Clear, Blunt Words

If words meant anything, the Big Three did more for their nations and their world at Yalta than they did at Teheran. After their Persian meeting, they proclaimed agreement only in the broadest generalities. After their Crimean meeting, they not only proclaimed agreement on every point taken up in their announcement, but on the most difficult points broke down the agreement into hard specifics.

The War. ". . . The timing, scope and coordination of new and even more powerful blows [against] Germany . . . have been fully agreed and planned in detail.

. . . Our combined military plans will be made known only as we execute them. . . . 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 Big Three's announcement did not mention the Pacific war, did not suggest that a Soviet declaration of war against Japan had been discussed.

Germany. Stalin gave his strongest support yet to the Roosevelt policy of unconditional surrender. More important, the occupation and control of defeated Germany is to be an Allied, cooperative job: "The forces of the three powers will each occupy a separate zone. ... A central control commission consisting of the supreme commanders of the three powers [will have] headquarters in Berlin." France will be invited to take a fourth zone (presumably the Ruhr and the Rhine's west bank), a fourth place on the control commission.

Joseph Stalin had repeatedly told the German people that they might have an army and a free government after the war. But he had always conditioned that promise on the early overthrow of Hitler and an early surrender. Now Stalin said with Churchill and Roosevelt : "We are determined to disarm and disband all German armed forces; break up for all time the German General Staff ... remove all ... militarist influences." Political and economic disarmament would be equally complete and rigorous: "....Eliminate or control all German industry that could be used for military production . . . wipe out the Nazi party, Nazi laws, organizations and institutions. . . . It is not our purpose to destroy the people of Germany. But only when Naziism and militarism have been extirpated will there be hope for a decent life for Germans. . . ." Reparations. Germany must pay "to the greatest extent possible." A commission sitting in Moscow will add up the bill, collect "in kind" (i.e., in goods and labor).

Poland. Russia gets eastern Poland up to the Curzon line (with some minor adjustments "in Poland's favor"), and Poland will get German territory to the west and north. But Stalin agreed that his Lublin Government should be broadened by taking in "democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad."

In Moscow Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, U.S. Ambassador Harriman and British Ambassador Kerr will confer with Poles on forming this new provisional government. It "shall be pledged to holding 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 put forward candidates."

Roosevelt got across two points: 1) such governments, even when broadened, will have only "provisional" approval until the peoples concerned have a chance to vote; 2) territorial settlements, including the new Poland's slice of east Germany, will not be made final until after the war.

Dumbarton Oaks. "... A conference of United Nations should be called at San Francisco . . . April 25, 1945, to prepare the charter of [a world security] organization." The Big Three said that they had settled the tough problem raised by Russia's previous insistence that any major power should be able to veto any action against itself, withheld the details of agreement until France and China have been consulted. The date chosen for the San Francisco conference may be significant: April 24, the day before the conference opens, is the last on which Russia may legally end its neutrality pact with Japan.

Liberated Europe. Where necessary, the Big Three powers reserve the right to intervene in the affairs of liberated countries (as Britain did in Greece) until the people of those countries can "create the democratic institutions of their own choice." The Big Three's words presumably applied to Russia's sphere (Bulgaria, Rumania, etc.): "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."

Consultation. The Big Three's foreign secretaries--Eden, Molotov, Stettinius--will set up "permanent machinery," meet regularly ("about every three or four months") first in London, then in Washington and Moscow.

The Peace. It is still a Big Three world, a Big Three Europe; and at least at the start any world security organization will be a Big Three baby. But in bluntly asserting their preeminence, the Big Three leaders faced their responsibility: "Victory in this war and establishment of the proposed international organization will provide the greatest opportunity in all history" to create "a secure and lasting peace."

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