Address by President Roosevelt to Congress
March 1, 1945, 12:30 p.m. EWT
Broadcast audio (MBS):
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker and members of the Congress:
I hope that you will pardon me for the unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but I know that you will realize it makes it a lot easier for me in not having to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs and also because of the fact that I have just completed a 14,000-mile trip.
First of all, I want to say that it is good to be home. It has been a long journey and I hope you all will agree that it has been, so far, a fruitful one.
Speaking in all frankness, the question of whether it is entirely fruitful or not lies to a great extent in your hands. For unless you here, in the halls of the American Congress – with the support of the American people – concur in the general conclusions reached in the place called Yalta, and give them your active support, the meeting will not have produced lasting results.
And that is why I have come before you at the earliest hour I could after my return. I want to make a personal report to you, and at the same time to the people of the country. Many months of earnest work are ahead of us all, and I should like to feel that when the last stone is laid on the structure of international peace, it will be an achievement for which all of us in America have worked steadfastly and unselfishly together.
I am returning from this trip, which took me so far, refreshed and inspired. I was well the entire time. I did not-- was not ill for a second until I arrived back in Washington. There I heard all of the rumors which occurred in my absence. Yes, I returned from the trip refreshed and inspired – the Roosevelts are not, as you may suspect, averse to travel; we seem to thrive on it!
And far away as I was, I was kept constantly informed of affairs in the United States. The modern miracle of rapid communications has made this world very small; we must always bear in mind that fact when we speak or think of international relations. I received a steady stream of messages from Washington, I might say not only from the executive branch with all its departments, but also from the legislative branch – its two departments. And, except where radio silence was necessary for security purposes, I could continuously send messages any place in the world. And, of course, in a grave emergency we could even have risked the breaking of the security rule.
I come from the Crimea Conference with a firm belief that we have made a good start on the road to a world of peace.
There were two main purposes in this Crimea Conference. The first was to bring defeat to Germany with the greatest possible speed, and with the smallest possible loss of Allied men. That purpose is now being carried out in great force. The German Army, and the German people, are feeling the ever-increasing might of our fighting men and of the Allied armies and every hour gives us added pride in the heroic advance of our troops in Germany, on German soil, toward a meeting with the gallant Red Army.
The second purpose was to continue to build the foundation for an international accord which would bring order and security after the chaos of the war and would give some assurance of lasting peace among the nations of the world. In that goal, toward that goal, a tremendous stride was made.
After Tehran, a little over a year ago, there were long-range military plans laid by the chiefs of staff of the three most powerful nations. Among the civilian leaders at Tehran, however, at that time, there were only exchanges of views and expressions of opinion. No political arrangements were made and none was attempted.
At the Crimea Conference, however, the time had come for getting down to specific cases in the political field. There was on all sides at this conference an enthusiastic effort to reach an agreement. Since the time of Tehran, a year ago, there had developed among all of us a – what shall I call it – a greater facility in negotiating with each other, that augurs well for the peace of the world. We know each other better.
I have never for an instant wavered in my belief that an agreement to insure world peace and security can be reached. There were a number of things that we did that were concrete – that were definite. For instance, the lapse of time between Tehran and Yalta without conferences of civilian representatives of the three major powers have proved to be too long – fourteen months. During this long period local problems were permitted to become acute in places like Poland and Greece and Italy and Yugoslavia.
Therefore, we decided at Yalta that, even if circumstances made it impossible for the heads of the three governments to do it, to meet more often in the future, and to make that sure by arranging that there would be frequent personal contacts for the exchange of views between the Secretaries of State, the Foreign Ministers of these three powers.
We arranged for periodic meetings, at intervals of three or four months. And I feel very confident that under this arrangement there will be no recurrence of the incidents which this winter disturbed the friends of worldwide cooperation and collaboration.
When we met at Yalta, in addition to laying our strategic and tactical plans for the complete, final military victory over Germany, there were other problems of vital political consequence.
For instance, first, there were the problems of occupation and control of Germany after victory, the complete destruction of her military power, and the assurance that neither the Nazis nor Prussian militarism could again be revived to threaten the peace and the civilization of the world.
Secondly, again for example, there was the settlement of the few differences which remained among us with respect to the International Security Organization after the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. As you remember at that time, I said afterward we had agreed 90 percent. Well, that’s a pretty good percentage. I think the other 10 percent was ironed out at Tehra-- at Yalta.
Thirdly, there were the general political and economic problems common to all of the areas that would be in the future, or which had been, liberated from the Nazi yoke. There are special problems – we over here find it difficult to understand the ramifications of many of these problems in foreign lands. But we are trying to.
Fourth, there were the special problems created by a few instances such as Poland and Yugoslavia.
Days were spent in discussing these momentous matters and we argued freely and frankly across the table. But at the end, on every point, unanimous agreement was reached. And more important even than the agreement of words, I may say we achieved a unity of thought and a way of getting along together.
Of course we know that it was Hitler’s hope – and German warlords’ – that we would not agree, that some slight crack might appear in the solid wall of Allied unity, a crack that would give him and his fellow gangsters one last hope of escaping their just doom. That is the objective for which his propaganda machine has been working for many months.
But Hitler has failed.
Never before have the major Allies been more closely united – not only in their war aims but also in their peace aims. And they are determined to continue to be united – to be united with each other and with all peace-loving nations – so that the ideal of lasting peace will become a reality.
The Soviet, British and United States Chiefs of Staff held daily meetings with each other, they conferred frequently with Marshal Stalin, with Prime Minister Churchill and with me, on the problem of coordinating the strategic and tactical efforts of the Allied powers. They completed their plans for the final knockout blow to Germany.
At the time of the Tehran Conference the Russian front, for instance, was removed so far from the American and British fronts that, while certain long-range strategic cooperation was possible, there could be no tactical, day-by-day coordination. They were too far apart.
But Russian troops have now crossed Poland, they are fighting on the eastern soil of Germany herself; British and American troops are now on German soil close to the Rhine River in the west. It is a different situation today from what it was fourteen months ago. A closer tactical liaison has become possible for the first time in Europe – and, in the Crimean Conference, that was something else that was accomplished.
Provision was made for daily exchange of information between the armies under command of Gen. Eisenhower, on the Western Front, and those armies under the command of the Soviet marshals on that long Eastern Front, and also with our armies in Italy – without the necessity of going through the Chiefs of Staff in Washington or London, as in the past.
You have seen one result of this exchange of information in the recent bombing by American and English aircraft of points which are directly related to the Russian advance on Berlin.
From now on, American and British heavy bombers will be used – in the day-by-day tactics of the war – and we have begun to realize, I think, that there is all the difference in the world between tactics on the one side and strategy on the other – day-by-day tactics of the war, in direct support of Soviet armies, as well as in the support of our own in the Western Front.
They are now engaged in bombing and strafing in order to hamper the movement of German reserves, German materials, to the Eastern and Western Fronts from other parts of Germany or from Italy.
Arrangements have been made for the most effective distribution of all available material and transportation to the places where they can best be used in the combined war effort – American, British and Russian.
Details of these plans and arrangements are military secrets, of course. But they are going to hasten-- this tying of things in together is going to hasten the day of the final collapse of Germany. The Nazis are learning about some of them already, to their sorrow, and I think all three of us at the conference felt that they will learn more about them tomorrow and the next day – and the day after that.
There will be no respite for these attacks. We will not desist for one moment until unconditional surrender.
You know, I’ve always felt that common sense prevails in the long run, quiet overnight thinking. I think that’s true in Germany, just as much as it is here.
The German people, as well as the German soldier, must realize the sooner they give up and surrender, surrender by groups or by individuals, the sooner their present agony will be over. They must realize that only with complete surrender can they begin to reestablish themselves as people whom the world might accept as decent neighbors.
We made it clear again at Yalta, and I now repeat that unconditional surrender does not mean the destruction or the enslavement of the German people. The Nazi leaders have deliberately withheld that part of the Yalta declaration from the German press and radio. They seek to convince the people of Germany that the Yalta declaration does mean slavery and destruction for them – they are working at it day and night, for that is how the Nazis hope to save their own skins, how to deceive their people into continued and useless resistance.
We did, however, make it clear at the Conference just what unconditional surrender does mean to Germany.
It means the temporary control of Germany by Great Britain, Russia, France and the United States. Each of these nations will occupy and control a separate zone of Germany – and the administration of the four zones will be coordinated – coordinated in Berlin by a control council composed of representatives of the four nations.
Unconditional surrender means something else. It means the end of Nazism. It means the end of the Nazi Party – and of all its barbaric laws and institutions.
It means the termination of all militaristic influence in public, private and cultural life of Germany.
It means for the Nazi war criminals a punishment that is speedy and just – and severe.
It means the complete disarmament of Germany; the destruction of its militarism and its military equipment; the end of its production of armament; the dispersal of all its armed forces; the permanent dismemberment of the German General Staff which has so often shattered the peace of the world.
It means that Germany will have to make reparations – reparations in kind for the damage which has been done to the innocent victims of its aggression.
By compelling reparations in kind-- in plants, in machinery, in rolling stock, and in raw materials – we shall avoid the mistake that we and other people-- other nations made after the last war, the demanding of reparations in the form of money, which Germany could never pay.
We do not want the German people to starve, or to become a burden on the rest of the world.
Our objective in handling Germany is simple – it is to secure the peace of the rest of the world, now and in the future. Too much experience has shown that that objective is impossible if Germany is allowed to retain any ability to wage aggressive warfare.
Now these objectives will not hurt the German people. On the contrary, they will protect them from a repetition of the fate which the General Staff and Kaiserism imposed on them before and which Hitlerism is now imposing upon them again a hundredfold. It will be removing a cancer from the German body politic, which for generations has produced only misery and only pain for the whole world.
During my stay in Yalta, I saw the kind of reckless, senseless fury, the terrible destruction, that comes out of German militarism. Yalta, on the Black Sea, had no military significance of any kind. It had no defenses.
Before the last war it had been a resort, a resort for people like czars and princes and aristocracy, and their hangers-on. However, after the war, after the Red Revolution, until the attack on the Soviet Union by Hitler a few years ago, the palaces, the villas of Yalta had been used as a rest and recreation center by the Russian people.
The Nazi officers took these former palaces and villas, took them over for their own use. They are the only reasons that the so-called former palace of the Czar was still habitable when we got there. It had been given, or had thought to have been given, to a German general for his own property and his own use. And when Yalta was so destroyed, he kept soldiers there to protect what he thought would become his own nice villa.
It was a useful rest and recreation center for hundreds of thousands of Russian workers, farmers and their families, up to the time it was taken again by the Germans.
The Nazi officers took these places for their own use, and when the Red Army forced the Nazis out of the Crimea, just almost a year ago – last April, I think it was – all the villas were looted by the Nazis, and then nearly all of them were destroyed by bombs placed on the inside. And even the humblest of the homes of Yalta were not spared.
There was little left of it except blank walls, ruins, destruction.
Sevastopol – that was a fortified port, about forty or fifty miles away – there again was a scene of utter destruction – a large city with great navy yards and fortifications, I think less than a dozen buildings were left intact in the entire city.
I had read about Warsaw and Lidice and Rotterdam and Coventry – but I saw Sevastopol and Yalta! And I know that there is not room enough on earth for both German militarism and Christian decency.
Of equal importance with the military arrangements at the Crimean Conference were the agreements reached with respect to a general international organization for lasting world peace.
The foundations were laid at Dumbarton Oaks. There was one point, however, on which agreement was not reached. It involved the procedure of voting, of voting in the Security Council. I want to try to make it clear by making it simple. It took me hours and hours to get the thing straight in my own mind – and many conferences. At the Crimea Conference the Americans made a proposal on this subject which, after full discussion, I am glad to say, was unanimously adopted by the other two nations.
It is not yet possible to announce the terms of it publicly, but it will be in a short time.
When the conclusions reached with respect to voting are made known, I think and I hope that you will find them a fair solution of this complicated and difficult problem. You might almost say it’s a legislative problem. They are founded in justice, and will go far to assure international cooperation in the maintenance of peace.
There is going to be held – and you know – after we have straightened that voting matter out, there is going to be held in San Francisco a meeting of all United Nations of the world, on the 25th of April – next month. There, we all hope, and confidently expect, to execute a definite charter of organization upon which the peace of the world will be preserved and the forces of aggression permanently outlawed.
This time we are not making the mistake of waiting until the end of the war to set up the machinery of peace. This time, as we fight together to win the war finally, we work together to keep it from happening again.
I-- As you know, I have always been a believer in the document called the Constitution of the United States. And I spent a good deal of time in educating two other nations of the world in regard to the Constitution of the United States.
The charter has to be, and should be, approved by the Senate of the United States under the Constitution. I think the other nations all know it now. I am aware of that fact, and now all the other nations are, and we hope that the Senate will approve of what is set forth as the Charter of the United Nations when they all come together in San Francisco next month.
The Senate of the United States, through its appropriate representatives, has been kept continuously advised of the program of this government in the creation of the International Security Organization.
The Senate and the House will both be represented at the San Francisco Conference. The Congressional delegates will consist of an equal number – and the Senatorial – of an equal number of Republicans and Democratic members. The American delegation is, in every sense of the word, bipartisan.
But I think that world peace is not exactly a party question. I think that Republicans want peace just as much as Democrats. It is not a party question any more than is military victory – the winning of the war.
