Cairo Conference
The Cairo Conference took place during the Second World War from November 22nd to 26th, 1943 between the President of the USA Franklin D. Roosevelt , the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in the Egyptian capital Cairo . The three heads of government agreed here on the Cairo Declaration on the War Aims against Japan in the Pacific War . After the interim Tehran Conference (November 28 to December 1, 1943), Roosevelt and Churchill met again in Cairo to hold talks with the Turkish President İsmet İnönü about his country's possible entry into the war against Germany (4th to December 6, 1943). Both meetings ran under the code word " Sextant ".
course
At the beginning of the conference, the Chinese fight against Japan was the dominant theme. Contrary to the will of Winston Churchill, who saw this theater of war as secondary, Franklin D. Roosevelt promised the Chinese generalissimo a large-scale landing operation on the Bay of Bengal . The British Prime Minister feared that the planned landings in the Mediterranean and Normandy would be weakened , but he later succeeded in dissuading the American President from this idea at the Tehran Conference .
The American and British Chiefs of Staff then met on November 24 to discuss how to proceed in north-western Europe and the Mediterranean; the Chinese embassy did not take part. Churchill reaffirmed the importance of the Normandy landing and Britain's readiness to land; he also explained his strategy in the Mediterranean, which included a landing on Rhodes as well as the early conquest of Rome; the Yugoslav partisans should also be better supplied with supplies. On the same day, however, the British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden arrived in Cairo and reported on Turkey's refusal to enter the war against the German Empire, which put Churchill's plans on a serious blow.
With regard to the Asian theater of war , the following points were agreed, which were announced in the Cairo Declaration on December 1, 1943 :
- the continuation of the war until the unconditional surrender of Japan
- abandoning territorial expansion after the war
- the withdrawal of Japanese annexations since 1914 and the return to China of all areas and territories that had stolen Japan from China, including Manchuria, the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands. Japan is also expelled from all other areas and territories that have been forcibly annexed.
- Korea should receive its independence in due course
Follow-up time
The parties adhered to the agreements on all points, only the Ryūkyū Islands , which were occupied in the further course of the war, were not returned to Japan until 1971. The conference itself was followed almost immediately by the Tehran conference on November 28, 1943.
See also
literature
- Winston Churchill : The Second World War . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003
