President Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration Foreign Relations and Diplomatic Papers (1931-1945)

President Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration Foreign Relations and Diplomatic Papers (1931-1945)

147,876 pages of transcription of documentary records of President Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration's foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activity. Documents included date from 1931 to 1945, from before FDR took office until the time of his death in April 1945.

Composed of material collected analyzed, annotated, footnoted, cross-referenced and published by States Department historians over 87 years in the Departments' Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.

Produced by the Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, United States Department of State, The FRUS series presents a documentary historical record of American foreign policy. These volumes document the facts and events that contributed to the formulation of policies and includes evidence of supporting and alternative views to the policy positions ultimately adopted.

This compilation covers all regions of the world. The material covers a wide range of matters from a shipment of Jehovah Witness' bibles being refused by Burmese customs officials in 1933, to plans for the reorganization of Europe after the end of World War II. From a 1936 response to a complaint from an Albanian filmmaker, that King Zog had his film censored in America, to a series of documents chronicling Hitler's annexation of Austria.


Among the many topics and subjects a few include:

The Great Depression
The International Depression
Isolationism
The Mukden Incident of 1931
The Stimson Doctrine
The Good Neighbor Policy
The Japanese seizure of northeast China in 1931
Roosevelt-Livitnov Conversations
Recognition of the Soviet Union 1933
Soviet Union “Great Purges”
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Creation of Export-Import Bank
The commencement of the persecution of Jews in Germany and the Holocaust
Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA 1934)
The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935
The Rise of Fascism
Spanish Civil War 1936
Japan’s invasion of China in 1937
Neutrality Act of 1937
Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938
Mexican Expropriation of Foreign Oil 1938
Neutrality Act of 1939
The fall of France in June 1940
Lend-Lease and military aid to the Allies
Pearl Harbor Attack
War in Europe and the Pacific
U.S.-Soviet Alliance
The Atlantic Conference & Charter 1941
Repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act 1943
The Casablanca Conference, 1943
The Tehran Conference, 1943
The Yalta Conference 1945
The Formation of the United Nations


Major subject coverage includes:

Post-World War I - Interwar Diplomacy

Disillusionment with World War I, international commitments that could lead to another war, and economic uncertainty discouraged ambitious U.S. involvement in global affairs during the interwar period.

The United States, however, did not retreat into complete isolation. The necessities of commercial growth dictated continued government support for overseas private investment. That, in turn, drove the United States to further engage with both with Latin America and the rebuilding of Europe in the 1920s. The United States also played important roles in both international negotiations to set arms limitations and the creation of pacts that aimed at securing a lasting peace. By the mid-1920s, however, a general feeling of economic uncertainty reinforced isolationist tendencies and encouraged new legislation that placed severe limits on immigration to the United States, particularly from Asia. During the 1930s, the rise of fascism as a threat to international peace sparked concern in the United States, but the Great Depression curtailed U.S. willingness to act. In this environment, keeping the nation out of the brewing tension in Europe and Asia became an important foreign policy goal.




The Great Depression and U.S. Foreign Policy

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a global event that derived in part from events in the United States and U.S. financial policies. As it lingered through the decade, it influenced U.S. foreign policies in such a way that the United States Government became even more isolationist.

The origins of the Great Depression were complicated and have been much debated among scholars. The initial factor was the First World War, which upset international balances of power and caused a dramatic shock to the global financial system. The gold standard, which had long served as the basis for national currencies and their exchange rates, had to be temporarily suspended in order to recover from the costs of the Great War, but the United States, European nations, and Japan put forth great effort to reestablish it by the end of the decade. However, this introduced inflexibility into domestic and international financial markets, which meant that they were less able to deal with additional shocks when they came in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The U.S. stock market crash of 1929, an economic downturn in Germany, and financial difficulties in France and Great Britain all coincided to cause a global financial crisis. Dedication to the gold standard in each of these nations and Japan, which only managed to return to it in 1930, only made the problem worse and hastened the slide into what is now known as the Great Depression.


The International Depression

The key factor in turning national economic difficulties into worldwide Depression seems to have been a lack of international coordination as most governments and financial institutions turned inwards. Great Britain, which had long underwritten the global financial system and had led the return to the gold standard, was unable to play its former role and became the first to drop off the standard in 1931. The United States, preoccupied with its own economic difficulties, did not step in to replace Great Britain as the creditor of last resort and dropped off the gold standard in 1933. At the London Economic Conference in 1933, leaders of the world’s main economies met to resolve the economic crisis but failed to reach any major collective agreements. As a result, the Depression dragged on through the rest of the 1930s.


Isolationism

The Depression caused the United States to retreat further into its post-World War I isolationism. A series of international incidents occurred during the 1930s—the Japanese seizure of northeast China in 1931, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and German expansionism in Central and Eastern Europe—but the United States did not take any major action in response or opposition. When these and other incidents occurred, the United States Government issued statements of disapproval but took limited action beyond that. On a more positive note, isolationism manifested in Latin America in the form of the Good Neighbor Policy of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, under which the United States reduced its military presence in the region and improved relations between itself and its neighbors to the south. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt were to an extent constrained by public opinion, which demanded that primary attention be given to domestic problems. The Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations concentrated upon rebuilding the U.S. economy and dealing with widespread unemployment and social dislocation at home and as a result, international affairs took a back seat.


Rise of Fascism

As the United States turned inwards to deal with the lingering effects of the Depression, militaristic regimes came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan promising economic relief and national expansion. While they achieved some measure of success on the economic front, these regimes began to push their territorial ambitions and received minimal opposition from the rest of the world. The lack of a strong U.S. response to Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 and Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 encouraged the Japanese and German governments to enlarge their military campaigns. At the time, most U.S. leaders believed their decision to avoid a more active role was justified because of the domestic context, but some began to realize that U.S. inaction allowed the conflict to grow. After the fall of France in June 1940, the United States increasingly committed itself to the fight against fascism. Ironically, it was World War II, which had arisen in part out of the Great Depression, that finally pulled the United States out of its decade-long economic crisis.

The Great Depression caused the United States Government to pull back from major international involvement during the 1930s, but in the long run it contributed to the emergence of the United States as a world leader thereafter. The perception that the turn inwards had in some part contributed to perpetuating the horrors of World War II caused U.S. foreign policy makers to play a major role in world affairs after the war in order to avert similar disasters.





The Mukden Incident of 1931 and the Stimson Doctrine

In 1931, a dispute near the Chinese city of Mukden (Shenyang) precipitated events that led to the Japanese conquest of Manchuria. In response, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson issued what would become known as the Stimson Doctrine, stating that the United States would not recognize any agreements between the Japanese and Chinese that limited free commercial intercourse in the region.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the United States had a number of interests in the Far East. The United States engaged in trade and investment in China. American missionaries representing many denominations worked within the region. The United States also claimed Pacific territories, including the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii. The United States defended its interests in the region through a three-pronged Far Eastern policy: it included the principle of the Open Door for guaranteeing equal access to commercial opportunities in China, a belief in the importance of maintaining the territorial integrity of China, and a commitment to cooperation with other powers with interests in the region.


Japanese Invasion of China

In the 1930s, events transpired that challenged all of these policies. On September 18, 1931, an explosion destroyed a section of railway track near the city of Mukden. The Japanese, who owned the railway, blamed Chinese nationalists for the incident and used the opportunity to retaliate and invade Manchuria. However, others speculated that the bomb may have been planted by mid-level officers in the Japanese Army to provide a pretext for the subsequent military action. Within a few short months, the Japanese Army had overrun the region, having encountered next to no resistance from an untrained Chinese Army, and it went about consolidating its control on the resource-rich area. The Japanese declared the area to be the new autonomous state of Manchukuo, though the new nation was in fact under the control of the local Japanese Army.

The United States and other western powers were at a loss on how to respond to the rapidly developing crisis. Even as the Japanese moved far from the original site of the “attack” at Mukden to bomb the city of Jinzhou (Chinchow), there was little sense that U.S. interests in the area were anywhere near profound enough to make military intervention necessary or desirable. Given the 1930s worldwide depression, there was little support for economic sanctions to punish the Japanese. Instead, the United States sat in on League of Nations council meetings for the first time to try to convince the League to enforce the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which both Japan and China had signed. Appeals based on the pact, however, proved ineffective.


The Stimson Doctrine

Therefore, Secretary Stimson issued the Stimson Doctrine in early 1932. This Doctrine stated that the United States would not recognize any treaty or agreement between Japan and China that violated U.S. rights or agreements to which the United States subscribed.

This doctrine of non-recognition proved incredibly ineffectual in the face of on-going Japanese aggression and expansion. Japan had been expanding its influence in Manchuria for years, and now it formally controlled the territory. Moreover, after its successful conquest of Manchuria, the Japanese attacked the city of Shanghai in 1932. As Shanghai was home to the largest international settlements in China, the sudden invasion threatened foreign concessions as well. Stimson responded to this development by declaring that as a result of Japanese violation of the Nine Power Treaty, the United States would no longer consider itself bound by the naval limitations agreements. This meant a potential new naval arms race in the Pacific that would inevitably draw in the Japanese, but it did not change the situation in Manchuria.

Lytton Report

While the United States sought its own solution, it also sent an unofficial delegate along with the League of Nations group investigating the incident. The resulting report, written by the Lytton Commission, divided blame for the conflict in Manchuria equally between Chinese nationalism and Japanese militarism. Still, the report stated that it would not recognize the new state of Manchukuo on the grounds that its establishment violated the territorial integrity of China, and therefore the Nine-Power Treaty to which many of the prominent league members subscribed. When the Lytton Report was ratified by the League in 1933, the Japanese delegation walked out and never returned to the League Council. The Chinese and Japanese signed a truce, but that agreement left the Japanese firmly in control of Manchuria.

The Manchurian Crisis of 1931–33 demonstrated the futility of the 1920s-era agreements on peace, nonaggression and disarmament in the face of a power determined to march forward. Responses like the Stimson Doctrine of non-recognition similarly had little effect. In the years following the crisis, changing alliances, economic necessities and altered policies would result in an all-out Sino-Japanese War.

Source: Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs. United States Department of State



Good Neighbor Policy, 1933

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office determined to improve relations with the nations of Central and South America. Under his leadership the United States emphasized cooperation and trade rather than military force to maintain stability in the hemisphere. In his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt stated: “In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.”

Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, participated in the Montevideo Conference of December 1933, where he backed a declaration favored by most nations of the Western Hemisphere: “No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another”. In December Roosevelt stated, “The definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention.” In 1934 at Roosevelt’s direction the 1903 treaty with Cuba (based on the Platt Amendment) that gave the United States the right to intervene to preserve internal stability or independence was abrogated. Although domestic economic problems and World War II diverted attention from the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy represented an attempt to distance the United States from earlier interventionist policies, such as the Roosevelt Corollary and military interventions in the region during the 1910s and 1920s.






Recognition of the Soviet Union, 1933

On November 16, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt ended almost 16 years of American non-recognition of the Soviet Union following a series of negotiations in Washington, D.C. with the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov.

On December 6, 1917, the U.S. Government broke off diplomatic relations with Russia, shortly after the Bolshevik Party seized power from the Tsarist regime after the “October Revolution.” President Woodrow Wilson decided to withhold recognition at that time because the new Bolshevik government had refused to honor prior debts to the United States incurred by the Tsarist government, ignored pre-existing treaty agreements with other nations, and seized American property in Russia following the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks had also concluded a separate peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, ending Russian involvement in World War I. Despite extensive commercial links between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s, Wilson’s successors upheld his policy of not recognizing the Soviet Union.


Roosevelt Pushes for Recognition

Almost immediately upon taking office, however, President Roosevelt moved to establish formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. His reasons for doing so were complex, but the decision was based on several primary factors. Roosevelt hoped that recognition of the Soviet Union would serve U.S. strategic interests by limiting Japanese expansionism in Asia, and he believed that full diplomatic recognition would serve American commercial interests in the Soviet Union, a matter of some concern to an Administration grappling with the effects of the Great Depression. Finally, the United States was the only major power that continued to withhold official diplomatic recognition from the Soviet Union.

President Roosevelt decided to approach the Soviets in October 1933 through two personal intermediaries: Henry Morgenthau (then head of the Farm Credit Administration and Acting Secretary of the Treasury) and William C. Bullitt (a former diplomat who, as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, was informally serving as one of Roosevelt’s chief foreign policy advisers). The two approached Boris Shvirsky, the Soviet Union’s unofficial representative in Washington, with an unsigned letter from Roosevelt to the Soviet Union’s official head of state, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin. The letter intimated that the U.S. Government would be willing to negotiate the terms for recognizing the Soviet Union and requested that Kalinin dispatch an emissary to Washington. In response, Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov journeyed to Washington in November 1933 in order to begin talks.


Roosevelt-Livitnov Conversations

Initially, the talks made little headway due to several outstanding issues: the unpaid debt owed by the Soviet Union to the United States, the restriction of religious freedoms and legal rights of U.S. citizens living in the Soviet Union, and Soviet involvement in Communist subversion and propaganda within the United States. Following a series of one-on-one negotiations known as the “Roosevelt-Litvinov Conversations,” however, Litvinov and the President worked out a “gentleman’s agreement” on November 15, 1933, that overcame the major obstacles blocking recognition.

According to the terms of the Roosevelt-Litvinov agreements, the Soviets pledged to participate in future talks to settle their outstanding financial debt to the United States. Four days earlier, after another private meeting with Litvinov, Roosevelt also managed to secure guarantees that the Soviet Government would refrain from interfering in American domestic affairs (i.e. aiding the American Communist Party) and would grant certain religious and legal rights for U.S. citizens living in the Soviet Union. Following the conclusion of these agreements, President Roosevelt appointed William C. Bullitt as the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union.


Violence in the USSR

Unfortunately, the cooperative spirit embodied in the Roosevelt-Litvinov agreements proved to be short-lived. Shortly after his arrival in Moscow in December 1933, Bullitt became disillusioned with the Soviets as an agreement on the issue of debt repayment failed to materialize. Moreover, evidence emerged that the Soviet Government had violated its pledge not to interfere in American domestic affairs. Finally, the killing of the Leningrad Communist Party boss, Sergey Kirov, launched the first of the “Great Purges” that led to the death or imprisonment of millions of Soviet citizens as the Stalinist regime liquidated any potential critics of the government. The wide scope and public nature of the purges horrified both American diplomatic personnel stationed in the Soviet Union, and the world at large.


Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

In the hope of improving relations, President Roosevelt dispatched businessman Joseph E. Davies to Moscow as Bullitt’s replacement in 1936. While Davies managed to reestablish amicable relations with the Soviet leadership, his dismissive attitude concerning the purges alienated other American diplomats. Moreover, Davies faced unprecedented new challenges as a result of the worsening political situation in Europe. U.S.-Soviet relations reached their nadir in August 1939, when the Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany after the British and French rejected Soviet offers to establish a military alliance against Germany. Not until the German invasion of Soviet Union began in June 1941 would the United States and the Soviet Union once again find a way to make common cause on any meaningful issue.



New Deal Trade Policy: The Export-Import Bank & the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, 1934

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March 1933, he immediately focused his attention on the domestic economic situation created by the Great Depression. Believing that recovery would come from measures taken at home rather than abroad, he secured Congressional passage of a series of far-reaching domestic economic reforms that would come to be known as the first New Deal. His doubts about the ability of foreign economic policy to contribute to domestic recovery were reflected in his approach to the London Economic Conference. In June 1933, representatives from 66 countries gathered in London to try to find a way out of the Depression through cooperation in areas such as the reduction of trade barriers and the stabilization of exchange rates. Countries that remained on the gold standard, such as France, sought to convince countries that had left the gold standard, particularly the United Kingdom (in September 1931) and the United States (in April 1933), to agree to stabilize the par values of their currencies. The chances for success were already slim when, on July 3, Roosevelt rejected such an agreement as “a purely artificial and temporary experiment,” asserting that a “sound internal economic situation” was more important to a country’s prosperity than the external value of its currency. The conference ended less than a month later with little to show for its efforts.


Creation of Export-Import Bank

In 1934, the Roosevelt Administration undertook two initiatives that signaled a desire to reengage economically with the rest of the world. The first was the creation of the Export-Import Bank. In February 1934, Roosevelt established the bank as an institution designed to finance U.S. trade with the newly-recognized Soviet Union. He created a second Export-Import Bank the following month, this one intended to finance trade with Cuba; in July 1934, the second bank’s field of operations was expanded to include all countries save the Soviet Union. In 1935, the two banks were combined and Congress passed legislation granting the newly unified bank more powers and more capital. In the years before the start of the Second World War, while it did extend credits to countries outside the Western Hemisphere such as Italy and China, the Export-Import Bank concentrated its efforts in Latin America, where it proved an important component of the Good Neighbor policy.

The second major foreign economic policy initiative of 1934 was the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA). In March 1934, proclaiming “that a full and permanent domestic recovery depends in part upon a revived and strengthened international trade,” Roosevelt asked Congress for authority to negotiate trade agreements based upon reciprocal tariff reductions with other countries. Signed into law on June 12, 1934, the RTAA represented a fundamental shift in U.S. trade policy. The Constitution gives Congress the right to regulate foreign commerce and establish tariff rates. Under the RTAA, Congress granted the president the right – on a temporary basis, subject to renewal after three years – to decrease or increase U.S. tariffs by up to 50% of the levels set by the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff in exchange for tariff concessions by other countries. Such tariff reductions would be brought into force through executive agreements, rather than treaties requiring Senate approval. U.S. tariff cuts negotiated under the RTAA would also be extended to all third countries to which the United States had accorded most favored nation status.


Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act

Between 1934 and 1939, the Roosevelt Administration concluded trade agreements with 19 countries under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. After 1945, the tariff negotiating procedure established under the RTAA program provided the model for that of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the agreement signed by 23 countries in 1947 that has provided the framework for multilateral trade liberalization in the post-WWII era.



The Neutrality Acts, 1930s

In the 1930s, the United States Government enacted a series of laws designed to prevent the United States from being embroiled in a foreign war by clearly stating the terms of U.S. neutrality. Although many Americans had rallied to join President Woodrow Wilson’s crusade to make the world “safe for democracy” in 1917, by the 1930s critics argued that U.S. involvement in the First World War had been driven by bankers and munitions traders with business interests in Europe. These findings fueled a growing “isolationist” movement that argued the United States should steer clear of future wars and remain neutral by avoiding financial deals with countries at war.


First Neutrality Act

By the mid-1930s, events in Europe and Asia indicated that a new world war might soon erupt and the U.S. Congress took action to enforce U.S. neutrality. On August 31, 1935, Congress passed the first Neutrality Act prohibiting the export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war” from the United States to foreign nations at war and requiring arms manufacturers in the United States to apply for an export license. American citizens traveling in war zones were also advised that they did so at their own risk. President Franklin D. Roosevelt originally opposed the legislation but relented in the face of strong Congressional and public opinion. On February 29, 1936, Congress renewed the Act until May of 1937 and prohibited Americans from extending any loans to belligerent nations.



Mexican Expropriation of Foreign Oil, 1938

On March 18, 1938, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas signed an order that expropriated the assets of nearly all of the foreign oil companies operating in Mexico. He later created Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), a state-owned firm that held a monopoly over the Mexican oil industry, and barred all foreign oil companies from operating in Mexico. The U.S. Government responded with a policy that backed efforts by American companies to obtain payment for their expropriated properties but supported Mexico’s right to expropriate foreign assets as long as prompt and effective compensation was provided.

Prior to expropriation in 1938, the oil industry in Mexico had been dominated by the Mexican Eagle Company (a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch/Shell Company), which accounted for over 60% of Mexican oil production, and by American-owned oil firms including Jersey Standard and Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL – now Chevron), which accounted for approximately 30% of total production. However, in Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917, the Mexican Government asserted ownership of the “subsoil,” including any natural resources discovered below ground. The possibility that the Mexican political leadership might exercise its rights complicated relations with the United States until the Calles-Morrow agreement of 1928, which temporarily alleviated tensions by reaffirming the rights of oil companies in the territories they had worked prior to 1917.

Despite the political difficulties, Mexico became the world’s second largest producer of oil in the 1920s. Nevertheless, the foreign-owned oil companies were the object of much popular resentment. Since Mexico was an agrarian nation with only a tiny domestic market, these companies exported most of the oil they produced during the 1920s and very little of their profits remained Mexico. The situation was exacerbated during the 1930s, when the Mexican Government’s share of oil revenues declined, and domestic oil production dropped due to the Great Depression and a glut in the global oil supply. These developments, combined with the fact that the large oil companies often paid their Mexican workers only half as much as other employees working in the same capacity, ultimately led to massive labor unrest.

A strike by oil workers in 1937 ultimately led the Mexican Government to act. Initially, President Cárdenas attempted to mediate a settlement by having a government commission draw up a new labor agreement. After the foreign companies defied both the commission and the Mexican Supreme Court, however, Cárdenas promulgated the expropriation decree on March 18, 1938.

The expropriation act had international repercussions. The foreign-owned oil companies retaliated by instituting an embargo against Mexican oil. Mexican oil exports decreased by 50% and the Mexican Government’s primary customer for oil became Nazi Germany. Expropriation also led the British to take a very strong stand against Mexico's actions, which prompted the Cárdenas government to sever diplomatic relations.

The U.S. reaction to Mexican expropriation of oil assets was mixed. On the one hand, it had no objection to expropriation as long as the Mexicans agreed to compensate the oil companies. Furthermore, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to maintain good relations with the United States’ immediate neighbor, lest a hostile U.S. response to expropriation drive Mexico to align itself with the Axis Powers. On the other hand, some U.S. officials urged a tough response because they understood that that the United States would eventually become a major importer of oil and because the rights of U.S. economic interests were involved. As such, they believed that it was essential for American oil companies to retain direct access to the oil resources of the Western Hemisphere outside of the United States.

Secretary of State Cordell Hull initially supported a strong stance against Cárdenas’ actions. Although Cárdenas informed the U.S. Government that he intended to pay compensation, on March 26, Hull dispatched a note to the Mexicans announcing that the U.S. Government would suspend further purchases of silver from Mexico. The U.S. Ambassador in Mexico realized that such action might provoke a diplomatic rupture and asked the Mexicans to consider the note undelivered until a more moderate policy could be formulated in Washington. Further opposition from the Treasury Department eventually forced Hull and the State Department to back down.

Although Hull’s attempts to directly challenge the Mexican Government fell out of favor, U.S. companies fought the expropriation in their own way. For over two years following expropriation, the oil companies made extravagant demands for compensation, which the Mexicans repeatedly rejected. The U.S. Government supported the oil companies until the Second World War began in Europe, at which point it pressured them to accept a settlement. Finally, on April 18, 1942, the U.S. and Mexican Governments signed the Cooke-Zevada agreement, whereby the Mexicans agreed to pay roughly $29 million in compensation to several American firms, including Jersey Standard and Socal. The British, however, held out until 1947, when they received $130 million.

Efforts to secure the re-admission of the foreign oil companies in Mexico proved to be a failure, however. After Cárdenas left office in 1940, the Mexicans were willing to consider the possibility, but only on condition that Mexico retained ownership of the subsoil, and PEMEX its domestic monopoly. This proved unacceptable to both the U.S. Government and oil companies. Finally, in 1950, the U.S. Government abandoned its efforts to re-open the Mexican oil industry after several failed attempts to use government loans as leverage. By this time, American oil companies had begun losing interest in Mexico and preferred operating under the more favorable conditions found in the Middle East and Venezuela.



1937–1945: Diplomacy and the Road to Another War

By the late 1930s, the United States continued its efforts to stay out of the wars in Europe and Asia. As the failure of disarmament, the peace movement, and the doctrine of appeasement became clear, Congress passed a series of neutrality acts designed to prevent the United States from being drawn into the widespread international conflict that the U.S. Government believed to be inevitable.

In 1940, U.S. policy slowly began to shift from neutrality to non-belligerency by providing aid to the nations at war with the Axis Powers—Germany, Italy and Japan. In response to the growing emergency, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called upon the American people to prepare for war. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval installation at Pearl Harbor, and the United States formally entered the Second World War. Meetings between those powers allied in the war against the Axis powers provided the framework for the postwar world. Two major issues would become of major importance to postwar foreign policy, the prevention of another global conflict and the influence of nuclear weapons on the international balance of power.


Neutrality Act of 1937

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and the rising tide of fascism in Europe increased support for extending and expanding the Neutrality Act of 1937. Under this law, U.S. citizens were forbidden from traveling on belligerent ships, and American merchant ships were prevented from transporting arms to belligerents even if those arms were produced outside of the United States. The Act gave the President the authority to bar all belligerent ships from U.S. waters, and to extend the export embargo to any additional “articles or materials.” Finally, civil wars would also fall under the terms of the Act.

The Neutrality Act of 1937 did contain one important concession to Roosevelt: belligerent nations were allowed, at the discretion of the President, to acquire any items except arms from the United States, so long as they immediately paid for such items and carried them on non-American ships—the so-called “cash-and-carry” provision. Since vital raw materials such as oil were not considered “implements of war,” the “cash-and-carry” clause would be quite valuable to whatever nation could make use of it. Roosevelt had engineered its inclusion as a deliberate way to assist Great Britain and France in any war against the Axis Powers, since he realized that they were the only countries that had both the hard currency and ships to make use of “cash-and-carry.” Unlike the rest of the Act, which was permanent, this provision was set to expire after two years.


Neutrality Act of 1939

Following Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia in March of 1939, Roosevelt suffered a humiliating defeat when Congress rebuffed his attempt to renew “cash-and-carry” and expand it to include arms sales. President Roosevelt persisted and as war spread in Europe, his chances of expanding “cash-and-carry” increased. After a fierce debate in Congress, in November of 1939, a final Neutrality Act passed. This Act lifted the arms embargo and put all trade with belligerent nations under the terms of “cash-and-carry.” The ban on loans remained in effect, and American ships were barred from transporting goods to belligerent ports.

In October of 1941, after the United States had committed itself to aiding the Allies through Lend-Lease, Roosevelt gradually sought to repeal certain portions of the Act. On October 17, 1941, the House of Representatives revoked section VI, which forbade the arming of U.S. merchant ships, by a wide margin. Following a series of deadly U-boat attacks against U.S. Navy and merchant ships, the Senate passed another bill in November that also repealed legislation banning American ships from entering belligerent ports or “combat zones.”

Overall, the Neutrality Acts represented a compromise whereby the United States Government accommodated the isolationist sentiment of the American public, but still retained some ability to interact with the world. In the end, the terms of the Neutrality Acts became irrelevant once the United States joined the Allies in the fight against Nazi Germany and Japan in December 1941.




Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World War II

During World War II, the United States began to provide significant military supplies and other assistance to the Allies in September 1940, even though the United States did not enter the war until December 1941. Much of this aid flowed to the United Kingdom and other nations already at war with Germany and Japan through an innovative program known as Lend-Lease.

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that while the United States would remain neutral in law, he could “not ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.” Roosevelt himself made significant efforts to help nations engaged in the struggle against Nazi Germany and wanted to extend a helping hand to those countries that lacked the supplies necessary to fight against the Germans. The United Kingdom, in particular, desperately needed help, as it was short of hard currency to pay for the military goods, food, and raw materials it needed from the United States.

Though President Roosevelt wanted to provide assistance to the British, both American law and public fears that the United States would be drawn into the conflict blocked his plans. The Neutrality Act of 1939 allowed belligerents to purchase war materiel from the United States, but only on a “cash and carry” basis. The Johnson Act of 1934 also prohibited the extension of credit to countries that had not repaid U.S. loans made to them during World War I, which included Great Britain. The American military opposed the diversion of military supplies to the United Kingdom. The Army’s Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, anticipated that Britain would surrender following the collapse of France, and thus American supplies sent to the British would fall into German hands.

Marshall and others therefore argued that U.S. national security would be better served by reserving military supplies for the defense of the Western Hemisphere. American public opinion also limited Roosevelt’s options. Many Americans opposed involving the United States in another war. Even though American public opinion generally supported the British rather than the Germans, President Roosevelt had to develop an initiative that was consistent with the legal prohibition against the granting of credit, satisfactory to military leadership, and acceptable to an American public that generally resisted involving the United States in the European conflict.

On September 2, 1940, President Roosevelt signed a “Destroyers for Bases” agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States gave the British more than 50 obsolete destroyers, in exchange for 99-year leases to territory in Newfoundland and the Caribbean, which would be used as U.S. air and naval bases. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had originally requested that Roosevelt provide the destroyers as a gift, but the President knew that the American public and Congress would oppose such a deal. He therefore decided that a deal that gave the United States long-term access to British bases could be justified as essential to the security of the Western Hemisphere—thereby assuaging the concerns of the public and the U.S. military

In December 1940, Churchill warned Roosevelt that the British were no longer able to pay for supplies. On December 17, President Roosevelt proposed a new initiative that would be known as Lend-Lease. The United States would provide Great Britain with the supplies it needed to fight Germany, but would not insist upon being paid immediately

Instead, the United States would “lend” the supplies to the British, deferring payment. When payment eventually did take place, the emphasis would not be on payment in dollars. The tensions and instability engendered by inter-allied war debts in the 1920s and 1930s had demonstrated that it was unreasonable to expect that virtually bankrupt European nations would be able to pay for every item they had purchased from the United States. Instead, payment would primarily take the form of a “consideration” granted by Britain to the United States. After many months of negotiation, the United States and Britain agreed, in Article VII of the Lend-Lease agreement they signed, that this consideration would primarily consist of joint action directed towards the creation of a liberalized international economic order in the postwar world.

The United Kingdom was not the only nation to strike such a deal with the United States. Over the course of the war, the United States contracted Lend-Lease agreements with more than 30 countries, dispensing some $50 billion in assistance. Although British Prime Minister Winston Churchill later referred to the initiative as “the most unsordid act” one nation had ever done for another, Roosevelt’s primary motivation was not altruism or disinterested generosity. Rather, Lend-Lease was designed to serve America’s interest in defeating Nazi Germany without entering the war until the American military and public was prepared to fight. At a time when the majority of Americans opposed direct participation in the war, Lend-Lease represented a vital U.S. contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany. Moreover, the joint action called for under Article VII of the Lend-Lease agreements signed by the United States and the recipient nations laid the foundation for the creation of a new international economic order in the postwar world.



Japan, China, the United States and the Road to Pearl Harbor, 1937–41

Between 1937 and 1941, escalating conflict between China and Japan influenced U.S. relations with both nations, and ultimately contributed to pushing the United States toward full-scale war with Japan and Germany.

At the outset, U.S. officials viewed developments in China with ambivalence. On the one hand, they opposed Japanese incursions into northeast China and the rise of Japanese militarism in the area, in part because of their sense of a longstanding friendship with China. On the other hand, most U.S. officials believed that it had no vital interests in China worth going to war over with Japan. Moreover, the domestic conflict between Chinese Nationalists and Communists left U.S. policymakers uncertain of success in aiding such an internally divided nation. As a result, few U.S. officials recommended taking a strong stance prior to 1937, and so the United States did little to help China for fear of provoking Japan.

U.S. likelihood of providing aid to China increased after July 7, 1937, when Chinese and Japanese forces clashed on the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, throwing the two nations into a full-scale war. As the United States watched Japanese forces sweep down the coast and then into the capital of Nanjing, popular opinion swung firmly in favor of the Chinese. Tensions with Japan rose when the Japanese Army bombed the U.S.S. Panay as it evacuated American citizens from Nanjing, killing three. The U.S. Government, however, continued to avoid conflict and accepted an apology and indemnity from the Japanese. An uneasy truce held between the two nations into 1940.

In 1940 and 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formalized U.S. aid to China. The U.S. Government extended credits to the Chinese Government for the purchase of war supplies, as it slowly began to tighten restrictions on Japan. The United States was the main supplier of the oil, steel, iron, and other commodities needed by the Japanese military as it became bogged down by Chinese resistance but, in January 1940, Japan abrogated the existing treaty of commerce with the United States. Although this did not lead to an immediate embargo, it meant that the Roosevelt Administration could now restrict the flow of military supplies into Japan and use this as leverage to force Japan to halt its aggression in China.

After January 1940, the United States combined a strategy of increasing aid to China through larger credits and the Lend-Lease program with a gradual move towards an embargo on the trade of all militarily useful items with Japan. The Japanese Government made several decisions during these two years that exacerbated the situation. Unable or unwilling to control the military, Japan’s political leaders sought greater security by establishing the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” in August 1940. In so doing they announced Japan’s intention to drive the Western imperialist nations from Asia. However, this Japanese-led project aimed to enhance Japan’s economic and material wealth so that it would not be dependent upon supplies from the West, and not to “liberate” the long-subject peoples of Asia.

In fact, Japan would have to launch a campaign of military conquest and rule and did not intend to pull out of China. At the same time, several pacts with Western nations only made Japan appear more of a threat to the United States. First, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on September 27, 1940 and thereby linked the conflicts in Europe and Asia. This made China a potential ally in the global fight against fascism. Then in mid-1941, Japan signed a Neutrality Pact with the Soviet Union, making it clear that Japan’s military would be moving into Southeast Asia, where the United States had greater interests. A third agreement with Vichy France enabled Japanese forces to move into Indochina and begin their Southern Advance.

The United States responded to this growing threat by temporarily halting negotiations with Japanese diplomats, instituting a full embargo on exports to Japan, freezing Japanese assets in U.S. banks, and sending supplies into China along the Burma Road. Although negotiations restarted after the United States increasingly enforced an embargo against Japan, they made little headway. Diplomats in Washington came close to agreements on a couple of occasions, but pro-Chinese sentiments in the United States made it difficult to reach any resolution that would not involve a Japanese withdrawal from China, and such a condition was unacceptable to Japan’s military leaders.

Faced with serious shortages as a result of the embargo, unable to retreat, and convinced that the U.S. officials opposed further negotiations, Japan’s leaders came to the conclusion that they had to act swiftly. For their part, U.S. leaders had not given up on a negotiated settlement, and also doubted that Japan had the military strength to attack the U.S. territory. Therefore, they were stunned when the unthinkable happened and Japanese planes bombed the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan, and it soon entered into a military alliance with China. When Germany stood by its ally and declared war on the United States, the Roosevelt Administration faced war in both Europe and Asia.



U.S.-Soviet Alliance, 1941–1945

Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. Without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United States and Great Britain would have been hard pressed to score a decisive military victory over Nazi Germany.

As late as 1939, it seemed highly improbable that the United States and the Soviet Union would forge an alliance. U.S.-Soviet relations had soured significantly following Stalin’s decision to sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August of 1939. The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in September and the “Winter War” against Finland in December led President Franklin Roosevelt to condemn the Soviet Union publicly as a “dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world,” and to impose a “moral embargo” on the export of certain products to the Soviets. Nevertheless, in spite of intense pressure to sever relations with the Soviet Union, Roosevelt never lost sight of the fact that Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, posed the greatest threat to world peace. In order to defeat that threat, Roosevelt confided that he “would hold hands with the devil” if necessary.

Following the Nazi defeat of France in June of 1940, Roosevelt grew wary of the increasing aggression of the Germans and made some diplomatic moves to improve relations with the Soviets. Beginning in July of 1940, a series of negotiations took place in Washington between Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Soviet Ambassador Constantine Oumansky. Welles refused to accede to Soviet demands that the United States recognize the changed borders of the Soviet Union after the Soviet seizure of territory in Finland, Poland, and Romania and the reincorporation of the Baltic Republics in August 1940, but the U.S. Government did lift the embargo in January 1941. Furthermore, in March of 1941, Welles warned Oumansky of a future Nazi attack against the Soviet Union. Finally, during the Congressional debate concerning the passage of the Lend-Lease bill in early 1941, Roosevelt blocked attempts to exclude the Soviet Union from receiving U.S. assistance.

The most important factor in swaying the Soviets eventually to enter into an alliance with the United States was the Nazi decision to launch its invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. President Roosevelt responded by dispatching his trusted aide Harry Lloyd Hopkins to Moscow in order to assess the Soviet military situation. Although the War Department had warned the President that the Soviets would not last more than six weeks, after two one-on-one meetings with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, Hopkins urged Roosevelt to assist the Soviets. By the end of October, the first Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union was on its way. The United States entered the war as a belligerent in late 1941 and thus began coordinating directly with the Soviets, and the British, as allies.

Several issues arose during the war that threatened the alliance. These included the Soviet refusal to aid the Polish Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, and the decision of British and U.S. officials to exclude the Soviets from secret negotiations with German officers in March of 1945 in an effort to secure the surrender of German troops in Italy. The most important disagreement, however, was over the opening of a second front in the West. Stalin’s troops struggled to hold the Eastern front against the Nazi forces, and the Soviets began pleading for a British invasion of France immediately after the Nazi invasion in 1941. In 1942, Roosevelt unwisely promised the Soviets that the Allies would open the second front that autumn. Although Stalin only grumbled when the invasion was postponed until 1943, he exploded the following year when the invasion was postponed again until May of 1944. In retaliation, Stalin recalled his ambassadors from London and Washington and fears soon arose that the Soviets might seek a separate peace with Germany.

In spite of these differences, the defeat of Nazi Germany was a joint endeavor that could not have been accomplished without close cooperation and shared sacrifices. Militarily, the Soviets fought valiantly and suffered staggering casualties on the Eastern Front. When Great Britain and the United States finally invaded northern France in 1944, the Allies were finally able to drain Nazi Germany of its strength on two fronts. Finally, two devastating atomic bomb attacks against Japan by the United States, coupled with the Soviets’ decision to break their neutrality pact with Japan by invading Manchuria, finally led to the end of the war in the Pacific.

Furthermore, during the wartime conferences at Tehran and Yalta, Roosevelt secured political concessions from Stalin and Soviet participation in the United Nations. While President Roosevelt harbored no illusions about Soviet designs in Eastern Europe, it was his great hope that if the United States made a sincere effort to satisfy legitimate Soviet security requirements in Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia, and to integrate the U.S.S.R. into the United Nations, the Soviet regime would become an international team player and moderate its authoritarian regime. Unfortunately, soon after the war, the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union began to unravel as the two nations faced complex postwar decisions.



The Atlantic Conference & Charter, 1941

The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration released by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941 following a meeting of the two heads of state in Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter provided a broad statement of U.S. and British war aims.


British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

The meeting had been called in response to the geopolitical situation in Europe by mid-1941. Although Great Britain had been spared from a German invasion in the fall of 1940 and, with the passage of the U.S. Lend Lease Act in March 1941, was assured U.S. material support, by the end of May, German forces had inflicted humiliating defeats upon British, Greek, and, Yugoslav forces in the Balkans and were threatening to overrun Egypt and close off the Suez Canal, thereby restricting British access to its possessions in India. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, few policymakers in Washington or London believed that the Soviets would be able to resist the Nazi onslaught for more than six weeks. While the British Government focused its efforts on dealing with the Germans in Europe, they were also concerned that Japan might take advantage of the situation to seize British, French, and Dutch territories in Southeast Asia.

Churchill and Roosevelt met on August 9 and 10, 1941 aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, to discuss their respective war aims for the Second World War and to outline a postwar international system. The Charter they drafted included eight “common principles” that the United States and Great Britain would be committed to supporting in the postwar world. Both countries agreed not to seek territorial expansion; to seek the liberalization of international trade; to establish freedom of the seas, and international labor, economic, and welfare standards. Most importantly, both the United States and Great Britain were committed to supporting the restoration of self-governments for all countries that had been occupied during the war and allowing all peoples to choose their own form of government

While the meeting was successful in drafting these aims, it failed to produce the desired results for either leader. President Roosevelt had hoped that the Charter might encourage the American people to back U.S. intervention in World War II on behalf of the Allies; however, public opinion remained adamantly opposed to such a policy until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Churchill’s primary goal in attending the Atlantic Conference was “to get the Americans into the war.” Barring that, he hoped that the United States would increase its amount of military aid to Great Britain and warn Japan against taking any aggressive actions in the Pacific.

Roosevelt, on the other hand, wanted the British Government to affirm publicly that it was not involved in any secret treaties, particularly ones concerning territorial questions, such as those concluded by the Allies during the First World War concerning the division of enemy territory at war’s end. Roosevelt also wished to arrange the terms by which Great Britain would repay the United States for its Lend Lease assistance. Roosevelt wanted the British to pay compensation by dismantling their system of Imperial Preference, which had been established by the British Government during the Great Depression and was designed to encourage trade within the British Empire by lowering tariff rates between members, while maintaining discriminatory tariff rates against outsiders.

Churchill was extremely disappointed by Roosevelt’s refusal to discuss American entry into the war. Furthermore, Churchill understood that several aspects of the proposed joint declaration might be politically damaging for the Prime Minister. Churchill worried that the abandonment of Imperial Preference would anger the protectionist wing of his Conservative Party. The Americans also proved unwilling to warn Japan too strongly against any future military action against British possessions in Southeast Asia. Finally, both Churchill and many members of his Cabinet were alarmed by the third point of the Charter, which mentions the rights of all peoples to choose their own government. Churchill was concerned that this clause acknowledged the right of colonial subjects to agitate for decolonization, including those in Great Britain’s empire.

Nevertheless, Churchill realized that the joint declaration was the most he could accomplish during the conference. While the United States would remain neutral, the declaration would raise the morale of the British public and, most importantly, bind the United States closer to Great Britain. Therefore, when Churchill forwarded the text of the declaration to his Cabinet on August 11, he warned them that would it be “imprudent” to raise unnecessary difficulties. The Cabinet followed Churchill’s recommendation and approved the Charter.

While the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 was not a binding treaty, it was, nonetheless, significant for several reasons. First, it publicly affirmed the sense of solidarity between the U.S. and Great Britain against Axis aggression. Second, it laid out President Roosevelt’s Wilsonian-vision for the postwar world; one that would be characterized by freer exchanges of trade, self-determination, disarmament, and collective security. Finally, the Charter ultimately did serve as an inspiration for colonial subjects throughout the Third World, from Algeria to Vietnam, as they fought for independence.



Repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1943

In 1943, Congress passed a measure to repeal the discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants and to establish an immigration quota for China of around 105 visas per year. As such, the Chinese were both the first to be excluded in the beginning of the era of immigration restriction and the first Asians to gain entry to the United States in the era of liberalization. The repeal of this act was a decision almost wholly grounded in the exigencies of World War II, as Japanese propaganda made repeated reference to Chinese exclusion from the United States in order to weaken the ties between the United States and its ally, the Republic of China. The fact that in addition to general measures preventing Asian immigration, the Chinese were subject to their own, unique prohibition had long been a source of contention in Sino-American relations.

There was little opposition to the repeal, because the United States already had in place a number of measures to ensure that, even without the Chinese Exclusion Laws explicitly forbidding Chinese immigration, Chinese still could not enter. The Immigration Act of 1924 stated that aliens ineligible for U.S. citizenship were not permitted to enter the United States, and this included the Chinese.

More controversial than repeal was the proposal to go one step further and place the Chinese on a quota basis for future entry to the United States. By finally applying the formulas created in the 1924 Immigration Act, the total annual quota for Chinese immigrants to the United States (calculated as a percentage of the total population of people of Chinese origin living in the United States in 1920) would be around 105. In light of the overall immigration to the United States, at first glance the new quota seemed insignificant.

Yet, those concerned about an onslaught of Chinese (or Asian) immigration and its potential impact on American society and racial composition believed that even this small quota represented an opening wedge through which potentially thousands of Chinese could enter the United States. Because migration within the Western Hemisphere was not regulated by the quota system, it seemed possible that Chinese residents in Central and South America would re-migrate to the United States. Moreover, if the Chinese of Hong Kong were to apply under the vast, largely unused British quota, thousands could enter each year on top of the number of available Chinese visas.

Fears about the economic, social, and racial effect of a “floodtide” of Chinese immigrants led to a compromise bill, fears that mirrored the xenophobic arguments that had led to Chinese Exclusion in the first place, some sixty years previously. Under this bill, there would be a quota on Chinese immigration, but, unlike European quotas based on country of citizenship, the Chinese quota would be based on ethnicity. Chinese immigrating to the United States from anywhere in the world would be counted against the Chinese quota, even if they had never been to China or had never held Chinese nationality. Creating this special, ethnic quota for the Chinese was a way for the United States to combat Japanese propaganda by proclaiming that Chinese were welcome, but at the same time, to ensure that only a limited number of Chinese actually entered the country.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt threw the weight of his office behind the compromise measure, connecting the importance of the measure to American wartime goals. In a letter to Congress, Roosevelt wrote that passing the bill was vital to correcting the “historic mistake” of Chinese exclusion, and he emphasized that the legislation was “important in the cause of winning the war and of establishing a secure peace.”

The repeal of Chinese exclusion paved the way for measures in 1946 to admit Filipino and Asian-Indian immigrants. The exclusion of both of these groups had long damaged U.S. relations with the Philippines and India. Eventually, Asian exclusion ended with the 1952 Immigration Act, although that Act followed the pattern of the Chinese quota and assigned racial, not national, quotas to all Asian immigrants. This system did not end until Congress did away with the National Origins quota system altogether in the Immigration Act of 1965.



Wartime Conferences, 1941–1945

The first involvement of the United States in the wartime conferences between the Allied nations opposing the Axis powers actually occurred before the nation formally entered World War II. In August 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met secretly and devised an eight-point statement of war aims known as the Atlantic Charter, which included a pledge that the Allies would not accept territorial changes resulting from the war in Europe. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the wartime conferences focused on establishing a second front.

At Casablanca in January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to fight until the Axis powers surrendered unconditionally.

In a November 1943 meeting in Egypt with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to a pre-eminent role for China in postwar Asia.

The next major wartime conference included Roosevelt, Churchill, and the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. Meeting at Tehran following the Cairo Conference, the “Big Three” secured confirmation on the launching of the cross-channel invasion and a promise from Stalin that the Soviet Union would eventually enter the war against Japan.

In 1944, conferences at Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks created the framework for international cooperation in the postwar world.

In February 1945, the “Big Three” met at the former Russian czar’s summer palace in the Crimea. Yalta was the most important and by far the most controversial of the wartime meetings. Recognizing the strong position that the Soviet Army possessed on the ground, Churchill and an ailing Roosevelt agreed to a number of compromises with Stalin that allowed Soviet hegemony to remain in Poland and other Eastern European countries, granted territorial concessions to the Soviet Union, and outlined punitive measures against Germany, including an occupation and reparations in principle. Stalin did guarantee that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within six months.

The last meeting of the “Big Three” occurred at Potsdam in July 1945, where the tension that would erupt into the cold war was evident. Despite the end of the war in Europe and the revelation of the existence of the atomic bomb to the Allies, neither President Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, nor Clement Atlee, who mid-way through the conference replaced Churchill, could come to agreement with Stalin on any but the most minor issues. The most significant agreement was the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration to Japan demanding an immediate and unconditional surrender and threatening Japan with destruction if they did not comply. With the Axis forces defeated, the wartime alliance soon devolved into suspicion and bitterness on both sides.



The Casablanca Conference, 1943

The Casablanca Conference was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the city of Casablanca, Morocco that took place from January 14–24, 1943. While Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin received an invitation, he was unable to attend because the Red Army was engaged in a major offensive against the German Army at the time. The most notable developments at the Conference were the finalization of Allied strategic plans against the Axis powers in 1943, and the promulgation of the policy of “unconditional surrender.”

The Casablanca Conference took place just two months after the Anglo-American landings in French North Africa in November 1942. At this meeting, Roosevelt and Churchill focused on coordinating Allied military strategy against the Axis powers over the course of the coming year. They resolved to concentrate their efforts against Germany in the hopes of drawing German forces away from the Eastern Front, and to increase shipments of supplies to the Soviet Union. While they would begin concentrating forces in England in preparation for an eventual landing in northern France, they decided that first they would concentrate their efforts in the Mediterranean by launching an invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland designed to knock Italy out of the war. They also agreed to strengthen their strategic bombing campaign against Germany. Finally, the leaders agreed on a military effort to eject Japan from Papua New Guinea and to open up new supply lines to China through Japanese-occupied Burma.

On the final day of the Conference, President Roosevelt announced that he and Churchill had decided that the only way to ensure postwar peace was to adopt a policy of unconditional surrender. The President clearly stated, however, that the policy of unconditional surrender did not entail the destruction of the populations of the Axis powers but rather, “the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people.”

The policy of demanding unconditional surrender was an outgrowth of Allied war aims, most notably the Atlantic Charter of August 1941, which called for an end to wars of aggression and the promotion of disarmament and collective security. Roosevelt wanted to avoid the situation that had followed the First World War, when large segments of German society supported the position, so deftly exploited by the Nazi party, that Germany had not been defeated militarily, but rather, had been “stabbed in the back” by liberals, pacifists, socialists, communists, and Jews. Roosevelt also wished to make it clear that neither the United States nor Great Britain would seek a separate peace with the Axis powers.



The Tehran Conference, 1943

The Tehran Conference was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, between November 28 and December 1, 1943.

During the Conference, the three leaders coordinated their military strategy against Germany and Japan and made a number of important decisions concerning the post-World War II era. The most notable achievements of the Conference focused on the next phases of the war against the Axis powers in Europe and Asia. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin engaged in discussions concerning the terms under which the British and Americans finally committed to launching Operation Overlord, an invasion of northern France, to be executed by May of 1944. The Soviets, who had long been pushing the Allies to open a second front, agreed to launch another major offensive on the Eastern Front that would divert German troops away from the Allied campaign in northern France. Stalin also agreed in principle that the Soviet Union would declare war against Japan following an Allied victory over Germany. In exchange for a Soviet declaration of war against Japan, Roosevelt conceded to Stalin’s demands for the Kurile Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin, and access to the ice-free ports of Dairen (Dalian) and Port Arthur (Lüshun Port) located on the Liaodong Peninsula in northern China. The exact details concerning this deal were not finalized, however, until the Yalta Conference of 1945.

At Tehran, the three Allied leaders also discussed important issues concerning the fate of Eastern Europe and Germany in the postwar period. Stalin pressed for a revision of Poland’s eastern border with the Soviet Union to match the line set by British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in 1920. In order to compensate Poland for the resulting loss of territory, the three leaders agreed to move the German-Polish border to the Oder and Neisse rivers. This decision was not formally ratified, however, until the Potsdam Conference of 1945. During these negotiations Roosevelt also secured from Stalin his assurance that the Republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia would be reincorporated into the Soviet Union only after the citizens of each republic voted on the question in a referendum. Stalin stressed, however, that the matter would have to be resolved “in accordance with the Soviet constitution,” and that he would not consent to any international control over the elections. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin also broached the question of the possible postwar partition of Germany into Allied zones of occupation and agreed to have the European Advisory Commission “carefully study the question of dismemberment” before any final decision was taken.

Broader international cooperation also became a central theme of the negotiations at Tehran. Roosevelt and Stalin privately discussed the composition of the United Nations. During the Moscow Conference of the Foreign Ministers in October and November of 1943, the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union had signed a four-power declaration whose fourth point called for the creation of a “general international organization” designed to promote “international peace and security.” At Tehran, Roosevelt outlined for Stalin his vision of the proposed organization in which the future United Nations would be dominated by “four policemen” (the United States, Britain, China, and Soviet Union) who “would have the power to deal immediately with any threat to the peace and any sudden emergency which requires action.”

Finally, the three leaders issued a “Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran.” Within it, they thanked the Iranian Government for its assistance in the war against Germany and promised to provide it with economic assistance both during and after the war. Most importantly, the U.S., British, and Soviet Governments stated that they all shared a “desire for the maintenance of the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Iran.”

Roosevelt secured many of his objectives during the Conference. The Soviet Union had committed to joining the war against Japan and expressed support for Roosevelt’s plans for the United Nations. Most importantly, Roosevelt believed that he had won Stalin’s confidence by proving that the United States was willing to negotiate directly with the Soviet Union and, most importantly, by guaranteeing the opening of the second front in France by the spring of 1944. However, Stalin also gained tentative concessions on Eastern Europe that would be confirmed during the later wartime conferences.



The Yalta Conference, 1945

The Yalta Conference took place in a Russian resort town in the Crimea from February 4–11, 1945, during World War Two. At Yalta, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions regarding the future progress of the war and the postwar world.

The Allied leaders came to Yalta knowing that an Allied victory in Europe was practically inevitable but less convinced that the Pacific war was nearing an end. Recognizing that a victory over Japan might require a protracted fight, the United States and Great Britain saw a major strategic advantage to Soviet participation in the Pacific theater. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill discussed with Stalin the conditions under which the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan and all three agreed that, in exchange for potentially crucial Soviet participation in the Pacific theater, the Soviets would be granted a sphere of influence in Manchuria following Japan’s surrender. This included the southern portion of Sakhalin, a lease at Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou), a share in the operation of the Manchurian railroads, and the Kurile Islands. This agreement was the major concrete accomplishment of the Yalta Conference.

The Allied leaders also discussed the future of Germany, Eastern Europe and the United Nations. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed not only to include France in the postwar governing of Germany, but also that Germany should assume some, but not all, responsibility for reparations following the war. The Americans and the British generally agreed that future governments of the Eastern European nations bordering the Soviet Union should be “friendly” to the Soviet regime while the Soviets pledged to allow free elections in all territories liberated from Nazi Germany. Negotiators also released a declaration on Poland, providing for the inclusion of Communists in the postwar national government. In discussions regarding the future of the United Nations, all parties agreed to an American plan concerning voting procedures in the Security Council, which had been expanded to five permanent members following the inclusion of France. Each of these permanent members was to hold a veto on decisions before the Security Council.

Initial reaction to the Yalta agreements was celebratory. Roosevelt and many other Americans viewed it as proof that the spirit of U.S.-Soviet wartime cooperation would carry over into the postwar period. This sentiment, however, was short lived. With the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, Harry S. Truman became the thirty-third president of the United States. By the end of April, the new administration clashed with the Soviets over their influence in Eastern Europe, and over the United Nations. Alarmed at the perceived lack of cooperation on the part of the Soviets, many Americans began to criticize Roosevelt’s handling of the Yalta negotiations. To this day, many of Roosevelt’s most vehement detractors accuse him of “handing over” Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia to the Soviet Union at Yalta despite the fact that the Soviets did make many substantial concessions.



The Potsdam Conference, 1945

The Big Three, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman, met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. After the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed to meet following the surrender of Germany to determine the postwar borders in Europe. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the Allied leaders agreed to meet over the summer at Potsdam to continue the discussions that had begun at Yalta. Although the Allies remained committed to fighting a joint war in the Pacific, the lack of a common enemy in Europe led to difficulties reaching consensus concerning postwar reconstruction on the European continent.

The major issue at Potsdam was the question of how to handle Germany. At Yalta, the Soviets had pressed for heavy postwar reparations from Germany, half of which would go to the Soviet Union. While Roosevelt had acceded to such demands, Truman and his Secretary of State, James Byrnes, were determined to mitigate the treatment of Germany by allowing the occupying nations to exact reparations only from their own zone of occupation. Truman and Byrnes encouraged this position because they wanted to avoid a repetition of the situation created by the Treaty of Versailles, which had exacted high reparations payments from Germany following World War One. Many experts agreed that the harsh reparations imposed by the Versailles Treaty had handicapped the German economy and fueled the rise of the Nazis.

Despite numerous disagreements, the Allied leaders did manage to conclude some agreements at Potsdam. For example, the negotiators confirmed the status of a demilitarized and disarmed Germany under four zones of Allied occupation. According to the Protocol of the Conference, there was to be “a complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany”; all aspects of German industry that could be utilized for military purposes were to be dismantled; all German military and paramilitary forces were to be eliminated; and the production of all military hardware in Germany was forbidden. Furthermore, German society was to be remade along democratic lines by repeal of all discriminatory laws from the Nazi era and by the arrest and trial of those Germans deemed to be “war criminals.” The German educational and judicial systems were to be purged of any authoritarian influences, and democratic political parties would be encouraged to participate in the administration of Germany at the local and state level. The reconstitution of a national German Government was, however, postponed indefinitely, and the Allied Control Commission (which was comprised of four occupying powers, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union) would run the country during the interregnum.

One of the most controversial matters addressed at the Potsdam Conference dealt with the revision of the German-Soviet-Polish borders and the expulsion of several million Germans from the disputed territories. In exchange for the territory it lost to the Soviet Union following the readjustment of the Soviet-Polish border, Poland received a large swath of German territory and began to deport the German residents of the territories in question, as did other nations that were host to large German minority populations. The negotiators at Potsdam were well-aware of the situation, and even though the British and Americans feared that a mass exodus of Germans into the western occupation zones would destabilize them, they took no action other than to declare that “any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner” and to request that the Poles, Czechoslovaks and Hungarians temporarily suspend additional deportations.

In addition to settling matters related to Germany and Poland, the Potsdam negotiators approved the formation of a Council of Foreign Ministers that would act on behalf of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China to draft peace treaties with Germany’s former allies. Conference participants also agreed to revise the 1936 Montreux Convention, which gave Turkey sole control over the Turkish Straits. Furthermore, the United States, Great Britain, and China released the “Potsdam Declaration,” which threatened Japan with “prompt and utter destruction” if it did not immediately surrender (the Soviet Union did not sign the declaration because it had yet to declare war on Japan).

The Potsdam Conference is perhaps best known for President Truman’s July 24, 1945 conversation with Stalin, during which time the President informed the Soviet leader that the United States had successfully detonated the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. Historians have often interpreted Truman’s somewhat firm stance during negotiations to the U.S. negotiating team’s belief that U.S. nuclear capability would enhance its bargaining power. Stalin, however, was already well-informed about the U.S. nuclear program thanks to the Soviet intelligence network; so he also held firm in his positions. This situation made negotiations challenging. The leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, who, despite their differences, had remained allies throughout the war, never met again collectively to discuss cooperation in postwar reconstruction.



The Formation of the United Nations, 1945

On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations at war with the Axis powers met in Washington to sign the Declaration of the United Nations endorsing the Atlantic Charter, pledging to use their full resources against the Axis and agreeing not to make a separate peace.

At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden agreed to draft a declaration that included a call for “a general international organization, based on the principle sovereign equality of all nations.” An agreed declaration was issued after a Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow in October 1943. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, in November 1943, he proposed an international organization comprising an assembly of all member states and a 10-member executive committee to discuss social and economic issues. The United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and China would enforce peace as “the four policemen.” Meanwhile Allied representatives founded a set of task-oriented organizations: the Food and Agricultural Organization (May 1943), the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (November 1943), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (April 1944), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (July 1944), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (November 1944).

U.S., British, Soviet, and Chinese representatives met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in August and September 1944 to draft the charter of a postwar international organization based on the principle of collective security. They recommended a General Assembly of all member states and a Security Council consisting of the Big Four plus six members chosen by the Assembly. Voting procedures and the veto power of permanent members of the Security Council were finalized at the Yalta Conference in 1945 when Roosevelt and Stalin agreed that the veto would not prevent discussions by the Security Council. Roosevelt agreed to General Assembly membership for Ukraine and Byelorussia while reserving the right, which was never exercised, to seek two more votes for the United States.

Representatives of 50 nations met in San Francisco April-June 1945 to complete the Charter of the United Nations. In addition to the General Assembly of all member states and a Security Council of 5 permanent and 6 non-permanent members, the Charter provided for an 18-member Economic and Social Council, an International Court of Justice, a Trusteeship Council to oversee certain colonial territories, and a Secretariat under a Secretary General. The Roosevelt administration strove to avoid Woodrow Wilson’s mistakes in selling the League of Nations to the Senate. It sought bipartisan support and in September 1943 the Republican Party endorsed U.S. participation in a postwar international organization, after which both houses of Congress overwhelmingly endorsed participation. Roosevelt also sought to convince the public that an international organization was the best means to prevent future wars. The Senate approved the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2. The United Nations came into existence on October 24, 1945, after 29 nations had ratified the Charter.



Bretton Woods-GATT, 1941–1947

During and immediately after the Second World War, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other allied nations engaged in a series of negotiations to establish the rules for the postwar international economy. The result was the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank at the July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference and the signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade at an international conference in Geneva in October 1947.

By early 1942, U.S. and British officials began preparing proposals that would foster economic stability and prosperity in the postwar world. Harry Dexter White, Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and John Maynard Keynes, an advisor to the British Treasury, each drafted plans creating organizations that would provide financial assistance to countries experiencing short-term balance of payments deficits; this assistance was meant to ensure that such countries did not adopt protectionist or predatory economic policies to improve their balance of payments position.

Agreement was finally reached at the July 1944 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, a gathering of delegates from 44 nations that met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

The two major accomplishments of the Bretton Woods conference were the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the World Bank.



Source: Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs. United States Department of State


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