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 Diplomatic History The history of diplomacy in World War II naturally unfolds in three major divisions: the first is the story of the expansion of the war from 1939 through 1941; the second describes the period of transition from 1941 through 1943, when the Axis powers exploited their conquests but also suffered reverses; and the third tells of the Allied search for agreement on postwar policies, producing rising tension within the coalition as it approached victory, 1943-1945. EXPANSION OF THE WAR: 1939-1941 Poland, the Baltic States, and Scandinavia The Nazi-Soviet cooperation that had enabled Adolf HITLER to launch World War II was strengthened in the first phase of that conflict. On Sept. 17, 1939, Soviet forces moved into Poland, and on September 28 the German and Soviet foreign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav M. Molotov, revised the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 23. The USSR conceded to Germany control over a slightly larger portion of Poland, and in exchange Germany recognized a Soviet sphere of influence in Lithuania as well as in Estonia and Latvia. The new German-Soviet frontier through Poland approximated the one generally known as the Curzon Line. A Polish government in exile, established first in Paris and later in Angers, moved to London in 1940. There it organized emigre troops for the Allied cause and endeavored to promote the revival of a large Polish state after the war. Meanwhile, Joseph STALIN did not delay in collecting the other territories that Hitler had allotted to him. On Sept. 28, 1939, under Soviet military pressure, Estonia signed a nonaggression pact granting the USSR naval and air bases. Similar concessions were won from Latvia on October 5, and from Lithuania on October 10. The Finns caused Stalin greater difficulty. On October 12, the USSR offered to trade Soviet territory for strategic Finnish areas, but negotiations were broken off on November 9, and on November 30 the Soviet Army struck at Finland. The republic's stubborn resistance aroused much sympathy in the West. Great Britain and France considered intervention, the League of Nations expelled the USSR, and Americans discussed the severance of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. On March 12, however, before any assistance materialized, the Finns were forced to accept Soviet peace terms. As shown in Map 3, the USSR acquired the entire Karelian Isthmus, islands in the Gulf of Finland, territory northeast of Lake Ladoga, and a strip of central eastern Finland, as well as a 30-year lease on the Hango (Hanko) Peninsula for use as a naval base and transit rights to Sweden and Norway. In the meantime, in February and March, Anglo-French diplomacy sought unsuccessfully to win Norwegian and Swedish approval of a proposed Scandinavian front. But it was Germany rather than the Allies that opened the Scandinavian campaign, on April 9 launching simultaneous attacks on Denmark and Norway without diplomatic preliminaries. Within hours the Danish cabinet and king agreed reluctantly to German occupation of their country. Britain and France sent troops to Norway, but the last of the Allied forces were evacuated on June 8. Organized Norwegian resistance ceased, and the king and cabinet set up a government in exile in London. German Mastery over Western Europe Until May 1940, the war in the west was peculiarly inactive. Addressing the Reichstag on Oct. 6, 1939, Hitler stated that the acquisition of colonies was his only remaining ambition. While vowing that the "Poland of the Versailles Treaty will never rise again, he proposed a peace conference. The response of Premier Edouard Daladier and Prime Minister Neville CHAMBERLAIN was cold. During the Polish campaign and even while making peaceful overtures, Hitler was planning attacks on France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. When German forces drove into these nations on May 10, Berlin tried to persuade the Low Countries to accept German protection of their neutrality. The German diplomatic overtures failed, but German military success was swift. Luxembourg fell in a day, and the Netherlands capitulated in five days. Meanwhile, the Dutch royal family and cabinet left for London to form a government in exile, which thereafter concerted its policy with that of Great Britain and the United States for the protection of its possessions overseas. Belgium capitulated 18 days after the attack of May 10. Its king, Leopold III, surrendered against the advice of his ministers with only a few hours' notice to the British and French, and it was left to the Belgian premier to establish a government in exile. In London, Winston CHURCHILL had replaced Chamberlain as prime minister on May 10, but for the moment this step failed to improve Anglo-French fortunes. Virtually all of the British troops in France, as well as some French and Belgians, were evacuated from Dunkerque by June 4. Meanwhile, the Germans advanced across northern France. They entered Paris on June 14. Premier Paul Reynaud resigned on June 16, and the next day his successor, Marshal Philippe Peacute;tain, sought an armistice. The French accepted the German armistice terms at Compiegne on June 22. The northern and western half of France, including the entire Atlantic coast south to the Spanish frontier, was to be occupied by Germany. The French Fleet was not permitted to join the British to continue the war, but was to be demobilized and disarmed. Approximately 1,500,000 French prisoners of war were to remain German captives--hostages for the good behavior of France--until the end of the war. Although Free French leaders would soon rally around Gen. Charles de Gaulle in London and work with the Allies, the pliant government of PETAIN continued to function in France, establishing itself at Vichy because Paris was in the zone of German occupation. The armistice left Hitler in control of Europe from the Vistula River to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Pyrenees to the Arctic Circle. Intervention of Italy Two days after the ceremony of June 22 at Compiegne, an emptier one was staged in Rome, giving Benito MUSSOLINI the right to occupy a tiny area in southeastern France and creating a demilitarized zone 50 kilometers wide on the Italian frontier. The duce's meager reward matched his contribution to the victory over France. In 1939 he had avoided entering the conflict. Now, on June 10, 1940, with French defeat assured, he had declared war on France and Great Britain with the approval of King Victor Emmanuel III. His 32 divisions had soon been halted when they moved against the French, and Hitler would not approve his request for an Italian occupation of the Rhone Valley, Toulon, and Marseille. The armistice left Italy with almost nothing to show for its first military effort in support of the Axis. Diplomatic Reverses for the Axis Powers In the summer of 1940, Hitler let it be known publicly and privately that he was prepared to make peace with Britain if she would restore the colonies that Germany had lost in 1919 and renounce any influence in continental Europe. When the British showed no interest in his proposals even after they had been made in public on July 19, he intensified his planning for a direct assault on Britain, and by early September a German invasion force was held in readiness on the French coast. But German efforts to achieve air superiority in the Battle of Britain and the necessary naval strength fell short of success, and Hitler renounced an invasion in 1940. Setbacks in the war against Britain required Germany to undertake new diplomatic maneuvers. On September 27, Germany, Italy, and Japan formalized the Axis coalition by signing the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. Under its provisions, Japan recognized the new order that Germany and Italy were creating in Europe; Germany and Italy recognized Japan's right to create a new order in the Pacific region; and all three nations pledged themselves to form a military alliance against any power that might enter the war against one of them (it was well understood that this provision was directed against the United States). But the pact did not disguise the fact that Hitler's plans for vanquishing Britain had failed. Hitler's inability to counter British defiance, obvious by October, had other major repercussions. The policies of Portugal and Spain, for example, were unavoidably affected. Both nations, previously on good terms with Berlin, refused to respond to attempts to bring them into the war on the Axis side. Petain, too, thwarted Hitler by declining to engage France in military action against Britain. And in Florence on October 28, in a conference with Mussolini, the fuhrer met fresh disappointment. The duce had wished to strike for territorial gains in the Balkans when he entered the war in June, but Hitler, who had his own plans for the peninsula, held him back. The Italian dictator greeted the fuhrer in Florence with the proud announcement that Italian troops had crossed the Greek frontier at dawn. Although Hitler feared that this step would provoke British intervention in the Balkans, he could only contain his rage and return to Berlin. Nazi-Soviet Friction There were further disturbing developments for Hitler in November 1940. In that month he reached a stalemate in his negotiations with the USSR, and in crucial conferences with Molotov was unable to buy him off. Hitler's cooperation with the Soviet Union had been rewarding. It had hastened Poland's fall in 1939. It had also brought economic advantages: by June 1940, 22 percent of all German imports were received from the Soviet Union and the Baltic states. But tension had arisen between Berlin and Moscow. Just when German troops were most deeply committed in the west and Hitler could not prevent Soviet expansion, the Kremlin used military pressure to incorporate the three Baltic states in the Soviet Union (June 15-Aug. 6, 1940). At the same time, the USSR moved against Romania. On June 23, the day after the French surrendered at Compiegne, Molotov informed Germany that the Bessarabian question must be settled at once. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 had promised the USSR a free hand in Bessarabia, but now Molotov laid claim to Bucovina, which had not been recognized as part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Berlin remonstrated with him, and on June 26 the Soviets agreed to limit their demands to Bessarabia and the northern portion of Bucovina. On June 28, the Soviet Army moved into the coveted areas, which were immediately incorporated in the USSR. Hitler was now determined to prevent further Soviet expansion in central-eastern Europe. Ignoring the fact that the Nazi-Soviet Pact had placed Finland in the Soviet sphere of influence, Berlin on September 12 concluded an agreement with Helsinki that permitted its troops to cross Finnish territory to Norway. On November 20, Hungary joined the Tripartite Pact, and Romania and Slovakia followed its example on November 22. While the original pact had been directed against the United States, the new additions obviously formed an anti-Soviet bloc. There was more reason for Stalin to become alarmed than the Soviet dictator realized. On July 31, Hitler had ordered his generals to prepare for a possible invasion of the USSR in May 1941. Before committing himself to war with the Soviet Union, however, he seems to have determined to make a last attempt to reach an agreement that would keep the USSR out of the Balkans and direct its energies against the British Empire. On Nov. 12, 1940, Molotov arrived in Berlin for important negotiations. When Hitler and Ribbentrop proposed that the USSR move toward the Indian Ocean against the British positions in Iran and India, Molotov demanded instead that German troops be withdrawn from Finland, indicated that the USSR planned additional annexations there, requested that Germany's guarantee of Romania be revoked, and insisted that the Soviet Union had greater interest in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, and the Dardanelles than in expansion toward the Indian Ocean. The meetings ended inconclusively, and on December 5, Hitler approved plans for an attack on the USSR that were embodied in the directive of December 18 for Operation Barbarossa. The attack was to be ready by May 15, 1941. In the next few months diplomatic and military preparations for the invasion of the USSR were pressed forward. In December 1940, in order to clear his southern flank, Hitler approved plans to move German forces through Bulgaria to aid Italy against the Greeks. Bulgaria came under effective German domination in February 1941, and signed the Tripartite Pact on March 1. Yugoslavia, which had already presented difficulties to German planners, now became even more troublesome. On March 22, Ribbentrop gave Belgrade until the next day to agree to enter a pact with Germany. After agonizing deliberation the Yugoslav government signed the Tripartite Pact in Vienna on March 25, but on March 26-27, Serb patriots revolted against the regency government of Prince Paul and proclaimed the adolescent King Peter II of age. That afternoon, Hitler ordered an early attack on Yugoslavia, and on April 6 German bombers struck at Belgrade. Within 11 days the German Army, aided in the north by many Croats, was in control of the country. King Peter and his ministers left Yugoslavia to create a government in exile. Meanwhile, Croatia was proclaimed an independent state and functioned thereafter as an Axis satellite. Germany and Hungary annexed large portions of Yugoslav territory in the north and east, while Italy acquired more than either of them, including the greater part of the coast. In addition, Bulgaria annexed a sizable area of Yugoslav Macedonia. In Greece the sequel to the German invasion of Yugoslavia was soon completed, and Athens itself fell on April 27. Greece proper was subjected to joint German-Italian occupation and deprived of territory. Italy annexed the Ionian Islands and added Greek territory to its holdings in Albania, while Bulgaria was permitted to seize part of Greek Macedonia and Thrace, thereby restoring the frontier of 1913. The Greek government joined others in exile. Thus, by the spring of 1941 almost all of Europe west of the USSR was under the direct or indirect control of Germany. But the German attack on the Soviet Union was launched a full month later than Hitler had planned. In delaying Germany, Yugoslavia and Greece had made an important contribution to the ultimate Allied victory. German Attack on the Soviet Union Aside from Hitler's overt actions, which should have demonstrated to Stalin what was coming, Churchill and President Franklin D. ROOSEVELT warned the Kremlin of German preparations to attack the USSR. It appears, however, that the Soviet armies were taken by surprise when the German invasion began on June 22, 1941. Hitler did not act alone. On the day of the German attack, Italy and Romania declared war on the USSR; Slovakia joined them on June 23; Finland followed their example on June 26, and Hungary on June 27. Japan, Hitler's partner in the Far East, remained neutral, and Bulgaria, though occupied by German military missions, also was formally neutral. Meanwhile, thousands of miles from the Soviet battlefields, decisions were made that transformed the conflict into a global war, assured the eventual defeat of the Axis powers, and laid the basis for a new balance of power after 1945. United States Abandonment of Strict Neutrality In the first months of the war the United States was aroused against the Soviet Union as well as against Nazi Germany, but existing neutrality legislation and isolationist sentiment made it impossible for President Roosevelt to take effective action with regard to either nation. Material aid, even after the lifting of the strict embargo on arms shipments with the amendment of the Neutrality Act of 1937 on Nov. 3, 1939, was limited to what the British and French could purchase for cash and transport without using American ships. Pro-Allied sentiment was intensified by the Nazi victories in the spring of 1940 and by Italy's declaration of war against France and Great Britain in June. Thereafter some weapons and ammunition were made available to the British, British pilots were trained in Florida, and British warships were repaired in American shipyards. Then, on September 3, the White House announced more significant support for Britain: the trade (by executive agreement) of 50 overage destroyers in return for rent-free leases of 99 years on sites for American military bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, other Caribbean islands, and British Guiana. Congress adopted the Selective Service Act (signed September 16), authorizing the first peacetime military conscription in American history. Reelected to a third term as president in November, Roosevelt proposed in December a new form of aid to the Allies, which was adopted by Congress as the Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941. With supporting appropriations, the act provided at the outset $7 billion worth of war materials for nations whose defense the president deemed "vital to the defense of the United States. At the end of March, 69 Italian, German, and Danish ships in American ports and Philippine waters were seized, and approximately 875 seamen were jailed for "attempted sabotage. Other semibelligerent steps were taken by Washington during the first half of the year. Beginning in January, informal military and naval staff talks were conducted by American and British officers, who made tentative plans for joint efforts in the event that the United States should be drawn into war with Germany or Japan. On April 9, by agreement with Denmark's minister to Washington, the United States, fearful that Germany might take over Greenland, occupied the Danish island. From similar motives the United States assumed in July the defense of Iceland that Britain had provided since May 1940. Meanwhile, on May 27, 1941, stressing the dangers of nazism to the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt proclaimed an unlimited national emergency. On June 14, all German and Italian assets in the United States (and those of other Axis-controlled European countries not previously affected) were frozen. June also saw the closing of all German and Italian consulates in the United States and of American consulates in Germany and Italy. Hitler's attack that month on the USSR (for which few Americans had previously shown cordiality) brought quick promises of American as well as British aid to the beleaguered Soviet Union. Despite provisions of the Neutrality Act, United States ships were permitted to carry aid goods to Soviet ports. To coordinate joint defense measures and provide a basic declaration of common war aims, Roosevelt and Churchill met in August on shipboard off Argentia, Newfoundland. In the Atlantic Charter, issued after the meeting, they subscribed to certain general principles for achieving peace. The two leaders stated that no territorial changes should be made contrary to the wishes of the inhabitants of the territories involved, and they recognized the right of people to choose their own forms of government. Greater freedom of trade and freedom of the seas were affirmed as war aims, as was international cooperation to improve conditions of labor and social security. Armaments were to be reduced, and a "permanent system of general security was to be created. In addition, the aggressor nations were to be disarmed. Since midsummer, American naval vessels had been employed to convoy merchant ships bound for Great Britain. Then, on September 11, Roosevelt announced that henceforth naval ships on convoy duty would not wait for hostile action but would take the initiative in attacking Axis war vessels. In carrying out this policy, an American destroyer, the Reuben James, was sunk by a German submarine west of Iceland on October 30. On November 13, Congress repealed the most troublesome provisions of the Neutrality Act of 1939, thereby sanctioning trade with Great Britain and permitting American merchant vessels to be armed. Hoping to avoid full-scale intervention by the United States, Hitler and Mussolini (like Roosevelt himself) had refused to be provoked into an open declaration of war. Having moved hesitantly toward belligerency in the Atlantic, the United States found that war came instead in the Pacific. Japanese Steps Toward War The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 at first left Japanese prospects in the Far East relatively unchanged. The situation became much more advantageous for Japan in the early summer of 1940, when Germany overran the Low Countries and France. Indochina, with its resources of rice and rubber, could not rely on support from Vichy France if Japan moved to extend its sway there; the Netherland East Indies, with its oil, could no longer be effectively protected by the Dutch; and, since Great Britain was hard pressed by Germany, even British Malaya's rubber and the strategic base at Singapore lay exposed to attack as never before in the 20th century. The European war had created a power vacuum in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific, presenting Japan with a unique opportunity for expansion. Only the USSR and the United States could stand in its way, and both powers seemed preoccupied with the war in Europe. In Washington it was hoped that Japan might be contained by diplomatic and economic measures. Thus, on July 25 and July 31, 1940, the United States in effect placed an embargo on the export of scrap metal and petroleum without a special license and of all aviation gasoline to Japan, while continuing to permit trade in other commodities. The creation on July 17 of a new cabinet headed by Prince Fumimaro Konoye made uncertain at best the prospects of containing Japan peacefully. The new foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, was ambitious in his objectives and rash in his methods. Late in July, the cabinet reached an agreement on basic foreign policy objectives. The possibility of launching an attack in the south before the end of hostilities with China was discussed. If Japan should strike in the south, an attempt would be made to limit the war to Britain. Since this course might make war with the United States inevitable, however, Japan must prepare thoroughly for that possibility, while endeavoring to keep the United States neutral. The cabinet began at once to implement the new policy. An ultimatum of September 22 was followed by the movement of Japanese troops into northern Indochina. On September 26, immediately after the ultimatum became known, the United States proclaimed a total embargo on the sale of scrap iron and steel to Japan. The next day, Japan entered into the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, having reached the decision to do so before proclamation of the embargo. It was the hope of the cabinet that this step would keep the United States from attempting to block Japanese expansion. Shortly after occupying northern Indochina, Japan increased its efforts to force Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to capitulate. The United States reaction to this campaign, as well as to the occupation of northern Indochina and the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact, was to expand its aid to China. Meanwhile, Japanese pressure on the Netherlands East Indies grew, and by January 1941 there was talk in Tokyo of using force in that area. Because of concern that this pressure might lead to armed conflict with the United States, Japanese intelligence services were ordered to intensify their collection of data on American naval strength and placement. In January, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, secretly suggested the possibility of a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. At the same time, United States, British, and Dutch leaders began trying to coordinate defense measures in preparation for a possible attack on the Indies. The German invasion of the USSR in June gave the Japanese more certain assurance than the neutrality pact that Matsuoka had concluded in Moscow on April 13 that Japan could advance toward the south without concern for the possibility of Soviet action in Manchuria. For Matsuoka, however, the invasion had different implications. For years Japanese militarists had justified their imperialistic policies in Manchuria and China proper as defensive measures against Soviet communism and had looked forward to the day when Japan could attack the USSR. The German invasion presented a unique opportunity for an anti-Bolshevik crusade in Asia, and on June 22, Matsuoka recommended to Emperor Hirohito that Japan make war on the Soviet Union. But now that the moment had arrived for action, it was passed over, and in mid-July, Matsuoka was dropped from the cabinet. Meanwhile, on July 2, an Imperial Conference determined that Japan's first objective in the new circumstances would be to bring the war in China to a successful conclusion, while simultaneously advancing toward the south. Japan would "not decline a war with England and the United States if this should become necessary to achieve her objectives. The decisions of July 2 were soon implemented. Under an agreement forced on Vichy France on July 23, Japan occupied southern Indochina. In response, Japanese assets in the United States were frozen on July 25, and similar action was taken by Great Britain and the Netherlands. A new cabinet was formed in Japan on October 18. Gen. Hideki Tojo, minister of war in the Konoye cabinet, retained that position and also became prime minister and minister of home affairs. On November 5, after weeks of high-level discussions, an Imperial Conference decided on a final attempt to reach an agreement with the United States. But if a settlement favorable to Japan was not achieved by December 1, war would begin forthwith. On November 20, the Japanese ambassador in Washington, Adm. Kichisaburo Nomura, and a special envoy, Saburo Kurusu, were instructed to present Japan's last proposal for a temporary settlement. Under its terms both countries would agree to begin no new armed expansion in Southeast Asia or the South Pacific; Japan would withdraw its troops from southern Indochina on the conclusion of the agreement and from northern Indochina when the war with China was ended; the United States would give Japan a free hand to bring the war against China to a successful conclusion; and it would lift the embargo on strategic exports to Japan, release Japanese assets in the United States, agree to supply petroleum as generously as in the period 1936-1940, and join with Japan to ensure access by both countries to the resources of the Netherlands East Indies. This proposal was an ultimatum. A government that had no concern for the global balance of power might have agreed to it; the American leaders could not. From decoded Japanese messages the United States government knew that rejection of the proposal would very likely be followed by a Japanese resort to war, probably against Southeast Asia. In rejecting the proposal on November 26, the United States presented a counterproposition. It suggested that Japan evacuate both China and Indochina immediately and recognize Chiang Kai-shek's regime as the only government of China. A favorable trade treaty would be negotiated between Japan and the United States, and Japanese assets would be unfrozen. In addition, the two governments would enter into a multilateral nonaggression pact for the Far East. On December 1, an Imperial Conference reached a formal decision for war with the United States. A last message to the United States government was drafted in Tokyo, to be delivered in Washington on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was not an explicit declaration of war, but a rejection of Secretary of State Cordell Hull's proposals of November 26; it declared that negotiations were being broken off. Because of technical delays in the Japanese embassy in Washington, Hull was given the message by Japan's representative at 2:20 pm on Dec. 7, 1941, more than an hour after the first bombs fell at Pearl Harbor. The specific attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 came as a surprise to the commanders there and to officials in Washington. It accomplished the formal entry of the United States into World War II. On December 8, Congress declared that a state of war had been thrust on the United States by Japan. In accordance with the Tripartite Pact and in response to Japanese requests, Germany and Italy on December 11 declared war on the United States; Congress reciprocated the same day. The conflict begun by Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 was now in fact a global war. FROM AXIS MASTERY TO ALLIED RECOVERY: 1941-1943 From 1941 through 1943 the Allies fought stubbornly, forged weapons, and designed a strategy to wrest the initiative from the Axis. Meanwhile, Axis exploitation of the captive nations served as a constant reminder to the Allied peoples of what was at stake in the global war. Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere The Japanese leaders knew the value of slogans. Wartime proconsuls pictured Japan as the liberator of Asians from Western colonial rule and appealed to the people whose lands they overran to help them in a common effort. Japan's mission, Tokyo proclaimed, was to build a new order in Asia for the Asians. The Japanese named their far-flung dominion the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere (see Map 35). The reality of Japanese rule was considerably less appealing than the propaganda. The pattern of Japanese dominance had long been established in Korea, where a systematic policy of Japanization was pursued. In Manchuria, which had been taken from China in 1931 and renamed Manchukuo, a similar pattern evolved, although there the Japanese took greater pains to erect a facade of indigenous government. Exploitation was just as obviously the Japanese goal in occupied China. In 1940, Japan chose a well-known Nationalist defector, Wang Ching-wei, as its puppet. Established at Nanking on March 30, 1940, his regime on Jan. 9, 1943, declared war on the United States and Great Britain. Patterns of Japanese control for several other areas had to be devised after the expansion of 1940-1941. British Malaya was kept under direct military administration and scheduled for eventual incorporation in the Japanese Empire. The Netherlands East Indies also remained under Japanese military administration, but Indochina escaped such rule until March 10, 1945. Thailand, an independent state before 1941, became Japan's ally under duress. Occupied by Japanese troops, it declared war on the United States and Great Britain on Jan. 25, 1942. Thanks to native collaborators, Burma and the Philippines also became allies of Japan. Increasingly, as the fortunes of war turned against them, the Japanese gave lip service to a goal of independence for the captive areas. Nevertheless, the grip of Japan was always maintained, and everywhere the native economies suffered. Meanwhile, Nazi Germany was ruling Europe with even greater severity than Japan employed in Asia. Hitler's Europe The Nazi wartime empire was an improvised makeshift, but it gave Adolf Hitler power that no modern European had ever held. Areas that had been parts of pre-1918 Germany and others that had large German-speaking populations were incorporated directly in the Third Reich. The incorporated territories were Austria; the Sudetenland; northwestern Poland, including Danzig, the Polish Corridor, and Posen (Poznan); and Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet, taken from Belgium in 1940. Other provinces--Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg, northwestern Yugoslavia, and northwestern Poland (Province of Bialystok)--were not considered ready for full incorporation but were earmarked for eventual merger in the Reich. Approximately half of central-eastern Europe was scheduled to be a permanent Continental colonial realm, including the Baltic states, the Government-General of Poland (about one third of pre-war Poland), White Russia, the Ukraine, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In 1940-1941, German forces overran other territories that Hitler planned neither to incorporate in Germany nor to subordinate permanently as colonies. During the war these states were placed under a military occupation that was said to be temporary; they included Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Serbia, Greece, and France. Within these states native governments were allowed to function under varying degrees of supervision by German occupation authorities. Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, and Finland were satellite allies of Germany. They remained politically subservient, economically exploited, and occupied by German troops. Even Mussolini's regime was subordinated to Berlin, especially after the duce's downfall and reinstallation by Hitler in northern Italy in 1943. In that year, Germany occupied the areas in Albania and Yugoslavia that the Fascist state had previously controlled and added the South Tirol (Alto Adige), which Italy had possessed since 1919, to Greater Germany. In all the areas except the allied and neutral countries, Germany maintained its control by ruthless terrorism. Even less defensible was the deliberate genocide that German forces practiced in order to fulfill the racist dogmas of the Nazis. By the end of the war, Hitler bore ultimate responsibility for killing possibly as many as 5,700,000 Jews. While furthering the extermination of "non-Aryans, Nazi racial policy fostered the conversion of part Germans to full German citizenship.
By exploiting non-German peoples, Germany
Search for Solidarity in the Western Hemisphere
Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had
begun to mobilize the resources of the Americas in the struggle against the
Axis powers. The success that was attained owed much to the Good Neighbor
policy of the prewar decade. It also owed something to Axis agents and to
the zeal of Latin American Nazis and fascists, whose activities convinced
many of their countrymen that the Axis threat was not abstract and remote.
The first collective action by nations of the Western Hemisphere
to meet the dangers of World War II had been taken during the first month
of the conflict. In the Declaration of Panama, adopted on Oct. 3, 1939, foreign
ministers of the 21 American nations south of Canada declared a "safety
belt around the hemisphere, extending from 300 to 1,000 miles from the
eastern and western coastlines; the European belligerents were warned to desist
from naval and military operations in this area. The foreign ministers of
the American republics met again in Havana on July 21-30, 1940, to assess
the implications of the Nazi conquests in western Europe. By the Act of Havana
of July 30 they proclaimed that, pending final disposition, European colonies
in Latin America might be made collective trusteeships of the American republics
to prevent unfriendly powers from establishing control over them; any of the
republics could act in an emergency while awaiting concerted measures. They
also declared that any violation of "the territory, the sovereignty, or
the political independence of an American state by a non-American state
should be considered an act of aggression against all of the republics. Canada,
a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, was not represented at the
Havana Conference, but on August 17 the United States joined with it in agreeing
to create a Permanent Joint Board on Defense, which would plan the security
of the northern half of the hemisphere.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Costa Rica,
Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua,
and Panama immediately declared war on the Axis powers. Meeting in Rio de
Janeiro on Jan. 15-28, 1942, the foreign ministers of the American republics
resolved that all of them should sever diplomatic relations with the Axis.
All did so at the time except Chile, which acted in January 1943, and Argentina,
which delayed until January 1944. Mexico and Brazil sent troops overseas to
help in the war effort. Argentina's refusal to cooperate with the other republics
was the most troublesome facet of wartime diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere
and a major problem that confronted the Inter-American Conference on Problems
of War and Peace, meeting at Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City, on Feb. 21-March
8, 1945. With Argentina deliberately excluded, the other republics declared
that all were joint guardians of each against any aggression; Argentina was
notified that she could be admitted to the future United Nations only if she
adhered to the Act of Chapultepec and entered the war. The Argentine provisional
government on March 27, 1945, declared war against Germany.
Consolidation of the Allied Coalition
Concerting the policies of the American republics was an important task; maintaining
the coalition and directing the energies of the great-power Allies was even
more imperative. Berlin and Tokyo, not their own choices, had made them allies,
and they would not regain full freedom of decision until their common foes
were defeated.
During the week before the German invasion of the USSR in
June 1941, Churchill advised Roosevelt of his intention to aid the Soviets
when the German attack fell, and Roosevelt promised his support. Shipping
difficulties caused Stalin to be dissatisfied with the amount of aid that
he received, and after the war Soviet historians would contend that all Western
supplies did not exceed 4 percent of the wartime production of the USSR. But
the aid given in 1941-1942 came at a time when the Soviet Union needed
it most. By mid-1942, Britain and the United States had sent 4,400 tanks and
3,100 planes to the Soviet Union. Quite possibly the Soviet Army could not
have held out without them, as Stalin himself seemed to confess at Teheran
(Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 1943).
Coordination within the Big Three coalition in 1941-1942
was, as it always would be, imperfect. In July 1941, Churchill failed to persuade
Stalin to promise the restoration of the prewar Polish-Soviet frontier. On
July 30, however, Moscow established diplomatic relations with the Polish
government in exile, which it previously had scorned. Other differences and
signs of harmony appeared. In September, Stalin renewed his aggrieved demands
for a second front in the west in 1941, and this problem caused Churchill
great concern. So, too, did the revelation of Soviet war aims made to Anthony
Eden when the British foreign secretary visited Moscow in December. The Soviet
proposals served as a reminder that Stalin's approval of the Atlantic Charter
had been qualified. The Soviet leaders wanted Britain to agree to their retention
of all the territory they had acquired while collaborating with Hitler and
somewhat more for good measure. Unwilling to accept all the Soviet proposals
and fearful of splitting the coalition if they rejected them, London and Washington
adopted a policy of postponement and in public statements gave voice to general
principles rather than to specifics.
On Jan. 1, 1942, the USSR joined the United States, Great
Britain, China, France, and 21 other countries in signing the Declaration
by United Nations in Washington. This pact pledged each participant "to
employ its full resources, military or economic, against the Axis powers
and to make no "separate armistice or peace with the enemies. Member
nations, including the USSR, "subscribed to the Atlantic Charter's "
common program of purposes and principles, although these were not repeated
in the declaration. The USSR remained faithful to its neutrality pact of April 1941 with Japan, but this raised no serious
problems within the new coalition. To consolidate the Allied coalition an
Anglo-Soviet alliance, pledging mutual support against aggression for a period
of 20 years, was signed on May 26, 1942. Behind this pact lay Western hopes
for friendly relations after the common victory over the Axis.
For the moment, however, Hitler allowed Stalin no security,
and the Soviet dictator relentlessly reiterated his demand for an early second
front in western Europe. In May-June 1942, Molotov traveled to London
and Washington to press this issue. President Roosevelt finally approved a
statement, made public on June 11, which implied that a second front would
be created in Europe before the end of the year. This insufficiently qualified
statement could not be fulfilled, for Churchill and his generals favored giving
precedence to an invasion of North Africa over a cross-Channel attack. The
North African invasion was launched on November 8.
The reconciliation of the French factions in North Africa
was a major task for Roosevelt and Churchill when they met at Casablanca in
newly liberated French Morocco on Jan. 14-24, 1943. There the rival
leaders of Free France, Generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle, were
now urged to work together. On June 3, their diverse supporters created a
French Committee of National Liberation with headquarters in Algiers. This
body established its control over French colonies in northern and central
Africa and directed an underground resistance movement in France. Gradually
de Gaulle asserted his mastery over the committee.
At Casablanca, Roosevelt and Churchill also considered their
disagreements on strategy and their relations with Stalin. Their military
decisions at this conference were certain to cause greater suspicion and concern
in Moscow: an invasion of Sicily would be carried out at an early date, but
the invasion of France, so much desired by Stalin, would be delayed, possibly
until 1944. Somehow Stalin had to be assured of Western loyalty without an
early second front and without specific political promises. This consideration
probably was the dominant motive for the act for which the Casablanca Conference
is remembered, the proclamation of a policy of unconditional surrender. After
deliberation with Churchill the formula was announced by the president on
January 24. Peace could come, Roosevelt said, only by eliminating German and
Japanese war power, and this meant "unconditional surrender by Germany,
Italy, and Japan. While the public statement may have prolonged the war,
this is by no means certain. It avoided bickering within the Allied nations
that might have sapped their military energies, and it may well have forestalled
serious Soviet efforts for a separate peace with Nazi Germany in 1943, when
months passed without a second front in northwestern Europe.
In the spring of 1943 the British urged new delays in the
creation of a second front in France, and in the Trident Conference, held
in Washington on May 12-25, the Americans reluctantly acquiesced in
their desire to invade the Italian Peninsula soon after Sicily was in hand.
During the discussion, Churchill hinted at the desirability of limited operations
in the Balkans. The American military leaders opposed this suggestion; they
would do so again when Churchill and Eden later pressed it with greater vigor.
Meanwhile, it was agreed to postpone the cross-Channel invasion until May
1, 1944. A storm of Soviet protests arose when Stalin was advised in June
of the Trident decisions. As negotiations developed in August and September
leading to the surrender of Italy, other disagreements between London and
Washington developed, and Stalin (generally omitted from the decision making)
repeatedly aired his suspicions of Western policies. Then Hull and Eden traveled
to Moscow for major discussions (Oct. 19-30, 1943) of political aims
in the war. They assured the Russians of plans to invade France in the spring
of 1944, and tensions within the coalition were eased. When Roosevelt, Churchill,
and Stalin themselves met
First Crack in the Axis: Surrender in Italy
Mussolini's control over Italy had been shaken by the Allied victory in North
Africa in the spring of 1943. On July 24-25, leading Fascists, generals,
and King Victor Emmanuel conspired to remove the duce from power, and a new
government was created with Marshal Pietro Badoglio as premier. On September
3, the day Allied troops landed on the Italian mainland, Badoglio's regime
signed a secret armistice with the Western Allies. Because German forces remained
in the peninsula, hard fighting would continue until April 1945 between German
and Allied armies in central Italy. Meanwhile, after the autumn of 1943, armed
Italian underground units harried the Germans in northern Italy; in 1944 and
1945 they received increasing assistance from the Allies.
The Italian armistice and political problems in southern
Italy created friction among the Allies. On Oct. 13, 1943, the Western Allies
permitted the Badoglio regime to declare war on Germany, thus achieving a
status of cobelligerency with the Allies. The USSR was informed of the various
developments but was scarcely consulted. Then disagreements between Washington
and London allowed Stalin to exert somewhat greater influence in Italy. On
March 13, 1944, the Anglo-American leaders were surprised by the announcement
of an agreement between the Victor Emmanuel-Badoglio regime and the USSR.
While the British and the Americans were debating the future of the monarchical
government, the USSR had given it diplomatic recognition and thus a new lease
on life. The Western Allies arranged for Victor Emmanuel to retire in favor
of his son, Crown Prince Humbert, in June. Thenceforth they would recognize
the monarchical regime until the Italian people decided in favor of a republic
in 1946. By their exclusive occupation of Italy, Britain and the United States
guaranteed that this state would be linked closely to them in the future.
False Approaches to Peace
The events
in Italy in 1943-1944 and German reversals in the Soviet Union stimulated
consideration of possible ways to end the war short of total military decision.
Japan had not declared war on the USSR and was free to seek a separate peace
between that nation and Germany. From March 1942 through September 1944, Tokyo
occasionally suggested to Berlin and Moscow the possibility of Japanese mediation,
but without success. Separate Soviet overtures were made toward Germany in
December 1942, June 1943, and September 1943, but Hitler did not respond.
In September 1943, he told Joseph Goebbels that what he wished to win in the
East, "Stalin could not renounce. Both in 1943 and in 1944 reports
of peace feelers circulated in the capitals of the Western Allies and caused
anxiety. Possibly, sensing this, Stalin kept the potentiality of a separate
peace open only to enhance his bargaining power. Other possibilities of shortening
the war by political action were explored in these years. Nazi Germany encouraged
revolution against the Kremlin, while Moscow used anti-Nazi Germans in the
Soviet Union to urge German soldiers and civilians to desert or to rise against
Hitler. Both efforts were made with reservations and failed to accomplish
the desired results.
Meanwhile, leaders of the anti-Nazi resistance movement
in Germany urged British and American representatives to give them encouragement
for revolution. Apparently they received very little; certainly they requested
much. In general, they wished Germany to retain Austria, the Sudetenland,
and part of pre-1939 Poland. They also wanted the Western powers, after making
a separate peace with a Germany purged of Hitler, to allow Germany to continue
the war against the USSR. The resistance depended on the support of Wehrmacht
generals, and the Western Allies were determined to crush German militarism
as well as nazism. These considerations were probably more significant than
the unconditional surrender policy in causing the unenthusiastic response
of the Western powers to resistance overtures. Even without Western encouragement
the resistance leaders wounded Hitler in an attempt to kill him on July 20,
1944, and tried to revolt against his regime. Distrusted by the West before
July 20 and brutally crushed by Hitler after the unsuccessful revolt, the
German resistance movement was not destined to succeed in its efforts to shorten
the war.
ALLIED WAR AIMS AND POLICIES FOR PEACE: 1943-1945
The cross-Channel invasion of June 6, 1944, was followed
by a rapid Anglo-American movement through France in late July and August.
The Allied armies were often aided by local uprisings of the French resistance.
These events altered the relations between de Gaulle and Roosevelt, who had
remained unwilling to recognize the Committee of National Liberation as a
French government even when the invasion was launched. That had not prevented
de Gaulle from proclaiming it the provisional government of the French Republic
on June 2. Roosevelt's anger at this fait accompli was calmed when
de Gaulle visited Washington in July. The United States then gave de facto
recognition to the provisional government. French units participated
after August 1 in the liberation of France, and de Gaulle staged a triumphant
parade in Paris on August 26, the day after the city was jointly liberated
by French and American forces. De jure recognition of de Gaulle's
regime was granted formally by Britain, the USSR, and the United States on
October 23. At this time and in the months to come, de Gaulle made plain his
determination that France should be treated in all respects as an equal of
the great Allies.
The military successes in France, like others since 1943,
gave promise that the East-West Allies would be able to write their own terms
at the end of the war if they could agree on them. Problems mounted as the
cement holding the Allied coalition together--German and Japanese military
might--began to crumble.
Basic Problems
Knowledge of Soviet
demands in December 1941 had caused Churchill and Roosevelt to avoid agreements
on peace terms. At that time the Soviet leaders wanted the British to agree
immediately to the reincorporation in the USSR of all
the territory that Stalin had taken while in partnership with Hitler: Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Finland, Poland, and Bessarabia (they also
wished additional Finnish territory and air bases in Romania). Other Soviet
aims seemed to be approximately in harmony with those of the West: Austria,
Czechoslovakia, Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia were to be restored as independent
states with as much territory as they had held before being seized by the
Axis powers; Poland would gain territory at the expense of Germany; and Germany
would be dismembered and curbed in other ways. No suggestion was made that
any of these states should be Soviet satellites after the war, and Stalin
promised his support for any arrangement Britain might wish to make for the
future of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway.
The war aims announced to Eden in December 1941 did not
make it appear that Stalin's ambition in the world at large was insatiable.
In addition to dissolving the Communist International (Comintern) in May 1943
and stressing patriotism over Communist ideology within the USSR, the Soviet
leaders joined those of Britain, China, and the United States in declaring
on Oct. 30, 1943, that they would not use their military forces in the territories
of other states for selfish political purposes after the war. For their part,
Roosevelt and Churchill wished to satisfy the Soviet desire for security,
while placing limits on Soviet expansion.
The conflict between Soviet pressures for early agreement
on peace terms and Western attempts to limit and delay them can be followed
in all the great conferences in which postwar policies were discussed: the
foreign ministers' conference, held in Moscow (Oct. 19-30, 1943); the
Teheran Conference (Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 1943); the Yalta Conference (Feb.
4-11, 1945); and the Potsdam Conference (July 17-Aug. 2, 1945).
Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and President Harry S. TRUMAN represented
the United States at Potsdam; Clement R. Attlee, who became the new British
prime minister during the conference, replaced Churchill.
Creation of the United Nations
Stalin's
participation in wartime planning of the future United Nations organization
offered hope for friendly East-West relations after the war. Soviet willingness
to cooperate was announced in the four-power declaration of Oct. 30, 1943.
At Teheran, Roosevelt and Stalin found themselves in general if tentative
accord on the broad principles of operation of the new organization. Fleshing
out the bare bones of these principles proved to be more difficult at Dumbarton
Oaks in Washington (Aug. 21-Oct. 7, 1944). Here it was decided to call
the new organization the United Nations. It was to have a large legislative
body, the General Assembly, and a small executive committee, the Security
Council. In the Council, Great Britain, the USSR, China, and the United States
would be permanently represented; they would be aided by rotating members
chosen by the Assembly. The right of veto in the Council by the great powers
on basic matters affecting their security and sovereignty (a major American
provision) won approval, but there was disagreement over the limits to be
placed on the use of this right by these powers. This dispute could not be
reconciled at once, and a stalemate also was reached on the Soviet demand
for 16 seats in the General Assembly.
The search for a suitable compromise was one of the major
problems before the Big Three when they met at Yalta in February 1945. At
first, Stalin vigorously and stubbornly insisted on the full veto power in
all issues before the Security Council. On February 7, however, Soviet approval
of the American voting formula was given: no member of the Council, when a
party to a dispute, was to vote on resolutions for its pacific settlement;
in decisions on procedural matters the great-power members also would lack
the veto power. Moreover, the Soviet Union agreed to reduce its demand for
seats in the General Assembly from 16 to 3. Churchill, who was sensitive about
the then-projected 6-seat representation of the Commonwealth of Nations, favored
the revised Soviet proposal, and Roosevelt agreed to it. The decision was
reached that a conference to found the United Nations should meet in the United
States on April 25, and that France as well as China should have permanent
seats with the Big Three in the Security Council.
When the San Francisco Conference convened on April 25,
1945, to organize the United Nations, President Truman learned that Stalin
had retreated from the Yalta agreement to limit use of the veto. The question
at San Francisco was again whether permanent members of the Security Council
could prevent discussion of disputes. Stalin finally agreed to adopt the American
position. The USSR also sought to restrict freedom of discussion in the General
Assembly, but in the end it agreed that the Assembly could discuss any matters "
within the scope of the present Charter. Over Soviet protests, Argentina
was admitted to the United Nations. Soviet attempts to secure the seating
of Poland failed, for Poland was now governed by a Soviet puppet regime, and
the United States refused at San Francisco to allow it membership. The United
Nations Charter was adopted unanimously at San Francisco on June 26, but the
dispute over the seating of Poland was typical of other problems on which
no agreement had been found.
Poland and Central-Eastern Europe
Churchill later described the Polish problem as the "first of the great
causes which led to the breakdown of the Grand Alliance. Two major questions
disturbed Big Three harmony: What frontiers should postwar Poland have, especially
with the Soviet Union? What should be the character of its government?
The question of the Polish-Soviet frontier (see Map 2) was
rooted in historical antagonism, the ethnic mixture of the disputed area,
the structure of the Polish state between the two world wars, and the growth
of Soviet power and ambition. Weak in 1921, Soviet Russia had been forced
to agree to a frontier that left 5 million White Russians and Ukrainians inside
Poland. In 1939, however, Stalin had gained more than the ethnic Curzon Line
by cooperating with Hitler. After 1941 he insisted that the Ribbentrop-Molotov
line of 1939-1941 should become the post-war frontier. When the Polish
government in exile refused to agree and called for an investigation of the
Katyn massacre (see section 3. Early Campaigns), Stalin, in April
1943, broke off diplomatic relations with it and groomed pro-Soviet emigres
in the USSR to serve as a future government of Poland. Thus, insofar as the
Polish issue was concerned, Churchill was ready even in 1943 to abandon the
Western policy of postponement; seeking to forestall
the creation of a Soviet satellite regime, both Churchill and Roosevelt in
1944 urged the London Poles to accept the Curzon Line as a frontier. Their
refusal helps to explain why the Soviet Army failed to aid pro-Western Polish
patriots who rose against the Germans in Warsaw on August 1. On Jan. 5, 1945,
despite Roosevelt's protest, the USSR recognized the pro-Soviet Poles as the
government of Poland.
By this time the Soviet Army controlled almost all of the
country, and the Yalta Conference was virtually confronted by a fait accompli.
Stalin argued that his Warsaw regime was as representative as the de
Gaulle government in France and the government of Italy, which were backed
by the West, but he finally conceded that a few of the London Poles could
be associated with the Warsaw regime and agreed that free elections should
be held in Poland "as soon as possible. The Big Three also decided
that the Polish-Soviet frontier should follow the Curzon Line with minor digressions
in favor of Poland. Poland was to receive German territory in the west, although
agreement could not be reached on an exact Polish-German frontier. In a Declaration
on Liberated Europe, the Big Three promised to support interim governments
that were pledged to early free elections in areas taken from Nazi Germany.
Thanks to continued Western pressure, in the months after Yalta a few pro-Western
Poles were admitted to the pro-Soviet Warsaw regime to form a slightly broader
government that the West recognized, but the USSR adhered to its demand that
the line of the Oder and Western Neisse (Lusatian Neisse) rivers become the
Polish-German frontier. After much discussion the Western leaders at Potsdam
agreed that, pending a peace treaty, German territory east of the Oder-Neisse
line (except for East Prussia) should be "under the administration of the
Polish state.
Meanwhile, on Dec. 12, 1943, the USSR had signed a treaty
of alliance with the government in exile of Czechoslovakia amid promises by
Stalin that he would not interfere in Czech internal affairs. On Sept. 19,
1944, an Allied-Finnish armistice was signed, restoring the status quo of
March 12, 1940, with slight revisions, and leaving Finland free of Soviet
occupation. Then, on October 9, Churchill and Stalin privately decided on
a division of at least temporary influence in the Balkans as the area was
liberated from Germany. The USSR would be predominant in Romania and Bulgaria;
influence would be shared equally in Yugoslavia, where the British had backed
Marshal Tito's Partisans since 1943, and in Hungary; and Britain would be
predominant in Greece. It was already understood that the Soviet Union was
to regain Bessarabia and northern Bucovina. The presence of the Soviet Army
after August 1944 in central-eastern Europe ultimately enabled the USSR to
control more than the Stalin-Churchill agreement had promised, but Western
control in Greece was safeguarded by the British occupation of that country
after October.
Dilemma over Germany
While the East-West
dispute over the reorganization of the Polish government continued, the Third
Reich crumbled under the weight of the Allied advance. Hitler committed suicide
on April 30, 1945. Germany surrendered to the Western Allies on May 7 and
to the Russians in Berlin on May 9. The capitulation found the Allies lacking
in agreement on a postwar German policy. During the period 1941-1944
the Big Three had seemed to be basically in accord, but by early 1945 fundamental
differences had begun to appear. For Stalin the crippling of Germany seemed
essential to the attainment of either security for the USSR and/or the spread
of communism. For Roosevelt and Churchill the German problem was a dilemma
that they could not fully solve: How could Germany's domination of Europe
be broken without leaving the Continent under the sway of the USSR?
On some policies agreement in principle was easily achieved:
Germany must be denazified, disarmed, and demilitarized, and she must surrender
war criminals for punishment (all of which required military occupation by
the victors); she must pay reparations and have her war industries eliminated
or controlled; and she must be reduced in size and either decentralized or
dismembered. Formal agreement on these principles was reached unanimously
at Yalta; tacit approval had been given much earlier. But behind the agreement
on general principles there were massive problems of interpretation. Essential
problems remained without clear-cut solutions even after the Big Three parted
at Potsdam in August 1945.
Plans for the occupation of Germany were outlined by the
British in 1943, negotiated in 1944, and formally approved at Yalta in 1945.
As shown in Map 15, the final agreement provided that Britain was to occupy
northwestern Germany, the United States the south, and France the southwest;
the eastern third of pre-1938 Germany was to be occupied by the USSR. Joint
occupation policy was to be defined by a four-power Allied Control Council
in Berlin, which would thus be occupied jointly by the Allies. Since it was
thought that common occupation policies were to be imposed on Germany, no
concern was expressed over the fact that jointly occupied Berlin would be
surrounded by the Soviet zone of occupation, though Roosevelt in 1943 had
favored United States occupation of northwestern Germany up to and including
Berlin.
Full agreement on reparations and deindustrialization could
never be achieved. In August-September 1944, the United States secretary of
the treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., had proposed a program for sweeping deindustrialization
and the transfer of plants and equipment to Allied nations as reparations.
Roosevelt and Churchill tentatively approved this plan but then retreated
from it. At Yalta, Stalin made its principles his own. He proposed that Germany
furnish $20 billion worth of reparations, of which the USSR would receive
half; this would be collected by removing 80 percent of Germany's heavy industry
in the name of eliminating her war capacity. Since they could not agree, the
Big Three decided to create a reparations commission, which would adopt the
Soviet demand for $10 billion in kind as a "basis for discussion.
The commission also failed to reach an agreement, as did the Big Three
at Potsdam. There they decided that the USSR might receive up to 25 percent
of the industry removed from the Western zones of occupation, where most German
industry was located, but they could not decide on how much should be removed
altogether. The problem was to remain troublesome
Since 1943 the Allies had generally agreed that Germany
must cede territory. The restoration of Austrian independence and of pre-1938
Czechoslovakia was undisputed, and no one argued against giving German territory
to Poland, but even at Yalta the Big Three could not decide on the amount.
In spring of 1945 the Russians took matters into their own hands and at Potsdam
insisted on recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as the German-Polish frontier.
The Western leaders reluctantly agreed to recognize Polish "administration
of territory as far west as the "Oder-Neisse Line, pending the
formulation of a peace treaty for Germany. Truman and Attlee also agreed "
in principle to the absorption of Konigsberg (renamed Kaliningrad)
and surrounding territory in East Prussia by the USSR, the definitive frontier
to be determined by a future peace conference.
As early as December 1941, Stalin had called for the permanent
partition of Germany into separate states. At Teheran both Roosevelt and Churchill
indicated their general approval of this suggestion, but they disagreed about
the extent of the dismemberment and reserved any final decision. At Yalta,
Stalin again pressed vigorously for dismemberment, but again Roosevelt and
Churchill thought it too early to make a definitive decision; the Big Three
agreed only to "take such steps, including the dismemberment of
Germany as they deem requisite for future peace and security. In March
and April 1945, Roosevelt continued to favor postponement of a decision in
this matter, and on May 9, Stalin proclaimed that the Soviet Union did not
intend "either to dismember or to destroy Germany. Asked later that
month why he had changed his mind, Stalin told Harry Hopkins that "his
recommendation had been turned down at Yalta. Yet, ironically, de
facto partition was to be accomplished after 1945 by Stalin's refusal
to merge his zone of occupation with the Western zones to form a free and
united German state. The postwar disagreements over Germany had been clearly
foreshadowed at Yalta and Potsdam, but they were not allowed to disrupt the
wartime coalition; the defeat of Japan was yet to be accomplished.
Soviet Aid Against Japan and Far Eastern Policy
The likelihood of Soviet participation in the war against Japan and the general
character of Soviet aims were foreshadowed by earlier Far Eastern history.
In 1875, Russia had surrendered to Japan her claim to the Kuril Islands, and
her defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 had left Japan in
control of Port Arthur (Lushun), Dairen (Talien), and the railroads of
Manchuria (held by Russia before 1905), as well as of Korea (see Map 54).
Russia retained control over the northern half of Sakhalin, and in the 1920's
established its influence over Outer Mongolia. War against Japan after 1941,
if successful, would enable Stalin to win back what the czars had lost and
even more unless the West could build a strong China.
The creation of a strong China was to be a frustrating task.
In the period 1941-1943 only token American military support could be
given to Nationalist China. Chiang Kai-shek, caught up in a civil war with
Chinese Communist armies while fighting Japan, could be dissuaded only with
difficulty in 1943 from directing his war effort against the Communists. The
latter were as eager to expand the territory under their control as Chiang
was to extend his. To chart greater Allied aid to China and to concert political
policies, Roosevelt arranged to have Chiang meet with him and Churchill at
Cairo on Nov. 22-26, 1943, before the Western leaders went to Teheran.
The supply of war materials to Chiang by air across the Himalaya from India
was to be increased, and Chiang was treated as an equal of the great Allies.
By the Cairo Declaration of Dec. 1, 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang
announced their determination to strip Japan of her conquests.
But international political understanding did not solve
China's internal weaknesses. In the summer and fall of 1944, Vice President
Henry A. Wallace, Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, and Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell
urged Chiang to seek cooperation with the Communists so that the war against
Japan could be waged most effectively. Their success was negligible, and Stilwell
was recalled in October at Chiang's request. Meanwhile, although American
aid was increased, the Nationalist forces yielded more territory to the Japanese.
The military failures of China strengthened the desire in Washington for Soviet
aid in the war against Japan.
As early as 1941, Roosevelt and Chiang had suggested that
the USSR enter the Far Eastern war, but the idea had not been pressed. On
Dec. 1, 1943, Stalin informed Roosevelt and Churchill at Teheran that the
USSR would declare war on Japan after Germany had been defeated. At the same
time he expressed an interest in gaining southern Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands,
and use of the Manchurian railroads and Dairen. In December 1944, Stalin again
outlined these goals to United States Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and added
Port Arthur to the list. Roosevelt and Churchill could not prevent Stalin
from obtaining what he requested, and an agreement on these gains might forestall
more sweeping annexations. Thus a secret Yalta agreement of Feb. 11, 1945,
provided that the USSR should obtain southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands;
Soviet interests should be preeminent in an internationalized Dairen; Port
Arthur should be leased to the USSR; the Manchurian railways were to be operated
by a Soviet-Chinese company that would make Soviet interests in the railways
pre-eminent but respect full Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria; and the status
quo of Soviet influence in Outer Mongolia was to be preserved. It appeared
that Stalin was repudiating the Chinese Communists, for the Yalta agreement
stipulated that he was prepared to conclude a "pact of friendship and alliance
with the Nationalist Chinese government. Finally, Stalin agreed to make
war against Japan "in two or three months after Germany surrendered.
At the time of the Yalta agreements, American military leaders
desired the entry of the USSR in the war against Japan. The atomic bomb had
not yet been tested. Although by July 24, 1945, it was ready for use, the
Combined Chiefs of Staff then recommended to Truman and Churchill that they
encourage Soviet entry. Meanwhile, fear of Soviet entry and the hope of playing
the Soviet Union against the West had prompted Japanese peace efforts through
Moscow. In Tokyo, Japanese leaders were willing to concede
the Soviet territorial demands of Yalta and more. At Potsdam, Stalin reported
the overtures to Truman and Churchill, who separately agreed to give the Japanese
a last warning to surrender.
In the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, the Americans, British,
and Chinese threatened heavier attacks if Japan held out. On July 28, Japan
announced that it would ignore this warning. Hoping for a change in the Japanese
attitude, Truman delayed the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima until August
6. On August 8, the USSR declared war (effective August 9). Influenced by
this development and by the dropping of a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki on
August 9, civilian leaders in Tokyo sought a settlement that would leave the
emperor on his throne. The Allied powers quickly agreed, and on August 14,
Japan accepted the Allied terms. Meanwhile, Soviet forces had overrun most
of the areas promised them at Yalta. On Sept. 2, 1945 (September 1, United
States time), the formal Japanese surrender was made to General of the Army
Douglas MacArthur on board the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
World War II was over.
John L. Snell
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