Introduction

This introduction deals with the scope of, the sources for, and the problems of editorial treatment met in the compilation of volume II of Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945. A separate introduction relating to the contents of volume I, which deals with the pre-Conference period, will be found in that volume.

The Berlin Conference

The “Tripartite Conference of Berlin” (as it was called officially in the Conference Communiqué1), otherwise known as Terminal , the Berlin Conference, and the Potsdam Conference, was in reality a complex of bilateral, tripartite, and quadripartite meetings, both formal and informal, involving United States, British, Soviet, and Polish officials of various levels and in various combinations.2 Since the first meeting at the Conference site in which Heads of Government participated3 took place on July 16, 1945, and the last such meeting ended at 12:30 a.m. on the following August 2, these dates have been taken by the editors as the temporal bounds of the Conference.4 The principal types of meetings and conversations which took place during that period in connection with the Berlin Conference are described below, followed by a note on arrangements and procedures which may be helpful to the student of the Conference.

tripartite meetings of the heads of government

During the period from July 17 to August 2, 1945, the Heads of Government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union met together in thirteen formal or plenary meetings held in the Cecilienhof Palace (Schloss Cecilienhof), the former palace of Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia located in the New Garden, Potsdam, southwest of Berlin. The first group of plenary meetings [Page XIV] comprised nine daily meetings from July 17 through July 25 attended by President Harry S. Truman, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, and Generalissimo Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, together with their respective Foreign Ministers—Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov—and other advisers. On the afternoon of July 25 Churchill, Eden, and Clement R. Attlee (Chairman of the British Parliamentary Labour Party, who had been serving as a member of the British Delegation to the Berlin Conference) returned to London for the announcement of the results of the British general election which had just taken place. The Labour Party having won that election, Attlee succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister. Attlee remained in London a short time to make initial arrangements for the formation of a new government, including the appointment of Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary to replace Eden, and he then returned to Germany, accompanied by Bevin, in time for a plenary meeting on the evening of July 28. It may be said that this initiated the second group of plenary meetings at the Berlin Conference, attended by Truman, Attlee, and Stalin; by Byrnes, Bevin, and Molotov; and by other advisers. No plenary meetings were held on July 29 or 30, Stalin having notified Truman and Attlee that he was ill. The eleventh plenary meeting was held on July 31 and the twelfth, on the afternoon of August 1. The thirteenth and final plenary meeting began in the evening on August 1 and was concluded at 12:30 a.m. on August 2, following approval by the three Heads of Government of a Protocol of the Proceedings of the Conference and of a “Report” or Communiqué on the Conference for immediate public release. Department of State minutes are available for each of the thirteen plenary meetings of the Conference; these are printed in part VI of the present volume, where the reader will find also rough notes taken at the plenary meetings by Benjamin V. Cohen, a Special Assistant to the Secretary of State.

In addition to their plenary meetings, the Heads of Government met informally at dinners given in turn by Truman, Stalin, and Churchill. Minutes are not available for these informal meetings, but such information as has been found concerning them has been included in part VI of this volume.

tripartite meetings of the foreign ministers

At the First Plenary Meeting, on July 17, it was assumed that the Foreign Ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union would meet separately, as they had done at the Yalta Conference, to consider matters referred to them by the [Page XV] Heads of Government.5 Between July 18 and August 1 the three Foreign Ministers held eleven regular meetings, two informal meetings, and at least one luncheon meeting. Department of State minutes were prepared for all of the regular meetings and for one of the informal meetings; these minutes are printed in part VI of the present volume, together with other notes and memoranda prepared by members of the United States Delegation which pertain to these meetings.

meeting of the three foreign ministers with the polish delegation

The single quadripartite meeting of the Conference took place on July 24, when, at the invitation of the Heads of Government, a Polish Delegation headed by the President of the National Council of the Homeland and the Prime Minister in the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was received by the United States, British, and Soviet Foreign Ministers at the end of their Seventh Meeting and presented Polish views with respect to the western frontier of Poland. Two separate summaries of the Polish presentation prepared by members of the United States Delegation have been included in part VI of the present volume. A somewhat fuller summary, of Polish origin, is printed in appendix A.

tripartite subcommittees appointed by the foreign ministers

The Foreign Ministers during the course of the Berlin Conference appointed the following sixteen subcommittees:

1.
The Subcommittee (or Drafting Committee) on the Council of Foreign Ministers, appointed July 18 (see post, page 70).
2.
The Economic Subcommittee, appointed July 18 (see post, page 76).
3.
The Subcommittee (or Drafting Committee) on German Political Questions, appointed July 18 (see post, page 76).
4.
The Subcommittee (or Drafting Committee) on Poland, appointed July 19 (see post, page 105).
5.
The Subcommittee on Admission to the United Nations, appointed July 20 (see post, pages 150, 159).
6.
The Subcommittee (or Drafting Committee) on the Invitation to France and China To Join the Council of Foreign Ministers, appointed July 21 (see post, page 187).
7.
The Subcommittee on Implementation of the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe, appointed July 22 (see post, page 232).
8.
The Subcommittee on Directives to the Military Commanders in Germany, appointed July 23 (see post, page 285).
9.
The Subcommittee on Cooperation in Solving Immediate European Economic Problems, appointed July 23 (see post, page 285).
10.
The Subcommittee on Inland Waterways, appointed July 25 (see post, page 398).
11.
The Subcommittee on the Transfer of German Populations, appointed July 25 (see post, page 399).
12.
The Communiqué Subcommittee, appointed July 25 (see post, page 399).
13.
The Protocol Subcommittee, appointed July 25 (see post, page 399).
14.
The Technical Subcommittee on Disposition of the German Navy and Merchant Marine, appointed July 30 (see post, pages 492, 502).
15.
The Subcommittee on Use of Allied Property for Reparations in the Satellite Countries, appointed August 1 (see post, page 546).
16.
The Subcommittee (or Drafting Committee) on Revised Procedure for the Allied Control Commissions for Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, appointed August 1 (see post, page 556).

For a summary of the assignments given to subcommittees which were in an active status as of July 25, together with the names of the United States representatives on those subcommittees, see post, pages 401403.

The Economic Subcommittee was the busiest of all these bodies subordinate to the Foreign Ministers, since it was assigned (a) German economic problems, including reparations, on July 18; (b) the question of reparations from Italy and Austria, on July 20; and (c) the question of the release of tankers for the war against Japan through an altered distribution of European oil supplies, on July 21. The Economic Subcommittee met more frequently than any other subcommittee, holding its first meeting on July 19 and its last on August 1. Other subcommittees apparently completed their work in the course of one, two, or three meetings.

The United States Delegation had no standard procedure for recording the discussions which took place in these various subcommittees or, indeed, for recording such bare facts on subcommittee meetings as date, time, place, and names of participants. The editors, however, have found memoranda, notes, or diary entries dealing with certain of these meetings. In part VI of this volume subcommittee meetings are noted if (a) the date of a given meeting is known and (b) some relevant material on the discussions at that meeting has been found. It should be noted that the list of subcommittee meetings fulfilling these requirements is by no means complete, and many subcommittee meetings are known to have taken place on which such specific information is not available.

tripartite committees appointed by the heads of government

In the final days of the Conference, the Heads of Government, who had normally left the appointment of committees to the Foreign Ministers, appointed two committees directly:

1.
The Drafting Committee on Reparations From Germany, appointed July 31 (see post, page 518); and
2.
The Committee To Compare Texts of the Protocol, appointed at the Thirteenth Plenary Meeting, apparently on August 2 (see post, page 596).

No minutes, memoranda, or notes concerning the discussions in these two committees have been found.

tripartite military meeting

Truman, Churchill, and Stalin were all accompanied to the Berlin Conference by their Chiefs of Staff, who held one tripartite meeting in the Cecilienhof Palace on July 24. The minutes on that meeting prepared by the United States Secretaries, Combined Chiefs of Staff, are printed post, page 344.

bilateral meetings of heads of government and foreign ministers

During the course of the Berlin Conference Truman and Byrnes, either separately or together, had a number of bilateral meetings and conversations with members of the British, Soviet, and Polish Delegations. United States minutes or memoranda were prepared on some of these meetings, but for others no official United States record was kept. In part VI of the present volume the editors have taken note of all such bilateral meetings known to have taken place and have included, by either quotation or citation, all information pertaining to these meetings which they have found.

meetings of the combined chiefs of staff

The Combined Chiefs of Staff, comprising the Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, held eight meetings at 25 Ringstrasse, Babelsberg, during the course of the Berlin Conference, and a “plenary meeting” with President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill, held on July 24 at 2 Kaiserstrasse, Babelsberg. The Secretariat of the Combined Chiefs of Staff was in attendance, and the eight meetings other than the plenary meeting were numbered in the regular series of meetings held by the Combined Chiefs of Staff during World War II. Minutes of these meetings, prepared by the Combined Secretariat, are printed in part VI of the present volume.

other international conversations

In addition to the categories of meetings described above, there took place in connection with the Berlin Conference a number of other conversations between United States officials, on the one hand, and British, Soviet, or Polish officials, on the other. Some of these conversations took place on what may be called the “fringes” of the Conference, e. g., a call which Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson made on Generalissimo Stalin, a conversation between Secretary [Page XVIII] of the Navy James Forrestal and Foreign Secretary Bevin, and a meeting between the Appointed American Ambassador to Poland, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Polish officials at Babelsberg. It has seemed desirable, however, to consider the Conference in its broadest context, so the editors have taken note in part VI of this volume of all such meetings known to have taken place6 and have included all information pertaining to these meetings which they have found.

meetings attended by united states officials only

The United States Delegation to the Berlin Conference held no delegation meetings as such, although the President conferred frequently with individual advisers or groups of advisers, and Secretary of State Byrnes and other ranking members of the Delegation did likewise. For the most part, no minutes were kept of intradelegation discussions, but unofficial sources concerning them—particularly passages from the diary kept by Secretary of War Stimson—have been used by the editors at appropriate places in annotating the official documentation. Minutes do exist, and are printed in part VI, on the conversations which took place among United States officials at Babelsberg on the evening of July 26 regarding war criminals. Minutes were also prepared on the meetings at Babelsberg of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, relevant extracts from which are printed in part VI.

Discussions within the United States Delegation on subjects not considered internationally at the Berlin Conference fall outside the scope of the present volume.

conference arrangements and procedures

As indicated above, the principal tripartite meetings of the Berlin Conference took place in the Cecilienhof Palace, which, lying in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany, had been offered by the Soviet authorities for the Conference and had then been made ready by those authorities.7 The United States, British, and Soviet Delegations each had a suite of offices in the palace in addition to the facilities provided there for the interdelegation meetings. The three delegations had living and additional office space provided in compounds in nearby Babelsberg, and the United States Delegation, at least, preferred to use its Babelsberg quarters, where it had sole responsibility for security and other arrangements, for much of its office work.

[Page XIX]

President Truman was chosen on July 17 to preside over the plenary meetings of the Conference on the suggestion of Stalin.8 Churchill supported this arrangement, the British and United States Delegations having previously taken note of the precedents of the conferences at Tehran and Yalta, where President Roosevelt, the only Chief of State present, had served as chairman.9 In the meetings of the Foreign Ministers, Secretary of State Byrnes acted as chairman the first day, and thereafter the chair was rotated, passing to the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States again, in that order, during the first phase of the Conference, with the chairman for each meeting acting as Rapporteur to the succeeding meeting of Heads of Government. Molotov, however, acted as Rapporteur for the meeting of July 25—the British day to preside, but a day on which the United Kingdom was represented by Sir Alexander Cadogan in Eden’s absence—as well as for his regular turn on July 27; and on July 30, which would normally have been Byrnes’ day in the chair, Bevin (who had not previously presided over the Foreign Ministers) took the chair, leaving Byrnes to preside at the final meeting of the Foreign Ministers on August 1.

At the plenary meetings space was provided at the circular Conference table for fifteen persons—five from each of the participating Delegations—with additional chairs for advisers placed behind the seats for the principals. The usual pattern of seating, as can be seen from plates 3 and 4,10 was for each Head of Government to sit in the middle of his Delegation, flanked by his Foreign Minister and one other adviser on his right, and his interpreter and one additional adviser on his left. President Truman normally had Secretary of State Byrnes and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (his Chief of Staff) seated to his right, and Charles E. Bohlen (an Assistant to the Secretary of State who acted as the President’s interpreter) and Joseph E. Davies (a former Ambassador to the Soviet Union) seated to his left. The advisers seated behind these five changed somewhat from time to time, depending on the subjects being discussed. Ordinarily a Delegation had not more than ten members in the Conference room at the same time, but this was not a rule strictly adhered to.11 At plenary meetings most of the speaking was done by the Heads of Government themselves, although the Foreign Ministers spoke in plenary meetings from time to time (particularly after Bevin’s arrival at the Conference) and other advisers spoke in plenary meetings also, but only very infrequently.

[Page XX]

The method of interpretation at the plenary meetings has been described by Truman as follows:

“There was no difficulty at all in understanding what was being said. Bohlen would translate for me when I talked, Pavlov 12 would translate while Stalin was speaking, and Major Birse 13 would translate Churchill’s words for the Russians. We would slow down from time to time so the interpreters could translate each sentence. If there was any disagreement among the interpreters as to the proper Russian word for the English equivalent, they would settle it right there while Stalin would sit back and grin.”14

A similar method of interpretation was used in the meetings of the Foreign Ministers.

The Conference had no formal and fixed agenda, although there had been much consultation between the three participating Governments, through both diplomatic and military channels, as to what subjects should be discussed at the Conference.15 Likewise there was no formally agreed procedure for handling the questions which were discussed, but the normal procedure for disposition of a difficult political question involved at least an initial discussion by the Heads of Government, referral to and discussion by the Foreign Ministers, further referral to a subcommittee for additional discussion and the preparation of a draft text for approval by the Foreign Ministers, and the reporting to the Foreign Ministers of an agreed text or of the failure of the subcommittee to arrive at an agreed text. If the Foreign Ministers could then reach agreement, the matter was reported to the Heads of Government as settled, and the agreed text was subsequently incorporated into the Protocol of Proceedings and/or the Communiqué of the Conference submitted to the Heads of Government for final approval. Subjects on which the Foreign Ministers could not agree might be sent back to the subcommittee for further study or passed on to the Heads of Government for discussion and possible agreement. (The Foreign Ministers not only reported their discussions to the Heads of Government but also prepared the agenda for the plenary meetings.) On the most difficult questions there was also informal bilateral negotiation as a step toward eventual tripartite agreement. This procedural summary, however, represents only a rough generalization concerning the [Page XXI] flow of work at the Conference, and the reader will readily see from the minutes and documents printed in this volume that the procedures followed with respect to each individual subject depended upon ad hoc decisions made throughout the Conference, with final Conference action on each subject dependent upon the Heads of Government themselves.

Following the pattern of the Tehran and Yalta Conferences, no tripartite secretariat was provided to service the meetings of the Berlin Conference or to prepare a record of the proceedings acceptable to all the participating Heads of Government. Therefore—except for the minutes of the meetings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (which were prepared by a combined Anglo-American military secretariat and agreed upon) and the minutes of the meeting of the United States and Soviet Chiefs of Staff (which were prepared by the American military authorities and submitted for possible amendment to the Soviet authorities)—the minutes of the proceedings of the Berlin Conference presented in part VI of this volume represent solely the United States Delegation record of those proceedings, not a record agreed upon also by the British and Soviet Delegations to the Conference.

Organization and Scope of This Volume

Whereas volume I of Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, is devoted exclusively to pre-Conference developments, the focus of the present volume is the Conference itself, as defined above. Full coverage of the international discussions at the Conference has been the editors’ objective. Papers in the following categories have accordingly been included in this compilation: minutes and notes of discussions; proposals circulated among the delegations; working drafts of such proposals; inter-delegation correspondence; memoranda prepared within the United States Delegation on Conference subjects; and a log of the President’s activities at the Conference. The voluminous cable traffic passing between the United States Delegation at Babelsberg and officials in Washington has also been examined, and those messages having a substantial bearing on Conference subjects have been included. The editors have further included messages originating in a number of capitals other than Washington which had an important bearing upon subjects being discussed at the Conference. Finally, in view of the gaps still remaining in the Conference record, the editors searched for contemporary notes, memoranda, and correspondence of a personal character prepared by civilian officials present at the Conference which would add to a knowledge of the Conference negotiations, and relevant information from these sources has been included in this compilation.

[Page XXII]

In the course of compiling this volume the editors found a few hitherto unpublished post-Conference documents in which participants at the Berlin Conference made authoritative summaries or statements on the proceedings, or portions of the proceedings, of the Conference itself.16 Since these statements supplement the contemporary Conference record, they have been included under appropriate subject headings in this volume. It should be emphasized, however, that the present volume does not purport to cover any post-Conference developments, and the reader should perhaps be warned that the denouement to some Berlin Conference problems was along lines which would hardly be anticipated from the documents presented in this volume.

The present volume is organized in three parts, as follows:

Part V17 contains a “Log of the President’s Trip to the Berlin Conference” which is described in some detail on page 3, post.

Part VI contains minutes and notes of Conference proceedings, arranged chronologically by meeting. Where the editors have found minutes or notes prepared by two different participants on a given meeting, both sets have been included so that the reader can use one set to corroborate, amplify, clarify, or correct the other. Double coverage is provided for each of the plenary meetings, with a set of formal minutes (drafted in the third person) supplemented, for each meeting, by the somewhat rough and informal Cohen notes, which (while not pretending to be a full verbatim record) probably give, at some places, the best approximation available in United States records of the words actually spoken at the Conference table. In addition to minutes, and notes supplementary to or in lieu of minutes, part VI of this volume contains memoranda on the agenda for individual meetings, reports by the Rapporteurs on the meetings of the Foreign Ministers, summaries of discussions at individual meetings, and reports on the status of Conference business at the conclusion of particular meetings.

Conference documents, i. e., papers circulated, considered, or approved internationally at the Conference, are printed in part VII of the present volume and are arranged by subject, except for the final documents of the Conference (the report of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, the proclamation calling for the surrender of Japan, the Protocol of the Proceedings, and the Communiqué), which are printed as entire documents at the end of part VII. Included under the various subject headings in this part, in addition to papers dealt [Page XXIII] with internationally at the Conference, are supplementary documents which will give the reader added light on the Conference discussions and on developments elsewhere which bore on Conference discussions. These supplementary documents include memoranda, drafts, and working papers prepared within the United States Delegation; exchanges on Conference subjects between the United States Delegation and the Executive Departments of the Government at Washington; and relevant information on those subjects received in Washington and relayed, or presumably relayed, to the United States Delegation at Babelsberg. The gist (or in some cases the entire text) of important messages in this last category was usually repeated by telegram to the Delegation, and such repetition is noted in the footnotes in this volume. The editors have found no complete record, however, of those messages and memoranda copies of which were forwarded by air pouch to the Delegation at Babelsberg. It was standard practice, however, for the Department of State to forward by daily pouch information copies of important incoming telegrams, airgrams, and despatches, as well as carbon copies of certain memoranda prepared in Washington, so that the United States Delegation to the Berlin Conference was fully informed of world developments taking place during the Conference.

Two appendices to the present volume supplement the section on Conference proceedings with documentation from unusual sources: appendix A presents material made available to the Department of State by Stanisław Mikołajczyk, who was a member of the Polish Delegation summoned to the Berlin Conference; and appendix D contains two memoranda prepared, because of special circumstances, many years after the Conference by Charles E. Bohlen. For a fuller discussion of these two appendices and their contents, see post, pages 1517 and 1582.

Although France was not represented at the Berlin Conference, it stood in a special position with respect to the Conference in that the conferees made specific provision for communicating many of their decisions to the Provisional French Government and for soliciting French support of those decisions. The editors have therefore included in appendix B to the present volume a compilation of papers on French reaction to decisions of the Berlin Conference.

Because of the frequent references throughout the body of the volume to the decisions of the Yalta Conference, the Protocol of Proceedings and the Communiqué of that conference have been included in the present volume as appendix C for the convenience of the reader. The necessity for appendix E (addenda) is explained on page 1589, post.

[Page XXIV]

Within the scope described above, the present volume documents the Berlin Conference according to the usual regulations applicable to the Foreign Relations series, viz.:

045 Documentary Record of American Diplomacy

045.1 Scope of Documentation

The publication Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, constitutes the official record of the foreign policy of the United States. These volumes include, subject to necessary security considerations, all documents needed to give a comprehensive record of the major foreign policy decisions within the range of the Department of State’s responsibilities, together with appropriate materials concerning the facts which contributed to the formulation of policies. When further material is needed to supplement the documentation in the Department’s files for a proper understanding of the relevant policies of the United States, such papers should be obtained from other Government agencies.

045.2 Editorial Preparation

The basic documentary diplomatic record to be printed in Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, shall be edited by the Historical Office of the Department of State. The editing of the record shall be guided by the principles of historical objectivity. There shall be no alteration of the text, no deletions without indicating where in the text the deletion was made, and no omission of facts which were of major importance in reaching a decision. Nothing shall be omitted for the purpose of concealing or glossing over what might be regarded by some as a defect of policy. However, certain omissions of documents or parts of documents are permissible for the following reasons:

a.
To avoid publication of matters which would tend to impede current diplomatic negotiations or other business.
b.
To condense the record and avoid repetition of needless details.
c.
To preserve the confidence reposed in the Department by individuals and by foreign governments.
d.
To avoid giving needless offense to other nationalities or individuals.
e.
To eliminate personal opinions presented in despatches and not acted upon by the Department. To this consideration there is one qualification—in connection with major decisions it is desirable, where possible, to show the alternatives presented to the Department before the decision was made.

In accordance with the regulation quoted above, because the Berlin Conference dealt importantly with military as well as political problems, the Department of State asked for and received the cooperation of the Department of Defense in locating and releasing for publication documents relating to the military aspects of the Conference. This type of material consists of papers documenting the official position or advice of the War and Navy Departments on politico-military subjects discussed at the international level at the Berlin Conference, as presented by the civilian leaders of those Departments and by the military chiefs in their capacity as members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Combined Chiefs of Staff. In addition, some papers originating with military authorities below these levels have [Page XXV] been included in order to clarify subjects discussed at the Berlin Conference.

Unpublished Sources

The papers printed in this volume (except for a few items reprinted from the published sources listed below, pages xxvii xxxi ) were drawn from the following files and collections of official and private papers:

a. inside the department of state

1.
Indexed Central Files—Papers in the indexed Central Files of the Department of State are indicated by a file number in the head-note, in the usual style of Foreign Relations volumes. A considerable number of documents (such as the translations of Japanese Foreign Ministry papers printed on pages 12481264) were not originally found by the editors in the Central Files of the Department but have now been indexed and deposited in the Central Files.
2.
Staff Committee Files—A collection of unindexed papers in the Records Service Center of the Department containing the minutes and documents of the Secretary’s Staff Committee, a body which included the Secretary of State and the Assistant Secretaries, or their representatives.
3.
SWNCC Files—A collection of unindexed papers in the Records Service Center containing files of the interdepartmental State–War–Navy Coordinating Committee.
4.
Pauley Files—A collection of unindexed papers in the Records Service Center containing the office files of the United States Representative on the Allied Commission on Reparations, Edwin W. Pauley.
5.
Moscow Embassy Files—The files for 1945, now in the Record Service Center, of the American Embassy at Moscow.
6.
London Embassy Files—The files for 1945, now in the Records Service Center, of the American Embassy at London.
7.
Nanking Embassy Files—The files for 1945 of the American Embassy at Chungking, forwarded to the Records Service Center by the Embassy following its transfer to Nanking.
8.
Frankfurt USPolAd Files—The files for 1945, now in the Records Service Center, of the Office of the United States Political Adviser at Frankfurt.
9.
L/T Files—The office files of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs.
10.
S/AE Files—The office files of the Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Disarmament and Atomic Energy.

b. outside the department of state

1.
Truman Papers—The private papers of former President Harry S. Truman. Photocopies of some of these papers, including the [Page XXVI] President’s set of Conference minutes, were obtained by the Department of State while Mr. Truman was still in office, and others were obtained from Mr. Truman’s office in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1956. No minutes were found in the Truman Papers which were not already available in the Department of State, but, since some of the minutes in the Department were retyped copies and contained copying errors not in the President’s set of minutes, the editors thought it desirable to print minutes from photocopies of the President’s set. In the categories of Conference documents and interdelegation correspondence, the editors found the Truman Papers invaluable as a supplement to the official files of the Department of State.
2.
J. C. S. Files—The files of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These Ales provided not only Joint Chiefs of Staff material but also Combined Chiefs of Staff documentation. The approval of the British Chiefs of Staff, along with that of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, was obtained for the declassification of Combined Chiefs of Staff documentation.
3.
Department of the Army Files—These files provided, for this volume, certain papers of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of War relating to politico-military matters discussed at the international level during the Berlin Conference, as well as several messages exchanged between United States Army officers in the field and the War Department. Since the Army operated the communications center for the United States Delegation at Babelsberg, certain cables to and from the Delegation not found elsewhere, including War Shipping Administration messages, were also drawn from Department of the Army Files.
4.
White House Files—The Log of the President’s Trip to the Berlin Conference (document No. 710) and one White House press release (document No. 1315) came from the files of the White House.
5.
Brown PapersWalter E. Brown, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State at the time of the Berlin Conference, made available pertinent extracts from a diary which he kept at the Conference.
6.
Byrnes Papers—The principal editor of this volume had the opportunity to examine papers pertaining to the Conference among the private papers of James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State at the time of the Conference. A few papers not already in the files of the Department of State were found and included in the present volume.
7.
Forrestal Papers—The diary of James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy at the time of the Conference, was examined at Princeton University, where it is now deposited. An account of Forrestal’s conversation at the Conference site with British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin is printed in this volume from that source, by arrangement [Page XXVII] with the University, Mr. Michael Forrestal, and the New York Herald Tribune.
8.
Mikołajczyk Papers—The documents in appendix A to the present volume are printed from memoranda and diary entries lent to the Department of State, in connection with the preparation of this volume, by Stanislaw Mikołajczyk, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform in the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity at the time of the Berlin Conference.
9.
Morse Papers—Information on some of the Conference discussions on shipping questions was provided by Huntington T. Morse on the basis of rough notes which he had made at the Conference. Morse was Assistant to the Administrator of the War Shipping Administration at the time of the Berlin Conference.
10.
Stimson Papers—The diary of Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War at the time of the Conference, is now deposited at Yale University. Photocopies of relevant portions of the diary were made available to the Department by the Trustees of the Henry L. Stimson Literary Trust, and numerous extracts from the diary are included in the present volume by their permission.

The diary of the late Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, on deposit in the Library of Congress, was examined, with Admiral Leahy’s permission, but was found not to contain any pertinent information not already published in his book, I Was There, cited below. The executors of the estate of the late Joseph E. Davies caused a search to be made of the Davies Papers (from which a few papers had been made available during Davies’ lifetime for volume I of this compilation) and reported to the Department that nothing had been located in the way of notes by Davies on the Berlin Conference. One unsigned memorandum in the Department’s files was identified by comparison with a copy supplied by W. Averell Harriman from his private papers.

The editors are most grateful to all those who gave permission for the use of private papers, to those who searched private collections at their request, and to the many members of the United States Delegation who were interviewed by or who carried on correspondence with Department of State historians in connection with the present compilation.

Published Sources

a. official published sources

The sources listed below comprise (a) documents of or pertaining to the Berlin Conference published officially by the United States, British, and Soviet Governments, available to the editors as of September 1960, and (b) post-Conference statements by Conference [Page XXVIII] participants which contain information on events at the Conference and which have been printed in official publications. For a list of unofficial publications by Conference participants, see post, page xxx .

Sources Published by the United States Government

Department of State, “Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender”, in Department of State Bulletin, volume XIII, page 137. This text was printed from a mimeographed press release issued by the Office of War Information at Washington on July 26, 1945.

Department of State, “Tripartite Conference at Berlin”, in Department of State Bulletin, volume XIII, page 153. There is printed under this caption the text of the “Report on the Tripartite Conference of Berlin”, i. e., the Conference Communiqué, as contained in a mimeographed press release issued by the White House at Washington on August 2, 1945.

Department of State, untitled mimeographed press release, No. 238, March 24, 1947, with a mimeographed sheet of corrigenda bearing the same date. This press release contains the text of the Protocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin Conference released by the United States Government in 1947,18 and was the source for the text of the Protocol printed in A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941–49, Senate Document No. 123, 81st Congress, 1st Session (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1950), page 34.

Eugene H. Dooman, testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, September 14, 1951, in Institute of Pacific Relations, Hearings Before the Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 82d Congress, 1st Session (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1951–1953), part 3, page 703.

W. Averell Harriman, statement of July 13, 1951, submitted to the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, in Military Situation in the Far East, Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations To Conduct an Inquiry Into the Military Situation in the Far East and the Facts Surrounding the Relief of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur From His Assignments in That Area, United States Senate, 82d Congress, 1st Session (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1951), part 5, page 3328. The same statement is printed under the title, “Our Wartime Relations With the Soviet Union and the Agreements Reached at Yalta”, in Department of State Bulletin, volume XXV, page 371.19

Robert D. Murphy, “The Strategy of Communist Advance”, in Department of State Bulletin, volume XXXIX, page 1043.

Edwin W. Pauley, “German Reparations”, in Department of State Bulletin, volume XIII, page 308.

Harry S. Truman, “The Berlin Conference: Report of the President to the Nation”, in Department of State Bulletin, volume XIII, page 208. This source gives the text of a radio address by the President delivered on August 9, 1945, two days after his return from the Berlin Conference.

John Carter Vincent, testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, January 24–26, 1952, in Institute of Pacific Relations, [Page XXIX] Hearings Before the Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 82d Congress, 2d Session (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1951–1953), part 6, page 1684.

Sources Published by the British Government

Clement R. Attlee, statement in the House of Commons, August 16, 1945, in Parliamentary Debates: House of Commons Official Report, 5th series, volume 413, column 95.

Ernest Bevin, statement in the House of Commons, August 20, 1945, printed ibid., column 283.

Winston S. Churchill, statement in the House of Commons, August 16, 1945, printed ibid., column 76.

Anthony Eden, statement in the House of Commons, August 20, 1945, printed ibid., column 311.

John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, volume VI (a volume in History of the Second World War: United Kingdom Military Series) (London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1956).

Foreign Office, Establishment of a Council of Foreign Ministers: Extract From the Report of the Tripartite Conference at Berlin Originally Published on the 2nd August, 1945, Miscellaneous No. 14 (1945), Cmd. 6689 (London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1945).20

Foreign Office, Protocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin Conference, Berlin, 2nd August, 1945, Miscellaneous No. 6 (1947), Cmd. 7087 (London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1947). This source comprises the official British text of the Protocol released by the British Government in 1947. It is the source for the text reprinted in British and Foreign State Papers, volume CXLV, page 852.

Sources Published by the Soviet Government

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents, Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the U. S. S. R. and the Presidents of the U. S. A. and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957). This two-volume work has been republished in the United States, with the original title pages and the original pagination but bound in one volume with a new preliminary title page bearing the title Stalin’s Correspondence With Churchill, Attlee, Roosevelt and Truman, 1941–45 (New York, E. P. Dutton and Company, 1958). This work is referred to in the present volume by the short title Stalin’s Correspondence. For the Russian-language edition of the same work, see Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents, Перепиcкa Предcедaтеля Coвета Μинистров CCCP с Президентами CIIIA и Премьер-Μинистрами Великобритании во Время Великой Oтечественной Войньɪ, 1941–1945 гг. (Moscow, State Publishing House for Political Literature, 1957).

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Oткрьɪтие Конференпии Глав Τрëx Bеликиx Дерҗав в Берлине (Коммюнике)”, in Внешняя Политика Cоветского Cоюза в Период Oтечественной Bойньɪ (Moscow, State Publishing House for Political Literature, 1946–1947), volume III, page 334. This source [Page XXX] comprises the Russian text of the interim communiqué issued after the First Plenary Meeting of the Berlin Conference, July 17, 1945.21

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Протокол Берлинской Конференции Tрëx Bеликиx Дерҗав”, in Cборник Действyющиx Договоров, Cоглашшений и Конвенций, Заключëнньɪx [CCCP] с Иностранньɪми Государствами (Moscow, 2d edition, 1928– ), part XI, page 122. This source comprises the Russian text of the Protocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin Conference, released by the Soviet Government in 1955.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Cooбщение o Берлинской Кoнференции Tрёx Дерҗав (17 Июля–2 Aвгуста 1945 Года)”, printed ibid., page 107. This source comprises the Russian text of the Report or Communiqué of the Berlin Conference, as printed in the Soviet Treaty Series, where it appears without the List of Delegations at the end. For texts in Russian including the List of Delegations, see Известия, August 3, 1945, page 1; Bнешняя Πолитика Cоветского Cоюза в Πериод Oтечественной Bойньɪ, volume III, page 336.

b. unofficial published sources

The editors have also made use of the books and articles listed below written by persons present at the Conference site during the course of the Berlin Conference or written by other authors on the basis of the private papers of Conference participants. The Department of State, in listing these volumes and articles here, takes no responsibility for the entire accuracy of their treatment of the Berlin Conference nor, of course, for their interpretation of the events dealt with. This list contains titles available to the editors as of October 1960; it makes no distinction between works which treat the Berlin Conference rather fully and those which contain only brief mention of the Conference. A few minor newspaper and magazine sources cited elsewhere in the volume for anecdotal material concerning the Conference are not listed here.

An asterisk (*) in this list indicates that the editors have quoted from the work so marked by permission of the copyright owner, which is gratefully acknowledged.

George V. Allen, “The Berlin Conference”, in The American Foreign Service Journal, October 1945, page 7.

H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1949).

C. R. Attlee, As It Happened (New York, The Viking Press, 1954).

Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Garden City, Doubleday and Company, 1959).

*Harvey H. Bundy, “Remembered Words”, in The Atlantic, March 1957, page 56.

James F. Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1958).

*James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1947).

*Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (volume VI of The Second World War ) (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953).

Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City, Doubleday and Company, 1950).

[Page XXXI]

Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey: The Autobiography of Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope (London, Hutchinson and Company, 1951).

John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation With Russia (New York, The Viking Press, 1947).

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, Doubleday and Company, 1948).

*William Hillman, Mr. President: The First Publication From the Personal Diaries, Private Letters, Papers and Revealing Interviews of Harry S. Truman, Thirty-second President of the United States of America (New York, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952).

General Sir Leslie Hollis, One Marine’s Tale (London, Andre Deutsch, 1956).

Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York, The Viking Press, 1960).

Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1952).

Arthur Bliss Lane, I Saw Poland Betrayed: An American Ambassador Reports to the American People (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1948).

*William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950).

James Leasor, The Clock With Four Hands, Based on the Experiences of General Sir Leslie Hollis (New York, Reynal and Company, 1959).

Isador Lubin, “Reparations Problems”, in Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science (New York, The Academy of Political Science, Columbia University, 1946), page 522.

Stanisław Mikołajczyk, The Rape of Poland: Pattern of Soviet Aggression (New York, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1948).

Walter Millis, editor (with the collaboration of E. S. Duffield), The Forrestal Diaries (New York, The Viking Press, 1951).

Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (Cleveland, The World Publishing Company, 1958).

Philip E. Mosely, “The Occupation of Germany: New Light on How the Zones Were Drawn”, in Foreign Affairs, volume XXVIII, page 580.

Edward J. Rozek, Allied Wartime Diplomacy: A Pattern in Poland (New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1958). This book is based in part on the papers of Stanisław Mikołajczyk.

Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1947).

Lord Strang, Home and Abroad (London, Andre Deutsch, 1956).

*Year of Decisions (volume I of Memoirs by Harry S. Truman ) (Garden City, Doubleday and Company, 1955).

Field-Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya, Eight Years Overseas, 1939–1947 (London, Hutchinson and Company, 1950).

Editorial Treatment

Headings—The data appearing in the headings of the original documents (place, date, addressee, method and priority of transmission, and classification) have been harmonized by the editors into a reasonably standard pattern in the headings as printed in this volume. Any substantive titles appearing on the original documents have been retained. The place of origin on documents prepared at the Berlin [Page XXXII] Conference has been retained without standardization, whether it is given on the original as Terminal , Berlin Conference, Berlin, Potsdam, or Babelsberg. If the original of a paper prepared at the Conference is on printed stationery, with the place of origin given as Washington or Whitehall, this likewise has been retained, but with a bracketed correction in italics. If no place of origin appears on the original of a paper prepared at the Conference, the editors have supplied Babelsberg in brackets as the place of origin (since most such papers were typed or mimeographed in delegation offices at Babelsberg) unless there is specific indication that the paper was physically prepared in the Cecilienhof Palace, in which case the editors have supplied Potsdam in brackets as the place of origin.

Classification and priority indicators—The classification of documents (top secret, secret, confidential, restricted, or plain) and the priority indicators on telegrams (U. S. urgent, operational priority, priority, and routine) are included in the printed headings if such information appears on the documents themselves. It should be noted, however, that in 1945 many documents were not given any formal classification although they were handled as if classified.

Numbering of documents—For convenience in the identification of papers during the process of compilation, and as an experiment in format, the individual papers in this volume and in its companion volume (except for minutes and notes of proceedings) have been assigned document numbers, and cross references for the most part are made to documents by number rather than by page. In order to assist the reader in locating papers easily by document number, the editors have inserted in brackets at the foot of each odd-numbered page (unless a new chapter or section begins on such a page) the document number assigned to the last paper which appears on that page.

Authorship of minutes—The authorship of minutes and notes is given in the editorial headings whenever known. The formal United States Delegation minutes of the plenary meetings of Heads of Government and of the meetings of the Foreign Ministers were all prepared by one of two officers attached to the Delegation—Llewellyn E. Thompson, Jr., from the staff of the American Embassy at London, or R. Borden Reams, Information Officer in the Office of the Secretary of State at Washington. Minutes of certain meetings can definitely be ascribed to Thompson, and these are accordingly headed “Thompson Minutes”. In cases where there is any uncertainty as to whether Thompson or Reams prepared the minutes for a given meeting, the minutes are headed merely “Department of State Minutes”.

Delegation titles—Most of the members of the United States Delegation to the Berlin Conference were not assigned new organizational titles denoting their rank, position, or function within the Delegation. [Page XXXIII] (Charles W. Yost, Secretary General of the Delegation, is the principal official who was given and who used a functional Delegation title.) Members of the Delegation other than Yost are therefore identified in document headings in this volume by their normal positions in the United States Government, e. g., Assistant Secretary of State, War Shipping Administrator, Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Representative on the Allied Commission on Separations, Deputy Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, and (since the editors found no satisfactory alternative consistent with other headings) First Secretary of Embassy in Portugal.

Place of meeting—The plenary meetings of the Heads of Government and the formal meetings of the Foreign Ministers were all held in the Cecilienhof Palace. Most if not all of the subcommittee meetings were also held there. The meetings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (except the final meeting with the President and the Prime Minister) were held in a conference room at 25 Kingstrasse, Babelsberg. The meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were held at 4 Kaiserstrasse, Babelsberg. Information on the place of other meetings is given in footnotes, where known.

Persons present at individual meetings—The list of persons present at individual meetings which the editors have placed immediately under the heading for each meeting in part VI of the present volume is based primarily on the cover sheet for the original minutes of the meeting, if minutes were prepared. Members of each delegation are listed in the order in which they are named on that cover sheet, followed by the names (in alphabetical order) of other persons whose presence is mentioned in the documents printed on the meeting, whose presence is assumed by the existence of minutes or memoranda which they prepared, or whose presence at a given meeting is specifically mentioned in one of the published sources on the Conference. It should be noted that the officers who prepared the cover sheets for the minutes gave comparatively long lists of persons present at the early meetings of the Conference, but confined their lists for later meetings largely to those actually seated at the Conference table. Additional advisers to each delegation were normally present at all plenary meetings of the Heads of Government and at meetings of the Foreign Ministers, but no record of their presence was kept by the United States Delegation.22 The lists of persons present printed with reference to subcommittee meetings are probably all incomplete.

[Page XXXIV]

Extracts—The headnote “Extract” or “Extracts” indicates that less than half of the entire document is printed under a particular document number. Points are used in all documents to indicate omissions—three points for omissions of less than a paragraph and a line of seven points for omissions of a paragraph or more.

Signatures—Signatures as printed in this volume follow the source text. If a document is printed from an original bearing a holograph signature with no points, the signature as printed will have no points, e. g., “Harry S Truman”. If, on the other hand, the document is printed from a typed source text in which points were used, the signature as printed will have points, e. g., “Harry S. Truman”.

Signing officers—All telegraphic instructions of the Department of State are issued over the name of the Secretary, the Secretary ad interim, or the Acting Secretary, although in many cases the name of that officer is actually signed by an appropriate official of lower rank who subscribes his own initials. In the telegrams sent by the Department which are printed in this volume, such initials have been retained as part of the signature, with a bracketed indication in each case of the identity of the signing officer. Similarly, in the case of those third-person communications which are customarily initialed rather than signed, the initials appearing on the original document have been retained, and a bracketed indication of the name of the initialing officer has been added. As an exception to the normal procedure described above for signing outgoing telegrams, it was required that all telegrams sent from the Department to the Secretary of State at Babelsberg during the Berlin Conference be signed personally by Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew. After Grew’s signature had been affixed, the signed copies of such telegrams were delivered to the White House Map Room for dispatch and were filed there. As a result of this procedure, the official file copies of these telegrams retained in the Department of State usually have no signature at all, and the editors have accordingly added Grew’s name in brackets to indicate that the messages as dispatched and as received at Babelsberg actually bore the Acting Secretary’s signature.

Real addressees and originators—When telegrams printed in this volume contain an internal caption indicating that they were to or from a specific individual other than the formal addressee or signer, the editor’s heading is based on this internal caption. In such cases, the formal addressee and signer, where they differ from the real addressee and originator, are indicated in footnotes.

Typographical errors—Obvious typographical errors have been corrected except in signed international agreements, which are printed literatim. All permissible variations in spelling, however, have been retained as in the original text.

[Page XXXV]

Romanization—In all material provided by the editors (front matter, document headings, lists of persons present at meetings, and footnotes) names of individuals from countries using non-roman alphabets have been romanized consistently in the normal Foreign Relations style. In the documents themselves, however, the editors have not altered whatever system (or lack thereof) the originators of the individual documents used to romanize proper names.

Identification of persons mentioned—Individuals mentioned by title or position in the documents have been identified in footnotes, where such identification was possible, at least once in every section or subsection of this volume, unless their identification is clear from the editor’s headings or from the text of the documents themselves. Fuller identification of individuals mentioned by name only will be found in a List of Persons Mentioned, beginning on page xlviii . For a list of the principal members of the delegations to the Berlin Conference, see post, page xliii .

Translations—Translations printed in this volume are contemporary with the original documents unless it is specifically noted that they have been prepared especially for this volume.

Telegrams to and from special missions—Telegrams sent by the Department to special missions in care of a regular diplomatic post, and those transmitted by special missions to the Department through the facilities of a regular diplomatic post, were usually assigned serial numbers in the regular series of messages exchanged with the diplomatic post. The telegram numbers on messages to and from the Alternate Delegate to the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations are thus to be construed (to give an example of this practice) as the numbers which these messages were assigned in the chronological sequence of the entire exchange of telegrams between the Department of State and the American Embassy at London.

Citations—In citing to documents already officially published in multiple sources, the editors in general have given citations to Foreign Relations volumes, the Department of State Bulletin, the various series of treaties and international agreements published by the Department, and the Statutes at Large, in preference to citations to other official publications. Individual readers, however, may find it more convenient, in locating the texts cited, to look for them in other official compilations, such as A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941–49 (Senate Document No. 123, 81st Congress, 1st Session); The Axis in Defeat: A Collection of Documents on American Policy Toward Germany and Japan (Department of State publication No. 2423); Occupation of Germany: Policy and Progress (publication No. 2783); Making the Peace Treaties, 1941–1947 (publication No. 2774); and In Quest of Peace and Security: Selected Documents on [Page XXXVI] American Foreign Policy, 1941–1951 (publication No. 4245). Many of the previously published documents cited in this volume are to be found in unofficial publications as well.

Papers cited as “not printed”—It is to be assumed that some papers annotated in the present volume as “not printed” will eventually be printed in the annual Foreign Relations volumes for 1945.

  1. Document No. 1384, post.
  2. Concurrent meetings in the Berlin area among the commanders of the occupation forces in Germany of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and France and their subordinates have not been considered a part of the Berlin Conference, even though some of these meetings were attended by members of the United States, British, and Soviet Delegations to the Berlin Conference.
  3. A private meeting between Truman and Churchill. See post, p. 35.
  4. Concerning preparatory meetings which took place at the Conference site on July 14 and 15, see vol. i, documents Nos. 140, 218, 234, 258, 319, 351, 379, 380, 404, 470, 519, 635, 645, 678, and 708.
  5. See post, p. 52.
  6. Except that interdelegation meetings primarily of a social character have not been noted unless (a) the President or a member of his Cabinet was present or (b) some information has been found with respect to substantive discussions at such meetings.
  7. Concerning the physical arrangements made for the Conference, see vol. i, part ii.
  8. See post, p. 52.
  9. See vol. i, document No. 140.
  10. These plates are printed post, following p. 400.
  11. See James F. Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (New York, 1958), p. 292.
  12. Vladimir Nikolayevich Pavlov, Stalin’s personal secretary and interpreter. Later in the Conference Sergey Alexandrovich Golunsky acted as Stalin’s interpreter.
  13. Major Arthur Birse, a member of the staff of the British Embassy at Moscow, assigned as Churchill’s interpreter. Birse also acted as interpreter for Attlee in the last four plenary meetings of the Berlin Conference.
  14. Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions (vol. i of Memoirs by Harry S. Truman ) (Garden City, 1955), p. 350. For an example of disagreement among the interpreters, see Harry S. Truman, “Truman Bids U. S. Be Firm to Soviet”, in The New York Times, July 31, 1959, p. 3.
  15. See vol. i, part ii.
  16. Published post-Conference statements by Conference participants relating to the Conference proceedings are listed below under “Published Sources”, pp. xxvii xxxi .
  17. See vol. i for parts i (genesis of the Conference), ii (final arrangements for the Conference), iii (general background reports), and iv (recommendations and late developments on Conference subjects).
  18. i. e., the text of the Protocol at the end of “Stage 3”, as defined post, pp. 14771478.
  19. It was also printed unofficially as a separate pamphlet under the title, Our Wartime Relations With the Soviet Union Particularly as They Concern the Agreements Reached at Yalta (no place or date of publication indicated).
  20. This is apparently the only section of the Communiqué of the Berlin Conference which the British Government printed officially. The Communiqué was of course printed in full in the British press on the basis of a release from the Foreign Office. See, for example, the London Times, August 3, 1945, p. 8.
  21. Cf. post, p. 63.
  22. Photographs taken at the Conference indicate that a few individuals probably were present at meetings although their names do not appear at all in the minutes or supplementary papers. For example, Boris Fedorovich Podtserob, one of Molotov’s secretaries, appears in plates 3, 4, and 7 (see post, following p. 400). Since these photographs were not taken while meetings were actually in progress, however, names of individuals have not been added to the lists of persons present at meetings on the evidence of the photographs alone.