Tehran Conference
The conference at Tehran in November and December 1943 between Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin was the first major wartime meeting of the three Allied leaders at which they decided key points of the grand strategy in the European theatre and the treatment of defeated Nazi Germany.
Here Stalin settled a protracted dispute between the Americans and the British over the priority of a cross-channel invasion (Operation Overlord) versus continued Mediterranean campaigns in favor of the former. Stalin’s insistence on Overlord in May 1944 to be coordinated with a Soviet offensive thus created a united front with the Americans against the British, who had the most to lose from the failure of such an invasion. The two Western leaders agreed to Stalin’s demand for the 1941 border with Poland—which was to be compensated in the West by German territory (east of the river Oder)—and the surrender of the northern part of East Prussia, including the port city of Konigsberg, to the Soviet Union. The Big Three moreover concurred on dismemberment for the remainder of amputated Germany. In particular for Roosevelt, partitioning was the point of departure for the indispensable political reorientation of Germany: the concept of the Reich had to be erased from the German mind and vocabulary. He proposed a division into five autonomous states, plus two internationalized regions. He also heartily agreed with Stalin’s demand for economic disarmament as a substitute for American troop stationing in Europe for which he foresaw little popular support. In the confidential exchanges at Tehran, Roosevelt expressed for the first time his hardened thoughts on the Third Reich. It was not a problem of Nazism or Prussian militarism, but one that involved the entire German people. Roosevelt and Stalin appeared to reach a fundamental meeting of minds over a punitive-restrictive policy toward Germany, while Churchill expressed his country’s interest in German economic recovery and eventual rehabilitation—a position that in the American administration was advocated by the State Department, whose representatives had been excluded from this conference.Beyond the European theater, Stalin formally pledged that Soviet forces would enter the war in the Pacific after the defeat of Germany, and Roosevelt sketched out his postwar vision of what was to become the United Nations Organization, with the predominant four powers being Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.
Roosevelt was greatly pleased with his first personal encounter with Stalin and the convergence of their views on matters of vital importance to the conduct of the war.Whether for reasons of time-consuming rehashing of British American strategic differences or Roosevelt’s aversion to detailed postwar arrangements, the Tehran conference yielded few finalized plans for defeated Germany. These were left to be formulated by the newly created European Advisory Commission. In particular the Big Three’s agreement on German dismemberment was not formalized, leading to a smoldering intra-administrative American conflict, until in late summer 1944 Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgen- thau sounded the alarm over discrepancies that developed between the State Department’s postwar plans, which were against partitioning, and the president’s expressed intent to dismember Germany.
Michaela Hoenicke Moore
See also Casablanca Conference; Morgenthau Plan; U.S. Plans for Postwar Germany; World War II
References and Further Reading
Casey, Steven. Cautious Crusade. Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War against Nazi Germany. Oxford, UK: Oxford University, 2001.
Stoler, Mark. Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms. A Global History of World War II. New York: Cambridge University, 1994.