Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Two months later, at the so-called “Trident” Conference in Washington, Churchill and Roosevelt went over the same matters (May 1943). The cross-Channel attack, Overlord , was set for May 1944, and an intensified aerial bombardment of Germany ordered as a preliminary. No important decisions could be made on postwar problems, although the atmosphere was brightened by a Soviet announcement of the abolition of the Communist International and an Anglo-American announcement renouncing extraterritorial rights in China.

The next conference, held in May and June 1943 at Hot Springs, Virginia, was of a technical nature, and discussed postwar food and agricultural problems. From this conference there emerged a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an advisory body to collect and disseminate agricultural information, as had been done previously by the League of Nations affiliate, the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome.

Closely related to FAO, but of a temporary rather than permanent character and possessing administrative rather than simply advisory powers, was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). At the first meeting of this international organization, at Atlantic City, New Jersey, in November 1943, forty-four nations agreed to contribute 1 percent of their national incomes to purchase relief supplies for war-devastated peoples. Herbert Lehman, former governor of New York, was elected director-general of the new organization.

In the meantime, in August 1943 at Quebec, in what is sometimes called the “Quadrant” Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt found some time for discussion of postwar policy, although their chief concern was with Italy, with Overlord , and with a new supplement to Overlord consisting of an invasion of southern France from the Mediterranean Sea and up the Rhône Valley. This new invasion, known as Anvil, was to be launched in the summer of 1944.

At Quebec, Churchill accepted Roosevelt’s postwar projects with considerable reluctance. The prime minister felt strongly that the United States and the Soviet Union would be the two giants of the postwar world and that Britain’s best interests lay in building some kind of British sphere of influence in Europe and in Asia as a balance against these two giants. He wished to see two regional associations for these two areas, with Britain in both, the two forming part, if necessary, of some larger, worldwide association. It soon became clear that the United States would accept no regional associations of this character, and insisted on a worldwide association of individual countries. The American insistence on no spheres of influence and no settlement of frontiers while the war was on, like the American insistence that China was a Great Power, was regarded by the other two Allies as childishly unrealistic and even hypocritical, especially as both Britain and Russia were convinced that the United States was aiming to create American spheres of interest, if not regional associations, in its areas of chief concern, Latin America and the Far East.

Churchill had to accept Roosevelt’s projects for a postwar international organization for fear that resistance to these might lead to a revival of American isolationism following the Second World War, as had happened after 1919. This, above all, Churchill had to prevent, since it would leave Britain facing the Soviet Union with no Great Power companionship. Accordingly, at Quebec in August 1943, Churchill accepted Hull’s draft for a postwar United Nations Organization, consisting of four Great Powers and associated lesser Powers on a worldwide basis. This meant that Britain was committed to seek support against the Soviet Union from the United States within the United Nations organization rather than through some tripartite balance-of-power system with spheres of influence.

One important consequence of this British commitment to the American point of view appeared in 1943 with respect to the explosive problem of the Polish frontiers. Britain and Russia reached a tentative agreement to move the whole Polish state westward by wholesale transfers of population, drawing its eastern boundary along the Curzon Line and compensating for this loss of territory in the east by moving its western boundary to the Oder and Neisse rivers. Churchill sincerely felt that this shift would greatly strengthen Poland, since the areas lost in the east to Russia were largely swamps and pine barrens, while the areas to be acquired from Germany in the west were rich in agricultural and mineral resources. This project had to be abandoned, however, when it was rejected by both the United States and Poland. The only agreement which could be reached was an informal one that Poland should obtain East Prussia.

In preparation for the forthcoming first meeting of the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) in Teheran, their foreign ministers met in Moscow in October 1943. Russian suggestions to force Turkey into the war or to demand air bases in Sweden were rejected, and it was generally agreed not to dismember Germany after the war but to force Germans to pay reparations for damages and to undergo punishment for crimes against humanity or international law. It was agreed that a disarmed Germany should be ruled jointly under an Inter-Allied Commission and that Austria should be reestablished as an independent country.

The chief achievement of the conference was the signature of a Four-Nation Declaration on the United Nations. This document stated that the signers would continue to cooperate after the war “for the organization and maintenance of peace and security.” It further promised to create “a general international organization based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states and open to membership by all such states.” The four Powers also promised not to use their armies in the postwar period in the territories of other states “except for the purposes envisaged in this declaration and after joint consultation” and to cooperate together to regulate postwar armaments. This declaration was significant because of the American promise not to relapse into isolation again and because of the American success in having China accepted, admittedly with reluctance, as a Great Power.

In reporting to a joint session of Congress on the significance of this agreement, Secretary of State Hull voiced that kind of naïve idealism which made Churchill squirm. He said, “As the provisions of the Four-Nation Declaration are carried into effect, there will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balancing of power, or any other kind of special arrangements through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests.” He went on to point out, as a desirable fact, that questions of boundaries had been left in abeyance until the end of hostilities, as the United States had desired.

Just at this time considerable efforts were being made in the United States to obtain popular commitments against any postwar return to isolationism. On September 7, 1943, a conference of leaders of the Republican Party at Mackinac Island, Michigan, endorsed the hopes for a postwar international organization. Two weeks later, the Fulbright Resolution favoring such an organization passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 360 to 29, and in November a similar expression, the Connally Resolution, was accepted in the United States Senate by a vote of 85 to 5.

The Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers was followed, within a month, by the first meeting of the Big Three, held at Teheran from November 28 to December 1, 1943. Since Russia was not at war with Japan, there were no Chinese representatives at Teheran, and the Anglo-Americans met with these at two separate conferences in Cairo before and after the sessions in Teheran (November 22-26 and December 3-6, 1943). Although the war against China was being fought quite independently from the war against Germany, the Cairo discussions formed a background for the Teheran negotiations, and undoubtedly influenced them. Once again, this influence was exerted through strategic discussions.