Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ended their conference at Casablanca, in French Morocco, by announcing that the Allies would accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan. Meeting with their combined chiefs of staff at the Anfa Hotel, the two leaders agreed to follow the North African campaign with an invasion of Sicily, to launch a combined bomber offensive against Germany and to give priority to winning the Battle of the Atlantic. The surrender formula shaped Allied war aims for the rest of the conflict and remains one of the war's most debated decisions.
The meeting was an extraordinary journey in itself. Roosevelt flew across the Atlantic aboard a Pan American Boeing flying boat, becoming the first American president to travel by air while in office and the first to visit Africa during a war. The two delegations gathered at the Anfa Hotel on the outskirts of Casablanca, a city Allied troops had seized only weeks earlier. Joseph Stalin had been invited but declined, saying he could not leave while the battle at Stalingrad was being fought. Behind closed doors, American commanders pressed for an early cross-Channel invasion of France, while the British argued for exploiting success in the Mediterranean. The British view largely prevailed, and Sicily became the next target.
The most lasting words came at a closing press conference on the hotel lawn. Roosevelt declared that peace could come only through the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, and later said the phrase had come to him from Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general nicknamed "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. Churchill, who had discussed the idea privately, backed it publicly. Critics would argue that the policy stiffened enemy resistance; supporters said it reassured the Soviet Union that its Western allies would not strike a separate peace.
The conference also produced a piece of political theater. Roosevelt and Churchill persuaded the rival Free French leaders Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud to shake hands for the photographers, a gesture that barely concealed their mutual dislike. Afterward Churchill insisted that Roosevelt accompany him to Marrakech to see the sun set over the snow-capped Atlas Mountains. There Churchill painted the only picture he completed during the war, a view of the Koutoubia Mosque's tower, and gave it to the president as a gift.