In a telegram to me the President said he felt this was a very encouraging, positive stage in the negotiations. Most of the arrested Polish leaders were apparently only charged with operating illegal radio transmitters, and Hopkins was pressing Stalin to grant them an amnesty so that consultations could be conducted in the most favourable atmosphere possible. He asked me to urge Mikolajczyk to accept Stalin’s invitation. I persuaded Mikolajczyk to go to Moscow, and in the upshot a new Polish Provisional Government was set up. At Truman’s request this was recognised by both Britain and the United States on July 5.
It is difficult to see what more we could have done. For five months the Soviets had fought every inch of the road. They had gained their object by delay. During all this time the Lublin Administration, under Bierut, sustained by the might of the Russian armies, had given them a complete control of Poland, enforced by the usual deportations and liquidations. They had denied us all the access for our observers which they had promised. All the Polish parties, except their own Communist puppets, were in a hopeless minority in the new recognised Polish Provisional Government. We were as far as ever from any real and fair attempt to obtain the will of the Polish nation by free elections. There was still a hope—and it was the only hope—that the meeting of “the Three”, now impending, would enable a genuine and honourable settlement to be achieved. So far only dust and ashes have been gathered, and these are all that remain to us to-day of Polish national freedom.
On June 1 President Truman told me that Marshal Stalin was agreeable to a meeting of what he called “the Three” in Berlin about July 15. I replied at once that I would gladly go to Berlin with a British delegation, but I thought that July 15, which Truman had suggested, was much too late for the urgent questions demanding attention between us, and that we should do an injury to world hopes and unity if we allowed personal or national requirements to stand in the way of an earlier meeting. “Although,” I cabled, “I am in the midst of a hotly contested election I would not consider my tasks here as comparable to a meeting between the three of us. If June 15 is not possible why not July 1, 2, or 3?” Mr. Truman replied that after full consideration July 15 was the earliest for him, and that arrangements were being made accordingly. Stalin did not wish to hasten the date. I could not press the matter further.
The main reason why I had been anxious to hasten the date of the meeting was of course the impending retirement of the American Army from the line which it had gained in the fighting to the zone prescribed in the occupation agreement. The story of the agreement about the zones and the arguments for and against changing them are recorded in the previous chapter. I feared that any day a decision might be taken in Washington to yield up this enormous area—400 miles long and 120 at its greatest depth. It contained many millions of Germans and Czechs. Its abandonment would place a broader gulf of territory between us and Poland, and practically end our power to influence her fate. The changed demeanour of Russia towards us, the constant breaches of the understandings reached at Yalta, the dart for Denmark, happily frustrated by Montgomery’s timely action, the encroachments in Austria, Marshal Tito’s menacing pressure at Trieste, all seemed to me and my advisers to create an entirely different situation from that in which the zones of occupation had been prescribed two years earlier. Surely all these issues should be considered as a whole, and now was the time. Now, while the British and American Armies and Air Forces were still a mighty armed power, and before they melted away under demobilisation and the heavy claims of the Japanese war—now, at the very latest, was the time for a general settlement.
A month earlier would have been better. But it was not yet too late. On the other hand, to give up the whole centre and heart of Germany—nay, the centre and key-stone of Europe—as an isolated act seemed to me to be a grave and improvident decision. If it were done at all it could only be as part of a general and lasting settlement. We should go to Potsdam with nothing to bargain with, and all the prospects of the future peace of Europe might well go by default. The matter however did not rest with me. Our own retirement to the occupation frontier was inconsiderable. The American Army was three millions to our one. All I could do was to plead, first, for advancing the date of the meeting of “the Three,” and, secondly, when that failed, to postpone the withdrawal until we could confront all our problems as a whole, together, face to face, and on equal terms.
How stands the scene after eight years have passed? The Russian occupation line in Europe runs from Lübeck to Linz. Czechoslovakia has been engulfed. The Baltic states, Poland, Roumania, and Bulgaria have been reduced to satellite States under totalitarian Communist rule. Yugoslavia has broken loose. Greece alone is saved. Our armies are gone, and it will be a long time before even sixty divisions can be once again assembled opposite Russian forces, which in armour and manpower are in overwhelming strength. This also takes no account of all that has happened in the Far East. The danger of a third World War, under conditions at the outset of grave disadvantage, casts its lurid shadow over the free nations of the world. Thus in the moment of victory was our best, and what might prove to have been our last, chance of durable world peace allowed composedly to fade away.* On June 4 I cabled to the President these words, which few would now dispute:
I am sure you understand the reason why I am anxious for an earlier date, say the 3rd or 4th [of July]. I view with profound misgivings the retreat of the American Army to our line of occupation in the central sector, thus bringing Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward. I hoped that this retreat, if it has to be made, would be accompanied by the settlement of many great things which would be the true foundation of world peace. Nothing really important has been settled yet, and you and I will have to bear great responsibility for the future. I still hope therefore that the date will be advanced.
THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE WESTERN ALLIES JULY 1945
Mr. Truman replied on June 12. He said that the tripartite agreement about the occupation of Germany, approved by President Roosevelt after “long consideration and detailed discussion” with me, made it impossible to delay the withdrawal of American troops from the Soviet Zone in order to press the settlement of other problems. The Allied Control Council could not begin to function until they left, and the military government exercised by the Allied Supreme Commander should be terminated without delay and divided between Eisenhower and Montgomery. He had been advised, he said, that it would harm our relations with the Soviet to postpone action until our meeting in July, and he accordingly proposed sending a message to Stalin.
This document suggested that we should at once instruct our armies to occupy their respective zones. He was ready to order all American troops to begin withdrawing from Germany on June 21. The military commanders should arrange for the simultaneous occupation of Berlin and for free access thereto by road, rail, and air from Frankfurt and Bremen for the United States forces. In Austria arrangements could be completed more quickly and satisfactorily by making the local commanders responsible for defining the zones both there and in Vienna, only referring to their Governments such matters as they were unable to resolve themselves.
This struck a knell in my breast. But I had no choice but to submit. There was nothing more that I could do. It must not be overlooked that Mr. Truman had not been concerned or consulted in the original fixing of the zones. The case as presented to him so soon after his accession to power was whether or not to depart from and in a sense repudiate the policy of the American and British Governments agreed under his illustrious predecessor. He was, I have no doubt, supported in his action by his advisers, military and civil. His responsibility at this point was limited to deciding whether circumstances had changed so fundamentally that an entirely different procedure should be adopted, with the likelihood of having to face accusations of breach of faith. Those who are only wise after the event should hold their peace.
On July 1 the United States and British
Armies began their withdrawal to their allotted zones, followed by masses of refugees. Soviet Russia was established in the heart of Europe. This was a fateful milestone for mankind.
While all this was passing I was plunged into the turmoil of the General Election, which began in earnest in the first week of June. This month was therefore hard to live through. Strenuous motor tours to the greatest cities of England and Scotland, with three or four speeches a day to enormous and, it seemed, enthusiastic crowds, and, above all, four laboriously prepared broadcasts, consumed my time and strength. All the while I felt that much we had fought for in our long struggle in Europe was slipping away and that the hopes of an early and lasting peace were receding. The days were passed amid the clamour of multitudes, and when at night, tired out, I got back to my headquarters train, where a considerable staff and all the incoming telegrams awaited me, I had to toil for many hours. The incongruity of party excitement and clatter with the sombre background which filled my mind was in itself an affront to reality and proportion. I was glad indeed when polling day at last arrived and the ballot papers were safely sealed for three weeks in their boxes.
I was resolved to have a week of sunshine to myself before the Conference. On July 7, two days after polling day, I flew to Bordeaux with Mrs. Churchill and Mary, and found myself agreeably installed at General Brutinel’s villa near the Spanish frontier at Hendaye, with lovely bathing and beautiful surroundings. I spent most of the mornings in bed reading a very good account, by an excellent French writer, of the Bordeaux armistice and its tragic sequel at Oran. It was strange to revive my own memories of five years before and to learn of many things which I had not known at that time. In the afternoons I even sallied forth with my elaborate painting outfit, and found attractive subjects on the river Nive and the Bay of St. Jean de Luz. I found a gifted companion of the brush in Mrs. Nairn, the wife of the British Consul at Bordeaux, with whom I made friends at Marrakesh a year before. I dealt only with a few telegrams about the impending Conference, and strove to put party politics out of my head. And yet I must confess the mystery of the ballot-boxes and their contents had an ugly trick of knocking on the door and peering in at the windows. When the palette was spread and I had a paint-brush in my hand it was easy to drive these intruders away.
The Basque people were everywhere warm in their welcome. They had endured a long spell of German occupation and were joyful to breathe freely again. I did not need to prepare myself for the Conference, for I carried so much of it in my head, and was happy to cast it off, if only for these few fleeting days. The President was at sea in the United States cruiser Augusta, the same ship which had carried Roosevelt to our Atlantic meeting in 1941. On the 15th I motored through the forests to the Bordeaux airfield, and my Skymaster took me to Berlin.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE ATOMIC BOMB
PRESIDENT TRUMAN arrived in Berlin the same day as I did. I was eager to meet a potentate with whom my cordial relations, in spite of differences, had already been established by correspondence. I called on him the morning after our arrival, and was impressed with his gay, precise, sparkling manner and obvious power of decision.
On July 16 both the President and I made separate tours of Berlin. The city was nothing but a chaos of ruins. No notice had of course been given of our visit and the streets had only the ordinary passers-by. In the square in front of the Chancellery there was however a considerable crowd. When I got out of the car and walked about among them, except for one old man who shook his head disapprovingly, they all began to cheer. My hate had died with their surrender and I was much moved by their demonstrations, and also by their haggard looks and threadbare clothes. Then we entered the Chancellery, and for quite a long time walked through its shattered galleries and halls. Our Russian guides then took us to Hitler’s air-raid shelter. I went down to the bottom and saw the room in which he and his wife had committed suicide, and when we came up again they showed us the place where his body had been burned. We were given the best first-hand accounts available at that time of what had happened in these final scenes.
The course Hitler had taken was much more convenient for us than the one I had feared. At any time in the last few months of the war he could have flown to England and surrendered himself, saying, “Do what you will with me, but spare my misguided people.” I have no doubt that he would have shared the fate of the Nuremberg criminals. The moral principles of modern civilisation seem to prescribe that the leaders of a nation defeated in war shall be put to death by the victors. This will certainly stir them to fight to the bitter end in any future war, and no matter how many lives are needlessly sacrificed it costs them no more. It is the masses of the people who have so little to say about the starting or ending of wars who pay the additional cost. The Romans followed the opposite principle, and their conquests were due almost as much to their clemency as to their prowess.
On July 17 world-shaking news arrived. In the afternoon Stimson called at my abode and laid before me a sheet of paper on which was written, “Babies satisfactorily born.” By his manner I saw something extraordinary had happened. “It means,” he said, “that the experiment in the Mexican desert has come off. The atomic bomb is a reality.” Although we had followed this dire quest with every scrap of information imparted to us, we had not been told beforehand, or at any rate I did not know, the date of the decisive trial. No responsible scientist would predict what would happen when the first full-scale atomic explosion was tried. Were these bombs useless or were they annihilating? Now we knew. The “babies” had been “satisfactorily born.” No one could yet measure the immediate military consequences of the discovery, and no one has yet measured anything else about it.
Next morning a plane arrived with a full description of this tremendous event in the human story. Stimson brought me the report. I tell the tale as I recall it. The bomb, or its equivalent, had been detonated at the top of a pylon 100 feet high. Everyone had been cleared away for ten miles round, and the scientists and their staffs crouched behind massive concrete shields and shelters at about that distance. The blast had been terrific. An enormous column of flame and smoke shot up to the fringe of the atmosphere of our poor earth. Devastation inside a one-mile circle was absolute. Here then was a speedy end to the Second World War, and perhaps to much else besides.
The President invited me to confer with him forthwith. He had with him General Marshall and Admiral Leahy. Up to this moment we had shaped our ideas towards an assault upon the homeland of Japan by terrific air bombing and by the invasion of very large armies. We had contemplated the desperate resistance of the Japanese fighting to the death with Samurai devotion, not only in pitched battles, but in every cave and dug-out. I had in my mind the spectacle of Okinawa island, where many thousands of Japanese, rather than surrender, had drawn up in line and destroyed themselves by hand-grenades after their leaders had solemnly performed the rite of hara-kiri. To quell the Japanese resistance man by man and conquer the country yard by yard might well require the loss of a million American lives and half that number of British—or more if we could get them there: for we were resolved to share the agony. Now all this nightmare picture had vanished. In its place was the vision—fair and bright indeed it seemed—of the end of the whole war in one or two violent shocks. I thought immediately myself of how the Japanese people, whose courage I had always admired, might find in the apparition of this almost supernatural weapon an excuse which would save their honour and release them from their obligation of being killed to the last fighting man.
Moreover, we should not need the Russians. The end of the Japanese war no longer depended upon the pouring in of their armies for the final and perhaps protracted slaughter. We had no need to ask favours of them. The array of European problems could therefore be faced on their merits and according to the broad principles of the United Nations. We seemed suddenly to have become possessed of a merciful abridgment of the slaughter in the East and of a far happier prospect in Europe. I have no
doubt that these thoughts were present in the minds of my American friends. At any rate, there never was a moment’s discussion as to whether the atomic bomb should be used or not. To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.
British consent in principle to the use of the weapon had been given on July 4, before the test had taken place. The final decision now lay in the main with President Truman, who had the weapon; but I never doubted what it would be, nor have I ever doubted since that he was right. The historic fact remains, and must be judged in the after-time, that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue. There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table; nor did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise.
A more intricate question was what to tell Stalin. The President and I no longer felt that we needed his aid to conquer Japan. His word had been given at Teheran and Yalta that Soviet Russia would attack Japan as soon as the German Army was defeated, and in fulfilment of this a continuous movement of Russian troops to the Far East had been in progress over the Siberian Railway since the beginning of May. In our opinion they were not likely to be needed, and Stalin’s bargaining power, which he had used with effect upon the Americans at Yalta, was therefore gone. Still, he had been a magnificent ally in the war against Hitler, and we both felt that he must be informed of the great New Fact which now dominated the scene, but not of any particulars. How should this news be imparted to him? Should it be in writing or by word of mouth? Should it be at a formal and special meeting, or in the course of our daily conferences, or after one of them? The conclusion which the President came to was the last of these alternatives. “I think,” he said, “I had best just tell him after one of our meetings that we have an entirely novel form of bomb, something quite out of the ordinary, which we think will have decisive effects upon the Japanese will to continue the war.” I agreed to this procedure.
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