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Meetings & Conferences WWII
Wartime Conferences
The first involvement of the United States in the wartime conferences between the Allied nations opposing the Axis
powers actually occurred before the nation formally entered World War II. In August 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met secretly and devised an eight-point statement of war aims known as the
Atlantic Charter, which included a pledge that the Allies would not accept territorial changes resulting from the war in
Europe. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the wartime conferences focused on establishing a second front.
At Casablanca in January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to fight until the Axis powers surrendered unconditionally.
In a November 1943 meeting in Egypt (Cairo Conference) with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, Roosevelt and Churchill
agreed to a pre-eminent role for China in postwar Asia. The next major wartime conference included Roosevelt, Churchill,
and the leader of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin. Meeting at Tehran following the Cairo Conference, the "Big Three"
secured confirmation on the launching of the cross-channel invasion and a promise from Stalin that the Soviet Union
would eventually enter the war against Japan. In 1944, conferences at Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks created the
framework for international cooperation in the postwar world. Yalta was the most important and by far the most
controversial of the wartime meetings. In February 1945, the "Big Three" met at the former Russian czar’s summer palace
in the Crimea. Recognizing the strong position that the Soviet Army possessed on the ground, Churchill and an ailing
Roosevelt agreed to a number of compromises with Stalin that allowed Soviet domination to remain in Poland and other
Eastern European countries, granted territorial concessions to the Soviet Union, and outlined punitive measures against
Germany, including an occupation and reparations in principle. Stalin did guarantee that the Soviet Union would declare
war on Japan within six months. The last meeting of the "Big Three" occurred at Potsdam in July 1945, where the tension
that would erupt into the cold war was evident. Despite the end of the war in Europe and the revelation of the existence of
the atomic bomb to the Allies, neither President Harry Truman,Roosevelt’s successor, nor Clement Atlee, who mid-way
through the conference replaced Churchill, could come to agreement with Stalin on any but the most minor issues. The
most significant agreement was the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration to Japan demanding an immediate and
unconditional surrender and threatening Japan with destruction if they did not comply. With the Axis forces defeated, the
wartime alliance soon devolved into suspicion and bitterness on both sides.
THE ATLANTIC CHARTER (1941)
The United States would not enter the war until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in
December 1941. But by the spring of 1941 Congress had approved the Lend Lease program,
and the aid Roosevelt had promised at Charlottesville had begun to flow to Great Britain, where
Winston Churchill was now prime minister. In July 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met for the first
time in Argentina Bay off Newfoundland, to issue a joint declaration on the purposes of the war
against fascism. Just as Wilson's Fourteen Points delineated the first war, so the Atlantic
Charter provided the criteria for the second. Originally the Soviet Union, which had been
attacked by Germany the month before, was to sign the charter as well. But the notion of "one
world," in which nations abandoned their traditional beliefs in and reliance upon military alliances
and spheres of influence, did not appeal to Joseph Stalin, and, in fact, neither was Churchill
particularly thrilled. Only Roosevelt, who had been a member of the Wilson administration, truly
believed in the possibility of a world governed by democratic processes, with an international
organization serving as an arbiter of disputes and protector of the peace.
The Casablanca Conference
From January 14 to 24, 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill and their staffs met in
Casablanca to lay out a strategy for the period after the North African campaign. The
American military chiefs wanted to proceed to the direct, cross-channel assault on
Germany. The British, eloquently spoken for by Churchill, argued the advantages of
gathering in the "great prizes" to be had in the Mediterranean, in Sicily and Italy for a
start. Roosevelt supported the British, and the American military succeeded only
(several months later) in getting an agreement that no more troops would be put into
the Mediterranean area than were already there, all others being assembled in
England for a cross-channel attack in 1944. Roosevelt gave his military another
shock when he announced that nothing short of unconditional surrender would be
accepted from any of the Axis powers. The policy was meant to reassure the
Russians, who would have to wait at least another year for a full-fledged second front, but was likely also to stiffen Axis
resistance.
3. Identify and locate the Allied and Axis powers on a map and discuss the major turning points of the war, the principal theaters of conflict, key
strategic decisions, and the resulting war conferences and political resolutions, with emphasis on the importance of geographic factors.
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Cairo Conference
Nov. 22-26, 1943, World War II meeting of U.S. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek of China at Cairo, Egypt. A joint declaration pledged
continuation of the war against Japan until unconditional Japanese
surrender, forswore territorial ambitions, and promised to strip Japan of all
territory acquired since 1895. Korea was to receive independence “in due
course.” The Tehran Conference was held immediately afterward.
THE ATLANTIC CHARTER
The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr.
Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together,
deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective
countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.
First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;
Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed
wishes of the peoples concerned;
Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they
will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have
been forcibly deprived of them;
Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the
enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the
trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;
Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field
with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;
Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the
means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may
live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;
Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;
Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment
of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations
which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and
permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage
all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments. Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill
The Tehran Conference
At the end of November, Roosevelt and Churchill journeyed to Tehran for their first
meeting with Stalin. The president and the prime minister had already approved,
under the code name Overlord, a plan for a cross-channel attack. Roosevelt
wholeheartedly favored executing Overlord as early in 1944 as the weather
permitted. At Tehran, Churchill argued for giving priority to Italy and possible new
offensives in the Balkans or southern France, but he was outvoted by Roosevelt and
Stalin. Overlord was set for May 1944. After the meeting, the CCS recalled
Eisenhower from the Mediterranean and gave him command of the Supreme
Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), which was to organize and carry
out Overlord.
The Tehran conference marked the high point of the East-West wartime alliance. Stalin came to the meeting as a
victorious war leader; large quantities of U.S. lend-lease aid were flowing into the Soviet Union through Murmansk and the
Persian Gulf; and the decision on Overlord satisfied the long-standing Soviet demand for a second front. At the same
time, strains were developing as the Soviet armies approached the borders of the smaller eastern European states. In
May 1943 the Germans had produced evidence linking the USSR to the deaths of some 11,000 Polish officers found
buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. Stalin had severed relations with the Polish exile government in
London, and he insisted at Tehran, as he had before, that the postwar Soviet-Polish boundary would have to be the one
established after the Polish defeat in 1939. He also reacted with barely concealed hostility to Churchill's proposal of a
British-American thrust into the Balkans.
3. Identify and locate the Allied and Axis powers on a map and discuss the major turning points of the war, the principal theaters of conflict, key
strategic decisions, and the resulting war conferences and political resolutions, with emphasis on the importance of geographic factors.
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Bretton Woods
It was during this conference that delegates/representatives from forty-four
nations wrote a plan to stabilize world currency by means of an International
Monetary Fund. They would use that fund to finance reconstruction of the
nations of Europe and Asia devastated by World War II, by means of the
'International Bank for Reconstruction and Development' (also known as the
World Bank).
Dumbarton Oaks
In a meeting near Washington, D.C., held from August 21 to October 7, 1944, U.S., Great Britain, U.S.S.R. and China met
to draft the constitution of the United Nations.
At Dumbarton Oaks, it was agreed that the new IGO (International Intergovernmental Organization) was to:
1. Maintain international peace and security, and promote cooperation and friendly relations among nations;
2. Operate based on the principle of sovereign equality of member states;
3. Be open to all “peace loving” states (meaning all states that opposed the Axis powers in WWII).
The negotiators also agreed that the new international organization would have a security council, general assembly,
secretariat, court, economic and social council, and any other necessary agencies.
It was to be the organization with primary responsibility for international peace and security, but based on a consensus of
great powers, which would be permanent members, and hold a veto due to the consensus requirement.
The United Nations (UN) Charter was signed on 26 June 1945 by the representatives of 51 countries at Dumbarton Oaks
in Washington, D.C. The main objective was a multilateral commitment to preserving peace through international
cooperation and collective security. The League of Nations, created under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, also had the
aim of promoting international cooperation and achieving peace and security. The break of the Second World War marked
the end of the League of Nations’ operation. The founding members of the UN did not want to repeat the same mistakes
they made in Versailles in 1919. The aim was to set up an international institutional arrangement through which peace
could be maintained and trade undertaken without conflict.
The Yalta Conference
By the time the conference was to take place, the Soviet armies were on the Odra
River, 35 miles east of Berlin. They had smashed the German line on the Wisla
River and reached the Baltic coast east of Danzig in January 1945 and had a tight
hold on the Odra by February 3. Stalin would meet Roosevelt and Churchill at
Yalta in Crimea (February 4-11) with all of Poland in his pocket and with Berlin and,
for all anybody then knew, most of Germany as well, within his grasp. At Yalta,
Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan within three to six months after the
German surrender in return for territorial concessions in the Far East.
The Americans and British, as was their custom, disagreed on how to proceed
against Germany. In a meeting at Malta shortly before the Yalta conference,
Montgomery and the British members of the CCS argued for a fast single thrust by Montgomery's army group across the
north German plain to Berlin. To sustain such a thrust, they wanted the bulk of Allied supplies to go to Montgomery, which
meant the American armies would have to stay on the defensive. Eisenhower's plan, which prevailed, was to give
Montgomery first priority but also keep the American armies on the move.
3. Identify and locate the Allied and Axis powers on a map and discuss the major turning points of the war, the principal theaters of conflict, key
strategic decisions, and the resulting war conferences and political resolutions, with emphasis on the importance of geographic factors.
3
Potsdam
This was a meeting (July 17-Aug. 2, 1945) of the principle Allies in World War
II (the United States, the USSR, and Great Britain) to clarify and implement
agreements previously reached at the Yalta Conference . The chief
representatives were President Truman, Premier Stalin, Prime Minister
Churchill, and, after Churchill's defeat in the British elections, Prime Minister
Attlee. The foreign ministers of the three nations were also present. The socalled Potsdam Agreement transferred the chief authority in Germany to the
American, Russian, British, and French military commanders in their
respective zones of occupation and to a four-power Allied Control Council for
matters regarding the whole of Germany. The Allies set up a new system of
rule for Germany, aimed at outlawing National Socialism and abolishing Nazi
ideology, at disarming Germany and preventing its again becoming a military
power, and at fostering democratic ideals and introducing representative and elective principles of government. The
German economy was to be decentralized, and monopolies were to be broken up; the development of agriculture was to
be emphasized in reorganizing the German economy. All former German territory east of the Oder and Neisse rivers was
transferred to Polish and Soviet administration, pending a final peace treaty. The German population in these territories
and in other parts of Eastern Europe was to be transferred to Germany. A mode for German reparations payments was
outlined. A Council of Foreign Ministers was established to consider peace settlements. The so-called Potsdam
Declaration issued (July 26) by the conference presented an ultimatum to Japan, offering that nation the choice between
unconditional surrender and total destruction. (The atom bomb was not actually mentioned.) Rarely was any agreement
so consistently breached as was the Potsdam Agreement. The work of the Allied Control Council for Germany was at first
blocked by France, which did not feel bound by an agreement to which it had not been party; the council had not even
begun to function when the rift caused by the cold war broke it up. The vague wording and tentative provisions of the
Potsdam Agreement, allowing a wide range of interpretation, have been blamed for its failure. "A Council composed of the
Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, China, France, and the United States...
shall normally meet in London which shall be the permanent seat of the joint Secretariat which the Council will form... As
its immediate important task, the Council shall be authorized to draw up, with a view to their submission to the United
Nations, treaties of peace with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland, and to propose settlements of territorial
questions outstanding on the termination of the war in Europe."
Potsdam Declaration of August 1 provided:
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"The purposes of the occupation of Germany by which the Control Council shall be guided are...
the complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany and the elimination or control of all
German industry that could be used for military production."
"War criminals and those who have participated in planning or carrying out Nazi enterprises
involving or resulting in atrocities or war crimes shall be arrested and brought to judgment."
"All members of the Nazi Party who have been more than nominal participants in its activities and
all other persons hostile to Allied purposes shall be removed from public and semi-public office,
and from positions of responsibility in important private undertakings."
"for the time being, no central German Government shall be established"
"During the period of occupation Germany shall be treated as a single economic unit."
"Payment of Reparations should leave enough resources to enable the German people to subsist
without external assistance."
"The Three Powers note that the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity, in accordance
with the decisions of the Crimea Conference, has agreed to the holding of free and unfettered
elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot"
"Allied troops should be withdrawn immediately from Tehran"
"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all
Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in
such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
3. Identify and locate the Allied and Axis powers on a map and discuss the major turning points of the war, the principal theaters of conflict, key
strategic decisions, and the resulting war conferences and political resolutions, with emphasis on the importance of geographic factors.
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