Office of the Historian

740.00119 Control (Austria)/6–1145: Telegram

President Truman to the British Prime Minister (Churchill)

[Washington,] 11 June 1945.

70. Your No. 81. In consideration of the tripartite agreement as to zones of occupation in Germany57 approved by President Roosevelt [Page 134] after long consideration and detailed discussion with you, I am unable to delay the withdrawal of American troops from the Soviet zone in order to use pressure in the settlement of other problems.

Advice of the highest reliability is received that the Allied Control Council cannot begin to function until Allied troops withdraw from the Russian zone.

I am also convinced that the Military Government now exercised by the Allied Supreme Commander should, without delay, be terminated and divided between Eisenhower and Montgomery,58 each to function in the zone occupied by his own troops.

I am advised that it would be highly disadvantageous to our relations with the Soviet to postpone action in this matter until our meeting in July.59

I therefore propose to send the following message to Stalin:

“Now that the unconditional defeat of Germany has been announced and the Control Council for Germany has had its first meeting, I propose that we should at once issue definite instructions which will get forces into their respective zones and will initiate orderly administration of the defeated territory. As to Germany, I am ready to have instructions issued to all American troops to begin withdrawal into their own zone on 21 June in accordance with arrangements between the respective commanders, including in these arrangements simultaneous movement of the national garrisons into Greater Berlin and provision of free access by air, road, and rail from Frankfurt and Bremen to Berlin for U. S. forces.

As to Austria, it seems that arrangements can be completed more quickly and satisfactorily by making our commanders on the spot responsible for determining the definition of zones both in Austria itself and in the Vienna area and the readjustment of forces, referring to their respective Governments only those matters that they are unable to resolve between themselves. I consider the settlement of the Austrian problem as of equal urgency to the German matter.

If you agree with the foregoing, I propose that appropriate instructions be issued at once to our respective commanders.”

  1. For text of the protocol between the Governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom on the zones of occupation in Germany and the administration of “Greater Berlin”, signed at London, September 12, 1944, and the Amending Agreement signed at London, November 14, 1944, see Department of State, Treaties and Other International Acts Series, No. 3071, or United States Treaties and Other International Agreements, vol. 5 (pt. 2), pp. 2078–2092↩
  2. Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, Commander in Chief of the 21st Army Group under SHAEF↩
  3. For documentation regarding the Potsdam Conference, see Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, in two volumes ↩