This is the Prince Vistue Debating Society special edition with Germanicus Markle Leus,

who guise, I'm John Bachelor.

War ends, contemplating war ends in Europe, requires attention to how it's happened before.

We turn first to Berlin, May of 1945.

How do you end the war?

Germanicus a very good evening too.

All right, there's the problem and it ended badly.

Is there any other possible outcome?

What do you measure of May 45?

Good evening, guys.

In May of 45, the parameters of the war had been set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt

when he just on his own whim had declared unconditional surrender, which in fact

in all probability, and we can see this in Sean McMekin's recent book,

Stalin's War, in all probability declaring out of the blue that nothing less than

unconditional surrender was acceptable to the Allies meant that the Germans fought

much harder and fought existentially to preserve the Reich.

And they might not have done that otherwise.

And that gets to one of the war termination paradigms that perhaps we might explore.

And that is the enemy ground down to dust.

In other words, the US approaching Germany and Japan, and not Italy,

Italy was different, Italy succumbed and quickly became a supplekin to the United States.

But Germany and Japan fought to the bitter end and the US pursued an existential conflict,

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