ABSTRACT
On 14 March 1946 Mr Frank Roberts, HM Chargé d’Affaires in Moscow, had written a long despatch to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Ernest Bevin, reviewing Soviet policy and Anglo-Soviet relations.1 His verdict on the Council of Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Moscow in December 19452 was that its conclusions had been on the whole favourable to the Soviet Union; whereas the first meetings of the UN General Assembly and Security Council in London in January 1946, had proved less satisfactory to the Russians, and ‘a forum for public Anglo-Soviet dispute’, particularly over Persia and Greece.3 In Mr Roberts’ view, the constant barrage of Soviet criticism and hostile propaganda against HMG in the spring of 1946 stemmed not from a perception of British weakness, but from an unease at the prospect of an evolving Western bloc, with Britain in the lead, in opposition to Soviet aims; the current Soviet push on all diplomatic fronts indicated, he thought, ‘an almost desperate effort to seize advanced positions and to dig in before the inevitable reaction against high-handed Soviet actions sets in with a return to more normal and peaceful conditions’. Mr Roberts was pessimistic about the prospects for the next Council of Foreign Ministers, due to open in Paris on 24 April 1946,4 and considered that AngloSoviet differences were most likely to come to a head over Germany, which had become a focus of East-West division. The Potsdam Protocol of 2 August 1945 (DBPO Potsdam, No. 603), under which supreme authority over Germany was given to the four occupying Powers (France, UK, US and USSR), stated that Germany was to be treated as a single economic unit with common policies enacted for the demilitarisation of the economy. However, the difficulty of reconciling industrial disarmament and the payment of reparations, while leaving sufficient resource for an economic recovery that could enable Germany to fend for itself, and providing security (for France in particular) against future aggression, had not only proved intractable but also exposed deep-seated differences between the Occupying Powers. Quadripartite negotiations on German issues up to the end of 1945 are documented in DBPO Germany; they were also to dominate the Council of Foreign Ministers in 1946. 1 Printed in DBPO Eastern Europe, No. 80. 2 See DBPO Conferences 1945, Chapter 3. 3 These UN meetings are documented in DBPO UN. 4 See DBPO Eastern Europe, No. 91.
