Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, General: Political and Economic Matters, Volume II

740.00119 Council/11–1245

The British Embassy to the Department of State

1. On the 29th October Mr. Byrnes was good enough to give Lord Halifax a general outline of the reception which Stalin had accorded to the President’s proposal that a procedure should be worked out to ensure the convocation by the Council of Foreign Ministers of a Peace Conference for the consideration of the treaties with Germany’s former satellites. The Generalissimo had in particular expressed the view that certain of the lesser Allied countries should take part in the preliminary peace discussions and that others should be excluded.

2. In the view moreover of the Generalissimo the lesser Allied countries taking part in the peace discussions could be invited to state their views and the peace treaties themselves would be finally decided by the powers contemplated at Potsdam, i.e. Great Britain and the Soviet Union in the case of Finland; the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union in the case of the Balkan peace treaties; and the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and France in the case of the Italian peace treaty.

3. Mr. Bevin wishes Mr. Byrnes to know that he feels the following misgivings about these counter-proposals of Generalissimo Stalin:—

(a) In general it seems to Mr. Bevin a mistake to limit the number of countries who would be invited to attend the proposed conference. The countries who do not receive an invitation will resent their exclusion and once the stage of a conference has been reached numbers should not in his view present serious inconvenience.

(b) It is not clear on what principle Stalin has based his list but one can surmise that his idea is to restrict the conference to countries which had actively fought against or been invaded by the enemy powers in question. If this is correct, the differentiation is not applied logically, as India, whose forces played an important part in the defeat of Italy, certainly deserves an invitation. The omission of South Africa from the list is, Mr. Bevin assumes, pure accident.

(c) Mr. Bevin greatly dislikes Stalin’s suggestion that the lesser Allied Governments attending the conference “could be invited to state their views and that the Peace Treaty would be finally decided by the Powers contemplated at Potsdam.” This implies that the lesser Allied Governments would only be allowed to state their views and would take no effective part in the discussion or formulation of the final peace terms. This in the opinion of Mr. Bevin is entirely wrong. If these Allied Governments are to be called into consultation there must be full and frank discussion with them and the final terms should be agreed in detail with them.

4. The suggestion that the final decision will rest with the Potsdam powers is objectionable on two counts; first, the implication of the Great Powers’ dictation; second, it goes far beyond the Potsdam agreement which spoke only of drawing up peace terms, and contains no justification for the view that the Great Powers, and still less only those Great Powers which were signatory to the armistices, should also settle the final terms. On the contrary, it was clearly stated in the Potsdam agreement that once the Council of Foreign Ministers had drawn up the draft treaties these would be submitted to the United Nations with whom the final approval implicitly would rest. This would seem to Mr. Bevin the correct and sensible arrangement, because all the United Nations who are at war with each enemy power must be signatory to the treaty if the state of war is to be brought to an end, and they will clearly not agree to sign the treaty unless they have a chance of seeing the terms in advance and formally concurring in them.

Washington, 12 November, 1945.