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

The conference of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin held at Yalta, in the Crimea, on February 4-12, 1945, sought to reach agreement on most of the issues of the war and of the immediate postwar period. The nature of this conference and its decisions has been so much distorted by partisan propaganda in recent years that it is difficult for any historian today to reconstruct the situation as it seemed at the time. In general, the conference seems to have been cordial, cooperative, and optimistic, and it is incorrect to project subsequent animosities and conflicts backward into the conference itself. As the discussions proceeded, the victorious armies were pressing forward rapidly into Germany in the Soviet offensive which began on January 12, 1945, and Eisenhower’s attack which had begun on February 8, 1945. Victory could clearly be foreseen in the European war, but in the Far East the future was much more clouded.

In Europe the attitude of mutual trust seems to have been high, probably higher than the actual relationships of the three Powers justified, but this was so prevalent that no efforts were made to establish limits of demarcation for the advancing armies within Germany. There was rapid agreement on joint postwar administration of Germany, with a four-Power control commission (to include France) and three separate zones of military occupation (any zone for France to be taken out of the area assigned to the Western Powers). Berlin, outside any zone, was to be governed jointly by a Kommandatura of commandants assigned by the respective zone commanders in chief. Access to Berlin, as a military question and on the advice of the United States War Department, was left to subsequent military arrangements with “freedom of transit” as the guiding principle.

Differences regarding the rules of the United Nations Organization were settled with surprising ease. Stalin accepted Roosevelt’s suggestion that the members of the Security Council be unable to veto discussion of disputes involving themselves within the Council, and the Anglo-Americans, in turn, accepted the Soviet demand for extra seats in the Assembly by offering them two, for the Ukraine and White Russia.

The crucial problem of Poland was subject to agreements which gave the Russians much of what they wanted. The Curzon Line of 1919 was accepted as its eastern frontier, but the western border was left indefinite, since Stalin would have placed it farther to the west (involving deportation of additional millions of German residents) than either Roosevelt or Churchill considered acceptable. It was no longer possible to find a government for Poland by fusion of the London group with the Communist-dominated Lublin Committee, since the former, after the resignation of Mikolajczyk, had become openly anti-Soviet and the latter, on December 31, 1944, had been recognized by Moscow as the government of Poland. Compromise was reached by agreement to expand the Lublin group by the addition of “democratic leaders from Poland abroad” and that this expanded government would be recognized when it had been “pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot.” No form of supervision of these elections, even by their ambassadors, could be obtained by the English-speaking countries.

Much of the Yalta Conference was concerned with the Far East. It would be a mistake to regard these discussions as revolving about payments to Soviet Russia in the Far East in return for its intervention in the war with Japan. All three Powers were agreed that Japanese imperialist gains at the expense of Russia and China since 1854 should be undone, and Stalin was as ready to enter the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany as Roosevelt was eager to have Russia do so. The talk was concerned rather with the terms and details of both of these actions.

The First Cairo Conference of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek on December 1, 1943 had agreed to a “Declaration” which promised that “Japan will be expelled from all territories which she has taken by violence and greed.” At Yalta this declaration was extended and specified. It was agreed to undo the results of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 as follows:

Southern Sakhalin would be granted to the Soviet Union along with a lease on the Port Arthur naval base and a dominant position in the “internationalized” port of Dairen; the Chinese Eastern Railroad and the South Manchurian Railroad which serves Dairen would be operated jointly by a Soviet-Chinese company in which Soviet interests would be dominant, although full sovereignty over Manchuria would be retained by China. In addition the Kurile Islands would be ceded to the Soviet Union; and Outer Mongolia, which had been free of Chinese power for decades, would be granted autonomy permanently.

These agreements, drawn up in a formal document at Yalta and specified as the price of Soviet intervention in the war on Japan, were kept secret, although it was agreed that they should be conveyed to Chiang Kai-shek. This could not be done much before the Soviet intervention in the war, because security was so poor in Chungking that there were no secrets from the Japanese there; accordingly, the Chinese were not informed of the secret Yalta agreements until President Truman told the Chinese prime minister and foreign minister, T. V. Soong, about June 10, 1945.

During this period, the Great Powers were thoroughly disillusioned with China. A generation of almost constant warfare under a government lacking in energy or principles had brought the whole organization to the verge of dissolution. Trade had reached a point of semicollapse; inflation was rampant; capital of the most fundamental kinds, such as farm tools, roads, and communications, was worn out; 90 percent of the railroads were out of operation; and the chief concern of almost all Chinese was survival. The existing political divisions offered little hope of remedying any of China’s ills even after Japan had been defeated. The dominant Kuomintang Party was shot through with corruption and complacency and seemed to have few concerns except remaining in office. Its chief aim seemed to be to maintain its armed blockade of the Communist forces operating out of Yenan in northwestern China. There the highly disciplined Communist armies had taken over the area and appeared to have gained some degree of local support.

American hopes of fusing the two parties into a common and energetic Chinese government, however, broke down on the refusals of the Kuomintang and the remoteness of the Communists. The Russians seemed to have little interest in these matters, and Stalin made it clear, in his conversations with his Western colleagues, that he had little concern with the situation beyond his rigid determination to secure the specific and strictly limited goals established by his vision of Russian national interests. He had little sympathy for the Chinese Communists or for the Chinese in general, regarded Chiang Kai-shek as the best of a poor lot, and seemed fully prepared to allow the United States to try its own independent hand in working out any agreements it wished in respect to the governing of China.

As became clear even in 1944, however, the United States was not going to get its wishes in China even when it could decide what those wishes were. As early as September 1944, Roosevelt was so completely disillusioned with the Chinese war effort, especially with Chiang’s lack of energy in fighting the Japanese, that he suggested that General Stilwell should be given command of all Chinese forces. This demand, sent to Chiang on September 16th, was answered within ten days by a blunt demand from Chiang that Stilwell be removed from China.

These circumstances made it inevitable at the time that American leaders, especially the military, should welcome possible intervention of Soviet forces against Japan on the mainland of Asia and should doubly welcome the addition of the first atomic bombs to their arsenal of weapons.