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UPI Archives
Monday, Feb. 12, 1945
Big Three plan unconditional surrender terms for Germany
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 1945 (UP) - The Big Three have agreed on plans for enforcing unconditional surrender terms on Germany, the calling of a United Nations' conference on world security organization problems, and future quarterly meetings of their foreign secretaries.
This spells the doom of Naziism and German militarism.
This was announced in a communiqu? issued by the White House. It said the meeting lasted eight days and was held at Yalta in the Russian Crimea. The meeting has now been concluded.
The communiqu? said that the three leaders had considered the question of damage caused by Germany and recognized it as "just" that she be obliged to make compensation in kind "to the greatest extent possible."
A commission will be established in Moscow to consider the extent and methods for compensating such damage.
President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin also agreed to form a new government for Poland, to be called the Polish provisional government of national unity.
Their joint communiqu? declared that in the future the three big powers will "immediately consult" on problems arising in any European liberated state or former Axis satellite.
The plans for occupation and control of Germany were agreed upon.
They provide control by the Big Three powers, but France will be invited to take over a zone of occupation and become a fourth member of a central control commission.
The commission will have headquarters in Berlin and will include representatives of all the big powers.
The communiqu?, six pages long, was divided into nine sections.
The first, devoted to the military aspects of the conference, said that the Big Three meeting had been "most satisfactory from every point of view" and had resulted in an interchange of the fullest information.
It promised "new and even more powerful blows" to be launched by the United Nations' armies and air forces into the heart of Germany from the east, west, north and south.
"Nazi Germany is doomed," the communiqu? said.
"The German people will only make the cost of their defeat heavier to themselves by attempting to continue a hopeless resistance."
The communiqu? revealed that the three leaders had solved the major unfinished business of the Dumbarton Oaks world organization conference - the voting procedure question - but gave no details of the solution.
The text of the proposals on voting procedure will be announced as soon as China and France have been consulted.
The Big Three agreed that the full United Nations conference to set up the world organization should meet at San Francisco on April 25.
The communiqu? said that a new situation had been created in Poland as a result of her "complete liberation by the Red Army" and called for establishment of a more broadly based provisional government in that country. It proposed reorganization of the provisional government which is now functioning in Poland on "a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad."
The three leaders said they considered that the eastern frontier of Poland should follow the Curzon Line, "with digression from it in some regions of five to eight kilometers in favor of Poland." They recognized that Poland must receive substantial territory in the north and west as compensation.
The Curzon Line would give Russia a substantial amount of Polish territory.
The final delimitation of the western Polish frontier should await the peace conference, they said.
The Big Three recommended to Marshal Tito and Premier Ivan Subasic of Yugoslavia that the agreement between them should be put into effect immediately and a new government formed on that basis. They further recommended that the new government should immediately declare extension of the anti-Fascist assembly to include members of the last Yugoslav parliament "who have not compromised themselves by collaboration with the enemy."
The Big Three declaration on liberated Europe said in part:
"They jointly declare their mutual agreement to concert during the temporary period of instability in liberated Europe the policies of their three governments in assisting the peoples liberated from the domination of Nazi Germany and the peoples of the former Axis satellite states of Europe to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems."
The Big Three promised jointly to assist the people of Europe "to establish conditions of internal peace: to carry out emergency measures for relief of distressed people; to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledge to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the peoples, and to facilitate when necessary the holding of such elections."
The three powers expressed the hope that France would be associated with them in the procedure suggested, apparently recalling Gen. De Gaulle's recent assertion that France would not be bound by any decisions reached at the Big Three conference in her absence.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International.
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