On the following June 4, at Berlin, Marshal Zhukov, Field-Marshal Montgomery, and Generals Eisenhower and de Lattre de Tassigny approved four agreements governing Germany’s disarmament, occupation, and adminis-
Tration, and decreeing that the principal Nazi war leaders should appear before an internaiiorial court of military ju*»tice It should be noted with reference to these agreements that as they were not in a position to prejudge the territorial decisions of the future peace conference, the four contracting parties defined Germany as the Reich within its frontiers of December 1937.
During the last weeks of their furious pursuit, Montgomery had advanced from Wismar on the Baltic to the Elbe just below Wittenberge, and General Bradley had reached the right bank of the Elbe as far as Torgau and to the south beyond Chemnitz (now Karl Marx Stadt). Both had gone beyond the limits set out in the Yalta agreements about the British, American, and Soviet occupation zones. Montgomery had gone about 45 miles ahead, Bradley about 125 miles. In fact, in the interests of their common victory, and without arousing the Kremlin’s protests, the British and the Americans
A A Russian points out to a party of British troops the spot where the bodies of Adolf Hitler and his last-minute wife, Eva Braun, were burned after their suicide on April 30.
V The victors: British and Russian officers inspect tanks of the 8th Hussars in Berlin. At the front, with Montgomery, are Marshals Zhukov and Rokossovsky, whom the British field-marshal had just invested with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath respectively.
Had exercised their "right of pursuit" beyond the demarcation line. Nevertheless on the day after the Rheims and Berlin surrenders, Stalin insisted on the precise implementation of all the promises given.
But had he kept his own promises about the constitution of a Polish government in which the various democratic factions of the nation would be represented? In London it was well known that the Soviet secret services were systematically destroying all elements opposed to the setting up of a communist regime in Poland loyal to Moscow, and that in the Kremlin the commission established by the Yalta agreements to carry out the reorganisation of the government was paralysed by Molotov’s obstruction.
In these circumstances, Churchill offered the opinion that the British and American armies should continue to occupy the positions they had reached in Germany up to the time when the coming conference of the Big Three in Berlin had clarified the situation. He also thought that this conference, which was first arranged for July 15, should be held earlier. For this reason he wrote to President Truman on June 4:
"I am sure you understand the reason why I am anxious for an earlier date, say 3rd or 4th (of July). I view with profound misgivings the retreat of the American Army to our line of occupation in the central sector, thus bringing Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe and the descent of the iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward. I hoped that this retreat, if it has to be made, would be accompanied by the settlement of many great things which would be the true foundation of world peace. Nothing really important has been settled yet, and you and I will have to bear great responsibility for the future. I still hope therefore that the date will be advanced.” On June 9, arguing that the Soviet occupation authorities’ behaviour in Austria and the increasing number of irregularities against the missions of the Western powers justified his position, he returned to the charge:
"Would it not be better to refuse to withdraw on the main European front until a settlement has been reached about Austria? Surely at the very least the whole agreement about zones should be carried out at the same time?"
World History
