The Pittsburgh Press (February 12, 1945)
Big Three agrees on plan to rule ‘doomed’ Germany
Poland to receive government based on national unity
WASHINGTON (UP) – The Big Three has agreed on plans for enforcing unconditional surrender terms on Germany, the calling of a United Nations’ conference on world security organization problems, and future quarterly meetings of their foreign secretaries.
This was announced in a communiqué issued by the White House. It said the meeting lasted eight days and was held in the Russian Crimea. The meeting has now been concluded.
President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin also agreed to form a new government for Poland to be called the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity.
Their joint communiqué declared that in the future the Big Three powers will “immediately consult” on problems arising in any European liberated state or former Axis satellite.
The plans for occupation and control of Germany were agreed upon.
They provide control of the Big Three powers, but France will be invited to take over a zone of occupation and become a fourth member of a Central Control Commission.
The commission will have headquarters in Berlin and will include representatives of all the big powers.
The communiqué, six pages long, was divided into nine sections.
The first, devoted to the military aspects of the conference, said that the big three meeting had been “most satisfactory from every point of view” and had resulted in an interchange of the fullest information.
It promised “new and even more powerful blows” to be launched by the United Nations armies and air forces into the heart of Germany from the east, west, north and south.
The communiqué said:
Nazi Germany is doomed. The German people will only make the cost of their defeat heavier to themselves by attempting to continue a hopeless resistance.
The communiqué revealed that the three leaders had solved the major unfinished business of the Dumbarton Oaks World Organization Conference – the voting procedure question – but gave no details of the solution.
The text of the proposals on voting procedure will be announced as soon as China and France have been consulted.
The Big Three agreed that the full United Nations Conference to set up the world organization should meet at San Francisco April 25.
The communiqué said a new situation had been created in Poland as a result of her “complete liberation by the Red Army” and called for establishment of a more broadly based provisional government in that country.
It proposed reorganization of the provisional government which is now functioning in Poland on “a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad.”
The three leaders said they considered 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 recognized that Poland must receive substantial territory in the north and west as compensation.
The Curzon Line would give Russia a substantial amount of Polish territory.
The final delimitation of the western Polish frontier should await the peace conference, they said.
The Big Three recommended to Marshal Tito and Premier Ivan Subasic of Yugoslavia that the agreement between them should be put into effect immediately and a new government formed on that basis. They further recommended that the new government should immediately declare extension of the anti-Fascist Assembly to include members of the last Yugoslav Parliament “who have not compromised themselves by collaboration with the enemy”
The communiqué said the three leaders had considered the question of damage caused by Germany and recognized it as “just” that she be obliged to make compensation in kind “to the greatest extent possible.”
A commission will be established in Moscow to consider the extent and methods for compensating such damage.
The Big Three declaration on Liberated Europe said in part:
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 domestic means their pressing political and economic problems.
The Big Three promised jointly to assist the people of Europe “to establish conditions of internal peace; to carry out emergency measures for relief of distressed people; to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledge to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the peoples, and to facilitate when necessary the holding of such elections.”
They affirmed “our determination to build with other peace-loving nations world order under law, dedicated to peace, security, freedom and general well-being of all mankind.”
The three powers expressed the hope that France would be associated with them in the procedure suggested, apparently recalling Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s recent assertion that France would not be bound by any decisions reached at the Big Three conference in her absence.
The Big Three said it was their “inflexible purpose” to destroy German militarism and Nazism so that Germany will never again disturb the peace. It would do it this way:
We are determined to disarm and disband all German forces; break up for all time the German General Staff that has repeatedly tried the resurgence of German militarism; remove or destroy all German military equipment; eliminate or control all German industry that can be used for military production; bring all war criminals to just and swift punishment and exact reparation in kind of the destruction wrought by the Germans; wipe out the Nazi Party, Nazi laws, organizations and institutions, remove all Nazi and militarist influences from public office and from the cultural and economic life of the German people; and take in harmony with such other measures in Germany as may be necessary to the future peace and safety of the world.
The Big Three said it does not intend to destroy the future of Germany. but it said that only with the elimination of Nazism and militarism could there be hope for “a decent life for Germans, and a place for them in the comity of nations.”