that the President had called a Conference of the forty-four United and Associated Nations to meet at Bretton Woods in July to discuss the proposal for an International Monetary Fund and "possibly" the proposal for a Bank for Reconstruction and Development. At a preliminary meeting in Atlantic City the last two weeks in June, however, in which experts from the four major powers and thirteen other states participated, further refinement of the bank proposal was accomplished. At Bretton Woods, agreement was reached on the creation of an International Monetary Fund and on the establishment of an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, both of which, it was stipulated, should cooperate with "any general international organization" and with the specialized international agencies in related fields. The United States Delegation to the conference reflected Vin substantial degree the interdepartmental, official-public, and Executive-Congressional character of the American postwar preparation as a whole.11 The advisers and technical secretaries to the Delegation and the technical officers of the conference were drawn largely from those who had participated in the work of the American Technical Committee or had otherwise been closely associated with the preparatory work for the conference.12 Other Consultations There were in progress during the same period certain other international economic consultations for which the Department had a "The Delegation was comprised of Secretary Morgenthau, Chairman; Fred M. Vinson, Director, Office of Economic Stabilization, Vice Chairman; Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary of State; Edward E. Brown, President of the First National Bank, Chicago; Leo T. Crowley, Administrator, Foreign Economic Administration; Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Miss Mabel Newcomer, Professor of Economics, Vassar College; Senators Robert F. Wagner of New York, Democrat, and Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire, Republican, Chairman and ranking minority member, respectively, of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency; Representatives Brent Spence of Kentucky, Democrat, and Jesse P. Wolcott of Michigan, Republican, Chairman and ranking minority member, respectively, of the House Committee on Banking and Currency; and Harry D. White, Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury. 12 Those drawn from the Department of State who had previously been associated with the preparation were: Technical Advisers, Messrs. Collado, Livesey, and Pasvolsky; Technical Secretary, John H. Fuqua; Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of Technical Commissions and Committees, Messrs. Brown, Stinebower, and Young, Mrs. Eleanor Lansing Dulles, and Miss Ruth Russell. a complete list of the Delegation and of the officers of the conference, see Proceedings and Documents of United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, Department of State publication 2866, International Organization and Conference Series I, 3, vol. II, pp. 1130–33. For more direct responsibility than in the case of the Bretton Woods Conference and which reflected for the most part the work of the Special Committees.18 On March 24, 1944, the Post-War Programs Committee considered recommendations presented by Assistant Secretary Berle, Chairman of the Special Committee on International Aviation, in anticipation of his initiation the following month of a series of bilateral discussions on this question. On April 13, recommendations on postwar shipping policy developed by the Special Committee on Shipping were considered by the Post-War Programs Committee with a view to arriving at a Departmental policy within which the special committee could carry on its further preparations for international discussions of this problem, which began in London on July 19, 1944. On May 4 and again on May 17, the Post-War Programs Committee discussed policy recommendations presented by the Special Committee on Inland Transport in connection with a British proposal for a European inland transport organization to function in the transitional period after the war; these recommendations were to serve as a guide for the American representatives in discussions of this problem that took place in London, May 30-June 27, 1944. On June 16, the Committee approved recommendations presented by Assistant Secretary Acheson, after consultation with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for changes in the draft constitution of a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization prepared by the Interim Commission that had been established for this purpose by the FAO Conference the previous year. In the formulation of all of these recommendations, the processes of the preparation already described were followed. These economic consultations came to immediate fruition in two instances. On August 1, 1944, the FAO Interim Commission submitted its final report to the participating governments for approval. This final report included the draft constitution for a permanent organization, which should "constitute a part of any general international organization to which may be entrusted the coordination of the activities of international organizations with specialized responsibili "The exploratory talks on postwar rubber problems among the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, which were held in London in August 1944 and which resulted in the establishment of an informal Rubber Study Group, had no direct connection with the extraordinary preparation under discussion here. As noted earlier, a special committee on rubber had been projected to function under the Taylor Committee, but had never been established. (See pp. 140-41.) However the United States Representative at these discussions was Bernard F. Haley, who had been the ranking Assistant Chief of the Division of Economic Studies before its absorption into the operating structure of the Department. The Rubber Study Group was to become the precursor of the study groups later proposed for the commodity field in the Habana Charter for an International Trade Organization. ties." That same month, an agreement was reached in London among the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland and the French Committee of National Liberation, to which other of the United Nations subsequently adhered, on the establishment of a United Maritime Authority to function from the cessation of the European war until six months after the end of the war with Japan. THE SECOND QUEBEC CONFERENCE PRESIDENT Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met for a second time at Quebec, September 11-16, 1944. Marshal Stalin, as before, had been invited to attend this meeting but had again indicated that military exigencies precluded his participation. The meeting was primarily military in character. No policy official of the Department accompanied the President to Quebec. The Joint Communiqué issued at its conclusion stated that the "President and the Prime Minister, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff, held a series of meetings during which they discussed all aspects of the war against Germany and Japan” and "reached decisions on all points both with regard to the completion of the war in Europe, now approaching its final stages, and the destruction of the barbarians of the Pacific". Certain political matters were discussed at Quebec, however, and one important decision with far-reaching postwar implications was taken, namely acceptance by the President and the Prime Minister of the plan for the treatment of Germany after surrender presented by Secretary Morgenthau, who had accompanied the President to Quebec. This plan was in fundamental conflict with the recommendations on this matter made earlier that month by the Secretary of State and with the views of the War Department. While this decision was later modified, it was to have an important bearing on the Government's subsequent position on this problem. Agreement on the respective British and American zones of occupation in Germany, long at issue between the two Governments in the European Advisory Commission, was also reached at Quebec. A proposal to guide lend-lease to Britain in the period between the end of the European War and the defeat of Japan, designed to facilitate the reconversion of Britain's industry and the re-establishment of the British export trade, was also agreed upon by the President and "Accounts of this decision and of the views held by the Secretaries of State and War have been made available in Memoirs of Cordell Hull, II, 1602-22, and in On Active Service by Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy (New York, 1947, 1949), pp. 568-83. Cf. also Henry Morgenthau, Germany Is Our Problem (New York, 1945), documentary foreword reproducing "Memorandum summarizing "The Morgenthau Plan"." Secretary Morgenthau. This matter had not come within the purview of either the departmental or the interdepartmental postwar preparatory work concerned here. There was, in addition, some discussion by the President and the Prime Minister of the problems arising out of the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations then in progress in Washington, particularly the question of voting in the Security Council. This is described in chapter XIV. L T CHAPTER XII Proposals for General International HE PERIOD of concentrated preparation of the United States proposals on general organization for the maintenance of international peace and security covered seven months, from December 9, 1943, to July 8, 1944. The resulting views, refined and supplemented, were those that the United States set forth in the major power negotiations at Dumbarton Oaks. The proposals were built during the same months that the United Nations were developing the momentum for sustained offensives in the war. In the south of Europe, the Allies opened battle in central Italy in May and captured Rome early in June. In eastern Europe, Soviet troops retook Odessa in April and Sevastopol in May and then pressed deeper into Rumania. The successful Allied landing in Normandy occurred June 6. By that time, in the Pacific the Allies had invaded Kwajalein and the Admiralty Islands, were fighting in Burma, and had landed at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea and in Biak Island 900 miles from the Philippines. The United Nations were drawing near the battlegrounds where the final struggles would be fought to decision. These welcome portents of future victory naturally increased the urgency for arriving at international agreement on organized means of maintaining world security and peace afterward. Having the same effect were the obvious desirability of rapidly following up the basic pledges on postwar organization embodied in the Declaration of Moscow and the fact that the Foreign Ministers at the Moscow Conference had agreed that a preliminary exchange of views should be undertaken in coming months on the problems of international organization for the maintenance of international peace and security. They contemplated that such exchange should be carried out in Washington first, as proposed by Mr. Molotov, and then in London and in Moscow. The first step toward exchange on this basis occurred in November 1943. In cables to the American Embassies in London, Moscow, and 246 |