Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, Volume I

40.00119 Potsdam/7–1445

No. 379
The Assistant Secretary of State (Dunn) to the Secretary of State ¹

[Extracts]²

secret

Potsdam, July 14, 1945.

Memorandum for the Secretary

Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, called this afternoon and discussed for two hours in a preliminary way a number of matters on the agenda of the Conference.³

. . . . . . .

6. Reparation.

Coulson was skeptical of a policy of moving capital goods out of Germany in advance of reaching basic decisions on reparation and expressed some dissent from the proposal that substantial interim deliveries of capital goods can be made, pending decisions on reparations.

Sir Alexander agreed that we should strive for a narrow definition of “booty of war.”

Sir Alexander felt that the UK and US should secure as high a percentage of reparation as possible; if, later, they did not utilize fully the shares assigned to them, they might re-allocate a part of them to other United Nations; a smaller initial allocation to them would not increase the share of the smaller United Nations.

. . . . . . .

James Clement Dunn

1. Printed from a carbon copy on which there is an uncertified typed signature.
2. For other extracts from this memorandum see documents Nos. 140, 218, 234, 258, 319, 351, 404, 470, 519, 635, 645, 678, and 708.
3. For a list of persons present at this meeting, see document No. 234, footnote 3.