Second Québec Conference
The Second Québec Conference (code name "Octagon") was a highly official military conference that was held between British, Canadian and American heads of government during the Second World War. The conference was held from September 12, 1944 to September 16, 1944 in the Citadel and Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City . It was the second conference held by the Allies and took place shortly after the invasion of Normandy from June 6 to August 25, 1944 in the French-Canadian capital Quebec. This time too, the main actors were Winston Churchill , William Lyon Mackenzie King and Franklin D. Roosevelt .
Decisions were made in the following areas: division of defeated Germany into allied occupation zones, extensive economic aid for Great Britain and the participation of the British Navy in the war against Japan .
In particular, the American Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. was able to show off at this conference with his proposals for the defeated Germany in the months to come, later known as the Morgenthau Plan . He succeeded in convincing even the extremely skeptical Churchill of the main features of his radical plan to transform Germany into an agrarian state. Even if Morgenthau's advances at the Quebec Conference did not last long after the American delegation returned to Congress, they are nevertheless to be seen as signposts for a “hard peace” on the European continent.
In 1998 a memorial was inaugurated in the city of Quebec to commemorate the two conferences of 1943 and 1944. It stands directly behind one of the city gates, the Porte Saint-Louis, which leads into the historic old town.
See also
literature
- United States Department of State: Foreign relations of the United States. Conference at Quebec, 1944 . US Government Printing Office, 1944.
