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Secretary and the Under Secretary in the field of the Department's political functions. While this Committee's work was of a current character, the inevitable conversion eventually of all postwar into current problems raised momentarily the question of the absorption at this early date of the territorial and economic research staffs into the operating divisions of the Department. This course was rejected as premature, but it suggested the need for closer relationship between the research and the operational structures of the Department and, hence, of several adjustments affecting both.

THE DIVISIONS OF POLITICAL STUDIES AND ECONOMIC STUDIES, 1943

REORGANIZATION was effected on January 1, 1943. The political staff was organized as the Division of Political Studies with Harley Notter as Chief, and with Durward Sandifer, Philip Mosely, and S. Shepard Jones as Assistant Chiefs. The economic staff was similarly organized as the Division of Economic Studies with Leroy Stinebower, formerly Assistant Adviser on International Economic Affairs, as Chief, and with H. Julian Wadleigh remaining for a time as Assistant Chief." These Divisions continued under Mr. Pasvolsky's general supervision and were given an expansion of functions in their respective fields regarded as extraordinary in Departmental practice: 66 responsibility for the conduct of continuing and special research, for the preparation of studies required in the formulation of policies, the planning of integrated programs as a basis for action in the field of foreign political [and economic] relations affecting the interests of the United States, with particular reference to the long-range implications of current policies, actions and developments . . . affecting post-war political [and economic] reconstruction, and for the formulation of appropriate recommendations with respect to the foregoing.""

Cooperation and liaison were required between these companion divisions. Each was directed, furthermore, to cooperate fully and to have effective liaison with all other parts of the Department of State and with other Departments and agencies of the Government having joint interest or authority in the field of activity concerned. Other divisions of the Department were likewise directed to cooperate with the new divisions and, in particular, to keep them fully informed of current decisions, activities, and developments, and to invite them to participate in formulating decisions having long-run implications.

'Mr. Wadleigh resigned Aug. 11, 1943.

'The duties of these divisions were stated largely in identic terms. The words in brackets have been inserted above to show the duties of both in Departmental Order 1124. For full list of personnel of the Research Staff in 1943, see appendix 22.

For the purpose of coordination within this broad definition of work and relationships, the reorganizing Order established a Committee on Special Studies under Mr. Pasvolsky's chairmanship, with Mr. Notter and Mr. Stinebower named to membership. While there was provision for other officers to be designated as members by the Secretary of State, no further members were added. This committee constituted the directing group for the research staff, and each of its three members in their ex officio capacity attended the meetings of the subcommittees of the Advisory Committee. If all were not present at every meeting, at least one or two were.

The Committee on Special Studies was particularly concerned with the identification of the problems requiring consideration, the determination of the most urgent studies and special papers needed for top-level use, the development of handbooks and policy summaries, and various aspects of the relationship between the staff work and that of other parts of the Department and of the Government as a whole. It also considered the organizational changes almost constantly required by the progressive stages reached in the work of the Advisory Committee's subcommittees and by the growth, so far as this affected the preparatory work, of the Department's functions and personnel, which began in this period to be rapid. Coordination with current policy and operations was provided through the reorganization of the Political Planning Committee on March 20, 1943, which added to its membership the Chairman of the Committee on Special Studies, Mr. Pasvolsky, and two other higher officers active on the Advisory Committee, Mr. Hackworth and Mr. Long. At the same time Mr. Dunn and Mr. Hornbeck, as the senior Political Advisers, became increasingly active in the work of the subcommittees considering postwar political problems.

The structure for the staff work sketched above was maintained throughout 1943, although expansion of staff, best described in connection with the developments recounted in the next Part, occurred within this framework. Here it may be noted that the Division of Economic Studies was rapidly and more effectively organized by the grouping of problems under three assistant chiefs: general economic under Bernard F. Haley, financial under Paul T. Ellsworth, and territorial economic under Melvin M. Knight. The expansion of the Division of Political Studies was greater, corresponding to the proportionate multiplicity and newness of the problems anticipated in its fields of responsibility. C. Easton Rothwell was made Assistant Chief in charge of administration and also, by cooperative arrangement, of the joint services for the staff of both Divisions. To these services was added in the summer a Unit of Biographical Analysis, under Miss Edna R. Fluegel, to study the background of current and emerging

leadership in all enemy-occupied countries in Europe. This unit absorbed certain of the work previously undertaken by the Post-War Trends Unit, which had been dissolved and whose remaining functions were being performed by the Public Relations Unit. Study of Central European territorial problems was intensified, and placed under David Harris as Assistant Chief.

This organization spanned roughly the period after the Allied invasion of North Africa and the holding of the Moscow, Cairo, and Tehran conferences, or, in other terms, the final period of work by the original Advisory Committee subcommittee organization and the beginning of the period when definite recommendations began to be formulated. It was during this period that Mr. Welles resigned and Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., became Under Secretary.

The new research structure so instituted in January 1943 increased the number of ranking officers at the divisional level, which at that time was the highest level in the Department below the rank of Political and Economic Adviser, Special Assistant to the Secretary, and Assistant Secretary, and thus inaugurated wider staff participation in policy consideration. It was designed, furthermore, to assure the utilization of all the resources of the Department and the integration of current policy and developing postwar policy so that each would be formulated with due regard for the other. It also reflected a general view that the staff should be made ready, by appropriate organization, for the performance of advisory and secretariat functions at international conferences, the approach of which was now beginning to be discernible. The first such conference to engage the staff directly on the scene was the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture. At this Conference, as noted above, members of both new Divisions, particularly the Chief of the Division of Economic Studies commenced the active participation in negotiations that in some fields of work were, as will be seen, integral to the preparation.

This reorganization was, however, only one of the steps in adjustment to new needs and the emerging world situation affecting the nature of postwar policy. The structure for staff work, like that for all other phases of the preparation, was adjusted constantly, more often through the way it functioned than through change by formal order.

'The public relations work was transferred in the autumn of 1943 elsewhere in the Department.

CHAPTER VII

Suspension of the Advisory Committee

T

HE DECISIONS of December 1941 to establish the President's Advisory Committee assumed eventual victory. Darker days of catastrophe and dire risk followed-days when the wartime alliance of the United Nations was hard-tested and strained by the conflicting demands on every hand of national versus over-all strategy and aims. The Advisory Committee's main work was carried on in the darkest period of the war.

It had begun when the retreat of United Nations forces both in the East and in the West was the almost daily theme of news. Then came the months of holding, of contesting the enemy's advance, and the beginning of the offensive against the enemy's outposts. The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 4-8, 1942, checked the Japanese advance southward in the Pacific theater, but not until June of 1942 was the threat of an invasion of Australia removed. In Africa, the German thrust reached El Alamein on July 1, 1942, placing the Near East in jeopardy. While the British defense there held and, in combination with the American and British landings, was turned to offense in North Africa on November 7, 1942, to push Axis forces out of Africa, it was not until July 10, 1943, that it became possible to invade Sicily. The tide did not begin to turn on the Eastern Front until, following the fall of Sevastopol and Rostov in July 1942, the capture of Stalingrad was prevented in the autumn, and the Soviet forces mounted an offensive in the Caucasus in December, forced a favorable turn in the area of Leningrad in January 1943, and exacted the surrender of the Nazi armies at Stalingrad on January 31-February 2 of that year. A Soviet general offensive then started, and a seesaw struggle ensued from which the Soviets emerged with sufficient strength to counter with a new offensive on July 12, 1943. By the end of that month, when the Advisory Committee ended its "second round" the tide of battle had turned in Eastern Europe; the Japanese thrust was being contained; North Africa was liberated; Sicily was invaded; and Mussolini had been deposed.

Since, however, the power of the Allies to inflict quick defeat was lacking, the enemy might hope to salvage victory by protracting the

war and attempting through friction or inducements to break up the United Nations coalition. On the other hand, rapid collapse of some one or other of the enemy was another possibility that could affect the stability of the United Nations coalition. And the risk was always present that under certain circumstances the national aims of any of the United Nations might adversely affect the general war effort jeopardizing, through alliances, territorial or other claims or faits accomplis, cooperative postwar relations as well as victory itself.

While such potentialities were considerations to be weighed, there were actual strains that augmented the difficulties anticipated in establishing a sound peace and which therefore confronted the postwar preparation as outlined above. While the United States and Great Britain were at war with Germany and Italy and with Japan, the Soviet Union was not at war with the latter. This factor in itself made necessary a closer coordination of effort between Great Britain and the United States, reflected, for example, in the establishment of the Combined British-American Boards on Raw Materials, Munitions Assignments and Shipping Adjustment, January 26, 1942; of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, February 6, 1942; and of the Pacific Council, March 30, 1942. It also meant that the United States and Great Britain, but not the Soviet Union, were waging war on a second gigantically difficult front-the Pacific-which Soviet leaders appeared to discount. Geographical location and other imperative military factors dictated that the major German land assault would be borne by the Soviet Union at this stage of the war, and that when the initiative on land was taken in Western Europe, it would be a combined Anglo-American action. A third factor was the uneven course of the war: the tide of battle turned in Africa and the Pacific, while the German offensive on the Eastern Front was still sustained.

These and related conditions, including the doubts and mutual distrust continuing from the prewar years and the developments of 1939-1941 preceding the German attack on the Soviet Union, were prominent among the causes of the "second front" controversy, which had important repercussions on wartime international relations, including those affecting the postwar period.

The measures taken initially to offset the friction engendered by this dispute were in substantial measure economic and diplomatic. Immediately following the signature of the Anglo-Soviet treaty, the problem of Soviet-American relations was discussed May 29-June 4, 1942, by President Roosevelt and Foreign Commissar Molotov. The announcement issued at the conclusion of the conversation specified:

"full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942. In addition, the

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