Great Men in the Second World War: The Rise and Fall of the Big Three by Paul Dukes

Author:Paul Dukes [Dukes, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

6

Potsdam: From Churchill to Attlee and a ‘New Weapon’

Potsdam: From Europe to Asia

Having already changed once with the death of Roosevelt, the composition of the Big Three was to change again before Potsdam was over with the replacement of Churchill by Attlee. However, we should not forget that, even before the British general election results were announced, Attlee was already participating in the conference in his capacity as Churchill’s deputy, a role which he had carried on with self-effacing efficiency throughout the war. For example, on 23 July, he sent Churchill a minute on the Montreux Convention and the Straits, elaborating points that he had already made on 18 July and arguing that although the Russians appeared to be carrying out ‘a crude exercise of power politics’, it was necessary ‘to look at the matter from the Russian angle’. Noting the lack of Russian access to the world’s wider waterways, contrasting with the Anglo-French dominance of the Mediterranean and Suez, Attlee feared that the British disinterestedness in further acquisitions might prompt ‘the subconscious retort by the Russians’ – ‘Why should you, you have all you want.’ Seeing the present position as ‘the result of the power politics of the past’, they were making demands to acquire full freedom of the seas and to enforce it, and this was ‘not unnatural in the second greatest power in the world’. Past precedents and old treaties were useless in a new situation in which ‘air power transcends all frontiers and menaces all home lands’. Moreover, the United States would be unlikely to give the UK much support ‘although they would be stiff enough over their own control of the Panama Canal zone’. The best policy would be to have constructive proposals appropriate to the new world situation for submission to the United Nations Organisation.1

The seventh plenary meeting on 23 July briefly noted progress made by the foreign secretaries and made some provision for future meetings before taking up again the question of Turkey. Churchill said that he could not accept that the Straits might be fortified by a Russian base. In response to Churchill’s earlier assertion that Russia had frightened Turkey with its military presence in Bulgaria, Stalin claimed that there were fewer troops there than the British had in Greece, although Churchill interjected his disagreement. Continuing, Stalin conceded that the restoration of pre-First World War tsarist frontiers might indeed have frightened the Turks, but pointed out that Kars was part of Armenia and Ardahan part of Georgia. An alliance was first suggested by the Turks themselves: if they did not want to rectify their frontiers, the question of an alliance should be dropped. Regarding the Straits, the Russian position was desperate. The Montreux Convention of 1936 was directed against the Soviet republic, allowing Turkey to block the Straits when it alone deemed that a threat of war existed. Moreover, according to the Convention, Soviet Russia had the same rights as the Emperor of Japan. A small power, Turkey, supported by a great power, Britain, held another great power, Russia, by the throat.

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