The Cold War was the period of conflict, tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-1940s until the early 1990s. Throughout the period, the rivalry between the two superpowers was played out in multiple arenas: military coalitions; ideology, psychology, and espionage; military, industrial, and technological developments, including the space race; costly defense spending; a massive conventional and nuclear arms race; and many proxy wars. The Cold War comprised an exchange of counter-measures and manoeuvres between the Communist East and the Democratic West, each side seeking to strengthen itself whilst weakening the other—without becoming involved in a "hot" war. It was, though, first and foremost, a conflict of ideologies and ideals. The term "Cold War" was first used in 1947 by Americans Bernard Baruch, close adviser to president Truman, and Walter Lippmann, describing emerging tensions between the two former wartime allies.[1] The Communist Revolution of 1917 had made the West apprehensive about Russia's expansionist aspirations. Communist development in the time from 1919 to 1939 made little progress in Europe, but misgivings, nevertheless, were still quite manifest. Even when Hitler marched into Russia in 1941, resulting in that country's teaming up with the US and Britain in a Grand Alliance, mistrust still remained. With the gradual break-up of the Grand Alliance, the Western Powers and the Soviet Union drifted apart. Although the US and the Soviet Union had been allied against Nazi Germany, the two sides differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world even before the end of World War II. There never was a direct military engagement between the US and the Soviet Union, but there was a half-century of military buildup, and political battles for support around the world, including significant involvement of allied and satellite nations. Over the following decades, the Cold War spread outside Europe to every region of the world, as the US sought the "containment" of communism and forged numerous alliances to this end, particularly in Western Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
There were repeated crises that threatened to escalate into world wars but never did, notably the Korean War (1950–1953), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Vietnam War (1964–1975), and the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989). There were also periods when tension was reduced as both sides sought détente. Direct military attacks on adversaries were deterred by the potential for mutual assured destruction using deliverable nuclear weapons. Because of this, the Cold War made use of methods such as propaganda, by means of television, press and radio; economics and monetary hand-outs; a war of words and diplomacy; and buying friend, with Dollar Diplomacy coming up against Rouble Diplomacy. The Soviet Union used its control of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, as well as the support of the communist parties in Italy, Greece and France, to spread Communist ideology and anti-imperialist slogans. The USSR's army served as an effective instrument of political pressure, and, while both sides utilised espionage, the Soviets had the advantage of operating in the open, free-moving western countries. The USA used its economic wealth to bring relief to poverty-stricken areas threatened by Communism, and it often formed alliances with these territories, establishing naval and air bases there. American propaganda stressed the values of Christianity, freedom and capitalism in favour of the more inhumane aspects of the Soviet dictatorship.
The Cold War was fought in such diverse arenas as Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and even space, and it attracted much of the attention of the UN. The war drew to a close in the late 1980s following the launching of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reform programs, perestroika and glasnost. The Soviet Union consequently ceded power over Eastern Europe and was dissolved in 1991.
History
Main article: Origins of the Cold War
The challenge of Nazi Germany forced the Western Allies and the Soviets into wartime cooperation. However, from the start, the alliance between the Soviet Union, the world's first Communist state, and the United States, the world's leading economic power, was marked by mutual distrust and ideological tension.
The Wisconsin School of Interpretation argues that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were economic rivals that made them natural adversaries regardless of ideology.[2] Walter LaFeber argues the U.S. and Imperial Russia became rivals by 1900 over the development of Manchuria. Russia, unable to compete industrially with the U.S., sought to close off parts of East Asia to trade with other colonial powers. Meanwhile, the U.S demanded open competition for markets.[3]
The ideological clash between communism and capitalism that began in 1917 following the Russian Revolution was the first event that would make Russian-American relations a matter of major concern to leaders in each country.[4] In World War I, the U.S., Britain, and Russia had been allies for a few months from April 1917 until the Bolsheviks seized power in November. In 1918 the Bolsheviks negotiated a separate peace with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk; and the Western Allies intervened in the Russian Civil War against revolutionary forces. After the war, the U.S. had refused to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933.[5] After winning the civil war (see Russian Civil War), the Bolsheviks proclaimed a worldwide challenge to capitalism.[1]
The period of prewar diplomacy also left both sides wary of the other's intentions and motives in World War II. Each feared that the other might pull out of the war effort and make a separate settlement with Germany. Moscow recalled Western appeasement of Adolf Hitler after the signing of the Munich Pact in 1938. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt feared Joseph Stalin would once more make a settlement with Germany, as he had done in August 1939 with the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact.[5] From 1941 to 1945, the alliance was only a temporary aberration in the post-nineteenth century relationship between Russia and America.[5]
During the war, the Soviets were deeply suspicious of U.S. military tactics and strategies. The Soviets believed at the time, and charged throughout the Cold War, that the British and Americans intentionally delayed the opening of a second front against Germany.[6] As early as July 1941, Stalin had asked the UK to invade northern France, but the British were in no position to carry out the request.[7] The second front was ultimately constituted on June 6, 1944, or D-Day. The Soviets suspected that the Anglo-Americans had decided to allow the Russians to bear the brunt of the war effort, but would intervene at the last minute to influence the peace settlement and dominate Europe.[8] Historians such as John Lewis Gaddis dispute this claim, citing other military and strategic calculations for the timing of the Normandy invasion,[9] but Soviet perceptions (or misperceptions) of the West, and vice versa, left an undercurrent of tensions and hostility between the Allied powers. That the Western Powers had their own reservations, too, is given away by the fact that they did not communicate to Russia the A-bomb formula. Winston Churchill, for example, was deeply suspicious of the Soviets' infiltration of Eastern Europe.
Moreover, both sides held very dissimilar concepts of establishing post-war security. The Americans tended to understand security in situational terms, assuming that, if US-style governments and markets were established as widely as possible, states could peacefully resolve their differences through international organizations.[10] The key to the US vision of security was a post-war world shaped according to the principles laid out in the Atlantic Charter in 1941—a liberal international system based on free trade and open markets. This vision would require a rebuilt capitalist Europe with, at its center, a healthy Germany which could serve again as a hub in world affairs.[5] It would also require the USA's economic and political leadership of the postwar world. Europe needed US assistance to rebuild its domestic production and to finance its international trade. The US was the only world power not economically devastated by the fighting, and, by the end of the war, it produced around fifty per cent of the world's industrial goods.[5]
Soviet leaders, however, tended to understand security in terms of space.[11] This reasoning was conditioned by Russia's historical experiences, given the frequency with which their country had been invaded over the previous 150 years.[11] In order to prevent a similar assault in the future, Stalin was determined to use the Red Army to control Poland, dominate the Balkans, and destroy Germany's capacity for another war. This strategy, however, risked confrontation with the equally powerful United States.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies attempted to define the framework for a post-war settlement in Europe. The Allies could not reach firm agreements on the crucial questions—the occupation of Germany, postwar reparations from Germany, and loans—so no final consensus was reached on what remained of Germany, other than to agree to a Soviet request for reparations totaling $10,000,000,000, "as a basis for negotiations."[12] Debates over the composition of Poland's post-war government were also acrimonious.[13]
Subsequent to the Allied triumph in May, Europe was dilapidated, but the US and USSR had emerged victorious, and were each of the opinion now that their own particular systems of government and ways of life had the answers to all of the world's troubles. There would have been no Cold War had there not been two adequately powerful, large densely-inhabited groups both believing in their own ideas and weapons and both after world leadership. The Soviets effectively occupied the countries of Eastern Europe, while the US and its Allies had much of Western Europe. In occupied Germany, the US and the Soviet Union (the world's two superpowers), along with the waning colonial forces of Britain and France, established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power control.
The moment the Russian armies had liberated Eastern Europe and the Balkans from German rule, the USSR achieved political and economic privileges in those quarters. Using dexterous tactics, it gained permanent power over the states of Eastern Europe. This was her stratagem: after liberating it, she would aid a country in setting up a provisional government in which Communist leaders would take over the army and issue forth Communist propaganda. By the end of WWII, Russia had an extra estimate of about 24,000,000 people under its control because of the subjugation of Baltic States such as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. This added to her mounting cachet, which increased further from the meetings at Yalta, Teheran and Potsdam onwards. Although she had lost 20,000,000 people to the War, it is beyond doubt that Russia emerged with strength in the international field (with, for example, her prominent role within the UNO). This, along with her control of the Communist states of Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Albania, gave her authority over some 90,000,000 Eastern European people. To secure its say-so over these states, the USSR launched Cominform, a body formed not only for the bartering of Communist information but also to operate as a cant mechanism for Communism. Next, the Communists would outnumber the non-Communist component of the government, and all resistance would be mercilessly eliminated by the Red Army (which served as more than just an idle, present threat). Little by little, Russia took control of these Eastern European nations, and, with the exception of Yugoslavia (where Marshall Tito resisted), they became puppet or satellite states of the USSR, thus bringing down the iron curtain on Europe.
At the Potsdam Conference starting in late July, serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and Eastern Europe.[14] At Potsdam, the US was represented by a new president, Harry S. Truman, who, on April 12, succeeded to the office following Roosevelt's death. Truman was unaware of Roosevelt's plans for post-war engagement with the Soviet Union, and he was generally uninformed about foreign policy and military matters.[15] This is why the new president was initially reliant on a set of advisers, including Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and his own choice for secretary of state, James F. Byrnes. This group tended to take a harder line towards Moscow than Roosevelt had.[15] Administration officials favoring co-operation with the Soviet Union and incorporation of socialist economies into a world trade system were marginalized.
One week after the Potsdam Conference ended, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki added to Soviet distrust of the United States. Shortly after the attacks, when Truman offered the Soviets little real influence in occupied Japan, Stalin had protested vainly to US officials.[16] It really was only a matter of time before the Grand Alliance broke up, for tensions between Russia and the West had mounted severely during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. The collapse of this Alliance left both sides free to pursue their own policies and ideologies.
In February 1946, George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow articulated the growing hard line that was being taken against the Soviets.[15] The telegram argued that the Soviet Union was motivated by both traditional Russian imperialism and Marxist ideology, and that Soviet behavior was inherently expansionist and paranoid, posing a threat to the United States and its allies. Later writing as "Mr. X" in his article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in Foreign Affairs (July 1947), Kennan drafted the classic argument for adopting a policy of "containment" toward the Soviet Union.
A few weeks after the release of the "Long Telegram", former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, describing the impassible barrier which divided Soviet-occupied territory from the rest of Europe. The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" from "Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic."[15]
On September 6, 1946 James F. Byrnes made a speech in Germany, repudiating the Morgenthau Plan, as well as warning the Soviets that the USA intended to maintain an indefinite military presence in Europe. (see Restatement of Policy on Germany) As Byrnes admitted a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds..."[17]
From "Containment" through the Korean War (1947–1953)
Main article: Cold War (1947-1953)
By the end of 1947, democratic government in Eastern Europe had all but disappeared, and in its place had been established the so-called "peoples' democracies" of Communism:
• When the Red Army freed and it has begun occupation Poland from German occupation in 1945, this naturally heralded the beginning of Communism in Poland. Communists gained charge of all of the key governmental departments and obliterated all opposition groups, and a new constitution, based on the Communist dogma, was implemented in 1947.
• The Communists also gained control in Hungary, crushing all opposition. Thus, in 1948, another "peoples' democracy" was established, with a Soviet constitution.
• There was evidence of Communism in the political affairs of Czechoslovakia even prior to the Second World War. The Czech government agreed to Marshall Aid, but the Kremlin ordered Gottwald and his government to decline it. Again in 1948, a new constitution was enforced—this time on the Czech people. Again, it was based on the Soviet mould, and another once-powerful egalitarian nation disappeared behind the iron curtain.
• In November 1946, after the Russian militia arrived at Romania, a coalition government was formed in which the Communists led. King Michael was compelled to step down, and a "peoples' republic" was declared in December 1947. Russian troops were permitted to be posted in Romania, which eventually became a Communist state.
• With the throwing out of the German armed forces in Bulgaria, a coalition government (including Communists) secured the closing down of the monarchy and the proclamation of a Republic. Here, too, through vetoing certain parties, the Communists took total control.
• The Russian occupation of East Germany, as said by the Potsdam agreement, provided the Communists with a direct opening to commence work for a Communist nation. The voted-in Peoples' Council drew up a constitution, based on the Communist doctrine, and, in October 1949, the (Communist) German Democratic Republic came into being.
Domino theory
The Communist dispersion into Eastern Europe was crucial and effectual, and it posed a real danger to the continuation of a democratic Western Europe. How would the West, particularly the US, counter the communist hazard? With the gravity and velocity of the Russian thrust, some redoubtable Western retort was of the essence, and this came in the form of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
With the 1947 institution of Cominform (pressing forward the doings of Communist parties right the way through the planet), the Western Powers appreciated the fact that the Communists' struggle for global supremacy was as steadfast as ever. The Communist forces had been trying to seize control of Greece for years. During the War, Communist and Republican armed services had fought side by side against the German occupational armies. After the War, the Communists became a party to the Greek coalition government, but, when the government tried to neutralize all Communist forces, the Communists revolted. They were, however, trounced with the assistance of British forces led by General Scobie. The monarchists won the 1946 election, and the new government took even stronger measures against the Communists. Until 1947, the Greek monarchist regime managed hold back the opposition Communist armed forces—but only with Britain's aid. When Britain found itself incapable of continuing to finance the Greek monarchical-military regime in its civil war against these Communist-led insurgents, and announced it in February 1947, the Greeks found themselves in dire Communist jeopardy.
Similar circumstances transpired in Turkey, where Communism also posed a threat. The states of Western Europe and Britain were struggling against a harsh winter and shortage of food and food. US President Truman's advisors had become worried that time was running out to counter the influence of the Soviet Union[15] and realised that, unless Western Europe was given both economic and military aid, it, too, would fall prey to Communism. Postwar economic recovery was faltering in Europe, and shortages such as those mentioned above were common. Truman's advisors feared that the Soviet Union sought to weaken the position of the US in a period of postwar confusion and collapse.
The event which spurred Truman into formally announcing the policy of "containment" was the British government's announcement that it could no longer afford to sustain its aid of Greece. (See Greek Civil War.) This was the first of the crises in the struggle between capitalism and Communism. Rather than viewing this war as a civil conflict revolving around domestic issues, US policy-makers interpreted it as a Soviet effort. The insurgents had been helped, however, not by Moscow but by Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia.[5] Secretary of State Dean Acheson accused the Soviet Union of conspiracy against the Greek royalists in an effort to "expand" into the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and, in March 1947, the administration unveiled the "Truman Doctrine". "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States," Truman declared in a speech to the American Congress in March 1947, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid."
The Truman Doctrine assured countries threatened by Communism that America would offer them support and help where it could. Indirectly, it paved the way for the policy of "containment"—that is, the fixing of a point further than which the Communist influence must not spread. In his famous speech, Truman rallied Americans to spend $400,000,000 to intervene in the civil war in Greece. In order to mobilize an unfriendly Republican Congress, the Democratic president painted the conflict as a contest between "free" peoples and "totalitarian" regimes, thus dramatically heightening the rhetorical stakes of the conflict.[5]
Without the assistance of huge capital resources to rebuild industry transferred from the United States, Western European economies failed to recover from the enormous wartime destruction of the region's infrastructure. Meanwhile, Communist parties were winning large votes in free elections in countries such as France and Italy. American policymakers worried that economic conditions in Western Europe might deteriorate to the point that communist parties could seize power through free elections or popular revolutions.[18] Some US policymakers also feared that their own economy might suffer unless effective demand for their exports in Western Europe was restored.[19]
For US policymakers, threats to Europe's balance of power were not necessarily military ones, but a political and economic challenge.[15] George Kennan helped summarize the problem at the State Department Planning Staff in May 1947: "Communist activities" were not "the root of the difficulties of Western Europe" but rather "the disruptive effects of the war on the economic, political, and social structure of Europe."[20] Instead, according to this view, the Communists were "exploiting the European crisis" to gain power.[20] In June, following the recommendations of the State Department Planning Staff, the Truman Doctrine was complemented by the Marshall Plan, a pledge of economic assistance aimed at rebuilding the Western political-economic system and countering perceived threats to Europe's balance of power, which the US had gone to war to restore, from the radical left.[21]
The American Congress consented to aid and abet Turkey—in terms of the Truman Doctrine, the USA had to assist all democracies in their struggles against Communism, so she came to Turkey's aid as well, admitting it to NATO to safeguard the Mediterranean—and Greece in their respective struggles against Communism, allowing these countries to contain the Communist force. It also had a say in the discharging of Communists from the French and Italian governments. The policy of aid (capital, arms and advisors) to all democracies that were endangered by Communism revealed a strategy of containing Communism through militaristic and economic weapons. By aiding Greece, Truman set a precedent for US aid to regimes, no matter how repressive and corrupt, that requested help to fight communists.[5] Said he, "America has seved notice that the march of Communism would not be allowed to succeed."
After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Generals Clay and Marshall, the Truman administration finally realized that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously had been dependent.[22]
In July, Truman rescinded on "national security grounds"[23] the punitive Morgenthau plan JCS 1067, which had directed the US forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." It was replaced by JCS 1779, which instead stressed that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany."[24]
President Truman signs the National Security Act Amendment of 1949 with guests in the Oval Office.
Also in July, Truman also reorganized the US government to fight the Cold War. The National Security Act of 1947, signed by Truman on July 26, created a unified Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council. These would become the main bureaucracies for US policy in the Cold War.[25]
The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid to Western Europe and Greece and Turkey. With US capital, arms and advisors, the Greek military won the civil war in 1949, and the Christian Democrats in Italy defeated the powerful Communist-Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948.[25]
European economic alliances
European military alliances
The US consolidated its new role as leader of the West. In retaliation to Western moves to reunite west Germany, Stalin built blockades to block western access to West Berlin, Truman maintained supply lines to the enclave by flying supplies over the blockade during 1948–1949. (see Berlin Blockade) The US formally allied itself to the Western European states in the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Stalin countered by tying together the economies of the Eastern bloc in a Soviet-led version of the Marshall Plan, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), and exploding the first Soviet atomic device in August 1949.[5]
The US took the lead in establishing the West Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in 1949.[14] To counter the Western reorganization of Germany, the Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany as the German Democratic Republic in 1949.[14] In the early 1950s, the US worked for the rearmament of West Germany and its full membership of NATO in 1955.[14]
In 1949 Mao's Red Army defeated the US-backed Kuomintang regime in China. Shortly afterward, the Soviet Union concluded an alliance with the new People's Republic of China. Confronted with the Chinese Revolution and the end of the US atomic monopoly in 1949, some in the Truman administration moved to escalate and expand the "containment" policy.[5] In a secret 1950 document, NSC-68, these officials proposed to reinforce pro-Western alliance systems and quadruple defense spending.[5] Truman himself continued to push for cuts in military spending and refused to implement NSC 68. However, the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced Truman that the Soviets were now willing to use force to achieve their goals. He then accepted NSC 68's recommendations.
Afterwards, US officials moved to expand "containment" into Asia, Africa, and Latin America.[15] At the time, revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by Communist parties, were fighting against the restoration of Europe's colonial empires in Southeast Asia. The US formalized an alliance with Japan in early 1950s, guaranteeing Washington long-term military bases; and brought other states, including Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the Philippines, within a series of alliances.[14]
To Stalin's surprise, Truman committed US forces to drive back the North Koreans.[5] In 1953 the Korean War ended in stalemate. But the US gradually became entangled in another civil war. In Vietnam, the US supported the South Vietnamese government against North Vietnam, which was backed by the Soviet Union and China.[14]
Crisis and escalation (1953–1962)
Main article: Cold War (1953-1962)
In 1953 changes in political leadership on both sides shifted the dynamic of the Cold War.[25] Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated president in January 1953. During the last 18 months of the Truman administration, the US defense budget had quadrupled; and Eisenhower resolved to reduce military spending by brandishing the United States' nuclear superiority while continuing to fight the Cold War effectively.[5] In March Joseph Stalin died, and the Soviets, now led by Nikita Khrushchev, moved away from Stalinist terror.[25]
Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles initiated a "New Look" for the "containment" strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons to US enemies.[25] Dulles also enunciated the doctrine of "massive retaliation," threatening a severe U.S response to any Soviet aggression. Possessing nuclear superiority, for example, Eisenhower curtailed Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East during the 1956 Suez Crisis.[5]
There was a slight relaxation of tensions after Stalin's death in 1953, but the Cold War in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.[26] US troops seemed stationed indefinitely in West Germany and Soviet forces seemed indefinitely stationed throughout Eastern Europe. To counter West German rearmament, the Soviets established a formal alliance with the Eastern European Communist states termed the Warsaw Pact Treaty Organization or Warsaw Pact in 1955.[14] In 1956, the status quo was briefly threatened in Hungary, when the Soviets invaded rather than allow the Hungarians to move out of their orbit (see Hungarian Revolution of 1956). Berlin remained divided and contested. In 1961, the East Germans erected the "Berlin Wall" to prevent the movement of East Berliners into West Berlin.
In the US, Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy emerged as an influential proponent of a hard-line stance on the Cold War. Although the president quietly deplored his demagoguery, the senator exploited anti-Soviet sentiment when alleging a communist conspiracy to take over the US government, leading to a massive political witch-hunt.
During the 1950s, the Third World was an increasingly important arena of Cold War competition. After the Second World War, the US emerged as the predominant power in the Third World, filling the vacuum of the old imperial hegemony of its principal Cold War allies—the traditional Western European colonial powers (particularly the UK, France, and the Netherlands).[27] However, nationalists in many postcolonial states were often unsympathetic to the Western bloc.[28] Adjusting to decolonization, meanwhile, was a difficult process economically and psychologically for European powers; and NATO suffered, as it included all the world's major colonial empires.[29]
Nationalist movements in some countries and regions, notably Guatemala, Iran, the Philippines, and Indochina were often allied with communist groups—or at least were perceived in the West to be allied with communists.[25] In this context, the US and the Soviet Union increasingly competed for influence by proxy in the Third World as decolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and early 1960s. The US government utilized the CIA in order to remove a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support others.[25] The US used the CIA to overthrow governments suspected by Washington of turning pro-Soviet, including Iran's first democratically elected government under Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 (see Operation Ajax) and Guatemala's democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954 (see Operation PBSUCCESS) Between 1954 and 1961, the US sent economic aid and military advisors to stem the collapse of South Vietnam's pro-Western regime.[5]
Many emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rejected the pressure to choose sides in the East-West competition. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia dozens of Third World governments resolved to stay out of the Cold War. The consensus reached at Bandung culminated with the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.[25] Meanwhile, Khrushchev broadened Moscow's policy to establish ties with India and other key neutral states. Independence movements in the Third World transformed the postwar order into a more pluralistic world of decolonized African and Middle Eastern nations and of rising nationalism in Asia and Latin America.[5]
Above the leaders of the major Non-Aligned states meet at the United Nations in New York in October 1960. From left to right: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, President Sukarno of Indonesia and President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia.
During the 1950s, the US and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other.[14] The Soviets developed their own hydrogen bomb and, in 1957, launched the first earth satellite. However, the period after 1956 was marked by serious setbacks for the Soviet Union, most notably the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance. (see Sino-Soviet Split) Before Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, the Soviets focused on a bitter rivalry with Mao's China for leadership of the global communist movement.
The nuclear arms race brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev formed an alliance with Fidel Castro after the Cuban Revolution in 1959. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade—a show of force that brought the world close to nuclear war.[30] The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that neither superpower was ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other's retaliation, and thus of mutually assured destruction. The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts at nuclear disarmament and improving relations.[26]
From confrontation through détente (1962–1979)
Main article: Cold War (1962-1979)
On April 29, 1975, the last U.S. helicopters remove Americans and friends from Saigon as South Vietnam falls.
In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union struggled to adjust to a new, more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer divided into two clearly opposed blocs by the two superpowers.[31] Since the beginning of the postwar period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, increasing their strength compared to the United States. As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, combined with the growing influence of Third World alignments such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Non-Aligned Movement, less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to pressure from either superpower. (EB) Moscow, meanwhile, was forced to turn its attention inward to deal with the Soviet Union's deep-seated domestic economic problems. During this period, Soviet leaders such as Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev embraced the notion of détente.[25]
Nevertheless, both superpowers resolved to reinforce their global leadership. Both the Soviet Union and the United States struggled to stave off challenges to their leadership in their own regions. President Lyndon B. Johnson landed 22,000 troops in the Dominican Republic, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution in Latin America. (see Operation Power Pack)[5] In Eastern Europe, the Soviets in 1968 crushed the Prague Spring reform movement in Czechoslovakia that might have threatened to take the country out of the Warsaw Pact.
The U.S. continued to spend heavily on supporting friendly Third World regimes in Asia. Conflicts in peripheral regions and client states—most prominently in Vietnam—continued.[30] Johnson stationed 575,000 troops in Southeast Asia to defeat the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) and their North Vietnamese allies, but his costly policy weakened the U.S. economy and, by 1975, ultimately culminated in what most of the world saw as a humiliating defeat of the world's most powerful superpower at the hands of one of the world's poorest nations. Brezhnev, meanwhile, faced far more daunting challenges in reviving the Soviet economy, which was declining in part because of heavy military expenditures.[5]
Although indirect conflict between Cold War powers continued through the late 1960s and early 1970s, tensions began to ease, as the period of détente began.[26] The Chinese had sought improved relations with the U.S. in order to gain advantage over the Soviets. In February 1972, Richard Nixon travelled to Beijing and met with Mao Zedong and Chou En-Lai. Nixon and Henry Kissinger then announced a stunning rapprochement with Mao's China.
Brezhnev and Nixon talk during Brezhnev's June 1973 visit to Washington—a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Later, in June, Nixon and Kissinger met with Soviet leaders in Moscow, and announced the first of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, aimed at limiting the development of costly antiballistic missiles and offensive nuclear missiles.[25] Between 1972 and 1974, the two sides also agreed to strengthen their economic ties.[5] Meanwhile, these developments coincided with the "Ostpolitik" of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Other agreements were concluded to stabilize the situation in Europe, culminating in the Helsinki Accords signed by the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975.
However, the détente of the 1970s was short-lived. The U.S. Congress limited the economic pact between Nixon and Brezhnev so much that the Soviets repudiated it in 1975.[5] Indirect conflict between the superpowers continued through this period of détente in the Third World, particularly during political crises in the Middle East (see Yom Kippur War), Chile (see Chilean coup of 1973), and Angola (see Angolan Civil War). While President Jimmy Carter tried to place another limit on the arms race with a SALT II agreement in 1979, his efforts were undercut by the other events that year, including the Iranian Revolution and the Nicaraguan Revolution, which both ousted pro-U.S. regimes, and his retaliation against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December.[5]
The "Second Cold War" (1979–1985)
Main article: Cold War (1979-1985)
In November 1982 American ten-year-old Samantha Smith wrote a letter to the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov expressing her fear of nuclear war, and pleading with him to work toward peace. Surprisingly, Andropov himself replied, and gave her a personal invitation to visit the country, which she accepted. Samantha Smith's visit was one of few prominent attempts to improve relations between the superpowers during Andropov's brief leadership from 1982–1984 at a dangerously low point in U.S.-Soviet relations. Above appears a cover of her book about the experience.
The term "second Cold War" has been used by some historians to refer to the period of intensive reawakening of Cold War tensions in the early 1980s.[1] In 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere.[5] Both Reagan and Britain's new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, denounced the Soviet Union in ideological terms that rivaled that of the worst days of the Cold War in the late 1940s.[14]
Reagan escalated the Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the policy of détente which began in 1979 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.[32]The Reagan Administration implemented new policies towards the Soviet Union, reviving of the B-1 bomber program that had been canceled by the Carter administration, and the production of the MX "Peacekeeper" missile.[33] In response to Soviet deployment of the SS-20, Reagan oversaw NATO's deployment of the Pershing II missile in West Germany.[34] One of Reagan's more controversial proposals was the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, a defense project.[35] The program would use ground-based and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles.[36] Reagan believed that this defense shield could make nuclear war impossible,[35][37] but the unlikelihood that the technology could ever work led opponents to dub SDI "Star Wars."[35]
U.S. domestic public concerns about intervening in foreign conflicts persisted from the end of the Vietnam War.[38] But Reagan did not encounter major public opposition to his foreign policies. The Reagan administration emphasized the use of quick, low cost counterinsurgency tactics to intervene in foreign conflicts.[39] In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened in the multisided Lebanese Civil War (see 1983 Beirut barracks bombing), invaded Grenada (see Invasion of Grenada), bombed Libya (see United States bombing of Libya), and backed the Central American Contras—right-wing paramilitaries seeking overthrow the Soviet-aligned Sandinista government in Nicaragua.[40] While Reagan's interventions against Granada and Libya were popular in the U.S., his backing of the Contra rebels was mired in controversy. In 1985, the president authorized the sale of arms to Iran; later, administration subordinates illegally diverted the proceeds to the Contras. (see Iran-Contra)
Meanwhile, the Soviets incurred high costs for their own foreign interventions. Although Brezhnev was convinced in 1979 that the Soviet war in Afghanistan would be brief, Muslim guerrillas waged a surprisingly fierce resistance against the invasion.[41] The Kremlin sent nearly 100,000 troops to support its puppet regime in Afghanistan, leading many outside observers to call the war the Soviets' Vietnam.[42] However, Moscow's quagmire in Afghanistan was far more disastrous for the Soviets than Vietnam had been for the Americans because the conflict coincided with a period of internal decay and domestic crisis in the Soviet system. A high U.S. State Department official predicted such an outcome as early as 1980, positing that the invasion resulted in part from a "domestic crisis within the Soviet system....It may be that the thermodynamic law of entropy has...caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend more energy on simply maintaining its equilibrium than on improving itself. We could," he construed, "be seeing a period of foreign movement at a time of internal decay."[43]
End of the Cold War
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty in 1987.
Main article: Cold War (1985-1991)
By the early 1980s, the Soviet armed forces were the largest in the world by many measures—in terms of the numbers and types of weapons they possessed, in the number of troops in their ranks, and in the sheer size of their military-industrial base.[44] However, the quantitative advantages held by the Soviet military often concealed areas where the Eastern bloc dramatically lagged behind the West. This led many U.S. observers to vastly overestimate Soviet power. (LaFeber 2002, 340)
By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built up a military that consumed as much as twenty-five percent of the Soviet Union's gross national product at the expense of consumer goods and investment in civilian sectors. (LaFeber 2002, 332) But the size of the Soviet armed forces was not necessarily the result of a simple action-reaction arms race with the United States. (Odom) Instead, Soviet spending on the arms race and other Cold War commitments can be understood as both a cause and effect of the deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, which accumulated at least a decade of economic stagnation during the Brezhnev years. (see Economy of the Soviet Union) Soviet investment in the defense sector was not necessarily driven by military necessity, but in large part by the interests of massive party and state bureaucracies dependent on the sector for their own power and privileges. (LaFeber 2002, 335)
By the time Mikhail Gorbachev had ascended to power in 1985, the Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero percent, combined with a sharp fall in hard currency earnings as a result of the downward slide in world oil prices in the 1980s. (LaFaber 2002, 331–333) (Petroleum exports made up around 60 percent of the Soviet Union's total export earnings.) (LaFeber 2002, 332) To restructure the Soviet economy before it collapsed, Gorbachev announced an agenda of rapid reform. (see perestroika and glasnost) Reform required Gorbachev to redirect the country's resources from costly Cold War military commitments to more profitable areas in the civilian sector. As a result, Gorbachev offered major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe.
Ronald Reagan recognized the real change in the direction of the Soviet leadership with Gorbachev, and shifted to diplomacy, with a view to encourage the Soviet Leader to go further with his reforms. Gorbachev agreed to meet Reagan in four summit conferences around the world: the first, in Geneva, Switzerland, the second in Reykjavík, Iceland, the third, held in Washington, D.C., along with the fourth summit, in Moscow, Russia.[45] Reagan believed that if he could persuade the Soviets to look at the prosperous American economy, they would embrace free markets and a free society. Gorbachev, facing severe economic problems at home, was swayed.[46]
Speaking at the Brandenburg Gate at the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987, Reagan said, "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
When Gorbachev visited Washington, D.C. for the third summit in 1987, he and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at the White House (they finalized it a year later), which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.[47]
Ronald Reagan gives a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"
The Kremlin made major military and political concessions. The East-West tensions that had reached intense new heights earlier in the decade rapidly subsided through the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1988, the Soviets officially declared that they would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied states in Eastern Europe. In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
In December 1989, Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush declared the Cold War officially over at a summit meeting in Malta.[48] In 1990, the Berlin Wall was torn down. By then, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse, and the Communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power. In the USSR itself, Gorbachev tried to reform the party to destroy resistance to his reforms, but, in doing so, ultimately weakened the bonds that held the state and union together. By February 1990, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year old monopoly on state power. By December of the next year, the union-state also dissolved, breaking the USSR up into fifteen separate independent states. (see Dissolution of the USSR)
Legacy
Despite its rapid and relatively bloodless end, the Cold War was fought at a tremendous cost globally over the course of more than four decades. It cost the U.S. up to $8 trillion in military expenditures, and the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans in Korea and Vietnam.[49] It cost the Soviets an even higher share of their gross national product. In Southeast Asia, local civil wars were intensified by superpower rivalry, leaving millions dead.
The end of the Cold War gave Russia the chance to cut military spending dramatically, but the adjustment was wrenching. The military-industrial sector employed at least one of every five Soviet adults.[50] Its dismantling left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed. Russian living standards have worsened overall in the post-Cold War years, although the economy has resumed growth in recent years. In the 1990s, Russia suffered an economic downturn more severe than the U.S. or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in the Great Depression after it had embarked on capitalist economic reforms.[51]
The legacy of the Cold War continues to structure world affairs.[1] The Cold War institutionalized the role of the United States in the postwar global economic and political system. By 1989, the U.S. was responsible for military alliances with 50 countries and 1.5 million U.S. troops were posted in 117 countries.[30] The Cold War also institutionalized the commitment to a huge, permanent wartime military-industrial complex.[30]
Some of the economic and social tensions that underpinned Cold War competition in parts of the Third World remain acute. The breakdown of state control in a number of areas formerly ruled by Communist governments has produced new civil and ethnic conflicts, particularly in the former Yugoslavia.[1] In some countries, the breakdown of state control was accompanied by state failure, such as in Afghanistan. But in other areas, particularly much of Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War was accompanied by a large growth in the number of liberal democracies. In areas where the two superpowers had been waging proxy wars, and subsidizing local conflicts, many conflicts ended with the Cold War; and the occurrence of interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, or refugee and displaced persons crises declined sharply.[52]
Historiography
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Soviet Union quickly abandoned its Cold War commitments as the state and Communist Party rule unraveled. By late 1991, opposition to Gorbachev's radical reforms had triggered the Soviet coup attempt of 1991, but the failure of the coup wound up accelerating the dissolution of the USSR. Above, immediately following the failure of the coup attempt, Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin spar over the events of the coup, with Yeltsin accusing Gorbachev of failing to prevent the crisis. Later, Gorbachev would accuse Yeltsin of tearing the Soviet Union apart out of a desire to advance his own personal interests.
As soon as the term "Cold War" was popularized to refer to postwar tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, interpreting the course and origins of the conflict has been a source of heated controversy among historians, political scientists, and journalists.[53] In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of Soviet-U.S. relations after the Second World War; and whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable, or could have been avoided.[54] Historians have also disagreed on what exactly the Cold War was, what the sources of the conflict were, and how to disentangle patterns of action and reaction between the two sides.[1]
While the explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions are complex and diverse, several general schools of thought on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three differing approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism," and "post-revisionism." Nevertheless, much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of these broad categories.[14]
Orthodox accounts
The first school of interpretation to emerge in the U.S. was the "orthodox" one. For more than a decade after the end of the Second World War, few U.S. historians challenged the official U.S. interpretation of the beginnings of the Cold War.[54] This "orthodox" school places the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe.[30] Thomas A. Bailey, for example, argued in his 1950 America Faces Russia that the breakdown of postwar peace was the result of Soviet expansionism in the immediate postwar years. Bailey argued Stalin violated promises he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet-dominated regimes on unwilling Eastern European populations, and conspired to spread communism throughout the world.[54] From this view, U.S. officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with the Truman Doctrine, plans to contain communist subversion around the world, and the Marshall Plan.
This interpretation has been described as the "official" U.S. version of Cold War history.[30] Although it lost its dominance as a mode of historical thought in academic discussions in 1960s, it continues to be influential.[53]
Revisionism
U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s disillusioned many historians with the premises of "containment", and thus with the assumptions of the "orthodox" approach to understanding the Cold War.[54] "Revisionist" accounts emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War, in the context of a larger rethinking of the U.S. role in international affairs, which was seen more in terms of American empire or hegemony.[30]
While the new school of thought spanned many differences among individual scholars, the works comprising it were generally responses in one way or another to William Appleman Williams' landmark 1959 volume, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Williams challenged the long-held assumptions of "orthodox" accounts, arguing that Americans had always been an empire-building people, even while American leaders denied it.[53]
Following Williams, "revisionist" writers placed more responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace on the United States, citing a range of U.S. efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.[30] According to Williams and later "revisionist" writers, U.S. policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining capitalism domestically. In order to achieve that objective, they pursued an "open door" policy abroad, aimed at increasing access to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture.[53] From this perspective, a growing economy domestically went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of U.S. power internationally.
"Revisionist" scholars challenged the widely accepted notion that Soviet leaders were committed to postwar "expansionism". They cited evidence that the Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive rationale, and that Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid encirclement by the United States and its allies.[30] In this view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the Second World War as to be unable to pose any serious threat to the United States; moreover, the U.S. maintained a nuclear monopoly until the USSR tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949.[54]
Revisionist historians have also challenged the assumption that the origins of the Cold War date no further back than the immediate postwar period.[53] Notably, Walter LaFeber, in his landmark study, America, Russia, and the Cold War, first published in 1967, argued that the Cold War had its origins in 19th century conflicts between Russia and America over the opening of East Asia to U.S. trade, markets, and influence.[53] LaFeber argued that the U.S. commitment at the close of World War II to ensuring a world in which every state was open to U.S. influence and trade, underpinned many of the conflicts that triggered the beginning of the Cold War.[54]
Starting with Gar Alperovitz, in his influential Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965), "revisionist" scholars have focused on the U.S. decision to use atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the last days of World War II.[54] In their view, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in effect, started the Cold War. According to Alperovitz, the bombs were not used on an already defeated Japan to win the war, but to intimidate the Soviets, signaling that the U.S. would use nuclear weapons to structure a postwar world around U.S. interests as U.S. policymakers saw fit.[53] According to former State Department employee William Blum and others, Japan had tried to surrender for several months, but the U.S. wanted to test nuclear weapons in war and, most importantly, show its power to the Soviet Union.[55][56]
Joyce and Gabriel Kolko's The Limits of Power: The World and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1954 (1972) has also received considerable attention in the historiography on the Cold War. The Kolkos argued U.S. policy was both reflexively anticommunist and counterrevolutionary. The U.S. was not necessarily fighting Soviet influence, but any form of challenge to the U.S. economic and political prerogatives through either covert or military means.[53] In this sense, the Cold War is less a story of rivalry between two blocs, and more a story of the ways by which the dominant states within each bloc controlled and disciplined their own populations and clients, and about who supported and stood to benefit from increased arms production and political anxiety over a perceived external enemy.[1]
Post-revisionism
The "revisionist" interpretation produced a critical reaction of its own. In a variety of ways, "post-revisionist" scholarship, before the fall of Communism, challenged earlier works on the origins and course of the Cold War, and some American academics continue to deny the existence of an American empire.[57][58]
During the period, "post-revisionism" challenged the "revisionists" by accepting some of their findings but rejecting most of their key claims.[54] Another current attempted to strike a balance between the "orthodox" and "revisionist" camps, identifying areas of responsibility for the origins of the conflict on both sides.[54] Thomas G. Paterson, in Soviet-American Confrontation (1973), for example, viewed Soviet hostility and U.S. efforts to dominate the postwar world as equally responsible for the Cold War.[54]
The seminal work of this approach was John Lewis Gaddis's The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (1972). The account was immediately hailed as the beginning of a new school of thought on the Cold War claiming to synthesize a variety of interpretations.[53] Gaddis then maintained that "neither side can bear sole responsibility for the onset of the Cold War."[54] He did, however, emphasize the constraints imposed on U.S. policymakers due to the complications of domestic politics.[54] Gaddis has, in addition, criticized some "revisionist" scholars, particularly Williams, for failing to understand the role of Soviet policy in the origins of the Cold War.[53]
Out of the "post-revisionist" literature emerged a new area of inquiry that was more sensitive to nuance and interested less in the question of who started the conflict than in offering insight into U.S. and Soviet actions and perspectives.[30] From this perspective, the Cold War was not so much the responsibility of either side, but rather the result of predictable tensions between two world powers that had been suspicious of one another for nearly a century. For example, Ernest May wrote in a 1984 essay:
After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union were doomed to be antagonists.... There probably was never any real possibility that the post-1945 relationship could be anything but hostility verging on conflict... Traditions, belief systems, propinquity, and convenience ... all combined to stimulate antagonism, and almost no factor operated in either country to hold it back.[59]
From this view of "post-revisionism" emerged a line of inquiry that examines how Cold War actors perceived various events, and the degree of misperception involved in the failure of the two sides to reach common understandings of their wartime alliance and their disputes.[1]
While Gaddis does not hold either side entirely responsible for the onset of the conflict, he has now argued that the Soviets should be held clearly more accountable for the ensuing problems. According to Gaddis, Stalin was in a much better position to compromise than his Western counterparts, given his much broader power within his own regime than Truman, who was often undermined by vociferous political opposition at home. Asking if it were possible to predict that the wartime alliance would fall apart within a matter of months, leaving in its place nearly a half century of cold war, Gaddis wrote in a 1997 essay, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History:[60]
Geography, demography, and tradition contributed to this outcome but did not determine it. It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation; and it took [Stalin] in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place.
For Stalin, Gaddis continues, "World politics was an extension of Soviet politics, which was in turn an extension of Stalin's preferred personal enviroment,a zero-sum game,in which achieving security for one meant depriving everyone else of it.’’
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met for the first time in Tehran, Iran (November 28-December 1, 1943) to discuss military operations against Germany and begin talks on postwar political issues.
Stalin agreed to pressure German forces while the Western Allies prepared for their invasion. The Soviets also agreed to join the fight against Japan once Germany was defeated.
The postwar occupation of Germany was discussed at length, but all three leaders appeared uncertain as to the specifics of the country's reorganization.
The Tehran Conference, November 29-December 1, 1943.
(a) Declaration of the Three Powers, December 1, 1943
We the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and the Premier of the Soviet Union, have met these four days past, in this, the Capital of our Ally, Iran, and have shaped and confirmed our common policy.
We express our determination that our nations shall work together in war and in the peace that will follow.
As to war-our military staffs have joined in our round table discussions, and we have concerted our plans for the destruction of the German forces. We have reached complete agreement as to the scope and timing of the operations to be undertaken from the east, west and south.
The common understanding which we have here reached guarantees that victory will be ours.
And as to peace-we are sure that our concord will win an enduring Peace. We recognize fully the supreme responsibility resting upon us and all the United Nations to make a peace which will command the goodwill of the overwhelming mass of the peoples of the world and banish the scourge and terror of war for many generations.
With our Diplomatic advisors we have surveyed the problems of the future. We shall seek the cooperation and active participation of all nations, large and small, whose peoples in heart and mind are dedicated, as are our own peoples, to the elimination of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance. We will welcome them, as they may choose to come, into a world family of Democratic Nations.
No power on earth can prevent our destroying the German armies by land, their U Boats by sea, and their war plants from the air.
Our attack will be relentless and increasing.
Emerging from these cordial conferences we look with confidence to the day when all peoples of the world may live free lives, untouched by tyranny, and according to their varying desires and their own consciences.
We came here with hope and determination. We leave here, friends in fact, in spirit and in purpose.
ROOSEVELT, CHURCHILL and STALIN
Signed at Tehran, December 1, 1943
(b) Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran, December 1, 1943
The President of the United States, the Premier of the U.S.S.R. and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, having consulted with each other and with the Prime Minister of Iran, desire to declare the mutual agreement of their three Governments regarding their relations with Iran.
The Governments of the United States, the U.S.S.R., and the United Kingdom recognize the assistance which Iran has given in the prosecution of the war against the common enemy, particularly by facilitating the transportation of supplies from overseas to the Soviet Union.
The Three Governments realize that the war has caused special economic difficulties for Iran, and they are agreed that they will continue to make available to the Government of Iran such economic assistance as may be possible, having regard to the heavy demands made upon them by their world-wide military operations, and to the world-wide shortage of transport, raw materials, and supplies for civilian consumption.
With respect to the post-war period, the Governments of the United States, the U.S.S.R., and the United Kingdom are in accord with the Government of Iran that any economic problems confronting Iran at the close of hostilities should receive full consideration, along with those of other members of the United Nations, by conferences or international agencies held or created to deal with international economic matters.
The Governments of the United States, the U.S.S.R., and the United Kingdom are at one with the Government of Iran in their desire for the maintenance of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iran They count upon the participation of Iran, together with all other peace- loving nations, in the establishment of international peace, security and prosperity after the war, in accordance with the principles of the Atlantic Charter, to which all four Governments have subscribed. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL J. STALIN FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT
(c) Military Conclusions of the Tehran Conference
The Conference:-
(1) Agreed that the Partisans in Yugoslavia should be supported by supplies and equipment to the greatest possible extent, and also by commando operations:
(2) Agreed that, from the military point of view, it was most desirable that Turkey should come into the war on the side of the Allies before the end of the year:
(3) Took note of Marshal Stalin's statement that if Turkey found herself at war with Germany, and as a result Bulgaria declared war on Turkey or attacked her, the Soviet would immediately be at war with Bulgaria. The Conference further took note that this fact could be explicitly stated in the forthcoming negotiations to bring Turkey into the war:
(4) Took note that Operation OVERLORD would be launched during May 1944, in conjunction with an operation against Southern France. The latter operation would be undertaken in as great a strength as availability of landing-craft permitted. The Conference further took note of Marshal Stalin's statement that the Soviet forces would launch an offensive at about the same time with the object of preventing the German forces from transferring from the Eastern to the Western Front:
(5) Agreed that the military staffs of the Three Powers should henceforward keep in close touch with each other in regard to the impending operations in Europe. In particular it was agreed that a cover plan to mystify and mislead the enemy as regards these operations should be concerted between the staffs concerned.
(signed) FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT JOSEPH V. STALIN WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
TEHRAN, December 1, 1943.
Source: A Decade of American Foreign Policy : Basic Documents, 1941-49 Prepared at the request of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations By the Staff of the Committee and the Department of State. Washington, DC : Government Printing Office, 1950
The conference at Yalta in the Crimea (February 4-11, 1945) brought together the Big Three Allied leaders again.
With victory close at hand, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed Europe's postwar reorganization. High on their agenda was organizing the occupation of Germany. Britain suggested France as one of the occupiers, a move Stalin resisted but eventually accepted.
The Soviets reaffirmed their intention to fight Japan and in return expected to receive occupation areas in the East. The Allies also agreed to install a representative government in Poland.
Yalta has long been a subject of controversy because of what some historians consider undue concessions to the Soviet Union.
Protocol of Proceedings of Crimea Conference
The Crimea Conference of the heads of the Governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which took place from Feb. 4 to 11, came to the following conclusions:
I. WORLD ORGANIZATION
It was decided:
1. That a United Nations conference on the proposed world organization should be summoned for Wednesday, 25 April, 1945, and should be held in the United States of America.
2. The nations to be invited to this conference should be:
(a) the United Nations as they existed on 8 Feb., 1945; and
(b) Such of the Associated Nations as have declared war on the common enemy by 1 March, 1945. (For this purpose, by the term "Associated Nations" was meant the eight Associated Nations and Turkey.) When the conference on world organization is held, the delegates of the United Kingdom and United State of America will support a proposal to admit to original membership two Soviet Socialist Republics, i.e., the Ukraine and White Russia.
3. That the United States Government, on behalf of the three powers, should consult the Government of China and the French Provisional Government in regard to decisions taken at the present conference concerning the proposed world organization.
4. That the text of the invitation to be issued to all the nations which would take part in the United Nations conference should be as follows:
"The Government of the United States of America, on behalf of itself and of the Governments of the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics and the Republic of China and of the Provisional Government of the French Republic invite the Government of -------- to send representatives to a conference to be held on 25 April, 1945, or soon thereafter , at San Francisco, in the United States of America, to prepare a charter for a general international organization for the maintenance of international peace and security.
"The above-named Governments suggest that the conference consider as affording a basis for such a Charter the proposals for the establishment of a general international organization which were made public last October as a result of the Dumbarton Oaks conference and which have now been supplemented by the following provisions for Section C of Chapter VI:
C. Voting
"1. Each member of the Security Council should have one vote.
"2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters should be made by an affirmative vote of seven members.
"3. Decisions of the Security Council on all matters should be made by an affirmative vote of seven members, including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VIII, Section A and under the second sentence of Paragraph 1 of Chapter VIII, Section C, a party to a dispute should abstain from voting.'
"Further information as to arrangements will be transmitted subsequently.
"In the event that the Government of -------- desires in advance of the conference to present views or comments concerning the proposals, the Government of the United States of America will be pleased to transmit such views and comments to the other participating Governments."
Territorial trusteeship:
It was agreed that the five nations which will have permanent seats on the Security Council should consult each other prior to the United Nations conference on the question of territorial trusteeship.
The acceptance of this recommendation is subject to its being made clear that territorial trusteeship will only apply to
(a) existing mandates of the League of Nations; (b) territories detached from the enemy as a result of the present war; (c) any other territory which might voluntarily be placed under trusteeship; and (d) no discussion of actual territories is contemplated at the forthcoming United Nations conference or in the preliminary consultations, and it will be a matter for subsequent agreement which territories within the above categories will be place under trusteeship.
[Begin first section published Feb., 13, 1945.]
II. DECLARATION OF LIBERATED EUROPE
The following declaration has been approved:
The Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States of America have consulted with each other in the common interests of the people of their countries and those of liberated Europe. They jointly declare their mutual agreement to concert during the temporary period of instability in liberated Europe the policies of their three Governments in assisting the peoples liberated from the domination of Nazi Germany and the peoples of the former Axis satellite states of Europe to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems.
The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of nazism and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice. This is a principle of the Atlantic Charter - the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live - the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived to them by the aggressor nations.
To foster the conditions in which the liberated people may exercise these rights, the three governments will jointly assist the people in any European liberated state or former Axis state in Europe where, in their judgment conditions require,
(a) to establish conditions of internal peace; (b) to carry out emergency relief measures for the relief of distressed peoples; (c) to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of Governments responsive to the will of the people; and (d) to facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections.
The three Governments will consult the other United Nations and provisional authorities or other Governments in Europe when matters of direct interest to them are under consideration.
When, in the opinion of the three Governments, conditions in any European liberated state or former Axis satellite in Europe make such action necessary, they will immediately consult together on the measure necessary to discharge the joint responsibilities set forth in this declaration.
By this declaration we reaffirm our faith in the principles of the Atlantic Charter, our pledge in the Declaration by the United Nations and our determination to build in cooperation with other peace-loving nations world order, under law, dedicated to peace, security, freedom and general well-being of all mankind.
In issuing this declaration, the three powers express the hope that the Provisional Government of the French Republic may be associated with them in the procedure suggested.
[End first section published February, 13, 1945.]
III. DISMEMBERMENT OF GERMANY
It was agreed that Article 12 (a) of the Surrender terms for Germany should be amended to read as follows:
"The United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shall possess supreme authority with respect to Germany. In the exercise of such authority they will take such steps, including the complete dismemberment of Germany as they deem requisite for future peace and security."
The study of the procedure of the dismemberment of Germany was referred to a committee consisting of Mr. Anthony Eden, Mr. John Winant, and Mr. Fedor T. Gusev. This body would consider the desirability of associating with it a French representative.
IV. ZONE OF OCCUPATION FOR THE FRENCH AND CONTROL COUNCIL FOR GERMANY.
It was agreed that a zone in Germany, to be occupied by the French forces, should be allocated France. This zone would be formed out of the British and American zones and its extent would be settled by the British and Americans in consultation with the French Provisional Government.
It was also agreed that the French Provisional Government should be invited to become a member of the Allied Control Council for Germany.
V. REPARATION
The following protocol has been approved:
Protocol
On the Talks Between the Heads of Three Governments at the Crimean Conference on the Question of the German Reparations in Kind
1. Germany must pay in kind for the losses caused by her to the Allied nations in the course of the war. Reparations are to be received in the first instance by those countries which have borne the main burden of the war have suffered the heaviest losses and have organized victory over the enemy.
2. Reparation in kind is to be exacted from Germany in three following forms:
(a) Removals within two years from the surrender of Germany or the cessation of organized resistance from the national wealth of Germany located on the territory of Germany herself as well as outside her territory (equipment, machine tools, ships, rolling stock, German investments abroad, shares of industrial, transport and other enterprises in Germany, etc.), these removals to be carried out chiefly for the purpose of destroying the war potential of Germany. (b) Annual deliveries of goods from current production for a period to be fixed. (c) Use of German labor.
3. For the working out on the above principles of a detailed plan for exaction of reparation from Germany an Allied reparation commission will be set up in Moscow. It will consist of three representatives - one from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, one from the United Kingdom and one from the United States of America.
4. With regard to the fixing of the total sum of the reparation as well as the distribution of it among the countries which suffered from the German aggression, the Soviet and American delegations agreed as follows:
"The Moscow reparation commission should take in its initial studies as a basis for discussion the suggestion of the Soviet Government that the total sum of the reparation in accordance with the points (a) and (b) of the Paragraph 2 should be 22 billion dollars and that 50 per cent should go to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
The British delegation was of the opinion that, pending consideration of the reparation question by the Moscow reparation commission, no figures of reparation should be mentioned.
The above Soviet-American proposal has been passed to the Moscow reparation commission as one of the proposals to be considered by the commission.
VI. MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS
The conference agreed that the question of the major war criminals should be the subject of inquiry by the three Foreign Secretaries for report in due course after the close of the conference.
[Begin second section published February 13, 1945.]
VII. POLAND
The following declaration on Poland was agreed by the conference:
"A new situation has been created in Poland as a result of her complete liberation by the Red Army. This calls for the establishment of a Polish Provisional Government which can be more broadly based than was possible before the recent liberation of the western part of Poland. The Provisional Government which is now functioning in Poland should therefore be reorganized on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad. This new Government should then be called the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity.
"M. Molotov, Mr. Harriman and Sir A. Clark Kerr are authorized as a commission to consult in the first instance in Moscow with members of the present Provisional Government and with other Polish democratic leaders from within Poland and from abroad, with a view to the reorganization of the present Government along the above lines. This Polish Provisional Government of National Unity shall be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot. In these elections all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates.
"When a Polish Provisional of Government National Unity has been properly formed in conformity with the above, the Government of the U.S.S.R., which now maintains diplomatic relations with the present Provisional Government of Poland, and the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America will establish diplomatic relations with the new Polish Provisional Government National Unity, and will exchange Ambassadors by whose reports the respective Governments will be kept informed about the situation in Poland.
"The three heads of Government consider that the eastern frontier of Poland should follow the Curzon Line with digressions from it in some regions of five to eight kilometers in favor of Poland. They recognize that Poland must receive substantial accessions in territory in the north and west. They feel that the opinion of the new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity should be sought in due course of the extent of these accessions and that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should thereafter await the peace conference."
VIII. YUGOSLAVIA
It was agreed to recommend to Marshal Tito and to Dr. Ivan Subasitch:
(a) That the Tito-Subasitch agreement should immediately be put into effect and a new government formed on the basis of the agreement. (b) That as soon as the new Government has been formed it should declare: (I) That the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation (AVNOJ) will be extended to include members of the last Yugoslav Skupstina who have not compromised themselves by collaboration with the enemy, thus forming a body to be known as a temporary Parliament and (II) That legislative acts passed by the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation (AVNOJ) will be subject to subsequent ratification by a Constituent Assembly; and that this statement should be published in the communiquŽ of the conference.
IX. ITALO-YUGOSLAV FRONTIER - ITALO-AUSTRIAN FRONTIER
Notes on these subjects were put in by the British delegation and the American and Soviet delegations agreed to consider them and give their views later.
X. YUGOSLAV-BULGARIAN RELATIONS
There was an exchange of views between the Foreign Secretaries on the question of the desirability of a Yugoslav-Bulgarian pact of alliance. The question at issue was whether a state still under an armistice regime could be allowed to enter into a treaty with another state. Mr. Eden suggested that the Bulgarian and Yugoslav Governments should be informed that this could not be approved. Mr. Stettinius suggested that the British and American Ambassadors should discuss the matter further with Mr. Molotov in Moscow. Mr. Molotov agreed with the proposal of Mr. Stettinius.
XI. SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
The British delegation put in notes for the consideration of their colleagues on the following subjects:
(a) The Control Commission in Bulgaria. (b) Greek claims upon Bulgaria, more particularly with reference to reparations. (c) Oil equipment in Rumania.
XII. IRAN
Mr. Eden, Mr. Stettinius and Mr. Molotov exchanged views on the situation in Iran. It was agreed that this matter should be pursued through the diplomatic channel.
[Begin third section published February 13, 1945.]
XIII. MEETINGS OF THE THREE FOREIGN SECRETARIES
The conference agreed that permanent machinery should be set up for consultation between the three Foreign Secretaries; they should meet as often as necessary, probably about every three or four months.
These meetings will be held in rotation in the three capitals, the first meeting being held in London.
[End third section published February 13, 1945.]
XIV. THE MONTREAUX CONVENTION AND THE STRAITS
It was agreed that at the next meeting of the three Foreign Secretaries to be held in London, they should consider proposals which it was understood the Soviet Government would put forward in relation to the Montreaux Convention, and report to their Governments. The Turkish Government should be informed at the appropriate moment. The forgoing protocol was approved and signed by the three Foreign Secretaries at the Crimean Conference February 11, 1945.
E. R. Stettinius Jr. M. Molotov Anthony Eden
AGREEMENT REGARDING JAPAN
The leaders of the three great powers - the Soviet Union, the United States of America and Great Britain - have agreed that in two or three months after Germany has surrendered and the war in Europe is terminated, the Soviet Union shall enter into war against Japan on the side of the Allies on condition that:
1. The status quo in Outer Mongolia (the Mongolian People's Republic) shall be preserved.
2. The former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904 shall be restored, viz.: (a) The southern part of Sakhalin as well as the islands adjacent to it shall be returned to the Soviet Union; (b) The commercial port of Dairen shall be internationalized, the pre-eminent interests of the Soviet Union in this port being safeguarded, and the lease of Port Arthur as a naval base of the U.S.S.R. restored; (c) The Chinese-Eastern Railroad and the South Manchurian Railroad, which provide an outlet to Dairen, shall be jointly operated by the establishment of a joint Soviet-Chinese company, it being understood that the pre-eminent interests of the Soviet Union shall be safeguarded and that China shall retain sovereignty in Manchuria;
3. The Kurile Islands shall be handed over to the Soviet Union.
It is understood that the agreement concerning Outer Mongolia and the ports and railroads referred to above will require concurrence of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The President will take measures in order to maintain this concurrence on advice from Marshal Stalin.
The heads of the three great powers have agreed that these claims of the Soviet Union shall be unquestionably fulfilled after Japan has been defeated.
For its part, the Soviet Union expresses it readiness to conclude with the National Government of China a pact of friendship and alliance between the U.S.S.R. and China in order to render assistance to China with its armed forces for the purpose of liberating China from the Japanese yoke.
(signed) Joseph Stalin Franklin D. Roosevelt Winston S. Churchill
February 11, 1945.
Source: A Decade of American Foreign Policy : Basic Documents, 1941-49 Prepared at the request of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations by the staff of the Committeee and the depatment of State:Washington D.C,government Printing Office,1950
At the Potsdam Conference (July 17 to August 2, 1945) the Big Three Allied powers convened again to clarify and implement agreements reached at Yalta earlier that year.
The players had changed significantly: Harry Truman had succeeded FDR, and before the conference was over, the newly-elected Clement Attlee would replace Winston Churchill.
Potsdam divided postwar Germany into four occupation zones, administered by Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union, and reorganized Germany's institutions and economy. The Allies also called for Japan to surrender or risk total destruction.
After the war, however, the goals of Potsdam were increasingly undermined by the tensions and suspicions of the gathering Cold War.
Protocol of the Proceedings, August l, 1945
The Berlin Conference of the Three Heads of Government of the U.S.S.R., U.S.A., and U.K., which took place from July 17 to August 2, 1945, came to the following conclusions:
I. ESTABLISHMENT OF A COUNCIL OF FOREIGN MINISTERS.
A. The Conference reached the following agreement for the establishment of a Council of Foreign Ministers to do the necessary preparatory work for the peace settlements:
"(1) There shall be established a Council composed of the Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, China, France, and the United States.
"(2) (i) The Council shall normally meet in London which shall be the permanent seat of the joint Secretariat which the Council will form. Each of the Foreign Ministers will be accompanied by a high-ranking Deputy, duly authorized to carry on the work of the Council in the absence of his Foreign Ministers, and by a small staff of technical advisers.
" (ii) The first meeting of the Council shall be held in London not later than September 1st 1945. Meetings may be held by common agreement in other capitals as may be agreed from time to time.
" (3) (i) As its immediate important task, the Council shall be authorized to draw up, with a view to their submission to the United Nations, treaties of peace with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland, and to propose settlements of territorial questions outstanding on the termination of the war in Europe. The Council shall be utilized for the preparation of a peace settlement for Germany to be accepted by the Government of Germany when a government adequate for the purpose is established.
"(ii) For the discharge of each of these tasks the Council will be composed of the Members representing those States which were signatory to the terms of surrender imposed upon the enemy State concerned. For the purposes of the peace settlement for Italy, France shall be regarded as a signatory to the terms of surrender for Italy. Other Members will be invited to participate when matters directly concerning them are under discussion.
" (iii) Other matters may from time to time be referred to the Council by agreement between the Member Governments.
"(4) (i) Whenever the Council is considering a question of direct interest to a State not represented thereon, such State should be invited to send representatives to participate in the discussion and study of that question.
"(ii) The Council may adapt its procedure to the particular problems under consideration. In some cases it may hold its own preliminary discussions prior to the participation of other interested States. In other cases, the Council may convoke a formal conference of the State chiefly interested in seeking a solution of the particular problem."
B. It was agreed that the three Governments should each address an identical invitation to the Governments of China and France to adopt this text and to join in establishing the Council. The text of the approved invitation was as follows:
Council of Foreign Ministers Draft for identical invitation to be sent separately by each of the Three Governments to the Governments of China and France.
"The Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States and the U.S.S.R. consider it necessary to begin without delay the essential preparatory work upon the peace settlements in Europe. To this end they are agreed that there should be established a Council of the Foreign Ministers of the Five Great Powers to prepare treaties of peace with the European enemy States, for submission to the United Nations. The Council would also be empowered to propose settlements of outstanding territorial questions in Europe and to consider such other matters as member Governments might agree to refer to it.
"The text adopted by the Three Governments is as follows:
"In agreement with the Governments of the United States and U.S.S.R., His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and U.S.S.R., the United States Government, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Government extend a cordial invitation to the Government of China (France) to adopt the text quoted above and to join in setting up the Council. His Majesty's Government, The United States Government, The Soviet Government attach much importance to the participation of the Chinese Government (French Government) in the proposed arrangements and they hope to receive an early and favorable reply to this invitation."
C. It was understood that the establishment of the Council of Foreign Ministers for the specific purposes named in the text would be without prejudice to the agreement of the Crimea Conference that there should be periodical consultation between the Foreign Secretaries of the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom.
D. The Conference also considered the position of the European Advisory Commission in the light of the Agreement to establish the Council of Foreign Ministers. It was noted with satisfaction that the Commission had ably discharged its principal tasks by the recommendations that it had furnished for the terms of surrender for Germany, for the zones of occupation in Germany and Austria and for the inter-Allied control machinery in those countries. It was felt that further work of a detailed character for the coordination of Allied policy for the control of Germany and Austria would in future fall within the competence of the Control Council at Berlin and the Allied Commission at Vienna. Accordingly it was agreed to recommend that the European Advisory Commission be dissolved.
II. THE PRINCIPLES TO GOVERN THE TREATMENT OF GERMANY IN THE INITIAL CONTROL PERIOD
A. POLITICAL PRINCIPLES.
1. In accordance with the Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany, supreme authority in Germany is exercised, on instructions from their respective Governments, by the Commanders-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the French Republic, each in his own zone of occupation, and also jointly, in matters affecting Germany as a whole, in their capacity as members of the Control Council.
2. So far as is practicable, there shall be uniformity of treatment of the German population throughout Germany.
3. The purposes of the occupation of Germany by which the Control Council shall be guided are:
(i) The complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany and the elimination or control of all German industry that could be used for military production. To these ends:-
(a) All German land, naval and air forces, the SS., SA., SD., and Gestapo, with all their organizations, staffs and institutions, including the General Staff, the Officers' Corps, Reserve Corps, military schools, war veterans' organizations and all other military and semi-military organizations, together with all clubs and associations which serve to keep alive the military tradition in Germany, shall be completely and finally abolished in such manner as permanently to prevent the revival or reorganization of German militarism and Nazism;
(b) All arms, ammunition and implements of war and all specialized facilities for their production shall be held at the disposal of the Allies or destroyed. The maintenance and production of all aircraft and all arms. ammunition and implements of war shall be prevented.
(ii) To convince the German people that they have suffered a total military defeat and that they cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves, since their own ruthless warfare and the fanatical Nazi resistance have destroyed German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable.
(iii) To destroy the National Socialist Party and its affiliated and supervised organizations, to dissolve all Nazi institutions, to ensure that they are not revived in any form, and to prevent all Nazi and militarist activity or propaganda.
(iv) To prepare for the eventual reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis and for eventual peaceful cooperation in international life by Germany.
4. All Nazi laws which provided the basis of the Hitler regime or established discriminations on grounds of race, creed, or political opinion shall be abolished. No such discriminations, whether legal, administrative or otherwise, shall be tolerated.
5. War criminals and those who have participated in planning or carrying out Nazi enterprises involving or resulting in atrocities or war crimes shall be arrested and brought to judgment. Nazi leaders, influential Nazi supporters and high officials of Nazi organizations and institutions and any other persons dangerous to the occupation or its objectives shall be arrested and interned.
6. All members of the Nazi Party who have been more than nominal participants in its activities and all other persons hostile to Allied purposes shall be removed from public and semi-public office, and from positions of responsibility in important private undertakings. Such persons shall be replaced by persons who, by their political and moral qualities, are deemed capable of assisting in developing genuine democratic institutions in Germany.
7. German education shall be so controlled as completely to eliminate Nazi and militarist doctrines and to make possible the successful development of democratic ideas.
8. The judicial system will be reorganized in accordance with the principles of democracy, of justice under law, and of equal rights for all citizens without distinction of race, nationality or religion.
9. The administration in Germany should be directed towards the decentralization of the political structure and the development of local responsibility. To this end:
(i) local self-government shall be restored throughout Germany on democratic principles and in particular through elective councils as rapidly as is consistent with military security and the purposes of military occupation;
(ii) all democratic political parties with rights of assembly and of public discussion shall be allowed and encouraged throughout Germany;
(iii) representative and elective principles shall be introduced into regional, provincial and state (Land) administration as rapidly as may be justified by the successful application of these principles in local self- government;
(iv) for the time being, no central German Government shall be established. Notwithstanding this, however, certain essential central German administrative departments, headed by State Secretaries, shall be established, particularly in the fields of finance, transport, communications, foreign trade and industry. Such departments will act under the direction of the Control Council.
10. Subject to the necessity for maintaining military security, freedom of speech, press and religion shall be permitted, and religious institutions shall be respected. Subject likewise to the maintenance of military security, the formation of free trade unions shall be permitted.
B. ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES.
11. In order to eliminate Germany's war potential, the production of arms, ammunition and implements of war as well as all types of aircraft and sea-going ships shall be prohibited and prevented. Production of metals, chemicals, machinery and other items that are directly necessary to a war economy shall be rigidly controlled and restricted to Germany's approved post-war peacetime needs to meet the objectives stated in Paragraph 15. Productive capacity not needed for permitted production shall be removed in accordance with the reparations plan recommended by the Allied Commission on Reparations and approved by the Governments concerned or if not removed shall be destroyed.
12. At the earliest practicable date, the German economy shall be decentralized for the purpose of eliminating the present excessive concentration of economic power as exemplified in particular by cartels, syndicates, trusts and other monopolistic arrangements.
13. In organizing the German Economy, primary emphasis shall be given to the development of agriculture and peaceful domestic industries.
14. During the period of occupation Germany shall be treated as a single economic unit. To this end common policies shall be established in regard to:
(a) mining and industrial production and its allocation;
(b) agriculture, forestry and fishing;
(c) wages, prices and rationing;
(d) import and export programs for Germany as a whole;
(e) currency and banking, central taxation and customs;
(f) reparation and removal of industrial war potential;
(g) transportation and communications.
In applying these policies account shall be taken, where appropriate, of varying local conditions.
15. Allied controls shall be imposed upon the German economy but only to the extent necessary:
(a) to carry out programs of industrial disarmament, demilitarization, of reparations, and of approved exports and imports.
(b) to assure the production and maintenance of goods and services required to meet the needs of the occupying forces and displaced persons in Germany and essential to maintain in Germany average living standards not exceeding the average of the standards of living of European countries. (European countries means all European countries excluding the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R.).
(c) to ensure in the manner determined by the Control Council the equitable distribution of essential commodities between the several zones so as to produce a balanced economy throughout Germany and reduce the need for imports.
(d) to control German industry and all economic and financial international transactions including exports and imports, with the aim of preventing Germany from developing a war potential and of achieving the other objectives named herein.
(e) to control all German public or private scientific bodies research and experimental institutions, laboratories, et cetera connected with economic activities.
16. In the imposition and maintenance of economic controls established by the Control Council, German administrative machinery shall be created and the German authorities shall be required to the fullest extent practicable to proclaim and assume administration of such controls. Thus it should be brought home to the German people that the responsibility for the administration of such controls and any break-down in these controls will rest with themselves. Any German controls which may run counter to the objectives of occupation will be prohibited.
17. Measures shall be promptly taken:
(a) to effect essential repair of transport;
(b) to enlarge coal production;
(c) to maximize agricultural output; and
(d) to erect emergency repair of housing and essential utilities.
18. Appropriate steps shall be taken by the Control Council to exercise control and the power of disposition over German- owned external assets not already under the control of United Nations which have taken part in the war against Germany.
19. Payment of Reparations should leave enough resources to enable the German people to subsist without external assistance. In working out the economic balance of Germany the necessary means must be provided to pay for imports approved by the Control Council in Germany. The proceeds of exports from current production and stocks shall be available in the first place for payment for such imports.
The above clause will not apply to the equipment and products referred to in paragraphs 4 (a) and 4 (b) of the Reparations Agreement.
III. REPARATIONS FROM GERMANY.
1. Reparation claims of the U.S.S.R. shall be met by removals from the zone of Germany occupied by the U.S.S.R., and from appropriate German external assets.
2. The U.S.S.R. undertakes to settle the reparation claims of Poland from its own share of reparations.
3. The reparation claims of the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries entitled to reparations shall be met from the Western Zones and from appropriate German external assets.
4. In addition to the reparations to be taken by the U.S.S.R. from its own zone of occupation, the U.S.S.R. shall receive additionally from the Western Zones:
(a) 15 per cent of such usable and complete industrial capital equipment, in the first place from the metallurgical, chemical and machine manufacturing industries as is unnecessary for the German peace economy and should be removed from the Western Zones of Germany, in exchange for an equivalent value of food, coal, potash, zinc, timber, clay products, petroleum products, and such other commodities as may be agreed upon.
(b) 10 per cent of such industrial capital equipment as is unnecessary for the German peace economy and should be removed from the Western Zones, to be transferred to the Soviet Government on reparations account without payment or exchange of any kind in return.
Removals of equipment as provided in (a) and (b) above shall be made simultaneously.
5. The amount of equipment to be removed from the Western Zones on account of reparations must be determined within six months from now at the latest.
6. Removals of industrial capital equipment shall begin as soon as possible and shall be completed within two years from the determination specified in paragraph 5. The delivery of products covered by 4 (a) above shall begin as soon as possible and shall be made by the U.S.S.R. in agreed installments within five years of the date hereof. The determination of the amount and character of the industrial capital equipment unnecessary for the German peace economy and therefore available for reparation shall be made by the Control Council under policies fixed by the Allied Commission on Reparations, with the participation of France, subject to the final approval of the Zone Commander in the Zone from which the equipment is to be removed.
7. Prior to the fixing of the total amount of equipment subject to removal, advance deliveries shall be made in respect to such equipment as will be determined to he eligible for delivery in accordance with the procedure set forth in the last sentence of paragraph 6.
8. The Soviet Government renounces all claims in respect of reparations to shares of German enterprises which are located in the Western Zones of Germany as well as to German foreign assets in all countries except those specified in paragraph 9 below.
9. The Governments of the U. K. and U.S. A. renounce all claims in respect of reparations to shares of German enterprises which are located in the Eastern Zone of occupation in Germany, as well as to German foreign assets in Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Rumania and Eastern Austria.
10. The Soviet Government makes no claims to gold captured by the Allied troops in Germany.
IV. DISPOSAL OF THE GERMAN NAVY AND MERCHANT MARINE
A. The following principles for the distribution of the German Navy were agreed:
(1) The total strength of the German surface navy, excluding ships sunk and those taken over from Allied Nations, but including ships under construction or repair, shall be divided equally among the U.S.S.R., U. K., and U.S. A.
(2) Ships under construction or repair mean those ships whose construction or repair may be completed within three to six months, according to the type of ship. Whether such ships under construction or repair shall be completed or repaired shall be determined by the technical commission appointed by the Three Powers and referred to below, subject to the principle that their completion or repair must be achieved within the time limits above provided, without any increase of skilled employment in the German shipyards and without permitting the reopening of any German ship building or connected industries. Completion date means the date when a ship is able to go out on its first trip, or, under peacetime standards, would refer to the customary date of delivery by shipyard to the Government.
(3) The larger part of the German submarine fleet shall be sunk. Not more than thirty submarines shall be preserved and divided equally between the U.S.S.R., U. K., and U.S. A. for experimental and technical purposes.
(4) All stocks of armament, ammunition and supplies of the German Navy appertaining to the vessels transferred pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (3) hereof shall be handed over to the respective powers receiving such ships.
(5) The Three Governments agree to constitute a tripartite naval commission comprising two representatives for each government, accompanied by the requisite staff, to submit agreed recommendations to the Three Governments for the allocation of specific German warships and to handle other detailed matters arising out of the agreement between the Three Governments regarding the German fleet. The Commission will hold its first meeting not later than 15th August, 1945, in Berlin, which shall be its headquarters. Each Delegation on the Commission will have the right on the basis of reciprocity to inspect German warships wherever they may be located.
(6) The Three Governments agreed that transfers, including those of ships under construction and repair, shall be completed as soon as possible, but not later than 15th February, 1946. The Commission will submit fortnightly reports, including proposals for the progressive allocation of the vessels when agreed by the Commission.
B. The following principles for the distribution of the German Merchant Marine were agreed:-
(1) The German Merchant Marine, surrendered to the Three Powers and wherever located, shall be divided equally among the U.S.S.R., the U. K., and the U.S. A. The actual transfers of the ships to the respective countries shall take place as soon as practicable after the end of the war against Japan. The United Kingdom and the United States will provide out of their shares of the surrendered German merchant ships appropriate amounts for other Allied States whose merchant marines have suffered heavy losses in the common cause against Germany, except that the Soviet Union shall provide out of its share for Poland.
(2) The allocation, manning, and operation of these ships during the Japanese War period shall fall under the cognizance and authority of the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board and the United Maritime Authority.
(3) While actual transfer of the ships shall be delayed until after the end of the war with Japan, a Tripartite Shipping Commission shall inventory and value all available ships and recommend a specific distribution in accordance with paragraph (1).
(4) German inland and coastal ships determined to be necessary to the maintenance of the basic German peace economy by the Allied Control Council of Germany shall not be included in the shipping pool thus divided among the Three Powers.
(5) The Three Governments agree to constitute a tripartite merchant marine commission comprising two representatives for each Government, accompanied by the requisite staff, to submit agreed recommendations to the Three Governments for the allocation of specific German merchant ships and to handle other detailed matters arising out of the agreement between the Three Governments regarding the German merchant ships. The Commission will hold its first meeting not later than September 1st, 1945, in Berlin, which shall be its headquarters. Each delegation on the Commission will have the right on the basis of reciprocity to inspect the German merchant ships wherever they may be located.
V. CITY 0F KOENIGSBERG AND THE ADJACENT AREA.
The Conference examined a proposal by the Soviet Government to the effect that pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement, the section of the western frontier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which is adjacent to the Baltic Sea should pass from a point on the eastern shore of the Bay of Danzig to the east, north of Braunsberg-Goldap, to the meeting point of the frontiers of Lithuania, the Polish Republic and East Prussia.
The Conference has agreed in principle to the proposal of the Soviet Government concerning the ultimate transfer to the Soviet Union of the City of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it as described above subject to expert examination of the actual frontier.
The President of the United States and the British Prime Minister have declared that they will support the proposal of the Conference at the forthcoming peace settlement.
VI. WAR CRIMINALS.
The Three Governments have taken note of the discussions which have been proceeding in recent weeks in London between British, United States, Soviet and French representatives with a view to reaching agreement on the methods of trial of those major war criminals whose crimes under the Moscow Declaration of October, 1943 have no particular geographical localization. The Three Governments reaffirm their intention to bring these criminals to swift and sure justice. They hope that the negotiations in London will result in speedy agreement being reached for this purpose, and they regard it as a matter of great importance that the trial of these major criminals should begin at the earliest possible date. The first list of defendants will be published before 1st September.
VII. AUSTRIA.
The Conference examined a proposal by the Soviet Government on the extension of the authority of the Austrian Provisional Government to all of Austria.
The three governments agreed that they were prepared to examine this question after the entry of the British and American forces into the city of Vienna.
It was agreed that reparations should not be exacted from Austria.
VIII. POLAND.
A. DECLARATION.
We have taken note with pleasure of the agreement reached among representative Poles from Poland and abroad which has made possible the formation, in accordance with the decisions reached at the Crimea Conference, of a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity recognized by the Three Powers. The establishment by the British and United States Governments of diplomatic relations with the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity has resulted in the withdrawal of their recognition from the former Polish Government in London, which no longer exists.
The British and United States Governments have taken measures to protect the interest of the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity as the recognized government of the Polish State in the property belonging to the Polish State located in their territories and under their control, whatever the form of this property may be. They have further taken measures to prevent alienation to third parties of such property. All proper facilities will be given to the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity for the exercise of the ordinary legal remedies for the recovery of any property belonging to the Polish State which may have been wrongfully alienated.
The Three Powers are anxious to assist the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity in facilitating the return to Poland as soon as practicable of all Poles abroad who wish to go, including members of the Polish Armed Forces and the Merchant Marine. They expect that those Poles who return home shall be accorded personal and property rights on the same basis as all Polish citizens
The Three Powers note that the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity, in accordance with the decisions of the Crimea Conference, has agreed to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot in which all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates, and that representatives of the Allied press shall enjoy full freedom to report to the world upon developments in Poland before and during the elections.
B. WESTERN FRONTIER OF POLAND.
In conformity with the agreement on Poland reached at the Crimea Conference the three Heads of Government have sought the opinion of the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity in regard to the accession of territory in the north 'end west which Poland should receive. The President of the National Council of Poland and members of the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity have been received at the Conference and have fully presented their views. The three Heads of Government reaffirm their opinion that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the peace settlement.
The three Heads of Government agree that, pending the final determination of Poland's western frontier, the former German territories cast of a line running from the Baltic Sea immediately west of Swinamunde, and thence along the Oder River to the confluence of the western Neisse River and along the Western Neisse to the Czechoslovak frontier, including that portion of East Prussia not placed under the administration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in accordance with the understanding reached at this conference and including the area of the former free city of Danzig, shall be under the administration of the Polish State and for such purposes should not be considered as part of the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.
IX. CONCLUSION on PEACE TREATIES AND ADMISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION.
The three Governments consider it desirable that the present anomalous position of Italy, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and Rumania should be terminated by the conclusion of Peace Treaties. They trust that the other interested Allied Governments will share these views.
For their part the three Governments have included the preparation of a Peace Treaty for Italy as the first among the immediate important tasks to be undertaken by the new Council of Foreign Ministers. Italy was the first of the Axis Powers to break with Germany, to whose defeat she has made a material contribution, and has now joined with the Allies in the struggle against Japan. Italy has freed herself from the Fascist regime and is making good progress towards reestablishment of a democratic government and institutions. The conclusion of such a Peace Treaty with a recognized and democratic Italian Government will make it possible for the three Governments to fulfill their desire to support an application from Italy for membership of the United Nations.
The three Governments have also charged the Council of Foreign Ministers with the task of preparing Peace Treaties for Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and Rumania. The conclusion of Peace Treaties with recognized democratic governments in these States will also enable the three Governments to support applications from them for membership of the United Nations. The three Governments agree to examine each separately in the near future in the light of the conditions then prevailing, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Finland, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary to the extent possible prior to the conclusion of peace treaties with those countries.
The three Governments have no doubt that in view of the changed conditions resulting from the termination of the war in Europe, representatives of the Allied press will enjoy full freedom to report to the world upon developments in Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland.
As regards the admission of other States into the United Nations Organization, Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations declares that:
1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving States who accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations;
2. The admission of any such State to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
The three Governments, so far as they are concerned, will support applications for membership from those States which have remained neutral during the war and which fulfill the qualifications set out above.
The three Governments feel bound however to make it clear that they for their part would not favour any application for membership put forward by the present Spanish Government, which, having been founded with the support of the Axis Powers, does not, in view of its origins, its nature, its record and its close association with the aggressor States, possess the qualifications necessary to justify such membership.
X. TERRITORIAL TRUSTEESHIP.
The Conference examined a proposal by the Soviet Government on the question of trusteeship territories as defined in the decision of the Crimea Conference and in the Charter of the United Nations Organization.
After an exchange of views on this question it was decided that the disposition of any former Italian colonial territories was one to be decided in connection with the preparation of a peace treaty for Italy and that the question of Italian colonial territory would be considered by the September Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs.
XI. REVISED ALLIED CONTROL COMMISSION PROCEDURE IN RUMANIA, BULGARIA, AND HUNGARY.
The three Governments took note that the Soviet Representatives on the Allied Control Commissions in Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, have communicated to their United Kingdom and United States colleagues proposals for improving the work of the Control Commissions, now that hostilities in Europe have ceased.
The three Governments agreed that the revision of the procedures of the Allied Control Commissions in these countries would now be undertaken, taking into account the interests and responsibilities of the three Governments which together presented the terms of armistice to the respective countries, and accepting as a basis, in respect of all three countries, the Soviet Government's proposals for Hungary as annexed hereto. (Annex I)
XII. ORDERLY TRANSFER OF GERMAN POPULATIONS.
The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.
Since the influx of a large number of Germans into Germany would increase the burden already resting on the occupying authorities, they consider that the Control Council in Germany should in the first instance examine the problem, with special regard to the question of the equitable distribution of these Germans among the several zones of occupation. They are accordingly instructing their respective representatives on the Control Council to report to their Governments as soon as possible the extent to which such persons have already entered Germany from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, to submit an estimate of the time and rate at which further transfers could be carried out having regard to the present situation in Germany.
The Czechoslovak Government, the Polish Provisional Government and the Control Council in Hungary are at the same time being informed of the above and are being requested meanwhile to suspend further expulsions pending an examination by the Governments concerned of the report from their representatives on the Control Council.
XIII. OIL EQUIPMENT IN RUMANIA.
The Conference agreed to set up two bilateral commissions of experts, one to be composed of United Kingdom and Soviet Members and one to be composed of United States and Soviet Members, to investigate the facts and examine the documents, as a basis for the settlement of questions arising from the removal of oil equipment in Rumania. It was further agreed that these experts shall begin their work within ten days, on the spot.
XIV. IRAN.
It was agreed that Allied troops should be withdrawn immediately from Tehran, and that further stages of the withdrawal of troops from Iran should be considered at the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers to be held in London in September, 1945.
XV. THE INTERNATIONAL ZONE OF TANGIER.
A proposal by the Soviet Government was examined and the following decisions were reached:
Having examined the question of the Zone of Tangier, the three Governments have agreed that this Zone, which includes the City of Tangier and the area adjacent to it, in view of its special strategic importance, shall remain international.
The question of Tangier will be discussed in the near future at a meeting in Paris of representatives of the Governments of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France.
XVI. THE BLACK SEA STRAITS.
The Three Governments recognized that the Convention concluded at Montreux should be revised as failing to meet present-day conditions.
It was agreed that as the next step the matter should be the subject of direct conversations between each of the three Governments and the Turkish Government.
XVII. INTERNATIONAL INLAND WATERWAYS.
The Conference considered a proposal of the U.S. Delegation on this subject and agreed to refer it for consideration to the forthcoming meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London.
XVIII. EUROPEAN INLAND TRANSPORT CONFERENCE.
The British and U.S. Delegations to the Conference informed the Soviet Delegation of the desire of the British and U.S. Governments to reconvene the European Inland Transport Conference and stated that they would welcome assurance that the Soviet Government would participate in the work of the reconvened conference. The Soviet Government agreed that it would participate in this conference.
XIX. DIRECTIVES TO MILITARY COMMANDERS ON ALLIED CONTROL COUNCIL FOR GERMANY.
The Three Governments agreed that each would send a directive to its representative on the Control Council for Germany informing him of all decisions of the Conference affecting matters within the scope of his duties.
XX. USE OF ALLIED PROPERTY FOR SATELLITE REPARATIONS OR WAR TROPHIES .
The proposal (Annex II) presented by the United States Delegation was accepted in principle by the Conference, but the drafting of an agreement on the matter was left to be worked out through diplomatic channels.
XXI. MILITARY TALKS.
During the Conference there were meetings between the Chiefs of Staff of the Three Governments on military matters of common interest.
ANNEX I
TEXT OF A LETTER TRANSMITTED ON JULY 12 TO THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE U.S. AND U. K. GOVERNMENTS ON THE ALLIED CONTROL COMMISSION IN HUNGARY.
In view of the changed situation in connection with the termination of the war against Germany, the Soviet Government finds it necessary to establish the following order of work for the Allied Control Commission in Hungary.
1. During the period up to the conclusion of peace with Hungary the President (or Vice-President) of the ACC will regularly call conferences with the British and American representatives for the purpose of discussing the most important questions relating to the work of the ACC. The conferences will be called once in 10 days, or more frequently in case of need.
Directives of the ACC on questions or principle will be issued to the Hungarian authorities by the President of the Allied Control Commission after agreement on these directives with the English and American representatives.
2. The British and American representatives in the ACC will take part in general conferences of heads of divisions and delegates of the ACC, convoked by the President of the ACC, which meetings will be regular in nature. The British and American representatives will also participate personally or through their representatives in appropriate instances in mixed commissions created by the President of the ACC for questions connected with the execution by the ACC of its functions
3. Free movement by the American and British representatives in the country will be permitted provided that the ACC is previously informed of the time and route of the journeys.
4. All questions connected with permission for the entrance and exit of members of the staff of the British and American representatives in Hungary will be decided on the spot by the President of the ACC within a time limit of not more than one week.
5. The bringing in and sending out by plane of mail, cargoes and diplomatic couriers will be carried out by the British and American representatives on the ACC under arrangements and within time limits established by the ACC, or in special cases by previous coordination with the President of the ACC.
I consider it necessary to add to the above that in all other points the existing Statutes regarding the ACC in Hungary, which was confirmed on January 20, 1945, shall remain in force in the future.
ANNEX II
USE OF ALLIED PROPERTY FOR SATELITE REPARATIONS OR WAR TROPHIES
1. The burden of reparation and "war trophies" should not fall on Allied nationals.
2. Capital Equipment-We object to the removal of such Allied property as reparations, "war trophies", or under any other guise. Loss would accrue to Allied nationals as a result of destruction of plants and the consequent loss of markets and trading connections. Seizure of Allied property makes impossible the fulfillment by the satellite of its obligation under the armistice to restore intact the rights and interests of the Allied Nations and their nationals.
The United States looks to the other occupying powers for the return of any equipment already removed and the cessation of removals. Where such equipment will not or cannot be returned, the U.S. will demand of the satellite adequate, effective and prompt compensation to American nationals, and that such compensation have priority equal to that of the reparations payment.
These principles apply to all property wholly or substantially owned by Allied nationals. In the event of removals of property in which the American as well as the entire Allied interest is less than substantial, the U.S. expects adequate, effective, and prompt compensation.
3. Current Production-While the U.S. does not oppose reparation out of current production of Allied investments, the satellite must provide immediate and adequate compensation to the Allied nationals including sufficient foreign exchange or products so that they can recover reasonable foreign currency expenditures and transfer a reasonable return on their investment. Such compensation must also have equal priority with reparations.
We deem it essential that the satellites not conclude treaties, agreements or arrangements which deny to Allied nationals access, on equal terms, to their trade, raw materials and industry; and appropriately- modify any existing arrangements which may have that effect.
(b)Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, July 26, 1945
(1) We-The President of the United States, the President of the National Government of the Republic of China, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, representing the hundreds of millions of our countrymen, have conferred and agree that Japan shall be given an opportunity to end this war.
(2) The prodigious land, sea and air forces of the United States, the British Empire and of China, many times reinforced by their armies and air fleets from the west, are poised to strike the final blows upon Japan. This military power is sustained and inspired by the determination of all the Allied Nations to prosecute the war against Japan until she ceases to resist.
(3) The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan. The might that now converges on Japan is immeasurably greater than that which, when applied to the resisting Nazis, necessarily laid waste to the lands, the industry and the method of life of the whole German people. The full application of our military power, backed by our resolve, All mean the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.
(4) The time has come for Japan to decide whether she will continue to be controlled by those self-willed militaristic advisers whose unintelligent calculations have brought the Empire of Japan to the threshold of annihilation, or whether she will follow the path of reason.
(5) Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay.
(6) There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest, for we insist that a new order of peace security and justice will be impossible until irresponsible militarism is driven from the world.
(7) Until such a new order is established and until there is convincing proof that Japan's war-making power is destroyed, points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies shall be occupied to secure the achievement of the basic objectives we are here setting forth.
(8) The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine.
(9) The Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, shall be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and productive lives.
(10) We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners. The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.
(11) Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those [industries] which would enable her to re-arm for war. To this end, access to, as distinguished from control of, raw materials shall be permitted. Eventual Japanese participation in world trade relations shall be permitted.
(12) The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.
(13) We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.
Source: A Decade of American Foreign Policy : Basic Documents, 1941-49 Prepared at the request of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations By the Staff of the Committee and the Department of State. Washington, DC : Government Printing Office, 1950
The United Nations was established after World War II in an attempt to maintain international peace and security, and to achieve cooperation among nations on economic, social and humanitarian problems.
The U.N. charter, the organization's governing treaty, was drawn up in spring 1945 by the representatives of 50 countries at a conference in San Francisco. The charter was officially signed on June 26, 1945. Poland was not represented at the conference but ratified the charter shortly afterward. It is considered one of the original 51 member states.
The U.N. officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, and has since grown to 185 members. The U.N. charter has been amended to reflect the growing membership.
United Nations Charter
PREAMBLE
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.
CHAPTER I: PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSES
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.
CHAPTER II: MEMBERSHIP
Article 3
The original Members of the United Nations shall be the states which, having participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco, or having previously signed the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, sign the present Charter and ratify it in accordance with Article 110.
Article 4
1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgement of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Article 5
A Member of the United Nations against which preventive or enforcement action has been taken by the Security Council may be suspended from the exercise of the rights and privileges of membership by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. The exercise of these rights and privileges may be restored by the Security Council.
Article 6
A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
CHAPTER III: ORGANS
Article 7
1. There are established as the principal organs of the United Nations: a General Assembly, a Security Council, an Economic and Social Council, a Trusteeship Council, an International Court of Justice, and a Secretariat.
2. Such subsidiary organs as may be found necessary may be established in accordance with the present Charter.
Article 8
The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs.
CHAPTER IV: THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
COMPOSITION
Article 9
1. The General Assembly shall consist of all the Members of the United Nations.
2. Each Member shall have not more than five representatives in the General Assembly.
FUNCTIONS AND POWERS
Article 10
The General Assembly may discuss any questions or any matters within the scope of the present Charter or relating to the powers and functions of any organs provided for in the present Charter, and, except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations to the Members of the United Nations or to the Security Council or to both on any such questions or matters.
Article 11
1. The General Assembly may consider the general principles of co-operation in the maintenance of international peace and security, including the principles governing disarmament and the regulation of armaments, and may make recommendations with regard to such principles to the Members or to the Security Council or to both.
2. The General Assembly may discuss any questions relating to the maintenance of international peace and security brought before it by any Member of the United Nations, or by the Security Council, or by a state which is not a Member of the United Nations in accordance with Article 35, paragraph 2, and, except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations with regard to any such questions to the state or states concerned or to the Security Council or to both. Any such question on which action is necessary shall be referred to the Security Council by the General Assembly either before or after discussion.
3. The General Assembly may call the attention of the Security Council to situations which are likely to endanger international peace and security.
4. The powers of the General Assembly set forth in this Article shall not limit the general scope of Article 10.
Article 12
1. While the Security Council is exercising in respect of any dispute or situation the functions assigned to it in the present Charter, the General Assembly shall not make any recommendation with regard to that dispute or situation unless the Security Council so requests.
2. The Secretary-General, with the consent of the Security Council, shall notify the General Assembly at each session of any matters relative to the maintenance of international peace and security which are being dealt with by the Security Council and shall similarly notify the General Assembly, or the Members of the United Nations if the General Assembly is not in session, immediately the Security Council ceases to deal with such matters.
Article 13
1. The General Assembly shall initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of:
a. promoting international co-operation in the political field and encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification;
b. promoting international co-operation in the economic, social, cultural, educational, and health fields, and assisting in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.
2. The further responsibilities, functions and powers of the General Assembly with respect to matters mentioned in paragraph 1 (b) above are set forth in Chapters IX and X.
Article 14
Subject to the provisions of Article 12, the General Assembly may recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations among nations, including situations resulting from a violation of the provisions of the present Charter setting forth the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.
Article 15
1. The General Assembly shall receive and consider annual and special reports from the Security Council; these reports shall include an account of the measures that the Security Council has decided upon or taken to maintain international peace and security.
2. The General Assembly shall receive and consider reports from the other organs of the United Nations.
Article 16
The General Assembly shall perform such functions with respect to the international trusteeship system as are assigned to it under Chapters XII and XIII, including the approval of the trusteeship agreements for areas not designated as strategic.
Article 17
1. The General Assembly shall consider and approve the budget of the Organization.
2. The expenses of the Organization shall be borne by the Members as apportioned by the General Assembly.
3. The General Assembly shall consider and approve any financial and budgetary arrangements with specialized agencies referred to in Article 57 and shall examine the administrative budgets of such specialized agencies with a view to making recommendations to the agencies concerned.
VOTING
Article 18
1. Each member of the General Assembly shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the General Assembly on important questions shall be made by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting. These questions shall include: recommendations with respect to the maintenance of international peace and security, the election of the non-permanent members of the Security Council, the election of the members of the Economic and Social Council, the election of members of the Trusteeship Council in accordance with paragraph 1 (c) of Article 86, the admission of new Members to the United Nations, the suspension of the rights and privileges of membership, the expulsion of Members, questions relating to the operation of the trusteeship system, and budgetary questions.
3. Decisions on other questions, including the determination of additional categories of questions to be decided by a two-thirds majority, shall be made by a majority of the members present and voting.
Article 19
A Member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years. The General Assembly may, nevertheless, permit such a Member to vote if it is satisfied that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the Member.
PROCEDURE
Article 20
The General Assembly shall meet in regular annual sessions and in such special sessions as occasion may require. Special sessions shall be convoked by the Secretary-General at the request of the Security Council or of a majority of the Members of the United Nations.
Article 21
The General Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure. It shall elect its President for each session.
Article 22
The General Assembly may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions.
CHAPTER V: THE SECURITY COUNCIL
COMPOSITION
Article 23
1. The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council. The General Assembly shall elect ten other Members of the United Nations to be non-permanent members of the Security Council, due regard being specially paid, in the first instance to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution.
2. The non-permanent members of the Security Council shall be elected for a term of two years. In the first election of the non-permanent members after the increase of the membership of the Security Council from eleven to fifteen, two of the four additional members shall be chosen for a term of one year. A retiring member shall not be eligible for immediate re-election.
3. Each member of the Security Council shall have one representative.
FUNCTIONS AND POWERS
Article 24
1. In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations, its Members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf.
2. In discharging these duties the Security Council shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations. The specific powers granted to the Security Council for the discharge of these duties are laid down in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and XII.
3. The Security Council shall submit annual and, when necessary, special reports to the General Assembly for its consideration.
Article 25
The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.
Article 26
In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating, with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee referred to in Article 47, plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments.
VOTING
Article 27
1. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.
3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.
PROCEDURE
Article 28
1. The Security Council shall be so organized as to be able to function continuously. Each member of the Security Council shall for this purpose be represented at all times at the seat of the Organization.
2. The Security Council shall hold periodic meetings at which each of its members may, if it so desires, be represented by a member of the government or by some other specially designated representative.
3. The Security Council may hold meetings at such places other than the seat of the Organization as in its judgement will best facilitate its work.
Article 29
The Security Council may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions.
Article 30
The Security Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President.
Article 31
Any Member of the United Nations which is not a member of the Security Council may participate, without vote, in the discussion of any question brought before the Security Council whenever the latter considers that the interests of that Member are specially affected.
Article 32
Any Member of the United Nations which is not a member of the Security Council or any state which is not a Member of the United Nations, if it is a party to a dispute under consideration by the Security Council, shall be invited to participate, without vote, in the discussion relating to the dispute. The Security Council shall lay down such conditions as it deems just for the participation of a state which is not a Member of the United Nations.
CHAPTER VI: PACIFIC SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES
Article 33
1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.
2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.
Article 34
The Security Council may investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.
Article 35
1. Any Member of the United Nations may bring any dispute, or any situation of the nature referred to in Article 34, to the attention of the Security Council or of the General Assembly.
2. A state which is not a Member of the United Nations may bring to the attention of the Security Council or of the General Assembly any dispute to which it is a party if it accepts in advance, for the purposes of the dispute, the obligations of pacific settlement provided in the present Charter.
3. The proceedings of the General Assembly in respect of matters brought to its attention under this Article will be subject to the provisions of Articles 11 and 12.
Article 36
1. The Security Council may, at any stage of a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 or of a situation of like nature, recommend appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment.
2. The Security Council should take into consideration any procedures for the settlement of the dispute which have already been adopted by the parties.
3. In making recommendations under this Article the Security Council should also take into consideration that legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties to the International Court of Justice in accordance with the provisions of the Statute of the Court.
Article 37
1. Should the parties to a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 fail to settle it by the means indicated in that Article, they shall refer it to the Security Council.
2. If the Security Council deems that the continuance of the dispute is in fact likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, it shall decide whether to take action under Article 36 or to recommend such terms of settlement as it may consider appropriate.
Article 38
Without prejudice to the provisions of Articles 33 to 37, the Security Council may, if all the parties to any dispute so request, make recommendations to the parties with a view to a pacific settlement of the dispute.
CHAPTER VII: ACTIONS WITH RESPECT TO THREATS TO THE PEACE, BREACHES OF THE PEACE, AND ACTS OF AGGRESSION
Article 39
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article 40
In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.
Article 41
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
Article 42
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.
Article 43
1. All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.
2. Such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types of forces, their degree of readiness and general location, and the nature of the facilities and assistance to be provided.
3. The agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as possible on the initiative of the Security Council. They shall be concluded between the Security Council and Members or between the Security Council and groups of Members and shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.
Article 44
When the Security Council has decided to use force it shall, before calling upon a Member not represented on it to provide armed forces in fulfilment of the obligations assumed under Article 43, invite that Member, if the Member so desires, to participate in the decisions of the Security Council concerning the employment of contingents of that Member's armed forces.
Article 45
In order to enable the United Nations to take urgent military measures, Members shall hold immediately available national air-force contingents for combined international enforcement action. The strength and degree of readiness of these contingents and plans for their combined action shall be determined within the limits laid down in the special agreement or agreements referred to in Article 43, by the Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.
Article 46
Plans for the application of armed force shall be made by the Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.
Article 47
1. There shall be established a Military Staff Committee to advise and assist the Security Council on all questions relating to the Security Council's military requirements for the maintenance of international peace and security, the employment and command of forces placed at its disposal, the regulation of armaments, and possible disarmament.
2. The Military Staff Committee shall consist of the Chiefs of Staff of the permanent members of the Security Council or their representatives. Any Member of the United Nations not permanently represented on the Committee shall be invited by the Committee to be associated with it when the efficient discharge of the Committee's responsibilities requires the participation of that Member in its work.
3. The Military Staff Committee shall be responsible under the Security Council for the strategic direction of any armed forces placed at the disposal of the Security Council. Questions relating to the command of such forces shall be worked out subsequently.
4. The Military Staff Committee, with the authorization of the Security Council and after consultation with appropriate regional agencies, may establish regional sub-committees.
Article 48
1. The action required to carry out the decisions of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security shall be taken by all the Members of the United Nations or by some of them, as the Security Council may determine.
2. Such decisions shall be carried out by the Members of the United Nations directly and through their action in the appropriate international agencies of which they remembers.
Article 49
The Members of the United Nations shall join in affording mutual assistance in carrying out the measures decided upon by the Security Council.
Article 50
If preventive or enforcement measures against any state are taken by the Security Council, any other state, whether a Member of the United Nations or not, which finds itself confronted with special economic problems arising from the carrying out of those measures shall have the right to consult the Security Council with regard to a solution of those problems.
Article 51
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
CHAPTER VIII: REGIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
Article 52
1. Nothing in the present Charter precludes the existence of regional arrangements or agencies for dealing with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security as are appropriate for regional action provided that such arrangements or agencies and their activities are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.
2. The Members of the United Nations entering into such arrangements or constituting such agencies shall make every effort to achieve pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies before referring them to the Security Council.
3. The Security Council shall encourage the development of pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies either on the initiative of the states concerned or by reference from the Security Council.
4. This Article in no way impairs the application of Articles 34 and 35.
Article 53
1. The Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilize such regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority. But no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council, with the exception of measures against any enemy state, as defined in paragraph 2 of this Article, provided for pursuant to Article 107 or in regional arrangements directed against renewal of aggressive policy on the part of any such state, until such time as the Organization may, on request of the Governments concerned, be charged with the responsibility for preventing further aggression by such a state.
2. The term enemy state as used in paragraph 1 of this Article applies to any state which during the Second World War has been an enemy of any signatory of the present Charter.
Article 54
The Security Council shall at all times be kept fully informed of activities undertaken or in contemplation under regional arrangements or by regional agencies for the maintenance of international peace and security.
CHAPTER IX: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COOPERATION
Article 55
With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, the United Nations shall promote:
a. higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development;
b. solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational cooperation; and
c. universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.
Article 56
All Members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in co-operation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55.
Article 57
1. The various specialized agencies, established by intergovernmental agreement and having wide international responsibilities, as defined in their basic instruments, in economic, social, cultural, educational, health, and related fields, shall be brought into relationship with the United Nations in accordance with the provisions of Article 63.
2. Such agencies thus brought into relationship with the United Nations are hereinafter referred to as specialized agencies.
Article 58
The Organization shall make recommendations for the co-ordination of the policies and activities of the specialized agencies.
Article 59
The Organization shall, where appropriate, initiate negotiations among the states concerned for the creation of any new specialized agencies required for the accomplishment of the purposes set forth in Article 55.
Article 60
Responsibility for the discharge of the functions of the Organization set forth in this Chapter shall be vested in the General Assembly and, under the authority of the General Assembly, in the Economic and Social Council, which shall have for this purpose the powers set forth in Chapter X.
CHAPTER X: THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL
COMPOSITION
Article 61
1. The Economic and Social Council shall consist of fifty-four Members of the United Nations elected by the General Assembly.
2. Subject to the provisions of paragraph 3, eighteen members of the Economic and Social Council shall be elected each year for a term of three years. A retiring member shall be eligible for immediate re-election.
3. At the first election after the increase in the membership of the Economic and Social Council from twenty-seven to fifty-four members, in addition to the members elected in place of the nine members whose term of office expires at the end of that year, twenty-seven additional members shall be elected. Of these twenty-seven additional members, the term of office of nine members so elected shall expire at the end of one year, and of nine other members at the end of two years, in accordance with arrangements made by the General Assembly.
4. Each member of the Economic and Social Council shall have one representative.
FUNCTIONS AND POWERS
Article 62
1. The Economic and Social Council may make or initiate studies and reports with respect to international economic, social, cultural, educational, health, and related matters and may make recommendations with respect to any such matters to the General Assembly to the Members of the United Nations, and to the specialized agencies concerned.
2. It may make recommendations for the purpose of promoting respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.
3. It may prepare draft conventions for submission to the General Assembly, with respect to matters falling within its competence.
4. It may call, in accordance with the rules prescribed by the United Nations, international conferences on matters falling within its competence.
Article 63
1. The Economic and Social Council may enter into agreements with any of the agencies referred to in Article 57, defining the terms on which the agency concerned shall be brought into relationship with the United Nations. Such agreements shall be subject to approval by the General Assembly.
2. It may co-ordinate the activities of the specialized agencies through consultation with and recommendations to such agencies and through recommendations to the General Assembly and to the Members of the United Nations.
Article 64
1. The Economic and Social Council may take appropriate steps to obtain regular reports from the specialized agencies. It may make arrangements with the Members of the United Nations and with the specialized agencies to obtain reports on the steps taken to give effect to its own recommendations and to recommendations on matters falling within its competence made by the General Assembly.
2. It may communicate its observations on these reports to the General Assembly.
Article 65
The Economic and Social Council may furnish information to the Security Council and shall assist the Security Council upon its request.
Article 66
1. The Economic and Social Council shall perform such functions as fall within its competence in connexion with the carrying out of the recommendations of the General Assembly.
2. It may, with the approval of the General Assembly, perform services at the request of Members of the United Nations and at the request of specialized agencies.
3. It shall perform such other functions as are specified elsewhere in the present Charter or as may be assigned to it by the General Assembly.
VOTING
Article 67
1. Each member of the Economic and Social Council shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the Economic and Social Council shall be made by a majority of the members present and voting.
PROCEDURE
Article 68
The Economic and Social Council shall set up commissions in economic and social fields and for the promotion of human rights, and such other commissions as may be required for the performance of its functions.
Article 69
The Economic and Social Council shall invite any Member of the United Nations to participate, without vote, in its deliberations on any matter of particular concern to that Member.
Article 70
The Economic and Social Council may make arrangements for representatives of the specialized agencies to participate, without vote, in its deliberations and in those of the commissions established by it, and for its representatives to participate in the deliberations of the specialized agencies.
Article 71
The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations and, where appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of the United Nations concerned.
Article 72
1. The Economic and Social Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President.
2. The Economic and Social Council shall meet as required in accordance with its rules, which shall include provision for the convening of meetings on the request of a majority of its members.
CHAPTER XI: DECLARATION REGARDING NON-SELF GOVERNING TERRITORIES
Article 73
Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:
a. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses;
b. to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement;
c. to further international peace and security;
d. to promote constructive measures of development, to encourage research, and to co-operate with one another and, when and where appropriate, with specialized international bodies with a view to the practical achievement of the social, economic, and scientific purposes set forth in this Article; and
e. to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply.
Article 74
Members of the United Nations also agree that their policy in respect of the territories to which this Chapter applies, no less than in respect of their metropolitan areas, must be based on the general principle of good-neighbourliness, due account being taken of the interests and well-being of the rest of the world, in social, economic, and commercial matters.
CHAPTER XII: INTERNATIONAL TRUSTEESHIP SYSTEM
Article 75
The United Nations shall establish under its authority an international trusteeship system for the administration and supervision of such territories as may be placed thereunder by subsequent individual agreements. These territories are hereinafter referred to as trust territories.
Article 76
The basic objectives of the trusteeship system, in accordance with the Purposes of the United Nations laid down in Article 1 of the present Charter, shall be:
a. to further international peace and security;
b. to promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned, and as may be provided by the terms of each trusteeship agreement;
c. to encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion, and to encourage recognition of the interdependence of the peoples of the world; and
d. to ensure equal treatment in social, economic, and commercial matters for all Members of the United Nations and their nationals, and also equal treatment for the latter in the administration of justice, without prejudice to the attainment of the foregoing objectives and subject to the provisions of Article 80.
Article 77
1. The trusteeship system shall apply to such territories in the following categories as may be placed thereunder by means of trusteeship agreements:
a. territories now held under mandate;
b. territories which may be detached from enemy states as a result of the Second World War; and
c. territories voluntarily placed under the system by states responsible for their administration.
2. It will be a matter for subsequent agreement as to which territories in the foregoing categories will be brought under the trusteeship system and upon what terms.
Article 78
The trusteeship system shall not apply to territories which have become Members of the United Nations, relationship among which shall be based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality.
Article 79
The terms of trusteeship for each territory to be placed under the trusteeship system, including any alteration or amendment, shall be agreed upon by the states directly concerned, including the mandatory power in the case of territories held under mandate by a Member of the United Nations, and shall be approved as provided for in Articles 83 and 85.
Article 80
1. Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.
2. Paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be interpreted as giving grounds for delay or postponement of the negotiation and conclusion of agreements for placing mandated and other territories under the trusteeship system as provided for in Article 77.
Article 81
The trusteeship agreement shall in each case include the terms under which the trust territory will be administered and designate the authority which will exercise the administration of the trust territory. Such authority, hereinafter called the administering authority, may be one or more states or the Organization itself.
Article 82
There may be designated, in any trusteeship agreement, a strategic area or areas which may include part or all of the trust territory to which the agreement applies, without prejudice to any special agreement or agreements made under Article 43.
Article 83
1. All functions of the United Nations relating to strategic areas, including the approval of the terms of the trusteeship agreements and of their alteration or amendment shall be exercised by the Security Council.
2. The basic objectives set forth in Article 76 shall be applicable to the people of each strategic area.
3. The Security Council shall, subject to the provisions of the trusteeship agreements and without prejudice to security considerations, avail itself of the assistance of the Trusteeship Council to perform those functions of the United Nations under the trusteeship system relating to political, economic, social, and educational matters in the strategic areas.
Article 84
It shall be the duty of the administering authority to ensure that the trust territory shall play its part in the maintenance of international peace and security. To this end the administering authority may make use of volunteer forces, facilities, and assistance from the trust territory in carrying out the obligations towards the Security Council undertaken in this regard by the administering authority, as well as for local defence and the maintenance of law and order within the trust territory.
Article 85
1. The functions of the United Nations with regard to trusteeship agreements for all areas not designated as strategic, including the approval of the terms of the trusteeship agreements and of their alteration or amendment, shall be exercised by the General Assembly.
2. The Trusteeship Council, operating under the authority of the General Assembly shall assist the General Assembly in carrying out these functions.
CHAPTER XIII: THE TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL
COMPOSITION
Article 86
1. The Trusteeship Council shall consist of the following Members of the United Nations:
a. those Members administering trust territories;
b. such of those Members mentioned by name in Article 23 as are not administering trust territories; and
c. as many other Members elected for three-year terms by the General Assembly as may be necessary to ensure that the total number of members of the Trusteeship Council is equally divided between those Members of the United Nations which administer trust territories and those which do not.
2. Each member of the Trusteeship Council shall designate one specially qualified person to represent it therein.
FUNCTIONS AND POWERS
Article 87
The General Assembly and, under its authority, the Trusteeship Council, in carrying out their functions, may:
a. consider reports submitted by the administering authority;
b. accept petitions and examine them in consultation with the administering authority;
c. provide for periodic visits to the respective trust territories at times agreed upon with the administering authority; and
d. take these and other actions in conformity with the terms of the trusteeship agreements.
Article 88
The Trusteeship Council shall formulate a questionnaire on the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of each trust territory, and the administering authority for each trust territory within the competence of the General Assembly shall make an annual report to the General Assembly upon the basis of such questionnaire.
VOTING
Article 89
1. Each member of the Trusteeship Council shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the Trusteeship Council shall be made by a majority of the members present and voting.
PROCEDURE
Article 90
1. The Trusteeship Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President.
2. The Trusteeship Council shall meet as required in accordance with its rules, which shall include provision for the convening of meetings on the request of a majority of its members.
Article 91
The Trusteeship Council shall, when appropriate, avail itself of the assistance of the Economic and Social Council and of the specialized agencies in regard to matters with which they are respectively concerned.
CHAPTER XIV: THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
Article 92
The International Court of Justice shall be the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It shall function in accordance with the annexed Statute, which is based upon the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice and forms an integral part of the present Charter.
Article 93
1. All Members of the United Nations are ipso facto parties to the Statute of the International Court of Justice.
2. A state which is not a Member of the United Nations may become a party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice on conditions to be determined in each case by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Article 94
1. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the International Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party.
2. If any party to a case fails to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgement rendered by the Court, the other party may have recourse to the Security Council, which may, if it deems necessary, make recommendations or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the judgement.
Article 95
Nothing in the present Charter shall prevent Members of the United Nations from entrusting the solution of their differences to other tribunals by virtue of agreements already in existence or which may be concluded in the future.
Article 96
1. The General Assembly or the Security Council may request the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on any legal question.
2. Other organs of the United Nations and specialized agencies, which may at any time be so authorized by the General Assembly, may also request advisory opinions of the Court on legal questions arising within the scope of their activities.
CHAPTER XV: THE SECRETARIAT
Article 97
The Secretariat shall comprise a Secretary-General and such staff as the Organization may require. The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. He shall be the chief administrative officer of the Organization.
Article 98
The Secretary-General shall act in that capacity in all meetings of the General Assembly, of the Security Council, of the Economic and Social Council, and of the Trusteeship Council, and shall perform such other functions as are entrusted to him by these organs. The Secretary-General shall make an annual report to the General Assembly on the work of the Organization.
Article 99
The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.
Article 100
1. In the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization.
2. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.
Article 101
1. The staff shall be appointed by the Secretary-General under regulations established by the General Assembly.
2. Appropriate staffs shall be permanently assigned to the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and, as required, to other organs of the United Nations. These staffs shall form a part of the Secretariat.
3. The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.
CHAPTER XVI: MISCELLANEOUS PROVISION
Article 102
1. Every treaty and every international agreement entered into by any Member of the United Nations after the present Charter comes into force shall as soon as possible be registered with the Secretariat and published by it.
2. No party to any such treaty or international agreement which has not been registered in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article may invoke that treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations.
Article 103
In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.
Article 104
The Organization shall enjoy in the territory of each of its Members such legal capacity as may be necessary for the exercise of its functions and the fulfilment of its purposes.
Article 105
1. The Organization shall enjoy in the territory of each of its Members such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the fulfilment of its purposes.
2. Representatives of the Members of the United Nations and officials of the Organization shall similarly enjoy such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions in connection with the Organization.
3. The General Assembly may make recommendations with a view to determining the details of the application of paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Article or may propose conventions to the Members of the United Nations for this purpose.
CHAPTER XVII: TRANSITIONAL SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS
Article 106
Pending the coming into force of such special agreements referred to in Article 43 as in the opinion of the Security Council enable it to begin the exercise of its responsibilities under Article 42, the parties to the Four-Nation Declaration, signed at Moscow, 30 October 1943, and France, shall, in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 5 of that Declaration, consult with one another and as occasion requires with other Members of the United Nations with a view to such joint action on behalf of the Organization as may be necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.
Article 107
Nothing in the present Charter shall invalidate or preclude action, in relation to any state which during the Second World War has been an enemy of any signatory to the present Charter, taken or authorized as a result of that war by the Governments having responsibility for such action.
CHAPTER XVIII: AMENDMENTS
Article 108
Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted by a vote of two thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.
Article 109
1. A General Conference of the Members of the United Nations for the purpose of reviewing the present Charter may be held at a date and place to be fixed by a two-thirds vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any nine members of the Security Council. Each Member of the United Nations shall have one vote in the conference.
2. Any alteration of the present Charter recommended by a two-thirds vote of the conference shall take effect when ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations including all the permanent members of the Security Council.
3. If such a conference has not been held before the tenth annual session of the General Assembly following the coming into force of the present Charter, the proposal to call such a conference shall be placed on the agenda of that session of the General Assembly, and the conference shall be held if so decided by a majority vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any seven members of the Security Council.
CHAPTER XIX: RATIFICATION AND SIGNATURE
Article 110
1. The present Charter shall be ratified by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.
2. The ratifications shall be deposited with the Government of the United States of America, which shall notify all the signatory states of each deposit as well as the Secretary-General of the Organization when he has been appointed.
3. The present Charter shall come into force upon the deposit of ratifications by the Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. and the United States of America, and by a majority of the other signatory states. A protocol of the ratifications deposited shall thereupon be drawn up by the Government of the United States of America which shall communicate copies thereof to all the signatory states.
4. The states signatory to the present Charter which ratify it after it has come into force will become original Members of the United Nations on the date of the deposit of their respective ratifications.
Article 111
The present Charter, of which the Chinese, French, Russian, English, and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall remain deposited in the archives of the Government of the United States of America. Duly certified copies thereof shall be transmitted by that Government to the Governments of the other signatory states.
IN FAITH
WHEREOF the y. representatives of the Governments of the of San Francisco the twenty-sixth day of June, one thousand nine hundred and forty-five United Nations have signed the present Charter.
DONE at the cit
The Katyn Massacre
by Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive Writer
In 1943, German soldiers discovered a mass grave in the Katyn forest near Smolensk in western Russia. The grave held the bodies of between 4,000 and 5,000 Polish army officers. Hoping to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western allies, Nazi officials publicized the grave and accused the Soviets of the massacre. Moscow denied the charge and claimed the Germans were attempting to cover up their own atrocity.
Despite evidence that the Kremlin was indeed behind the massacre, Britain and the United States chose to look the other way. London's wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, opposed a call by the Polish government-in-exile for an investigation by the International Red Cross into the incident.
Following the war, at the Nuremberg war crime tribunals, the issue of Katyn was originally included on the list of crimes attributed to the Nazis. But it was later dropped, apparently out of concern that any revelations about the massacre would embarrass the Soviets.
It wasn't until 1990 that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted Soviet involvement in the Katyn forest massacre. Two years later, the Russian government handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa previously secret documents showing that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had directly ordered the killing of the Polish army officers.
Most of the victims in Katyn forest were Polish army reservists -- lawyers, doctors, scientists and businessmen -- who were called up to active service following the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. But instead of fighting the Germans, about 15,000 Polish officers found themselves prisoners of the Red Army, which had occupied eastern Poland under the terms of a secret Moscow-Berlin treaty.
In the spring of 1940, about 4,500 of these officers were taken by their Soviet captors to the Katyn forest. Most were then gagged, bound, shot once in the head and buried on the spot. The other Polish POWs were taken to other locations, where many of them were also executed. The mass liquidation killed off much of Poland's intelligentsia and facilitated the Soviet takeover of the nation.
The memory of the massacre was an open wound in Soviet-Polish relations throughout the Cold War, and it continues to strain ties between Warsaw and Moscow.
In 1995, Walesa and relatives of the Katyn forest victims attended a memorial service at the site of the massacre. Boris Yeltsin was invited to take part in the ceremonies but declined. The Polish media denounced the Russian president's decision.
"Boris Yeltsin's absence leaves a deeply unsettling message," said the Zycie Warszawy newspaper. "There has been no apology of the kind that Germany has long since made. This day could have been a symbol of reconciliation between two nations tragically marked by communism. Instead it is a bitter shame, and Katyn forest continues to cast its dark shadow."
Narration: A cloud hides the sky - a nuclear shadow falls across the human future.
Midway through the 20th century, two superpowers prepared for a conflict which might have ended life on the planet.
Spring flowers the warm light of day the pleasures of life.
But under this American hotel was a hidden gate. It led into an underworld.
This was the shelter for members of the United States Congress in the event of nuclear war.
Down here, the politicians would represent the dead and the dying in the world overhead.
For a handful of human beings, there was all they needed to wait out the nuclear winter.
But nerves might snap, then order would be kept by force.
The lost world above the shelter would become only a memory - a myth.
The living would come to envy the dead.
Berlin 1945. Soviet troops had stormed the capital of Hitler's Reich. American, British and French soldiers soon joined them in the ruins. Churchill, Stalin and Truman were the official victors of the Second World War. But a special triumph was Stalin's.
Russian power had pushed forward into the centre of Europe.
At Potsdam outside Berlin, the Big Three met to settle the post-war order.
Winston Churchill represented a Britain exhausted by war.
While Joseph Stalin, supreme ruler of the Soviet Union faced Harry S Truman, 33rd President of the United States.
It was 3 months after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt that Harry Truman, once a Missouri haberdasher, set off for Potsdam.
It was his first overseas conference as Head of State.
Interview: GEORGE ELSEY-Aide to Truman
"President Truman was unprepared for the Presidency in the sense of being fully briefed and up to the minute on all that was going on. But as a Senator for the past ten years, as Chairman of one of the most important Congressional Committees of the war he was well aware of the major problems that a President had to face."
Interview: VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV-Soviet Foreign Ministry
"Stalin was late for the conference. He had a sort of heart attack. Anyhow, he came one day later. He visited Churchill and Truman, and immediately apologised for being late."
Narration: The Soviet Union was devastated by war. But Stalin remained a formidable figure.
Interview: Averell Harriman-U.S. Ambassador to USSR
"I went up to him and I said, 'Marshall, this must be a great satisfaction to you after all the trials that you've been through and the tragedy that you've been through - to be here in Berlin. ' He looked at me and said, 'Tsar Alexander got to Paris!'
Narration:Did Stalin want to push on to the Atlantic?
Lenin, his predecessor, once hoped the Russian revolution would lead on to Communist world revolution.
It was then, after the first World War, in a clash of ideologies, communist and capitalist, that the Cold War had its origins.
In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took ship to the European Peace Conference with his gospel for a better world - safe for small nations, sound for business.
But his peace settlement excluded Bolshevik Russia.
Many nations, including the United States and Britain, sent troops to fight the Russian Revolution.
Churchill, fresh from victory over Germany, urged: "Kill the Bolshie! Kiss the Hun! "
The Intervention left Lenin and Stalin convinced that the West would seize any chance, embrace any ally, in order to destroy Communism.
Interview: DAVID ORTENBERG - Red Army Volunteer
"I joined the Civil War as a so-called 'son of the regiment'. We were young boys. We knew we were fighting for the people - the poor people."
Narration: There was widespread support for the Red Army. The foreign troops soon withdrew. The Bolshevik Reds defeated the Whites, their Russian enemies.
Interview: IVAN LEGCHILIN - Briansk Resident
"The White Guards who had left Russia were encircling us. There was starvation. It was a time when sausages were made from human flesh."
Narration: In Russia, famine followed Civil War. The victorious Bolsheviks turned away from the outside world to build up the economy at home.
America also turned inwards. People wanted the good life, and no more foreign entanglements.
Then, in 1929, Wall Street crashed. The Great Depression began. Suddenly, across the richest nation on earth, millions faced destitution. American politics shifted to the Left.
Archival Footage: 1933 - Franklin Roosevelt swearing-in ceremony
"I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. So help me God."
Narration: Roosevelt promised a New Deal for Americans.
He would manage capitalism for the public good. And in a change of policy, he recognised the Soviet Union.
Interview: GEORGE KENNAN - US State Department
"One has to remember that we had been, I think, for sixteen years without any representation in Russia - no ... no relations between the two governments - and FDR was the one who decided to try to break that log-jam."
Narration: Stalin's industrial drive soon attracted American experts. Some brought their families.
While Soviet muscles strained to raise dams and blast furnaces, American corporations supplied skilled engineers on contract.
Communist ideology didn't worry them. Unlike the Russians, they were free to go when the job was over. Stalin was master of the economic plan - a tyrant who tolerated no failure and no criticism.
Privately owned fields became collectivised prairies.
The cost of collectivisation was the murder of millions of peasants and renewed famine. The truth was kept secret.
Interview: DAVID ORTENBERG - Red Army Volunteer
"People didn't really know all about the bad things. All the achievements were put down to his initiatives. Those who knew otherwise would shut up. They knew if they said anything, they would be imprisoned and shot. It was a regime of terror."
Narration: This was socialism in one country.
Heavy industry's output doubled in ten years.
Interview: GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow
"Stalin felt that in order to get public support for the things he was doing, which were very harsh policies, he had to convince a great many of the people, the common people and the Party members, (V/O) that Russia was confronted with a conspiracy on the part of the major capitalist powers to undermine the Soviet government by espionage."
Narration: Lenin's old comrades confessed to imaginary crimes.
Archival Footage: - Andrei Vyshinski at Moscow show trials
"The mask of betrayal has been ripped off their faces. Let your verdict sound like the refreshing and purifying thunder of Soviet punishment."
Interview - GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow
"I could see them there, with their pale faces, their twitching lips, their evasive eyes. These were the faces of men who had been, if not tortured, then terrified in many ways and often by threats to take it out on their families if they didn't confess."
Narration: The Moscow trials tore away some foreign illusions. Stalin's Soviet Union was revealed as a police state, not a workers' paradise.
But even in America, thousands stayed loyal to the Communist dream. In the 1930s, Moscow called for a Popular Front of the Left against Hitler and Fascism.
Fighting the spread of Fascism became the great cause for socialist and communist alike.
Doubts about Stalin were repressed.
In Spain, volunteers from all over the world rallied to oppose the Fascist rebellion launched by Franco.
Franco was armed by Mussolini and Hitler.
In Germany, the Nazis were rearming. Hitler did not hide his ambitions to dominate Europe, and then the world.
Roosevelt wanted to keep out of any European War.
Archival Footage: FDR
"Despite what happens in continents overseas, the United States of America shall and must remain, as long ago the father of our country prayed that it would remain, unentangled and free!"
Narration: Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, trusted that Hitler would listen to reason.
In September 1938, Chamberlain flew to Munich. War seemed close, as Germany prepared to invade Czechoslovakia. But Chamberlain went determined to appease Hitler.
At Munich, Britain, France and Italy licensed Hitler to seize the Czech Sudetenland, with its German minority.
Czechoslovakia's allies had abandoned her.
In Moscow, Stalin drew lessons from Munich. The western democracies, he concluded, would never stand up to Hitler.
Stalin planned a desperate stroke of diplomacy.
The fascist and Communist arch-enemies were about to embrace.
Hitler flew his Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to Moscow. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov. The West was appalled.
Interview: SERGO BERIA - Son of Secret Police Chief
"After the pact was signed, I heard this from Stalin's lips - he was often at our home. He said, 'We need to win time - at least two years' time. Only then will the Soviet Union be able to defend itself against Germany.'"
Narration: September 1939. Hitler invaded Poland.
Britain and France declared war on the aggressor - too late to save Poland.
Defeated, Poland was wiped off the map. Germany and Russia had conspired against her.
In Eastern Poland, the communist occupiers were supervised by Nikita Khrushchev. They were taking over provinces once ruled by the Tsars.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact left Stalin free to grab Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The Baltic States were back under Russian domination. Stalin had already outraged the world by invading Finland.
Archival Footage: FDR Speech, 1940
"The Soviet Union is run by a dictatorship. A dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world. It has allied itself with another dictatorship and it has invaded a neighbour so infinitesimally small that it could do no conceivable possible harm to the Soviet Union."
Narration: In 1940, Hitler struck West. By mid-1941, France, Belgium. Holland, Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia and Greece had been added to his conquests.
Churchill's Britain held out alone.
On June the 22nd 1941, Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
It was a day that changed history.
Hitler meant to win a vast colony for Germany. Instead, his act would bring Russian power into the heart of Europe, only 4 years later.
The future outlines of the Cold War began to form as the Nazi tanks surged forward.
The Red Army fell back in retreat.
Interview: LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army Volunteer
"My mother said, 'Go with the soldiers'. The soldiers were retreating - injured, covered in blood. I only had my overcoat and my shoes - that's all."
Narration: Soviet citizens rallied. Abroad the Soviet Union won unexpected friends.
Interview: Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office
"Churchill, in spite of his past, anti-Soviet feelings, at once welcomed Stalin's Russia as an ally. He did say to his friends, of course, that he'd have welcomed the devil if the devil had turned up in order to help him defeat Hitler."
Archival Footage: FDR speech to Congress, 1941
"The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory."
Narration: America declared war on Japan. Days later, with the Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow, Hitler rashly declared war on the United States, making Russians and Americans allies.
The German thrust at Moscow was blocked. Stalin broadcast to the nation.
Archival Footage: Stalin speech
"People with the morals of animals have the impudence to call for the annihilation of the Russian nation. The Germans want to win a war of annihilation. Well if the Germans want a war of annihilation, that's what they'll get."
Narration: Stalin already looked beyond victory.
He told the British that post-war Soviet boundaries must include the Baltic States and part of Poland.
Interview: Sir FRANK ROBERTS- British Foreign Office
"When I went to Moscow with Anthony Eden in December 1941, when the Germans were still only 19 kilometres away from us as we talked, the very first thing that Stalin said at that meeting was, "Mr Eden, I want to have your assurance that at the end of the war, you will support my just claim to all these areas you see". And Eden was absolutely taken aback. He said, "But oughtn't we to be thinking about how we win the war?" "No, no", said Stalin, "I would like to have this clear at the very beginning". So Eden obviously had to say, well he had no authority to discuss how the war was to end. "
Narration: American aid to Russia concentrated on guns and trucks. But Stalin and his people cried out for more - a second front - an Allied landing in Western Europe, to relieve Soviet suffering.
Interview: YEVGENI KHALDEI - Red Army Photographer
"I saw the atrocities. I heard the noises of war. Although it's 50 years ago, I can still hear the noises of war - the shells, the bombing, people screaming, women crying."
Narration: For 6 months, battle raged at Stalingrad. Hitler sent half a million men.
The Germans were trapped and forced to surrender. The tide of war was turning.
Western opinion cheered on the Red Army, their comrades in arms.
Archival Footage: Henry Wallace - US Vice President
"The Russians have thus far lost in the common cause at least fifty per cent more men - killed wounded and missing - than all the rest of the European allies put together. And moreover, they have killed, wounded and captured at least twenty times as many Germans as the rest of the Allies."
Narration: The Nazis sought ways to split the alliance against them. At Katyn in Western Russia, they dug up the corpses of more than 4000 Polish officers.
Germany announced - truthfully, as it turned out - that the officers had been murdered by Soviet security troops in 1940.
Britain and America chose to ignore this evidence of Stalin's methods.
In 1943, with their alliance still intact, the Big Three prepared to meet at Tehran, in Persia.
Interview: ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence
"I was summoned to Tehran to help them prepare for the conference. Mr Roosevelt is supposed to arrive. We had a code name for it. And so I called the airfield, and sure enough I spoke to Admiral Leahy. I said, 'Are you coming?' And he said, 'No, we're not coming. We're going to the American Mission.' And when I said that to Molotov, I thought he'd just fry me alive. He said, 'What!' and he'd get all the four letter words I'd never heard in my life were spilled over me. He said, 'Who the hell are you here anyway? Who? How did you get in here? What do you know? What am I going to say to Stalin?'"
Narration: Stalin persuaded Roosevelt that his safety was best assured by residence at the Soviet Embassy. The Embassy had been specially prepared for his visit - it was bugged.
Interview: SERGO BERIA - Soviet Intelligence
"Stalin told me that the task he was putting to our group, and particularly to me, was ethically very unattractive. However, the position of the USSR was so serious that he had to know what our allies were thinking."
Interview: Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office
"Stalin was very skillful in dealing with Roosevelt and Churchill. Even Churchill began to quite like him, you know, and talk about Uncle Joe, you see, which was quite an affectionate term. And they both had this idea that if you treated him the right way ... The phrase was 'if you treat Uncle Joe like a member of our club, perhaps one day he will behave like a member of our club.'"
Interview: SERGO BERIA - Soviet Intelligence
"Every day at eight in the morning, I had to go to Stalin. I went with all the transcripts, in Russian and in English. For about an hour Stalin examined in great detail all of Roosevelt's conversations."
Interview: GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow
"I don't think FDR was capable of conceiving of a man of such profound iniquity, coupled with enormous strategic cleverness, as Stalin. He had never met such a creature. Stalin was an excellent actor - quiet, affable, reasonable. He sent them all away thinking - this really is a great leader."
Narration: The allies agreed that post-war Eastern Europe would be a Soviet zone of influence. Stalin would annex Eastern Poland. As compensation, the Poles would get a slice of Eastern Germany. Poland was offered no choice.
Together, the Big Three mapped out the future.
D-Day - the 6th of June 1944. The biggest sea-borne invasion in history lands in France.
This was the second front Stalin longed for.
On the Eastern front, Russian armies continued to advance.
The Nazi road back out of Russia. Every rail line blown up as they flee. Of course Nazi propaganda now stresses the masterful retreat. The Soviet flag unfurled in triumph over Sarni, Tarnapol, Odessa, as the Russian tide of victory rolls westwards towards Germany.
As the Red Army approached Warsaw, the Polish Resistance seized the city from the Germans. The Poles hoped to liberate themselves, and confront Stalin with an independent Poland.
Interview: Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office
"The Polish Home Army rose, to take over Warsaw when the Germans left and before the Russians arrived - and the Russians had encouraged them to do this. And then the Russian Army stopped on the Vistula."
Narration: Stalin claimed that his armies needed to pause outside Warsaw and re-group.
The Germans counter-attacked.
Interview: GEORGE KENNAN - US Embassy Moscow
"The Polish Freedom fighters were abandoned by the Russians, who were sitting with their forces across the river, and could easily have gone in to help them. I thought for various reasons that that was the point at which American policy should have changed."
Narration: The Poles held out alone against the Germans for 63 days. When the Rising collapsed in slaughter and Warsaw was destroyed, Poland blamed the Soviet Union.
Then with Poland under Soviet occupation, Churchill and Stalin got down to power-broking in Moscow. One night, Churchill scribbled down a formula for carving up Europe:- Romania - Soviet influence 90%. Greece - 90% British and American. Yugoslavia and Hungary - 50/50. Bulgaria - 75% Russian. Stalin ticked his agreement.
Churchill wondered if the note should be destroyed. Stalin told him: 'No, you keep it!'
Yalta in the Crimea. Churchill wanted the next Big Three meeting to be held in the West, but Stalin insisted on a Soviet meeting place.
Interview: ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence
"Stalin wanted to please them. (Sync) And I will tell you, I only saw how hard people worked with everything devastated around, bringing crystal glass, bringing white napkins and tablecloths and furniture. Even when Mr Winston Churchill said once, you know, sort of, 'Oh I wish I had a lemon with my gin and tonic' - the next day they found a lemon tree."
Narration: The journey was torment for the sick Roosevelt. His polio and the strains of war leadership dragged him down.
In the former Tsar's palace, the leaders faced a heavy agenda. They must decide how to govern a defeated Germany. And they wanted to get the Polish question settled.
Interview: Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Delegation, Yalta
"Eastern Europe, important though it was, was only one of many other things - first of all winning the war and then occupying Germany, secondly seeing to the war against Japan, thirdly the post war arrangements."
Interview: HUGH LUNGHI- British Delegation, Yalta
"Stalin knew that the war was won. After all, the Russians were only 40 miles from Berlin at that time. They were on the point of capturing Budapest. They'd swept through parts of Eastern Europe, not the whole lot yet."
Interview: ZOYA ZARUBINA - Soviet Intelligence
"He was a very shrewd negotiator. He doesn't look you in the eye; he's just sort of smoking - he was a chain smoker - and he was sort of smoking, and you think that probably he's not listening, you know. Then all of a sudden he would raise his fingers and say 'Ah'."
Interview: HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Yalta
"The terrible mistake that Roosevelt made was that he was trying to ingratiate himself into Stalin's favour by stressing the divisions between Churchill and himself, so he made it quite clear to Stalin that there were real divisions as well as imaginary ones."
Interview: Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Foreign Office
"For us, of course, the major topic was the future of Eastern Europe and above all, Poland. And on that Stalin obviously was bound to get what he wanted because the Red Army was in occupation of the whole area including Poland - they had already gone through Poland into Germany by the time we were in Yalta."
Narration: By now, the Balkans and most of Poland were in Soviet hands; so too was much of Czechoslovakia and Hungary - battlefield facts that diplomacy could not alter.
Interview: Sir FRANK ROBERTS - British Delegation, Yalta
"We got at Yalta two diplomatic documents which on paper were perfectly satisfactory. I mean that there would be a coalition government in Poland including people from the West, and there would be free elections in Poland. And then there was a declaration covering the whole of Eastern Europe called the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which again was to be rebuilt on the basis of democracy and free elections and all the rest of it - of course, phrases which the Russian used but interpreted rather differently."
Narration: Stalin promised that the Polish elections would be free and fair. Tired of arguing, the others took him at his word. Germany would be governed jointly by the victorious Allies. And Stalin secretly pledged to join the war against Japan. Churchill was confident.
Archival Footage: Winston Churchill farewell address at Yalta
"We have all bound ourselves to work together, to make sure that there is increasing happiness and prosperity for the broad masses of the people in every land - no longer subject to the hard strains of war. There is the prospect which has now opened before us."
Archival Footage: FDR funeral, April 1945
"The Funeral Special heads for Washington. An honour guard of servicemen keeps vigil beside the flag-draped casket. At villages, crossroads, way stations, the people who were so close to his heart stand silently, expressive of the devotion Franklin Roosevelt inspired."
Narration: As the President was buried, the last battles in Europe were ending. American troops were taking over German towns without resistance.
Interview: AL ARONSON - US 69th Infantry Division
"They were glad to see the American troops because they had a terrible fear of having Russians occupy or come into their area."
Narration: As the Allies advanced they discovered the full horror of German crimes.
The Jews had been the Nazis' special target. But every nation was mourning over mass graves.
Fear of a German revival, would overshadow the first years of peace.
Soon Soviet and American troops would meet in Germany.
Interview: AL ARONSON - US 69th Infantry Division
"Our lieutenant came in one day and said he'd got ... he wants to get a patrol together - we're going to go and see if we can find some Russians. Well, none of us were too eager to go on that patrol really, because we realised the end of the war was imminent and we didn't know what was out there. You know, we had gotten this far, why stick our necks out again?"
Interview: JIM KANE - US 69th Infantry Division
"We kept going and we kept running into no resistance and everybody was retiring and surrendering and we just, I guess, were lucky. We got to the Elbe river and we saw the Russians on the other side."
Interview: LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army 58th Guards Division
"I told my girlfriend, "You stand there and I'll stay here". We waited for them to come ashore. We could see their faces. They looked like ordinary people. We had imagined something different. Well, they were Americans!"
Interview: AL ARONSON
"I guess we didn't know what to expect from the Russians, but when you looked at them and examined them, you couldn't tell whether, you know ? If you put an American uniform on them, they could have been American!"
Interview: LUIBOV KOZINCHENKO - Red Army 58th Guards Division
"We didn't know who we were kissing. We were just kissing everyone."
Interview: ALEXANDER GORDEYEV - Red Army 58th Guards Division
"I think that for us the war was over. We washed our feet in the Elbe river. We washed our faces and hands. We thought that now we'd met the Americans, the war must be over."
Narration: Two days later, the movie cameras were ready.
The moment of history, the meeting of ordinary soldiers from Russia and America, was re-run, dramatically, with a bigger cast.
By allied agreement, the capture of Berlin was left to the Russians.
April 1945. The Red Army launches its final offensive towards Berlin.
The war cost the Soviet Union 27 million lives - nearly 40 times American and British losses put together.
The Red Flag destined to fly over the Reichstag was a home made affair.
Interview: YEVGENI KHALDEI - Red Army Photographer
"We used tablecloths. One night, I helped my friend, a Jewish tailor, sew them into three flags. We took them to Berlin. I found three soldiers and we climbed up. The first photograph I took was of the flag I'd brought from Moscow - the Soviet flag over Berlin."
Narration: As Hitler's Reich fell apart, hundreds gathered in San Francisco to found the United Nations Organisation.
The Soviet delegation was led by the man who had signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact - Molotov.
Interview: VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, San Francisco
"Molotov was very nervous because he felt that the war is coming to an end, victory would soon be here, and here he is in America. That's why everyday he sent cables to Stalin, 'When may I return?'"
Narration: As the San Francisco meeting continued, news came of Germany's surrender.
Archival Footage: US President Harry Truman, May 1945
"General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly all over Europe."
Narration: As the fighting stopped, the Soviet front line had cut Europe in two, from the Baltic to the Adriatic.
The war in the Pacific dragged on. American marines had stormed Iwo-Jima.
It was a foretaste of how difficult and bloody the final invasion of Japan might be.
Potsdam, in conquered Germany - site of the third allied summit.
Interview: GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman
"The attitude in Washington toward the Soviet Union had begun to change well before Potsdam. Storm signals were already flying."
Interview: VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam
"Truman declared officially and quite sharply that the declaration on Europe adopted at Yalta is not being carried out in some countries. Governments are being set up which the United States will not recognise."
Interview: HUGH LUNGHI - British Delegation, Potsdam
"I'd call the Potsdam conference a bad-tempered conference, because apart from the ceremonial occasions, it was really very bad-tempered."
Narration: The allies couldn't easily agree about a German Peace Treaty or on how to carry out agreements reached at Yalta. Stalin confirmed that his troops were ready for war with Japan. But the day before the conference, America had successfully tested an atomic bomb.
Interview: GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman
"President Truman, after consulting with the British, and with his own military advisers, decided that he would tell Stalin that we had a powerful new weapon, without identifying it as a nuclear weapon."
Interview: VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam
"Truman repeated what he was saying about the new weapon. He thought Stalin didn't hear or didn't understand him. Stalin said, 'Okay, thank you for the information'."
Interview: GEORGE ELSEY - Aide to President Truman
"There was some question amongst the Americans as to whether Stalin had really understood what Truman was saying. As we now know, they knew all about the Manhattan Project through espionage and their own agents."
Narration: With the conference still in session, news arrived from London that Clement Attlee had been elected British Prime Minister.
Interview: VLADIMIR YEROFEYEV - Soviet Delegation, Potsdam
"I had a feeling that the biggest sensation for Molotov and Stalin was not the bomb explosion but the fact that Churchill was not re-elected in England."
Narration: Another photo-call. The world must see that the Allies were still united.
On August the 2nd the conference ended and the statesmen went home.
Four days later, America dropped an atomic bomb on the city and people of Hiroshima.
Three days after that, another was dropped on Nagasaki.
Soon the human race would be able to destroy itself in a day. At each Cold War crisis to come, the nuclear shadow threatened.
Hope this helps!
-lily of the valley