Moscow Conference

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During and after the Second World War , conferences of the major allied powers took place in Moscow :

Beaverbrook-Harriman Mission 1941

Between September 29 and October 1, 1941, Joseph Stalin met with envoys from the United States ( Averell Harriman ) and Great Britain ( Lord Beaverbrook ) to negotiate the extension of the American loan and lease law to the Soviet Union and the organization of deliveries. The result was the Moscow Protocol of October 2, 1941, in which the United States committed itself to delivering armaments and war-related goods worth a billion dollars by June 30, 1942.

Moscow Conference 1942

From August 12 to 17, 1942, Stalin and Churchill as well as Harriman met in Moscow, the subject of the talks was the Allied war plans for North Africa and for the establishment of a “Second Front” in Europe by landing in France .

Foreign Ministers Conference 1943

The Foreign Ministers of the three leading Allied powers USA, Great Britain and USSR ( Hull , Eden and Molotov ) took part in the Moscow Conference from October 19 to November 1, 1943 . They coordinated further cooperation, agreed the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan and the foundations of their European and world political cooperation after the end of the war. The Moscow Declaration was formulated about the future of defeated Germany and Austria to be restored. In addition, a European Advisory Commission (of them was the European Advisory Commission ) with its head office in London, which was to deal with the preparation of plans for the European post-war order. They agreed on the following principles for the treatment of post-war Germany:

  • Occupation of all of Germany by Allied troops;
  • Assumption of provisional government by an Allied Control Commission;
  • Demilitarization, denazification and democratization of Germany;
  • Destruction of the war industry;
  • Prohibition and dissolution of the NSDAP;
  • Punishment of war criminals;
  • Re-establishment of democracy;
  • Reparations payments from Germany;
  • territorial treatment of Germany by the European Advisory Commission (EAC) to be founded.

The postponement of the core problem, namely the territorial treatment of Germany, resulted primarily from the differences of opinion among the Allies and in the American leadership: President Roosevelt and the military wanted an extreme weakening of Germany through fragmentation, the State Department (= Foreign Ministry) preferred the unity of one federalist Germany and its political decentralization. British Foreign Secretary Eden saw the dismemberment proposal as "a useful contribution". His Soviet counterpart Molotov agreed, but described the plan as a minimal solution.

Moscow Conference 1944

From October 9th to 20th, Stalin and Churchill met, accompanied by their foreign ministers, to discuss the future of the countries of East Central and Southeast Europe. The negotiations were conducted subject to subsequent American approval. One focus was the discussion on the future of Poland, to which representatives of the London government in exile and the Lublin Committee were invited. Churchill declared that he wanted to largely renounce influence in Bulgaria and Romania and in return the Soviet Union renounced influence in Greece .

Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference 1947

The fifth conference of foreign ministers began on March 10, 1947. The US Secretary of State George C. Marshall presented the Marshall Plan named after him for the economic unification of the four zones of occupation . This included a cross-zonal currency reform in Germany and a uniform administration. During the conference, American President Harry S. Truman asked Congress for financial aid for Greece and Turkey, which threatened to collapse, in order to prevent the introduction of a totalitarian communist system of government. This Moscow conference lasted six weeks and was a complete failure. The positions between the USA and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other, which were mainly about Eastern Europe, but also about the Mediterranean, the Middle East and China, were incompatible. With regard to Germany, a division was emerging. Another issue was the repatriation of prisoners of war. On April 23, 1947, it was decided to repatriate all German prisoners of war by the end of 1948. In fact, according to the calculations of the British allies, several hundred thousand were still in Soviet camps at this point in time.

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard M. Leighton, Robert W. Coakley: Global Logistics and Strategy, vol. 1. 1940-1943. Center of Military History, US Army, Washington, DC 1995, pp. 101 ff.
  2. ^ "The Moscow Conference" , in: Die Zeit , Issue 15/1947, online April 10, 1947, updated November 22, 2012, accessed on July 31, 2017.
  3. ↑ Wolfram Werner: "January 1947 - June 1947". In: Volume 2 of "Germany 1945-1949". Files on the prehistory of the Federal Republic, Institute for Contemporary History, Walter de Gruyter, 1979, ISBN 9783486718362 , p. 267.
  4. ↑ Prisoners of War - Every Fifteenth , In: Der Spiegel , Issue 2/1949 of Jan. 8, 1949, accessed on July 31, 2017.
  5. ↑ Ernst Reuss: Trapped! Two grandfathers in World War II. neobooks 2014, ISBN 9783847660323 .