Russia at war 1941-1945

"booty" at the time—from the Soviet Zone. But they continued to hope that the reparations questions would be put on an all-German basis at Potsdam. This was not to be. On July 23, Mr Byrnes declared Stalin's Yalta figure of twenty billion dollars (half of it for the Soviet Union) to be "unpractical", and refused to name any other. He also reiterated the United States Government's opposition to the Russians' meddling in the control of industry in the Ruhr and other parts of Western Germany. And there followed this conversation:

Mr Molotov: I understand that what you have in mind is that each country should take reparations from its own zone. If we fail to reach an agreement, the result will be the same.

Mr Byrnes: Yes.

Mr Molotov: Would not your suggestion mean that each country would have a free hand in its own zone and would act entirely independently of the others?

Mr Byrnes: That is true in substance.

[ Quoted by W. A. Williams, op. cit., p. 251.]

The Russians fought this proposal for over a week, but, in the end, accepted it, together with the following provisions: they would also have a free hand in collecting German assets throughout Eastern Europe; they would receive a small percentage of the

reparations available from Western Germany; and, finally, the Western Powers would

"provisionally" recognise the Oder-Neisse Line—rather to Churchill's disgust, as expressed in the final pages of The Second World War. What this meant in fact was that the all-German treatment of reparations, for which the Russians had fought so

desperately, was down the drain. Even the small face-saver for this "all-German"

treatment—the minor reparations deliveries to Russia from Western Germany—was

scrapped less than a year later, apparently on the personal responsibility of General Lucius Clay, the Military Governor of the American Zone.

This reparations settlement was crucial: it started the process whereby Russia was kept strictly outside Western Germany but, at the same time, strengthened her economic—and therefore also political—hold on Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe as a whole. This apparent ratification of a "spheres of influence" policy was, of course, in flat contradiction to Truman's Open Door policy, and American experts have continued to

argue on the real significance of this apparent contradiction.

There was a direct connection between the American atom bomb and the singular

reparations deal at Potsdam. This was, in fact, symptomatic of the temporary (as Truman thought) division of Germany and of Europe in two. Although appearances were kept up to some extent for the next two or three years, Potsdam marked in the reality the

beginning of the end of that "Big-Three Peace" of which the main pillar—as the Russians saw it—was the joint control of Germany.

Chapter VI THE SHORT RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR-

HIROSHIMA

There were two periods in the Soviet-German war when the Russians dreaded a Japanese attack on them. First, during the very first months of the war, and indeed, right up to Pearl Harbour; and again during the disastrous summer and autumn of 1942. As a

precaution against a Japanese attack, the Russians had to keep substantial forces in the Far East, about forty divisions according to the post-war History. Although in extreme emergencies—during the Battle of Moscow and, again, at the time of Stailingrad—the

Soviet Supreme Command had to draw on its Far-Eastern forces and bring some

particularly tough Siberian troops to the Soviet-German Front, the fact remains that, especially during the first eighteen months of the war, Japan rendered Hitler a great service by tying up with its one-million-strong Kwantung Army important Russian forces which would have been of the greatest value in Europe.

After Stalingrad, and with the war in the Pacific not going quite as well as the Japanese had expected, a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union was "postponed". As the History says:

Stalingrad struck an irreparable blow at the Japanese plans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Having been bogged down in their war against China, the United

States and Britain, the Japanese now had every reason to doubt a successful

outcome of their aggressive plans against the Soviet Union... The Japanese