7.14 Postwar Diplomacy

• Atlantic Charter (August 1941): before the U.S. even entered the war, FDR and Churchill agreed on goals including no territorial gains for the victors, self-determination for all peoples, freer trade, and a future system of general security.
• Tehran (1943): Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met for the first time and agreed on the D-Day invasion.
• Bretton Woods (1944): the Allies created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and tied currencies to the U.S. dollar, building a postwar economic system centered on the United States.

At the Yalta Conference (February 1945), with Germany nearly beaten, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed to divide Germany into occupation zones, to hold a conference to create the United Nations, and that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan about three months after Germany surrendered. Stalin promised free elections in Eastern Europe, including Poland. Because the Red Army already occupied Eastern Europe, the West had little power to enforce that promise. Critics later accused FDR of giving away Eastern Europe; defenders reply that he could not undo Soviet military control.

Roosevelt died in April 1945. At the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945), Harry Truman, Stalin and Churchill (replaced midway by new British prime minister Clement Attlee) confirmed Germany's division and argued over reparations and Poland's borders. During the conference the U.S., Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan's unconditional surrender. Truman told Stalin of a powerful new weapon. Trust was already wearing thin.

Delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco in spring 1945 to write the UN Charter, signed in June. It created a General Assembly of all members and a Security Council where five permanent members, the U.S., Soviet Union, Britain, France and China, each hold a veto. The UN officially began in October 1945. The Senate approved U.S. membership by 89 to 2, a dramatic contrast with its rejection of the League of Nations in 1919–1920.

Why the difference? Americans had concluded that staying out of the League had helped allow aggression to grow in the 1930s, and Roosevelt deliberately involved senators from both parties in planning the UN.

In 1945 the U.S. produced about half of the world's manufactured goods, held most of its gold reserves, had the only atomic bomb, and had suffered no destruction at home. War crimes trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo set new principles of international law, and the U.S. occupied and rebuilt Japan under General Douglas MacArthur.

The Soviet Union, though devastated, controlled Eastern Europe and wanted a buffer zone against future invasion from the West. The U.S. wanted open markets, self-determination and free elections. These clashing goals turned wartime allies into Cold War rivals (8.2).