the President on the final decisions. Interdepartmental consideration was also a part of the process of formulation, accomplished through participation in the preparation by representatives of the War and Navy Departments and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who attended the meetings of the Group on all security aspects of the proposals, and through review of the proposals by the highest officials of those Departments and of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The initial exploration of the problems in this field had been made under the Advisory Committee, with the participation of especially qualified persons from private life. Extraordinary consultation on a nonpartisan basis with Members of Congress and with a number of distinguished private citizens was throughout an important part of the process of formulating the proposals on general international organization. In addition, as will be seen in Part IV, there was consultation with the public at large after the initial international negotiations at Dumbarton Oaks and before final decisions were made, and public organizations were invited into consultation during the international negotiations at the San Francisco Conference, where the broad policy decisions were elaborated and presented in definitive form. Moreover, the American proposals entering into the negotiations among the major powers at Dumbarton Oaks were supplemented thereafter not only through these further consultations at home but also through further negotiations in Washington and abroad. All these activities and the preparations for them were one inclusive process and extended in scope far beyond the extraordinary arrangements for the development of postwar policy in other fields.

The preliminary international exchanges looking toward joint conversations among major powers on general organization for international security and peace began early in 1944 and interlocked with the preparation proceeding in the Informal Political Agenda Group. Together they constituted the direct chain of development leading from the Moscow Conference to the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations. In order to describe this chain clearly, it is, however, desirable first to take into account the other international negotiations that were proceeding.

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CHAPTER XI

International Discussions and Conferences, Spring-Autumn 1944

T

HE INTERNATIONAL conferences and discussions held in 1944 were

for the most part crowded into the spring and the autumn months. They varied in scope from matters of wide and basic policy concern to problems confined to a single interest, and they varied in character, certain ones including many governments while others were limited to but two major powers.

THE EUROPEAN ADVISORY COMMISSION

THE DECISION Of the Moscow Conference to establish a European Advisory Commission provided a continuing body through which negotiations on the treatment of European enemy states were to be conducted during a year and a half among the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and, from November 1944, France. This Commission, on which Ambassador Winant was the United States representative, met in London from January 14, 1944, until superseded by the Council of Foreign Ministers under the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945. It devoted itself primarily to the questions that would be presented by the surrender and occupation of Germany, although its original terms of reference had been somewhat broader.

The Conference itself had referred to the Commission several matters that were before it at Moscow, notably, the United States proposal on the treatment of Germany, the Anglo-American proposal on France, and the question of Allied policy in liberated areas. Furthermore, it had been agreed there that the Commission would study and make joint recommendations to the three participating Governments on such European questions connected with the termination of hostilities as they might refer to it. More specifically, however, the Commission had been directed by the Conference to make detailed recommendations as soon as possible on the terms of surrender to be imposed upon each of the European enemy states and upon the necessary machinery

to insure the fulfillment of these terms. In keeping with this latter directive, the Commission, when it met, decided to take up first the terms of surrender for Germany, and its subsequent discussions included only the additional questions of the Bulgarian armistice and of occupation policy in Germany and Austria. For reasons of policy and practical considerations of time, the armistice agreements with Rumania, Finland, with which the United States was not at war, and Hungary, and the civil-affairs agreements with the occupied Allied states were reached outside the Commission.

During the life of the Commission, the Office of European Affairs, with the assistance of the Division of Territorial Studies, was primarily responsible for supplying Ambassador Winant with the necessary background studies for his guidance on the Commission and with policy recommendations and directives. These studies and policy papers were developed in the several interdivisional country committees concerned with European enemy states, the Working Security Committee, and eventually the State, War, and Navy Coordinating Committee,1 and certain of the economic committees. These papers were then reviewed in the Post-War Programs Committee, and the final directives were of course subject to clearance with the Secretary and, upon occasion, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President before being sent. The same committee structure at the working level also reviewed documents prepared by Ambassador Winant's staff in London prior to their submission for approval at the top policy level in Washington. In September 1944, Hamilton Fish Armstrong was appointed Special Assistant, with the personal rank of Minister, to Ambassador Winant in connection with the latter's work on the Commission, and from the summer of 1944 onward, the Ambassador's staff included Philip Mosely, Chief of the Division of Territorial Studies, who served there on detail as Political Adviser. By this time, it will be recalled, the Post-War Programs Committee was nearing completion of its review of the recommendations formulated in the country and area committees on European problems.

While the number of tripartite, and later quadripartite, agreements concluded in the European Advisory Commission prior to the end of the European war was small, the extensive documentation prepared for the use of the American representative on the Commission was to prove of great subsequent value when the period of actual occupation arrived.

See pp. 347-48.

2 Mr. Armstrong served only briefly in London, being appointed Special Adviser to the Secretary of State in December 1944; cf. p. 350.

THE WEST INDIAN CONFERENCE

IN MARCH 1944, the first session of the West Indian Conference was held under the auspices of the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission. Before the war, both the British and the American Governments had separately, in their respective spheres of responsibility, been attempting to alleviate the political, economic, and social difficulties of this region. With the United States acquisition in 1940 under 99-year lease of bases in the British West Indies, the desirability of joint efforts toward improving those conditions became apparent, particularly in view of the relationship between conditions of stability in the Caribbean and security requirements. The establishment of an Anglo-American Caribbean Commission for the purpose of "encouraging and strengthening social and economic cooperation" in this area between the United States and Great Britain and their dependencies had been announced on March 9, 1942.

This Commission, which had purely advisory functions, was composed of a British Section and a United States Section, under the chairmanship of Sir Frank A. Stockdale and Charles W. Taussig, respectively. It held a series of meetings in 1942-43 devoted primarily to wartime emergency problems. In August 1943, however, it established a Caribbean Research Council, for the consideration of long-range problems, and on January 5, 1944, it was announced that the British and American Governments had decided to inaugurate, under the auspices of the Commission, a "regular system of West Indian Conferences." This decision had grown out of consultations held in London in December 1942 by the two Co-chairmen of the Commission. The Conference would discuss "matters of common interest and especially of social and economic significance to Caribbean countries," and was designed to "broaden the base for the approach to Caribbean problems to include consultation with local representatives-not necessarily officials of the territories and colonies concerned." Like the Commission, it would be purely advisory.

Both the Commission, and the Conference which met in Barbados March 21-30, 1944, were practical experiments in international cooperation on a regional basis to promote the advance of dependent areas and were conducted during a period when the whole problem of postwar policy toward dependent areas was being considered by the American and British Governments. They were in particular experiments along the lines of the regional commissions suggested for more general establishment in the informal British proposal of February 1943 with respect to dependent areas and later incorporated in the United States draft proposal on this subject presented at the Quebec and Moscow Conferences.

See pp. 189 and 198.

While this collaborative effort in the Caribbean was restricted in the first instance to two nations only and was therefore not as inclusive an arrangement as that contemplated under these proposals, the question of its extension to other countries with dependencies in this area was left open. The joint communiqué of March 9, 1942, establishing the Commission had stated that it would, "in its studies and in the formulation of its recommendations necessarily bear in mind the desirability of close cooperation in social and economic matters between all regions adjacent to the Caribbean." The Netherlands was already represented on the Caribbean Research Council, and the joint announcement of January 4, 1944, stated "Although these arrangements limit the Conference to United States and British participation the Conference will be free to invite participation of other countries on occasions."

While the development of these regional arrangements in the Caribbean can in no sense be attributed to the Department's work during the same period in preparation for the peace, the experience with these arrangements was reflected in the plans being formulated for international cooperation after the war in meeting the problems of dependent areas. The United States Co-chairman of the Commission and other staff members of the United States Section, which reported directly to the President but for administrative purposes was regarded as an integral part of the Department of State, were members of the interdivisional Committee on Colonial Problems established on September 23, 1943. This committee was kept currently informed of developments in the work of the Commission, and its views on certain problems before the Commission were solicited. The committee's first Chairman, C. Easton Rothwell, participated as an adviser to the Commission in the Barbados Conference.

THE STETTINIUS MISSION

IN THE spring of 1944, the urgency of certain immediate problems connected with the prosecution of the war and the stage of development that had been reached in the Department's preparation for the peace made desirable another informal exchange of views with the British. The approaching Normandy invasion necessitated AngloAmerican agreement on the status of the French Committee of National Liberation. Joint action was needed in anticipation of the invasion to reduce to the minimum neutral trade with the enemy. The situation in the Near East required exploration by the two major

'On Oct. 30, 1946, an agreement was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands establishing a quadripartite Caribbean Commission, which became the prototype for the South Pacific Commission established in 1947.

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