p The Red Army victories and public opinion compelled the governments of the United States and Britain, which until then had preferred to discuss military strategy and the postwar arrangement in the absence of Soviet representatives, to agree to joint discussions. The latter half of 1943 saw conferences of the Big Three foreign ministers and heads of government, proving that international co-operation of states of the different social systems was possible and necessary.

p At the Big Three (USSR, USA, Britain) Foreign Ministers’ Conference, held in Moscow on October 19-30, 1943, the Soviet delegation called on the Allies to step up action and bring closer the victorious end of the war. As the initial item on the agenda, the Soviet spokesmen suggested examining "measures reducing the duration of the war against Germany and her allies in Europe”. British Gdneral Hastings Lionel Ismay, speaking on behalf of the US and British delegations, declared, however, that the second front could not be opened until 1944, and that only provided a number of especially favourable conditions were at hand.

p On the initiative of the Soviet Union the discussion was wound up with a communique stating that its participants regarded as their "prime aim hastening the end of the war".  [113•1  The Soviet delegation did not obtain explicit US and British second front commitments for 1944. All the same, the decision adopted on the need for closer military co-operation by the three Powers to hasten the end of the war offered new scope for international co-operation and made so much easier the Soviet efforts to speed the opening of a second front in Europe.

p The Conference recognised the need for postwar international co-operation. Its communique" said: "... it was essential in their (three Powers’—Ed.) own national, interests and in the interests of all peace-loving nations to continue the present close collaboration and co-operation in the conduct of the war into the period following the end of hostilities, and ... only in this way could peace be maintained and the political, economic and social welfare of their peoples fully promoted."  [113•2 

p The delegations exchanged opinions on the German 114 question. The Soviet Government held that the legitimate rights and interests of the German nation should be taken into account, with the solution of the question ensuring the complete elimination of fascism and prevention of its revival, and appropriate controls to secure lasting peace in Europe. The US spokesman, State Secretary Gordell Hull, put forward a plan for partitioning Germany. The same idea was projected by British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, who said use of force should not be discounted in achieving this aim.  [114•1 

p The US and British representatives urged the USSR to resume diplomatic relations with the Polish emigrd government, broken off a few months previously due to the latter’s strongly anti-Soviet policy. Replying to the insistent AngloAmerican representations the Soviet spokesman said: "We stand for an independent Poland and are ready to help her. But Poland must have a government with friendly feelings towards the USSR. That is lacking now."  [114•2 

p In contrast to plans concerning Austria advanced by certain groups in the United States and Britain without the least consideration for the opinion of the Austrian people, the Soviet delegation declared that the Austrians had the right to an independent national existence and to self-determination. It was the Soviet Union that initiated the issue of the Declaration on Austria by the Conference, saying that the three governments wished to see a free and independent Austria and would enable the Austrian people, like those of the neighbouring countries faced by similar problems, to find the political and economic security that is the only possible basis of a lasting peace. The Declaration also emphasised that Austria "has a responsibility which she cannot evade for participation in the war on the side of Hitlerite Germany".  [114•3 

p The Conference discussed Italy. Defeats on the Soviet- German Front, where Italian troops shared the fate of the German, coupled with Italy’s loss of all her colonies and the powerful popular movement at home, had precipitated a crisis in the spring of 1943. The Italian monopolists were frightened by the incipient revolution. On July 25, Mussolini was removed 115 from power by the King’s order, arrested and shipped off to the island of Ponca. The idea was to save the fascist dictatorship by sacrificing the bankrupt fascist dictator. But the people had their own ideas. They demanded peace, freedom and total elimination of the fascist regime. In the circumstances, the Italian Government started secret negotiations with the Anglo-American Command.

p On September 3, Italian representatives and officers of Eisenhower’s staff, acting on behalf of the United Nations, signed an armistice. It formalised the end of hostilities in Italy, with no mention of her democratic development and elimination of the fascist legacy.

p British and US troops began landing in the South. The slow pace enabled the nazi armies to lunge into Italy and capture her northern, central and a large section of southern territories. There the nazis formed a puppet government, of which Mussolini, released from arrest by German paratroopers under Otto Skorzeny, a veteran SS trouble-shooter, was made the head.

p As a result, an Italian front appeared, with British and US troops coming to grips with the Germans. New nazi defeats on the Soviet-German front and a spectacular partisan movement in Northern Italy paved the way for what could have been a rapid and crushing defeat of Hitler’s armies in Italy. But the US and British commands acted with deliberate slowness, waiting until the nazis should wipe out the Resistance movement in the country. That was why the Allied Command rejected the partisan offer of concerted action, which would obviously have brought Italy’s liberation closer.

p In the southern part of Italy, the Americans and British established a military administration which retained the fascist legislation and extensively employed the services of Italian fascists. It impinged on the national rights and interests of the Italian people, prejudicing the interests of the antifascist coalition and acting contrary to the war aims of that coalition.

p At the Moscow Foreign Ministers’ Conference, the Soviet delegation spoke sharply against the US and British separatist and anti-democratic policy in Italy. And it won its point with the adoption of the Declaration on Italy, an important victory for the democratic forces. The Declaration championed the legitimate rights of the Italian nation and laid down the principle of democratising the country.

p To prevent further separate action by any Allied Power, the Moscow Conference decided to form a European Advisory Commission (consisting of the USSR, USA and Britain) to work out joint three-Power decisions relating to the approaching end of the war, including the armistice or surrender terms for the hostile states. A special resolution was framed concerning behaviour in relation to peace-feelers from the enemy countries; it was aimed at averting new cases of separate secret negotiations. Under its terms, the Allied Powers undertook to inform each other forthwith and conduct mutual consultations "in order to agree their actions" in the event of any proposals from any of the countries of the Hitler bloc.  [116•1 

p A Declaration on German Atrocities, adopted on Soviet initiative, provided for the punishment of war criminals by nations against which their specific crimes had been committed, while the main war criminals would be tried and punished jointly by the Allied Powers. The Declaration warned that the war criminals would not escape just retribution, because "the three Allied Powers will pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to the accusers in order that justice may be done".  [116•2  The Declaration was a stern warning for the German war criminals, and disappointed those who had wished to protect them.

p The Conference discussed ways of assuring universal postwar security and the idea of an international peacekeeping organisation. A Declaration on General Security was adopted, which the Chinese Government also signed, referring to the establishment of "a general international organisation, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving States__for the maintenance of international peace and security".  [116•3 

p The Declaration was historic in that it initiated the United Nations Organisation and first formulated its purpose, defining its basic principles as a body for the international co-operation of sovereign states in maintaining peace and security. This destroyed the plans of turning the organisation into a kind of "supra-national government”, as certain Western quarters wished. The Declaration envisaged 117 agreement by its signatories on how to regulate armaments and stipulated that after the war’s end none would "employ their military forces within the territories of other states except for the purposes envisaged in this Declaration and after joint consultation".  [117•1 

p The Conference went down in history of the anti-fascist coalition as a practical proof that international co-operation was possible and fruitful. Its decisions assisted the efforts of progressives to assure a democratic postwar arrangement in the world. More immediately, they helped to invigorate the wartime Anglo-American-Soviet coalition and, moreover, prepared the ground for the first meeting of the USSR, USA and British heads of government.

p The Teheran Conference, at which Joseph Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill first,sat down round the same table, opened on November 28 and closed on December i, 1943.

p Teheran was chosen as the venue after prolonged negotiations. Some city in the Soviet Union would have been preferable, considering that the Soviet leaders directing operations on the decisive war front, could not afford to break off direct communications with the troops. However, considerable pressure was exerted on the US President by those who had wanted to complicate co-operation and pleaded considerations of prestige.

p The Allies had to take into account the existence in Iran of a considerable secret German intelligence network. The Soviet Government, for one, learnt that an attack was being planned against the heads of the three Powers. Nikolai Kuznetsov, legendary Soviet intelligence officer posing as Paul Siebert, a nazi oberleutnant, succeeded in winning the friendship of SS Sturmbahnfuehrer von Ortel in the Germanoccupied town of Rovno. Von Ortel revealed to him the plan of an attack envisaging the landing near Teheran of several groups of paratroopers specially trained in a Copenhagen school to capture and kill the leaders of the Allied Powers. Kuznetsov’s information was speedily relayed to Moscow.

p Protective measures were- taken. The Conference took place in the Soviet Embassy building, where premises were also provided for the US President’s residence. The Soviet delegation was lodged in the two-storeyed villa of the Soviet 118 Ambassador near the main Embassy building. The British delegation stayed on the grounds of its own embassy, located, close to the Soviet.

p A military group from the staff of the Soviet Supreme Command and the General Staff was also put up on the Soviet Embassy grounds. Contact was continuously maintained with the troops and war operations were directed along the entire Soviet-German Front.

p Just as at the preceding Foreign Ministers’ Conference, the main topic in Teheran concerned the second front. Speaking first, President Roosevelt named May-June 1944 as the approximate time for the landing of troops in Europe. "We should very much like to help the Soviet Union and to draw off a part of the German forces from the Soviet front."  [118•1  But, of course, a second front in the summer of 1944 could not be half as useful as a year or two earlier. The 1944 landing was spurred essentially by the interests of the US ruling element.

p Stalin stressed in his speech that the invasion of Europe by Allied forces would yield the best results "by a blow at the enemy in Northern or Northwestern France".  [118•2  Churchill, however, suggested stepping up operations in Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean before landing Allied forces in north-west Europe, though, he said, this "could cause some delay in the operation across the Channel".  [118•3  In reply, the Soviet head of government suggested that the Allies should consider Operation Overlord, already prepared, as their main 1944 undertaking—that is, invading north-west Europe with a supporting action in southern France, adding that the invasion should take place not later than May 1944.

p In the next two days Churchill continued to insist on his proposal. On November 30 he told Stalin that "a choice has to be made between the date of Operation Overlord and the operations in the Mediterranean”,  [118•4  obviously giving precedence to the latter. Seeking to overcome Churchill’s objections, Stalin said the Soviet Union would aid Operation Overlord by timing a major offensive in May in order to "pin down the German divisions on the Eastern Front and to prevent the Germans from creating any difficulties for 119 Overlord".  [119•1  Thereupon, the Conference agreed scheduling Operation Overlord for May 1944.

p Just as at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference, the US and British delegates in Teheran raised the question of Soviet relations with the Polish emigr£ government. The head of the Soviet delegation set out the Soviet attitude: "Russia, no less than the other Powers, is interested in good relations with Poland, because Poland is Russia’s neighbour. We stand for the restoration and strengthening of Poland. But we draw a line between Poland and the emigr£ Polish Government in London. We broke off relations with that Government not out of any whim on our part, but because the Polish Government joined Hitler in slandering the Soviet Union."  [119•2  The discussion of the Polish question yielded no results, because the US and British governments tied the matter in with the policy of the emigr£ government in London.

p At Roosevelt’s suggestion, Germany was discussed at some length. Stalin said: "What are the proposals on this matter?" Roosevelt’s reply was curt: "The partition of Germany.” Churchill was of the same opinion: "I am for partitioning Germany.” Stalin’s view differed: "there are no steps that could exclude the possibility of Germany’s unification— I don’t know that there is need to set up four, five or six independent German states."  [119•3 

p At the end of the October i sitting, acting on what he had discussed in private with the head of the Soviet delegation, Churchill submitted the following proposal concerning Poland’s postwar frontiers: "The hearth of the Polish state and people must be situated between the so-called Curzon Line and the line of the Oder River, including Eastern Prussia and the Oppeln Province as part of Poland."  [119•4  In principle, Stalin expressed his accord.

p Eyewitnesses recall that Roosevelt had told Stalin the United States could help the Soviet Union rehabilitate the war-ravaged economy by granting credits of several billion dollars. His country, Stalin replied, would welcome aid from so rich a country as the United States, provided the terms were acceptable.  [119•5 

p Two Teheran documents were made public: the Declaration of the Three Powers on joint action in the war against fascist Germany and on postwar co-operation, and the Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran. The former said the three powers had concerted their plans for the destruction of the German forces and reached complete agreement as to the scope and dates of operations to be launched from east, west and south.  [120•1 

p The latter said that the three powers are "at one with the Government of Iran in their desire for the maintenance of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iran".  [120•2 

p Churchill handed Stalin a sword, a gift from the King of Great Britain to the citizens of Stalingrad in commemoration of the victory. According to an eye-witness account Churchill suggested that the ruins of that hero city should be kept intact, with a new city built nearby, so that the ruins of Stalingrad would remain as a tribute to’ human endurance. Stalin said that the ruins of only one block or several buildings would be preserved. The whole city would be built anew, rising out of the ashes like Phoenix, he said, and this would be a fitting monument.  [120•3 

The Moscow and Teheran conferences were successful first and foremost thanks to the Soviet Union, whose government was striving to finish the war as quickly as possible, to liberate the enslaved peoples, to organise the postwar world along democratic lines and prevent new imperialist aggression in Europe. The conferences played a positive role, demonstrating that separate meetings by US and British statesmen were ineffective, while joint decisions on the major issues of war and peace were enormously important.