[Enclosure]
Memorandum by the Department of State2
[Washington,] December 26, 1944.
The Maintenance of the Civilian Economy of
Liberated Areas Is an Essential Instrument of Total War
Total war is the use of all national resources and power to achieve
national policy. It is not restricted to the employment of force against
the enemy; nor to support of allied force. It involves also the full
use, if possible, of the help of new populations transferred from the
side of the enemy. At the least, it requires every effort to prevent
these populations from becoming a positive obstruction.
Supplies to the liberated countries sufficient to keep the people
effectively at work in the great scheme of the war is as essential as
any part of the war plan. The war can be lost in the liberated
countries. It cannot be won without success in the liberated
countries.
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Everyone is agreed that in the immediate wake of battle military
necessity requires that disease and starvation be prevented. Otherwise
the liberated civilians will present a hazard to the conduct of
operations and the maintenance of lines of supply. Our conception of
total war has not gone much farther.
This is not true of our enemies. From the start they have seen the basic
political and military necessity of incorporating the new populations
into their systems of production, and, by employing them fully, of
minimizing the forces of unrest.
The people of the liberated countries and those of Eastern Europe are the
most combustible material in the world. They are fighting people. They
are violent and restless. They have suffered unbearably. They understand
the necessities and will bear the privations of the battle period.
But they will not and cannot understand or tolerate a situation in which,
after the battle has passed them, they cannot go to work to supply
themselves and the armies. To put them to work requires supplies and
ships. It is argued that these are more needed to prosecute the war in
other theaters.
The argument makes no sense to Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutchmen, Norwegians,
and Greeks who have been put to work for years by the Germans. It means
idleness, the most meagre existence, frustration. With these have come
and will come agitation and unrest. With them also come arbitrary and
absolutist controls. Then follows the overthrow of governments with
rival aspirants for the succession from the right and the left. And with
this comes also dissension among the great powers, with one backing one
faction, and another, another faction. North Africa, Yugoslavia, Greece,
should furnish illustration enough.
On the negative side, the neglect of civilian supply in the liberated
countries will directly impede and hamper the war by creating civil
disorder, diverting military force (as in Greece) and by causing
dissension and distrust among the allies.
It does something much worse than all of these. These disorders weaken
the will of our own people to fight the war. A victory which, as it
progresses, means first civil war, then conflict among the major allies,
and, finally, a dictatorship of the right or left, does not appear to
the British and American democracies as worth the sacrifice which this
war will mean in the most painful forms during 1945.
It is foolish to close our eyes to the reality of this danger. The will
of the democracies to make war can be so weakened by disillusionment
with the results as to have the most far-reaching military
consequences.
On the positive side, to win the war requires that we win the battle of
the liberated countries. Here millions of people have been transferred
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from the enemy’s camp to
ours—people who can work, perhaps fight in the prosecution of the war,
but all of whom must rebuild their country in some pattern—the one for
which we are expending untold efforts, or some other.
In the view of this Department, it is of the most supreme political and
military importance to this country to bend every effort to the full
utilization of the liberated countries in the war. They should be fully
and immediately incorporated in the economic and psychological alignment
against both the physical enemy and the political and ideological system
of the enemy.
For these reasons the supply of liberated countries to restore work and
production is a part of our total war.
[Mr. Richard Law, Minister of State of the British Foreign Office,
had come to Washington December 16, 1944, to discuss economic
matters, shipping, and food for liberated areas in Europe. A
memorandum of agreement between the United States and the United
Kingdom concerning the shipment of supplies to liberated European
countries during the first six months of 1945 was initialed at
Washington January 14, 1945, by Dean Acheson for Harry Hopkins,
Special Assistant to President Roosevelt, and Mr. Law; for text, see
Foreign Relations, The Conferences at
Malta and Yalta, 1945, page 420. This memorandum was
approved by General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, United
States Army, and Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, United
States Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations. For joint statement by
the Department of State and the British Embassy on maintenance of
the economies of the liberated countries, released to the press
January 15, 1945, see Department of State Bulletin, January 21, 1945, page 95.]
