Toward a Lost Peace

Out of U.S. archives in Washington and "a final scraping of the barrel at the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park," the State Department last week released 43 more documents pertaining to the Yalta Conference of 1945. The 43 documents did not add "significantly," said State, to the Yalta record published earlier this year (TIME, March 28). But they did add some interesting new evidence of how some U.S. delegates comported and deluded themselves in the closing months of World War II, how they bartered principle for the illusion of postwar friendship with the Communists.

In the star document of the new series, Marshal Stalin brutally served notice upon President Franklin D. Roosevelt, five days before F.D.R.'s death, that cooperation was a myth, that all the Western concessions had been for naught. "Matters on the Polish question have really reached a dead end," wrote Stalin. "Where are the reasons for it? The reasons for it are that the ambassadors of the U.S. and England in Moscow . . . have departed from the principles of the Crimea conference."

Roosevelt's Ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, confirmed that the grand alliance was indeed crumbling, specifically, that the Russians would sanction no form of democratic government for Poland. "Every argument ... I advanced was brushed aside," Harriman reported. "Aside from the major questions which are causing concern in our relations with the Soviet Union, there has been an accumulation of minor incidents . . . Little or no progress has been made in getting Soviet approval for our air teams to visit Soviet-controlled territory for appraisal of bomb damage, or for our naval team to [inspect the port of] Gdynia. Both proposals were agreed to at Yalta." And so on, around the world, the 43 documents add to the background of the lost peace.

Pastures for Germany. In another of his characteristic, clear reports, Ambassador Harriman described a conversation with Ivan Maisky, Russia's Assistant Foreign Minister, on the future of postwar Germany. Maisky insisted upon 1) dismemberment of Germany, 2) dismantling of German industry to 25% of its previous productive capacity, 3) deportation to Russia of 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 German men and women slave laborers for perhaps ten years. "It was the Russians' hope," Harriman concluded dryly,, "that this experience . . . should be handled in such a way as to re-educate the Germans. If they showed signs of becoming more reasonable in their attitude, greater freedom and a fuller life might be provided." Another paper dealing with the postwar reduction of Germany is a memorandum written by the late fellow traveler Harry Dexter White, then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and later exposed as a tool of the Communists. It told how Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. came back to Washington in the late summer of 1944, after the second Quebec Conference. At Quebec, Morgenthau and White had got the initials of Roosevelt and Churchill on the Morgenthau plan, designed to reduce Germany to a "pastoral" state. White noted that Prime Min ister Churchill first opposed the plan, then apparently came around to it, and that Churchill upbraided the reluctant Anthony Eden: "I don't want you running back to the War Cabinet trying to unsell this proposal before I get there." White also noted that Secretary Hull complained bitterly during this meeting against his former Under Secretary, Sumner Welles, who "seemed to be operating a second State Department." (Morgenthau and White, who had drawn up the plan for Germany without Hull's knowledge, were in that case operating a third State Department.)

Conscience of Poland. Most immediate issue in the time of Yalta and the 43 documents, however, was Poland. The Russian Red army had all but swallowed up Poland, and the Communists had installed there a satellite government; the question for the U.S. and Britain was the moral question of whether or not to approve it.

On Feb. 3, 1945, Tomasz Arciszewski, leader of the Polish government-in-exile in London, addressed a telegram to Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta. Perhaps the most forlorn of the 43 documents, the telegram shows how the U.S. and Britain might at least have emerged from Yalta with honor.

"Mr. President," Arciszewski wrote, defining the objective that was never sought. "At this time the fate of many nations rests in your hands and in the hands of Prime Minister Churchill. The whole world expects that these important discussions . . . will result in the creation of foundations for a future peace, a peace which should bring to nations the freedom of conscience and speech ... I trust you will not permit any decisions to be taken which might jeopardize the legitimate rights of Poland, or her independence, and that you will not recognize any faits accomplis with regard to Poland. If peace is to be durable, it must be based on principles of justice, on respect of law, on good neighborly relations as well as honesty in international life."

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