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1945
Yalta Conference

LAYING
THE BASIS
FOR PEACE

By TOM MORRIS

**Only with the continuing and growing cooperation and
understanding among our three countries and among all
the peace-loving nations can the highest aspiration of hu-
manity be realized — a secure and lasting peace.”’

This was how the historic Yalta conference ended on
Feb. 11, 1945 in which the Soviet Union, Great Britain
and the United States took part to build the framework of
post-war cooperation, to ensure a lasting peace and
create a system of international security. Yalta discussed
the complex questions of Germany’s future following its
unconditional surrender; it examined Poland’s frontiers
as well as the conditions of the USSR’s entry into the war

against Japan.
The Future of Germany

“It is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militar-
ism and Naziism and to ensure that Germany will never
again be able to disturb the peace of the world,”’ declared
the Yalta participants.

At the Potsdam Conference, July 17-Aug. 2, 1945, the
three powers extended the Yalta decisions regarding
post-war development. The Potsdam Agreement set out
these main aims concerning occupied Germany: com-
plete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany; dis-
solution of all fascist armed forces and organizations;
abolition of all Nazi laws; prohibition of all Nazi and
militarist activity and propaganda; internment and
punishment of war criminals and active Nazis, as well as
the democratic transformation of political life in
Germany.

Thus, the fundamental principles of a European peace
order sprang from the realization by the Allied powers at
Yalta and Potsdam that European peace and security
could only be guaranteed by the complete destruction of
German militarism and fascism and the fixing of stable
borders as well as upholding the principle of territorial

integrity.

The Polish Question
At Yalta it was agreed Poland’s eastern frontier should
follow the Curzon Line which had been approved after
World War One. At Potsdam Poland’s western frontier
was agreed to run along the Oder and Niesse rivers.
A vigorous discussion preceded the final agreement of

a

News Backgrounder

Poland’s new government: the U.S. and Britain made
every effort to foist a decision over the heads of the
Polish people by proposing the so-called Polish
““government-in-exile’’ based in London take power.
The USSR argued Poland’s right to self-determination.
Final settlement was a compromise: the Polish
Provisional Government, which had been functioning in
liberated Polish territories since the beginning of 1945,
was to be “‘reorganized on a broader democratic basis
with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland
itself and from Poles abroad’’. It was then to hold free
elections. These elections took place in January, 1947.
Representatives of the ‘‘government-in-exile’’ received
just over 10 per cent of the vote. Its leader, Stanislaw
Mikolajezyk, gave up hope and left Poland.

War in the Far East

The Yalta conference discussed the progress of the
war against Japan based on estimates provided
Roosevelt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that heavy casual-
ties would be sustained during the planned 1946 invasion
of the Japanese mainland. Accordingly, it was agreed
that the USSR would enter the war against Japan two or
three months following German fascism’s surrender
(which took place May 8, 1945).

Honoring its commitment, the USSR declared war on
Imperial Japan, deploying 11 field armies (80 divisions)
comprising 1.5 million troops, which resulted in the
liberation of northeast China and north Korea from the
elite Japanese Kwantung Army.

However, striving to establish undivided U.S. control
over Japan’s post-war future, despite the fact) that the
USSR’s entry into the war against Japan effectively had
decided the outcome, President Truman, who took office
following Roosevelt’s death April 12, 1945, gave the
order for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

International Security
The Yalta meeting continued the discussions on the

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 6, 1985

U.S. and Soviet troops meet on the Elbe River at Torgau.

Meeting at Yalta: (I-r) Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin.

formation of a new international security organization,
the United Nations, which had been discussed in 1944 at
Dunbarton Oaks. The Yalta declaration reaffirmed the
Allies’ common ‘‘determination to maintain and
strengthen in the peace to come that unity of purpose and
of action which has made victory possible and certain for
the United Nations in this war. We believe that this is 4
sacred obligation which our governments owe to our
peoples and the peoples of the world ...”’

While the questions of United Nations’ voting rules
were only settled after Yalta, the participants agreed that
the unity of the members of the anti-Hitler coalition 1
the future UN Security Council was of decisive im-
portance for the maintenance of lasting peace. This prin-
ciple, too, was embodied in the final document.

Rewriting History
A spate of articles reflecting a renewed attack against
the Yalta agreements has surfaced in this 40th anniver-

sary year. The Reagan administration has consistently
referred to the ‘‘artificial division’ of post-war Europe.

Resolutions have been introduced by U.S. Congress-
men on behalf of right-wing groups calling for the re-
nunciation of the agreements. Writers have raised many
theories: an ailing Roosevelt was ‘‘tricked’’ by Stalin;
Churchill was “‘naive’’; the USSR ‘‘reneged’’ on the
agreements.

In the Federal Republic of Germany maps are pub-
lished which ignore the post-war agreements and show 4
single Germany with borders of Hitler’s day, taking in all
of the GDR and large chunks of Poland and
Czechoslovakia.

In the U.S. (with its supporters in Canada) there is the
Chicago-based Pomost demanding the ‘‘liberation’’ of
Poland, with one key aim being to scrap the Yalta ac-
cords. The ‘‘Renounce Yalta Committee’’ needs little
explanation.

* * *

Thirteen months after Yalta the cold war began in
earnest, signalled by Churchill’s ‘‘iron curtain’’ speech
at Fulton, Missouri. Since that time, starting with the
creation of NATO in April 1949 and the formation of the
FRG in September 1949, the principles of post-war unity
have been systematically undermined by world
imperialism.

Its objectives became ‘‘containment”’ and ‘‘roll back”’
bolstered by increasing military pressures in Europe and
capped by the latest deployment of new nuclear
weapons systems added to NATO’s already massive
nuclear and conventional war machine on the continent.

It’s in this light that renewed attacks on post-war
agreements (including Yalta) should be viewed. And it’s
in this light that the ‘‘free world’s”’ refusal to ban fascism
and fascist groups, to prosecute war criminals, to drop
its claim that the map of eastern Europe remains an
“‘open political question,’”’ should be seen.

By contrast, this is what the Dec. 1984 communiqué of
the meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Warsaw Pact
nations said on the matter: “The participants . . . pointed
to the dangers to peace and security arising from con-
cepts that call in question the frontiers existing between
European states, their socio-political systems as well as
other political and territorial realities that came into exis-
tence after World War Two. Europe’s post-war frontiers
are inviolable ...”’

The Warsaw Pact nations repeated their call for seri-
ous dialogue with the West, for a lessening of military
confrontation based on respect for the independence,
national sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states.

In these dangerous times, and on the eve of the Geneva
talks, efforts to redraw post-war Europe’s boundaries
and undermine 40-year-old agreements are an integral
part of imperialism’s arsenal.

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