From sources I have read, FDR sprang unconditional surrender at the Casablanca conference. Stalin termed it a policy designed to maximize the already horrendous Soviet losses. Churchill was said to be privately furious but went along so as not to cause a rift. Some historians estimate FDR’s unconditional surrender posture, based as FDR claimed on the tradition set in the terms offered by Grant to Lee at Appomattox, cost 100,000 lives, and many of those American GI.
From the joint press conference at the Casablanca conference:
“...we had a General called US Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in my, and the Prime Minister’s, early days he was called ‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant.”
“Appomattox Court-House, Virginia April 9, 1865.
“GENERAL: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th instant, I propose to receive the surrender of the army of Northern Virginia on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged; and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officers appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.
“U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General.”
And Grant was not contemplating the surrender of the Confederacy, just that of the Army of Northern Virginia. The above looks like terms of surrender to me.
The NappyOne
Stalin ran circles around FDR, but he also had the advantage of having the Red Army occupying much of the area that later became the Soviet bloc. FDR made an attempt at Yalta to get better borders for Poland, but that seems to have been mainly because the Polish-American vote was concentrated in states with large electoral votes. Anyway, FDR and the establishment was almost entirely WASP (with a few Irish-Catholics like Joseph Kennedy). What did they care about Eastern Europeans?