After the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, the allies had agreed to the total defeat of the “German devil” in order to restore peace in Europe. However, ensuring that peace not only depended on defeating Nazism in the war, it also depended on being able to draw up a peace treaty that would prevent Germany from breaking it again. During the rest of the war, the allies met numerous times in an attempt to find a solution to the “German question” that would bring about a long period of peace in Europe. And a solution passed through the division of the country.
Tehran Conference (November-December 1943)
Under the code name EUREKA, the Tehran Conference was the first meeting between the three rulers of the Allied great powers. In this Conference, various issues will be discussed, although the most important will be to establish the common basic lines for the end of the war, such as support for the Yugoslav partisans, the entry of Turkey on the allied side, or the realization of Operation Overlord, although This was already agreed upon by the foreign ministers of the three powers shortly before, at the Third Moscow Conference.
In addition, in Tehran, the allies will assume the responsibility of working out a peace, together, as victorious powers, which will serve as a starting point for the harmonious future of the world. Having laid the original foundations for that peace months earlier in Casablanca, at the end of November 1943 the allied powers met again to determine the points of that “definitive peace” that would put an end to the war.
However, this point on the “definitive peace” agreed in Tehran has a section that does not appear in the official declaration, and it is the approach and discussion of the future of Germany. The three great powers, seeing victory close after the continuous Nazi defeats, and at the insistence of the General Secretary of the CPSU Josef Stalin, decided to discuss the “German question” as early as November 1943, taking the first steps on the methods of action that they would be carried out once Germany was defeated, referring mainly to the occupation of the territory, the demilitarization or the administration.
In the previous days in Cairo, the President of the USA mentioned to his aides his idea of dividing Germany, but into three balanced States. However, in Tehran, Stalin, although he does not mention it openly in the first meetings, takes a very radical position, being in favor of German dismemberment and the Allied occupation of strategic areas to prevent German military recovery. However, he had the opposition of the other two leaders due to the harshness of the measures proposed by him. Despite this opposition, Stalin maintained an uncompromising stance on the future of Germany, viewing any British and American proposal as an inadequate solution to the German problem, and emphasizing the danger that a united Germany posed to peace. Thus, Stalin was the first to state that:
“The victorious Allies must retain possession of the important strategic points in the world so that if Germany moved a muscle she could be rapidly stopped”
“The victorious allies must maintain possession of the world’s important strategic points so that if Germany moves a muscle, it can be quickly stopped.”
As the British and American presidents were reluctant to follow such an aggressive policy, Stalin accused Churchill of keeping a secret affection for Germany and wanting a “soft peace” for them, and Roosevelt of not being aware of the danger of having a border country of this caliber. Therefore, the negotiations on the German future stalled. However, although Stalin was so critical, he was only doing so towards the Nazi leaders, not towards the German citizens, whom he did not want to punish, but he was forced to do so in order to avoid repeating the rise of “a new Hitler.”
In any case, since the fundamental objective was for Germany to cease to be a threat to the world, everything possible had to be done to achieve this, and for this three preliminary solutions were proposed for the future of Germany:
- Stalin raised the idea of creating a whole series of small, decentralized and weak states, similar to the Holy Roman Empire, thus avoiding any future problems as there was no internal unity. This position was seen by the British and Americans as too radical and was rejected out of hand.
- Roosevelt accepted the idea of the division of Germany, but proposed that, even if a central government continued to exist, the German country be divided into five independent regions (Hannover, Prussia, Hesse, Saxony and Bavaria), as well as the independence of Austria, which prevent the reconstruction of a “Greater Germany”. The Saarland and the Ruhr would come under international control.
- Churchill, for his part, proposed the creation of three confederations, independent of each other, as well as internally decentralized.
However, the British and American proposals were rejected by Stalin, so a tripartite solution seemed, at this point, a long way off.
Thus, in this climate of uncertainty, the Tehran Conference came to an end, where, although it is true that no decision was made that directly affected the German future, the first steps were already taken on what to do with Germany once the war has ended. The European Advisory Commission (EAC), which had been created months before, at the Third Moscow Conference, based in London and with the initial objective of advising and recommending allied governments in their political decisions, was now responsible for drawing up a common plan for the occupation of Germany.
Second Quebec Conference (September 1944)
With the basic points for the short term already agreed upon, and with the allied victory very well underway after the success of the allied landing in Normandy (Operation Overlord) and the Soviet advance in the east (Operation Bagration), they began to emerge within the allies doubts about the medium and long term.
Although the division of Germany during the occupation and its demilitarization by the European Advisory Commissionthe doubts about the German future once this allied military occupation was over, since it was not going to be eternal, were very present in the three great powers, who saw how the end of the war was approaching and the German future was not materialized .
Thus, with the main objective of trying to definitively clarify the future of Germany, Churchill and Roosevelt, accompanied by the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) and various individual advisors, met in Quebec (Canada), at the Second Quebec Conference, under the code name OCTAGON. Stalin did not attend, however, and he rejected Roosevelt’s idea of meeting again, so the American President arranged the conference in Quebec only with the British Prime Minister.
Regarding the German occupation, the EAC established that, once the occupied territories were handed over, and Germany returned to its 1937 borders, three allied occupation zones would be created. East for the USSR, Northwest for Great Britain, and Southwest for the United States. The representatives of the three powers in that commission accepted this distribution, however, in Quebec, both Roosevelt and Churchill held negotiations on the exchange of their occupation zones for better geostrategic use, although, finally, both ended up accepting the division as it was. as the EAC had established and only Bremen and its port (Bremenhaven) would pass to US control to allow them a sea exit.
But in addition to the temporary occupation zones, at this conference, the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Henry Morgenthau Junior, presents his Morgenthau Plan for the future of Germany, which basically consists of territorial division and an eminently agricultural and livestock economy. prevent its military and industrial resurgence. In other words, Morgenthau’s main idea consisted of the total deindustrialization of Germany, since although in Tehran Roosevelt had shown reluctance with the radical Soviet position, in the privacy of his advisers he had assured that “we have got to be tough with GermanY”.
The Morgenthau Plan followed in the footsteps of the EAC. In the first place, the occupied territories would be handed over to the neighboring countries, and once the “distribution” had been made, and with Germany on its 1937 borders and stabilized, the country would be divided into two halves, north and south. There would be no war compensation imposed on either of the two halves since, in addition to being counterproductive due to the ideological problems it could cause in the Germans, once Germany was divided, the next step was to eliminate or hand over its industry to the Allies.
In addition, the mining areas of the Ruhr and the Saar would be isolated and under the control of international organizations and France, respectively. Thus, therefore, Germany would be reduced to a country made up of small landed farmers, and where reindustrialization would be carried out in a controlled manner and under the supervision of a centralized international power that would avoid future problems. For this reason, imposing compensation did not make much sense, since Germany would already pay with its own industrial backwardness. Although Churchill was initially quite skeptical of the plan, and even Roosevelt himself put some doubts on the table, both leaders finally accepted the general lines of the Morgenthau Plan as the basic plan for the future of Germany after the war.
However, Morgenthau’s idea created much reluctance among the allied political advisers, who proposed as a recommendation that Germany not be divided, although the advisers themselves make clear the consultative and non-binding nature of their decisions. But, although the advisers mention that Germany should not be divided, they do refer to the fact that it should “return to a federal system of government and a division of Prussia into a number of medium-sized states.”
That is where we can see the contrast of opinions that made it really difficult to make a consensus decision about the German future. While, both in Tehran and in Quebec, the leaders had proposed the division of Germany to avoid future conflicts, the American advisers propose, on the contrary, that the Germanic country remain united, but under a highly decentralized (federal) government, with the Germany itself that avoids being a threat.
In any case, the Morgenthau Plan had the support of Churchill and Roosevelt, and, although the CCS did not completely support it, it went ahead and would be the action protocol towards Germany accepted by the allied powers until Yalta things begin to change, and in Potsdam, the Morgenthau Plan is abandoned.