INTERDEPARTMENTAL CONSIDERATION OF TRUSTEESHIP

ON THE QUESTION of international trusteeship, much difficult work was still to be done. This question required, and was accorded, exceptional emphasis in the remaining preparation because of its intrinsic importance to fundamental American foreign policy in almost all its aspects, and because of its profound bearing upon American national security not only in future years but in the attainment of victory in the final crucial stages of the war. As has been seen, a tentative proposal for international trusteeship had been prepared and approved by the Post-War Programs Committee before the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, but for military considerations it had not been put forward in those Conversations.10 It was clear as a matter of policy at that time, however, that the President approved the principle of trusteeship. He had written on July 10, 1944, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "I am working on the idea that the United Nations will ask the United States to act as Trustee for the Japanese mandated islands."

The attention given to this matter in the Department during the two weeks after the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations was on the basis of a draft letter addressed to the Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, intended for prior informal discussion with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This draft letter proposed that the chapter of the "Tentative Proposals" withheld from the Conversations should now be sent to the other three major powers to inaugurate the exchange of views considered necessary before the general United Nations conference. The consideration of the whole matter was undertaken by an ad hoc group of officers comprised of Messrs. Pasvolsky and Dunn at the policy level and at the working level of Henry S. Villard of the Near Eastern Office, Robert B. Stewart of the European Office, Harley Notter of the Office of Special Political Affairs, Benjamin Gerig, Donald C. Blaisdell, James F. Green, and Ralph Bunche from the Divisions of the latter Office and C. Easton Rothwell, then Executive Secretary of the Post-War Programs Committee. In lieu of the projected letter, a number of informal conversations with Admiral Willson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were held during this period by superior officers in the Department of State.

On December 30, 1944, Secretary Stettinius proposed in letters to Secretaries Stimson and Forrestal that representatives of their Departments join with the Department of State in preparing a draft proposal for eventual incorporation in the final United Nations Charter and for possible early discussion with the other major Allied powers, which would set forth general principles and provide for international

V

trusteeship machinery. The Department of State was working on this draft, it was stated, with the intention, as heretofore, that the application of trusteeship to specific territories would be left for future determination."1

The draft proposal referred to was a revision of the paper withheld from the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations. It did not, however, encompass all the problems of policy concerning dependent areas on which papers were then being developed in the Department of State. Chief among these additional papers, as they were being drawn up in the interdivisional committee on dependent areas and within the Division of Dependent Area Affairs, were two: one on minimum standards applicable to all non-self-governing areas, including colonies and other types of dependencies as well as trust territories, and the other on regional advisory commissions to assist the authorities responsible for dependent territories in the discharge of their international obligations for the development and welfare of these territories and their peoples.

An Interdepartmental Committee on Dependent Area Aspects of International Organization was promptly created pursuant to informal agreement among the Departments concerned. The State Department representatives on this ranking Committee were appointed by the Staff Committee on January 5, 1945: Mr. Pasvolsky, Chairman, Assistant Secretaries Dunn, Rockefeller, and Clayton, and Isaiah Bowman. The War Department and Air Corps were represented by Generals Embick and Fairchild, respectively, the Navy Department by Admiral Russell Willson, and the Interior Department by Under Secretary Abe Fortas.12 The United States Commissioner on the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, Charles W. Taussig, attended as an expert on relevant Caribbean problems. The other members were Messrs. Wilson, Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs and the Committee's Acting Chairman when necessary; Charles P. Taft, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs and alternate for Mr. Clayton; Benjamin Thoron, who accompanied Mr. Fortas for the Interior Department; and Messrs. Haley, Director of the Office of Commercial Policy, and Gerig and Green from the staff of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs.13 The Committee's meetings began on February 2, 1945.

11 See appendix 54.

12 The military and naval representatives were all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The interest of the Interior Department stemmed up from its responsibilities for administration of certain territorial possessions of the United States. "Admiral Willson's alternate on one occasion was Admiral Harold C. Train; Mr. Wilson's on one occasion was Alger Hiss; and Avra Warren accompanied Mr. Rockefeller once.

13

In the interval, informal discussions took place in the State Department between Col. Oliver F. G. Stanley, British Minister of State for the Colonies, and Departmental officials on the possibilities of regional commissions for colonial territories, of a declaration of standards for administration of all dependent territories, and of trusteeship. There was recognition, most fully expressed in the discussion on January 18, of the heightening urgency for effecting an exchange of papers on trusteeship before the projected general United Nations conference convened.

The immediate problem in the remaining preparation on this question, however, was not international. Rather, it was to arrive at an agreed policy proposal within this Government that would satisfactorily take into account all the vital national interests of the United States involved in this complex question, including especially provision for the security of the United States in the Pacific. Congressional interest in the disposition to be made of the Pacific islands not under the control of an Allied power was strongly expressed in this period, and a subcommittee of the Committee on Naval Affairs of the House of Representatives was appointed on January 23 to study this matter. That same day, the Secretary of War set forth in a memorandum to Secretary Stettinius his views as expressed in a discussion of the previous day on the basic considerations relative to our national security involved in the projected trusteeship plan, and shortly thereafter, further interdepartmental discussion of this problem occurred at the Assistant Secretary level.

The necessity of responding to the approaches of other governments concerning our views on a trusteeship system was stressed by the Chairman at the initial meetings of the Interdepartmental Committee. At the third meeting, on February 13, he announced the Crimea decision to include a trusteeship system in the proposals for a general international organization. The Joint Chiefs of Staff conveyed to Secretary Stettinius, through a memorandum from the Chairman of the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee on February 26, 1945, their concurrence in the Secretary's proposal nearly two months earlier regarding interdepartmental preparations for international discussion of trusteeship and their views concerning United States security requirements that should be recognized in such discussion. This memorandum also conveyed the hope of Secretaries Stimson and Forrestal that the State Department's formulation of the proposal on trusteeship would proceed expeditiously and their intention to accord it prompt consideration when it was ready.

In its second meeting on February 8, the Interdepartmental Committee had developed certain essential differentiations between strategic and nonstrategic areas for trusteeship purposes and arrived at the

/concept that the former should come within the purview of the Security Council, where the unanimity requirement would be operative This was the basic concept on which the long-sought agreed policy wa to be constructed. On March 2, in its sixth meeting, the drafting of a definitive proposal was begun by the Committee. Three of its members, however the Chairman, Assistant Secretary Rockefeller, and General Embick-were absent on assignment to the United States Delegation attending the Conference at Mexico City, which had convened February 21.

Agreement on a trusteeship proposal, while advanced by the work so accomplished, was, however, not immediately reached. The further steps taken occurred mainly after the Mexico City Conference had been held and all officials concerned had returned to Washington and can best be described after consideration has been given to the Crimea and Mexico City Conferences.

CHAPTER XX

International Conferences
February-March 1945

OTH IN THE meeting of the three heads of Government at Yalta early in February and in the inter-American conference at Mexico City beginning later that month, the postwar preparation was involved, and the resulting decisions strongly influenced the subsequent preparatory work. In both instances, however, these relationships were confined to only certain of the matters discussed at the conferences.

THE CRIMEA CONFERENCE

WHEN PRESIDENT Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Marshal Stalin met at Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula, February 4–11, 1945, fourteen months had elapsed since their last meeting. The forces of the Western Allies were now attacking inside Germany close to the Rhine. Only Norway, Denmark, and a part of the Netherlands were still occupied. On the Eastern front, Soviet troops had crossed Poland and were fighting along the Oder in Germany, at some places less than a hundred miles from Berlin. At one point, north of Breslau, they had crossed the Oder. Northern Italy, however, had not yet been cleared of the enemy, and fighting was still in progress in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and also in Hungary, where German forces were still resisting expulsion, although an armistice had been signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union with the Provisional National Government of Hungary shortly before. In the Far East, though the liberation of the Philippines had not yet been accomplished, United States troops recaptured Manila on February 4; the Burma Road, closed for nearly three years, was again serving as a supply route for China; and more frequent bombing of the Japanese home islands had begun.

Thus, as the Crimea Conference convened, the defeat of Germany was expected in a matter of months,1 even though the Battle of the Bulge had left among the Allies a degree of uncertainty and some

1Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York, 1948), pp. 366–86.

843388-49 -26

391