Potsdam and the Postwar Perspective

...Usage gave it a name derived from the nearby site of the former Crown Prince's Palace, scene of the sessions...

...The book contains a dozen facets worthy of treatment at length equal to the whole—for example, the contentions over occupation boundaries, the reparations issue, the Hopkins-Stalin talks of 1945, the shaping of the San Francisco Conference, the problem of the postwar status of France or that of Italy...

...He should get as much of it told as he can, for no one else in the field quite matches his combination of intellect and style...

...They gathered for a mid-summer fortnight in 1945 at Babelsberg, some 17 miles southwest of Berlin...

...The enemy was prostrate...

...A painting in the Palace dining room depicted a ship surmounted by a dark cloud...

...This is no excuse for not trying to be foresighted...

...The way the situation has worked out up to now is one of those numberless instances in history which show how often results are different from anticipations...

...It was a complex time, charged with decision as perhaps no like period in history...

...With it out of the way, Feis' professed intention is to relax...

...I trust some word of praise from me may help persuade him to carry the effort into the dangers, disappointments and divisions in the sequel to World War II—into the widening and intensification of the cold war, the emergent fact of the decline of British power, the crisis over Greece and Turkey, the European Recovery Program, the rise of NATO, the hostilities in Korea, the standoff with Red China, the rigmarole about the summit with unction at Geneva and Camp David and outrage at Paris...

...It is an interesting point but not entirely persuasive...

...it came time for the political heads of the winning coalition to hold the third of their great wartime conferences, with the prime purpose of disposing of the problems of Europe...

...Reviewed by Charles Burton Marshall Alumni Visiting Professor of International Studies, University of North Carolina WITH GERMANY down in defeat...

...The accords were soon to fall apart...

...so common to writers in his field...

...He abstains from vain suppositions about the brighter possibilities if only this or that aspect had been different...

...that things would have turned out so much better if only he and his hindsight had been in charge...

...He is not one to reconstruct history by hypothesis...

...Suppose the Americans and British had had their way, instead of the Poles and Russians, and the line between Germany and Poland had been set further to the east...

...This suggests that the Russians' purposes were less prescient than reputed...

...The words of tribute and amity exchanged by the heads of governments in farewell showed "no deep inner glow of friendship...

...Feis permits himself some philosophizing on the result: "Since I cannot always resist noting the ironies of history, let me add one other reflection about the Polish frontier— brought to mind by certain current events...

...Poland would have been weaker, perhaps less afraid of future German attempts to regain its territory, but perhaps more dependent than it is on the Soviet Union...

...I suspect that the Russians knew what they were about in arranging matters so that East Germany would be under their thumb while the Poles would be bound to Russian protection by fear of an irredentist German thrust...

...The possibility of a break-up of the conference without settlement seemed somber...

...The suffering and separation were over...

...The thread of highest interest in this fourth of the series concerns Poland and specificaly the issue of Poland's accession to that part of Germany hemmed by the Oder and the western Neisse...

...Space is divided between the preparatory steps and the conference proper...

...The fifth and last book of his analytic narrative of policy and diplomacy in World War II, now in the works, will relate the advent of the atom bomb—briefly touched on in the instant book—and closure of hostilities with Japan...

...Feis asks these rhetorical questions not to justify "the conclusion that the more prudent course would be to pay tribute to the power of the Soviet Union to have pretty much its own way in Poland" but to make clear the choices as seen at the time by the Western principals...

...How might an acknowledged break affect plans for Soviet entry into the war against Japan and Soviet actions in the Far East...

...Feis' way of weaving them all together is an achievement in coherence up to the high standard he has set in three preceding works covering the slide into hostilities with Japan, the Chinese puzzle, and the conflict and collaboration among Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin...

...It was a vain gesture, for "the differences of memory and interest, and of visions of a good public and private life, proved to be too deep to make genuine cooperation possible once the common danger was past...

...It "should have been a time for exultation," Herbert Feis writes in Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference...

...Sensing an ill omen, the Russian hosts had a shining star—a symbol common to the heraldry of both the United States and the Soviet Union—dubbed in for the cloud...

...So the conference came "to a bleak ending...

...They were up against "the fact that Stalin would not refuse the Poles any of the area of Germany they were claiming as their own...

...Feis' account encompasses a quarter-year of the victors' diplomacy beginning with the collapse of the Nazi war effort in May...

...But it is a reason for recognizing how hard it is to be...

...Would it not impair the formation of the United Nations, and mar the prospect that the peace might be made enduring and just by that association...

...In that event, the eastern part of Germany—the area that was the Soviet zone—would presumably now be larger and more populous, and have greater coal, industrial, and land resources...

...How could they be deterred, without going to war, from doing what they wanted in areas under their control...

...The code name of the meeting was Terminal...

...He confesses to a preference for taking things easy over the exacting business of threading through the intricacies of dispatches, memoranda, diaries and minutes of negotiation...

...Great vows had been kept, and greater valor shown...

...The Western allies—as the conference minutes quote Secretary of State James Byrnes—"confronted the situation where Poland, with Soviet consent, was administering a good part of this territory...

...Feis seldom speculates on alternatives to the real events...

...But while populations rejoiced, government officials knew that the prospect was overcast...

...Thus it would be more able to challenge the effort of West Germany—formed out of the American, British, and French zones—to represent all Germany...

...Would the Russians then be even more willful and grasping...

...He avoids the pose...

...The distinguishing marks of his work are vigor, grace, perception, clarity, scope and brevity in rare mixture...

...As they looked over the scene of their triumph, their thoughts were brushed by the snow of mutual distrust and dislike—between the western allies and the Soviet Union...