AT the end of January 1945 Hitler’s armies were virtually compressed within their own territory, save for a brittle hold in Hungary and in Northern Italy, but the political situation, at any rate in Eastern Europe, was by no means so satisfactory. A precarious tranquillity had indeed been achieved in Greece, and it seemed that a free democratic Government, founded on universal suffrage and secret ballot, might be established there within a reasonable time. But Roumania and Bulgaria had passed into the grip of Soviet military occupation, Hungary and Yugoslavia lay in the shadow of the battlefield, and Poland, though liberated from the Germans, had merely exchanged one conqueror for another. The informal and temporary arrangement which I had made with Stalin during my October visit to Moscow could not, and so far as I was concerned was never intended to, govern or affect the future of these wide regions once Germany was defeated.
The whole shape and structure of post-war Europe clamoured for review. When the Nazis were beaten, how was Germany to be treated? What aid could we expect from the Soviet Union in the final overthrow of Japan? And once our military aims were achieved what measures and what organisation could the three great Allies provide for the future peace and good governance of the world? The discussions at Dumbarton Oaks had ended in partial disagreement. So, in a smaller but no less vital sphere, had the negotiations between the Soviet-sponsored “Lublin Poles” and their compatriots from London which Mr. Eden and I had with much difficulty promoted during our visit to the Kremlin in October 1944. An arid correspondence between the President and Stalin, of which Mr. Roosevelt had kept me informed, had accompanied the secession of M. Mikolajczyk from his colleagues in London, while on January 5, contrary to the wishes of both the United States and Great Britain, the Soviets had recognised the Lublin Committee as the Provisional Government of Poland.
The President was fully convinced of the need for another meeting of “the Three”, and after some urging on my part he also agreed that we should have a preliminary conference of our own at Malta. The reader will remember the anxieties which I had expressed about our operations in North-West Europe in my telegram to the President of December 6.* These still weighed with me. The British and American Chiefs of Staff had great need for discussion before we met the Soviets, and on January 29, 1945, I accordingly left Northolt in the Skymaster given to me by General Arnold. My daughter Sarah and the official party, together with Mr. Martin and Mr. Rowan, my private secretaries, and Commander Thompson, travelled with me. The rest of my personal staff and some departmental officials travelled in two other planes. We arrived at Malta just before dawn on January 30, and there I learnt that one of these two aircraft had crashed near Pantelleria. Only three of the crew and two passengers survived.
On the morning of February 2 the Presidential party, on board the U.S.S. Quincy, steamed into Valletta harbour. It was a warm day, and under a cloudless sky I watched the scene from the deck of H.M.S. Orion. As the American cruiser steamed slowly past us towards her berth alongside the quay wall I could see the figure of the President seated on the bridge, and we waved to each other. With the escort of Spitfires overhead, the salutes, and the bands of the ships’ companies in the harbour playing “The Star-spangled Banner”, it was a splendid scene. I lunched on board the Quincy, and at six o’clock that evening we had our first formal meeting in the President’s cabin. Here we reviewed the report of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the military discussions which had been taking place in Malta during the previous three days. Our Staffs had done a remarkable piece of work. Their discussions had centred principally round Eisenhower’s plans for carrying his forces up to and across the Rhine. There were differences of opinion on the subject, which are related in another chapter.* The opportunity was of course taken to review the whole span of the war, including the war against the U-boats, the future campaigns in South-East Asia and the Pacific, and the Mediterranean situation. We reluctantly agreed to withdraw two divisions from Greece as soon as they could be spared, but I made it clear that we should not be obliged to do this until the Greek Government had built up its own military forces. Three divisions were also to be withdrawn from Italy to reinforce North-West Europe, but I stressed that it would be unwise to make any significant withdrawal of amphibious forces. It was very important to follow up any German surrender in Italy, and I told the President that we ought to occupy as much of Austria as possible, as it was “undesirable that more of Western Europe than necessary should be occupied by the Russians.”† In all the military matters a large measure of agreement was reached, and the discussions had the useful result that the Combined Chiefs of Staff were aware of their respective points of view before engaging in talks with their Russian counterparts.
That night the exodus began. Transport planes took off at ten-minute intervals to carry some seven hundred persons, forming the British and American delegations, over fourteen hundred miles to the airfield of Saki, in the Crimea. I boarded my plane after dinner, and went to bed. After a long and cold flight we landed on the airfield, which was under deep snow. My plane was ahead of Mr. Roosevelt’s, and we stood for a while awaiting him. When he was carried down the lift from the “Sacred Cow” he looked frail and ill. Together we inspected the guards of honour, the President sitting in an open car, while I walked beside him.
Presently we set off on a long drive from Saki to Yalta. Lord Moran and Mr. Martin came with me in my car. The journey took us nearly eight hours, and the road was often lined by Russian soldiers, some of them women, standing shoulder to shoulder in the village streets and on the main bridges and mountain passes, and at other points in separate detachments. As we crossed the mountains and descended towards the Black Sea we suddenly passed into warm and brilliant sunshine and a most genial climate.
The Soviet headquarters at Yalta were in the Yusupov Palace, and from this centre Stalin and Molotov and their generals carried on the government of Russia and the control of their immense front, now in violent action. President Roosevelt was given the even more splendid Livadia Palace, close at hand, and it was here, in order to spare him physical inconvenience, that all our plenary meetings were held. This exhausted the undamaged accommodation. I and the principal members of the British delegation were assigned a very large villa about five miles away which had been built in the early nineteenth century by an English architect for a Russian Prince Vorontzov, one-time Imperial Ambassador to the Court of St. James. The rest of our delegation were put up in two rest-houses about twenty minutes away, five or six people sleeping in a room, including high-ranking officers, but no one seemed to mind. The Germans had evacuated the neighbourhood only ten months earlier, and the surrounding buildings had been badly damaged. We were warned that the area had not been completely cleared of mines, except for the grounds of the villa, which were, as usual, heavily patrolled by Russian guards. Over a thousand men had been at work on the scene before our arrival. Windows and doors had been repaired, and furniture and stores brought down from Moscow.
The setting of our abode was impressive. Behind the villa, half Gothic and half Moorish in style, rose the mountains, covered in snow, culminating in the highest peak in the Crimea. Before us lay the dark expanse of the Black Sea, severe, but still agreeable and warm even at this time of the year. Carved white lions guarded the entrance to the house, and beyond the courtyard lay a fine park with sub-tropical plants and cypresses. In the dining-room I recognised the two paintings hanging each side of the fireplace as copies of family portraits of the Herberts at Wilton. It appeared that Prince Vorontzov had married a daughter of the family, and had brought these pictures back with him from England. Every effort was made by our hosts to ensure our comfort, and every chance remark was noted with kindly attention. On one occasion Portal had admired a large glass tank with plants growing in it, and remarked that it contained no fish. Two days later a consignment of goldfish arrived. Another time somebody said casually that there was no lemon-peel in the cocktails. The next day a lemon tree loaded with fruit was growing in the hall. All must have come by air from far away.
The first plenary meeting of the Conference started at a quarterpast four on the afternoon of February 5. The discussion opened on the future of Germany. I had of course pondered this problem, and had thus addressed Mr. Eden a month before:
Treatment of Germany after the war. It is much too soon for us to decide these enormous questions. Obviously, when the German organised resistance has ceased the first stage will be one of severe military control. This may well last for many months, or perhaps for a year or two, if the German underground movement is active.… I have been struck at every point where I have sounded opinion at the depth of the feeling that would be aroused by a policy of “putting poor Germany on her legs again”. I am also well aware of the arguments about “not having a poisoned community in the heart of Europe”. I do suggest that, with all the work we have on our hands at the present moment, we should not anticipate these very grievous discussions and schisms, as they may become. We have a new Parliament to consider, whose opinions we cannot foretell.
I shall myself prefer to concentrate upon the practical issues which will occupy the next two or three years, rather than argue about the long-term relationship of Germany to Europe.… It is a mistake to try to write out on little pieces of paper what the vast emotions of an outraged and quivering world will be either immediately after the struggle is over or when the inevitable cold fit follows the hot. These awe-inspiring tides of feeling dominate most people’s minds, and independent figures tend to become not only lonely but futile. Guidance in these mundane matters is granted to us only step by step, or at the utmost a step or two ahead. There is therefore wisdom in reserving one’s decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed.
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So when Stalin now asked how Germany was to be dismembered, I said it was much too complicated to be settled in five or six days. It would require a very searching examination of the historical, ethnographical, and economic facts, and prolonged review by a special committee, which would go into the different proposals and advise on them. There was so much to consider. What to do with Prussia? What territory should be given to Poland and the U.S.S.R.? Who was to control the Rhine valley and the great industrial zones of the Ruhr and the Saar? A body should be set up at once to examine these matters, and we ought to have its report before reaching any final decision. Mr. Roosevelt suggested asking our Foreign Secretaries to produce a plan for studying the question within twenty-four hours and a definite plan for dismemberment within a month. Here, for a time, the matter was left.
We then arranged to meet next day and consider two topics which were to dominate our future discussions, namely, the Dumbarton Oaks scheme for world security and Poland.
As has been recorded in an earlier chapter, the conference at Dumbarton Oaks had ended without reaching complete agreement about the all-important question of voting rights in the Security Council, and space now forbids more than a reference to some of the salient points in our discussions. Stalin said he feared that, though the three Great Powers were allies to-day, and would none of them commit any act of aggression, in ten years or less the three leaders would disappear and a new generation would come into power which had not experienced the war and would forget what we had gone through. “All of us”, he declared, “want to secure peace for at least fifty years. The greatest danger is conflict among ourselves, because if we remain united the German menace is not very important. Therefore we must now think how to secure our unity in the future, and how to guarantee that the three Great Powers (and possibly China and France) will maintain a united front. Some system must be elaborated to prevent conflict between the main Great Powers.” The Russians were accused of talking too much about voting. It was true they thought it was very important, because everything would be decided by vote and they would be greatly interested in the results. Suppose, for instance, that China as a permanent member of the Security Council demanded the return of Hong Kong, or Egypt demanded the return of the Suez Canal, he assumed they would not be alone and would have friends and perhaps protectors in the Assembly or in the Council, and he feared that such disputes might break the unity of the three Great Powers.
“My colleagues in Moscow cannot forget what happened in December 1939, during the Russo-Finnish War, when the British and the French used the League of Nations against us and succeeded in isolating and expelling the Soviet Union from the League, and when they later mobilised against us and talked of a crusade against Russia. Cannot we have some guarantees that this sort of thing will not happen again?”
After much striving and explanation, we persuaded him to accept an American scheme whereby the Security Council would be virtually powerless unless the “Big Four” were unanimous. If the United States, the U.S.S.R., Great Britain or China disagreed on any major topic then any one of them could refuse their assent and stop the Council doing anything. Here was the Veto. Posterity may judge the results.
I myself have always held the view that the foundation of a World Instrument should be sought on a regional basis. Most of the principal regions suggest themselves—the United States, United Europe, the British Commonwealth and Empire, the Soviet Union, South America. Others are more difficult at present to define—like the Asian group or groups, or the African group—but could be developed with study. But the object would be to have many issues of fierce local controversy thrashed out in the Regional Council, which would then send three or four representatives to the Supreme Body, choosing men of the greatest eminence. This would make a Supreme Group of thirty or forty world statesmen, each responsible not only for representing their own region but for dealing with world causes, and primarily the prevention of war. What we have now is not effective for that outstanding purpose. The summoning of all nations, great and small, powerful or powerless, on even terms to the central body may be compared with the organisation of an army without any division between the High Command and the divisional and brigade commanders. All are invited to the headquarters. Babel, tempered by skilful lobbying, is all that has resulted up to the present. But we must persevere.