ZERO HOUR
The zero hour for post-war Germany rang out with the capitulation of the country on May 9, 1945. The members of the last government of the German Reich, headed by Admiral of the Fleet Dönitz were arrested and together with other National Socialist leaders brought before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and tried for crimes against peace and humanity. The four victorious powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France assumed supreme authority and divided up the capital city into four sectors and the territory of the Reich into four occupation zones.
Red Army in Berlin On 2 May 1945,
after one of the bloodiest battles in history,
two victorious Soviet soldiers:
Meliton Kantaria and Mikhail Yegorov,
raised the Soviet flag over the German Reichstag.
The Eastern territories were placed under Polish or Russian administration. At the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945 the four victorious powers were in agreement on the questions of denazification, demilitarization, economic decentralization and re-education of the German people along democratic lines. Admittedly not all those involved agreed on what these concepts actually entailed. In Potsdam the Western powers gave their consent to the expulsion of Germans from the German eastern territories, from Hungary and from Czechoslovakia. The West had insisted that the transfer be carried out in a “humane” fashion, but this demand was not observed and in the following years some 12 million Germans were brutally expelled by the new rulers. A minimum consensus was at least reached in the form of an agreement to treat Germany as an economic entity and in the medium term to establish centralized administrations for Germany as a whole. This resolution had no effect as the different developments in the zones occupied by the Soviet Union and the Western Allies respectively, as well as the handling of the reparations issue, which was of particular importance for the Soviet Union, excluded any uniform arrangement for Germany from the very beginning. Moscow demanded that Germany be forced to make overall reparations of USD 20 billion to the victorious powers, above all by dismantling plant and by contributions from ongoing production, and claimed that USD 10 billion should go to the USSR. The solution that was finally devised entailed each of the victorious powers drawing the reparations due to it from the zone it respectively occupied, a process that contributed to the economic division of Germany.
John Birch: The First Casualty of the Cold War
In the spring of 1942, a group of stranded U.S. servicemen huddled inside a Chinese riverboat, hiding from Japanese soldiers in the invaded country. Suddenly, they heard what seemed to be an American voice: "Anyone in there?" The hidden men feared trickery and capture until they heard the voice again; it was a full-blown Southern accent. That voice belonged to missionary John Morrison Birch, and the men he rescued from the boat were Col. Jimmy Doolittle and his famed "Tokyo Raiders." Birch brought the group down the Chienteng River to the town of Lanchi, from where they were able to move on to safety. Doolittle was much taken with the young missionary, whose native garb and near fluent grasp of Mandarin Chinese allowed him to continue his goal of bringing the Gospel to the Chinese mainland despite its occupying force. Birch had sought a position as a chaplain, but when Doolittle told Gen. Claire Chennault about his rescuer, Chennault recognized Birch's potential as an intelligence resource. Commissioned a first lieutenant on July 4, 1942, Birch became "the eyes of the 14th Air Force (the Flying Tigers)" with the stipulation that he be allowed to preach the Gospel whenever possible. Both in Chungking proper and in the interior, Birch used his language skills and analytical talents to draw up a network for the China Air Task Force, which replaced the American Volunteer Group. By all accounts, Birch was a man of great skill and even greater modesty; when he was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1944, he wrote to his mother, "they ought not to cheapen the decoration by giving it when a man merely does his duty." By war's end, Birch had achieved the rank of captain and his duties had come under the spreading auspices of the Office of Strategic Services. Shortly after the war ended, Birch and a party of 11 Chinese soldiers were sent by the OSS to accept the surrender of a Japanese base. On Aug. 25, 1945, they met a group of Chinese communists who disarmed Birch, and shot his aide Lt. Tung when he tried to intervene (Tung lived to tell the tale of Birch's treatment). Birch's ankles were bound and he was made to kneel for execution, then shot in the back of his head. Birch, who had spent the war working behind enemy lines to serve both God and Country, is considered by many to be the first casualty of the Cold War.
Dumbarton Oaks Located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC
the site of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference was the residence
of Robert Woods Bliss and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss .
The Dumbarton Oaks Conference
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.
The Stated Goals of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference were:
- To maintain international peace and security; and to that end to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means adjustment or settlement of international disputes which may lead to a breach of the peace
- To develop friendly relations among nations and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace
- To achieve international co-operation in the solution of international economic, social and other humanitarian problems
- To afford a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the achievement of these common ends.
Please use the Cold War Documentary Film link in the upper right-hand corner to find the assigned videos.
