Simms: Europe faces rocky road to real peace
Seeds of future strife already sown
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
SAN FRANCISCO, California – The end of the war in Europe starts one of the most difficult epochs in world history. That is the view of most conference delegates here.
For the next five to 10 years, they point out, Europe will face conditions bordering on chaos or worse. Revolt or civil war in certain areas is probable.
Millions of uprooted peoples will be on the move. Discontent, fed by misery, hunger and hate will spread as violent emotions suddenly are released.
Revolutionary minorities will find in this post-war chaos the opportunity of a lifetime and will try to make the best of it.
Problems only postponed
Problems presented by Eastern Europe and the Balkans have not been solved by the Big Three. They only have been postponed. Meanwhile, army discipline has kept down the cauldron lid. Now the lid will have to come off. Solutions for Europe’s impounded troubles will have to be found.
Therefore, foreign ministers in San Francisco warn, that this conference is the most crucial meeting ever held. It must create a peacekeeping organization which will work.
Germany, Italy and the Axis satellites have been defeated, but what to do with either the vanquished or the victims remains to be decided. The frontiers of Germany are still undetermined. Likewise, those of Poland and even of France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and other countries.
What of Poles, Serbs and Jews?
Millions of workers, used by the Nazis as slave labor, will be released and repatriated. But many of them – such as the Poles and the Serbs – feel they have no country to return to; or are afraid to return. Then there are the millions of dispossessed Jews – all that remain of some six million who had their homes in Europe. What is to become of them?
Italy is to be turned into a democratic state by the introduction of representative government with freedom of speech, religion and the press. Today she is almost in anarchy.
Iran is to be “independent and sovereign.” Recently her government was overthrown by one of the Big Three because it wasn’t quick enough with an oil concession.
Greece was to have self-government, but the first cabinet set up there soon had to defend itself against a leftist revolution.
Yugoslavia was promised representative rule, put the regime now at Belgrade is a dictatorship imposed from without.
Seeds for future trouble
Poland was to have a new government, reorganized “on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself” But when the “democratic leaders from Poland itself” – the 16 underground officials – showed up for a conference, the Russians put them under arrest. And so on.
The seeds for much future trouble have already been sown.
The war in Europe ends today, but the peace to follow will be only a truce unless the Big Three here and at the peace table return to the principles of the Atlantic Charter.
Editorial: Make V-E stick!
We and our Allies have won victory in Europe. Our job now is to make the victory stick – which we failed to do last time. That will not be easy.
But we owe it to those who have paid with their lives, and the millions who suffered, to win the peace for which they sacrificed. We also owe it to our children who will be the next victims, if we fail now.
German militarism and Nazism have been mowed down. They still must be uprooted, and the remaining seeds destroyed as far as possible. All the Allies are agreed on that.
The first step after unconditional surrender is already planned. An Allied control commission of four generals – American, British, French and Russian – with headquarters in Berlin will rule Germany as a military government.
Its difficult problems will be multiplied by the necessary division of the conquered country into four zones of occupation. That will require much closer c-operation between Russia and the Western Allies than was achieved during the war. For any one of the four to seek selfish advantage, or otherwise fail to cooperate, would undermine enforcement and invite Nazi revival.
How long military government must continue will depend on the Germans. All the evidence to date indicates that they are unrepentant. More disturbing than reports that the Nazis are going underground, is the almost unanimous testimony of Allied intelligence officers and correspondents that rank-and-file Germans have no sense of war guilt. Even the big industrialists, who aided Hitler, hope to evade responsibility.
Apart from some church leaders, who had the courage to defy Hitler and survived, there seems to be no considerable group of Germans capable of creating or maintaining decent government now. In that, at least, the Nazis succeeded; they destroyed Germen capacity for self-government for some time to come. Maybe an entire new generation, educated for peace instead of war. must grow up before Germany can be trusted fully.
Perhaps the greatest shock to Germans will be the discovery that their standard of living cannot be restored. They must be fed, or rather allowed to feed themselves, but it will be at a very low level. They must contribute first to reconstruction of neighboring lands they destroyed. That will take several years at best. Germans’ extreme suffering during the coming period was decreed by themselves when, as recently as two months ago, they chose to continue the war rather than surrender and prevent destruction of their factories and cities.
Beyond policing and demilitarizing Germany, and prompt trial and punishment of war criminals, are the larger problems of a peace settlement. These include not only reparations and territorial questions, but the whole range of political and economic conditions which will make for order or chaos, for peace or another war. Though the big powers should have a large voice in these decisions, a peace dictated by them cannot survive.
Germany’s smaller neighbors and worst victims deserve a voice. They will be needed to make the settlement work. Therefore, the general peace conference should be called at the earliest possible moment.
Finally, to make V-E stick, there must be an international organization for security and peace, based on justice and law. The job of the San Francisco Conference is now more important than ever.
Success in that long-term job, as in military government of Germany and as in making a wise peace settlement, depends chiefly on Russia’s willingness to cooperate and keep her agreements.