740.00119 Control (Germany)/6–1545: Telegram
The British Prime Minister (Churchill) to President Truman 60
87. Your No. 70. Obviously we are obliged to conform to your decision, and necessary instructions will be issued.
[Page 135]It is not correct to state that tripartite agreement about zones of occupation in Germany were the subject of “long consideration and detailed discussion” between me and President Roosevelt. References made to them at Octagon61 were brief and concerned only the Anglo-American arrangements which the President did not wish to be raised by correspondence beforehand. These were remitted to Combined Chiefs of Staff and were certainly acceptable to them.
As to Austria I do not think we can make the Commanders on the spot responsible for settling outstanding questions. Marshal Stalin made it quite plain in his message of May 18th that agreement on occupation and control of Austria must be settled by E.A.C. I do not believe he would agree to the change and in any case our Missions may already have left Vienna. I suggest for your consideration the following re-draft of the penultimate paragraph of your message to Marshal Stalin.
Begins. “I consider that settlement of the Austrian problem is of equal urgency to the German matter. The re-distribution of forces into the occupation zones which have been agreed in principle by E.A.C., the movement of national garrisons into Vienna and establishment of Allied Commission for Austria should take place simultaneously with these developments in Germany. I therefore attach the utmost importance to settling outstanding Austrian problems in order that the whole arrangement of German and Austrian affairs can be put into operation simultaneously. I hope the recent visit of American, British and French missions to Vienna will result in E.A.C. being able to take the necessary remaining decisions to this end without delay.” Ends.
I for my part attach particular importance to the Russians evacuating part of the British zone in Austria that they are now occupying at the same time as the British and Russian [American] forces evacuate the Russian zone in Germany.
I sincerely hope that your action will in the long run make for a lasting peace in Europe.
- This paraphrase of a message sent by Prime Minister Churchill to President Truman was transmitted under cover of a letter from the British Minister (Balfour) to the Under Secretary of State (Grew), dated June 15, 1945, not printed↩
- Code name for the Second Quebec Conference, September 11–16, 1944. The documentation regarding this Conference is scheduled for publication in a subsequent volume of Foreign Relations ↩