, because as I said in the edit summary the two are not, repeat not, as many Americans seem to think, interchangable.

If they could imagine the population of the Deep South being called 'Yanks', the situation might be better understood.

RASAM (talk) 14:35, 22 April 2013 (UTC)