The National WorldWar Ii Museum hosted the event. Well, greetings, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to see you all here and it is always great to see i dont want to say so many probably all are familiar faces and we saw most of you in november and we hope to see most of you again in november and in between in september for our memory conference. As steven is said, unfortunately dr. Stoller tried his best, slipped on the way and caught his balance. But all three flights from berlington, vermont, were cancelled to get him here yesterday. And while we are disappointed, he is even more disappointed that he couldnt make it back down here and present. But i can tell you that we are very fortunate in this great city of new orleans to have one of the leading scholars in this field in gunther bischof here to fill the breach and enlighten us with the first panel of the day. Gunther has been a friend since before we had a building. Not just a hotel. But an actual museum. He goes back with nick mueller and Steven Ambrose back to the early days as a master stunds of theirs and then went to harvard to obtain his hpd and then came back home to join the faculty at uno. And gunther is joined by someone equally important and that is melanie buhl his wife, just retired from being a life long School Teacher and also very involved with our Educational Committee so it is great to have you, mal annie. As i mentioned going way back and so we have heard lots of suggestions from dr. Bischof over the years and we have listened to them and we have enacted them. Slowly in his mind. But a couple of things that today really points out to me is the students. Gunther and his friends dr. Dupont and others at uno have been strong in advocated the museum not just have wonderful folks here but engage with the local university audience and with younger scholars, post docs or fresh out as a ph. D program and to look at a broader International Perspective and try to bring in not just the American Experience in our public programming. And lastly, he has been a long time advocate that we need to get a distinguished scholar by the name of sergei plokhy here. So thank you everything youve done for us gunther. Dr. Bischof is the director of center of austria at the university of new orleans, a native of austria he came here as an Exchange Student with a history degree and masters greig from u. N. O. He has published too many books to put in one biography and edited many more and published thousands of articles. But he is most recently the Marshall Plan since 1947, saving europe rebuilding austria. We have had him on our president ial counselors Advisory Board since before we had a board in 2006 and hes always a delight to be here so, ladies and gentlemen, lets welcome dr. Gunther bischof to the podium. Thank you. [ applause ] okay, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So good to see many of you here. Especially shoutout also to our u. N. O. Colleagues and students. It is sort of if you think about yalta fitting that our colleague mark stoler didnt make it out of vermont because it was very hard to get to yalta at that time in february of 45. You might know that roosevelt was roosevelt was a very sickly man. He had to travel by ship from virginia to malta in theed me r mediterranean and a flight up to the northern part of theeninsul down to the palace in yalta, another four hours. This man that had all kinds of physical challenges. So keep that in mind. By the way, there was a number of other cities initially envisioned for a summit meeting. Churchill and roosevelt suggested, for example, northern scotland, cypress, alexandria or jerusalem as possible sites for a summit meeting. Of course, stalin didnt want to leave the soviet union. Now, when we talk about summits, this is a relatively recent phenomenon in international diplomacy, summitry. Summit summitry in the early 1950s, when there was a chase on who would first clear the summit of mount evet. Everest. The cambridge historian David Reynolds has written an excellent book on 20th century summits. He said the first big one was munich in 1938. That is before tehran and yalta, what were going to talk about today. The way professor reynolds put it, it was made possible by air travel made necessary by weapons of mass destruction and made into a household news by the mass media. Three elements thats crucial in modern summitry. Let me get into the very complete outline and march you through it. His theme is sort of various summit conferences before the yalta summit. And in his preliminary remarks he was saying that the yalta conference is often considered to have been a peace conference, but it was not. The war was still going on. Military matters had a high place on the conference agenda, he says. Appears only in retrospect as if it were a peace conference. He thinks this is probably due to the fact there was no post world war ii peace conference the way it ended in 1991. He wants to make that point. Not a peace conference. He also makes the point and thats what his outline is about that many Major Political issues that were on the yalta agenda like poland, like the u. N. , like germany, had previously already been discussed in many summit meetings. In truth, most if not all the major issues had previously been discussed in the tehran conference in november 1943. Only about a bit more than a year before yalta. Of course, there was many other conference by lower level diplomats. I would add to his outline that many of the issues that were discussed by the big three or by the Foreign Ministers were worked out by various planning committees. In great britain, it was the Foreign OfficeResearch Department in the Foreign Office which came out of Foreign Research and press service at oxford. The british i looked at many of the documents with regard to postwar planning for austria. They are very complete. I think in the british case you can see that churchill took more of the suggestions of his planners than in the american case. The United States, the council on Foreign Relations new york began postwar planning even before the country was in the war. When the u. S. Finally joined the war late in 1941, that planning effort from the council on Foreign Relations was brought into the state department. Many of the council experts were part of it. It was in the state Department Much of the planning was done. Very often the suggestions made by the experts were not necessarily picked up by roosevelt and carried out. In other words, there was huge Planning Efforts going on in the a angloamerican world but also france and also in the soviet union there was planning going on. So think about planning during world war ii as something that quietly goes forward while the armies fight in the field and trying to defeat the nazis on the battlefield. Now lets go into the outline here. Put together the most important conferences. You see even on the highest level with roosevelt and churchill begins in august 1941, the famous new foufoundland conference. So again, the United States was not in the war yet and already they were doing diplomatic planning for the future of the world. Then there was a couple meetings in washington, d. C. You see that in 42. Then moscow meeting where churchill and stalin met in august and harriman was also present. If you dont know, he was roos svel roosevelts ambassador to the soviet figure. Then roosevelt and churchill met in morocco in january 1943. Stalin didnt come to that even though he was invited because it was out of the country as he put it. In canthat a decision was made. The german and japanese could not surrender this time. They had to surrender unconditionally at the end of the war. So crucial decision. Another washington meeting, quebec meeting the first one. Then the important Moscow Council of Foreign Ministers meeting that was the Foreign Ministers. The United States was represented. This thing is not working. Okay. There we go. Too well. Then there was a meeting in washingt washington. Thats very important for the postwar world. U. N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration fed the hungry people particularly of central euro europe. If you think about the fact in germany and austria people only had 1,000 calories a day, it would be this that guaranteed their survival. Very important meeting there. Then after tehran, there was a meeting in cairo for postwar planning for the far east. Then, of course, the important tehran meeting. I will talk more about that in a few minutes. That was in november of 1943. Then a meeting that were very important, in new hampshire, where all the important decisions were made for the financial postwar order. You see the world bank and imf was also planned. Out of this meeting, the dollar became the strongest currency in the world and other currency would be picked after the war. It was important for the financial order of the postwar world. Washington was a meeting that was a long meeting and mainly dealt with United Nations matters. Quebec in canada. The plan was decided, we will talk about that. Then again moscow. In the soviet Union Churchill flew there. He flew 107,000 miles during the war to get to these meetings. These miles were flown in unpressurized, unheated bombers. If you think about the many meetings and churchill attending them, going to moscow in the fall of 44. Will talk about it a bit. An important decision was made about how the balkans would be divide up. The socalled percentage agreement. Then yalta, we will talk about that and the meetings continued later on. There was a San Francisco meeting where the United Nations was founded. There was also a big meeting in germany right at the end of the war where important decisions were made about postwar germ y germany, including reparations decisions. You see its a very long list of meetings that were talking about. In all of these meetings, important decisions were made about the postwar order. For example, when they when they got to moscow in october of 1943, the Foreign Ministers, they talked about whether the soviet union would come into the war in the far east. Thats something that continued at yalta and im sure we will talk about that. The moscow meeting, thats something that i tell you was also important for declaration on postwar austria. That sort of founded the postwar austrian state which had been gobbled up by the nazis in 1938. Important decisions had been made about nazi germany already at tehran. It was important for a combined military strategy and the socalled second front was being decided upon. Because stalin insisted on it. If you think about it, United States had already landed and the british in africa and then italy, making their way up the boot in 1943. The soviets had already defeated the germans before moscow and stalingrad. While this vital progress was being made on the bottle field, here they decided finally were going to up a second front six months after the end six months after the tehran conference. In that sense, the second front had been a sore issue between the western powers and stalin for two years. It was promised in may of 194 s because he wanted to relieve list armies in the east. Upon stalins insistence, it finally was promised that there would be a landing in france, operation overlord. Another landing in the south of france, operation anvil. This would force hitler into a twofront war, he would have to fight in the west, too. There was a three or fourfront war going on because he was fighting in italy, the balkans, scandinavia. He had armies all over. The big three then met in tehran in november of 1943. Not only did the big three meet, but the combined chiefs of staff met there as well, meaning the military leaders of the british and the americans. You sort of see that the military matters were important as diplomatic matters for the postwar order. The polish issue was beginning to be discussed again. It was one of the chief issues. Polands boun dadaries, future government. This was an issue that divided d the powers east and west. When this conference went over churchill and roosevelt went to cairo and egypt and met shaand s continued into 1944. An important decision was made in tehran that the socalled European Advisory Commission would be established. European Advisory Commission became a very important diplomatic body, where essentially the boundaries for germany and postwar austria were being established. Important diplomats represented the United States. So an important decision coming out of tehran. At the quebec conference, the first one, the Prime Minister churchill and roosevelt also discussed nuclear weapons, the atopic bomb. They would say that this scientific effort, the achievements of which came to fruition at the end of the war, would remain an angloamerican monopoly and would not be shared by the soviets. That would be a sore point after the war, that monopoly, that information had not been shared with the soviets. If you think about these many diplomatic meetings prior to yalta, they were trying to decide on important issues like a new international organization, the u. N. , to replace the league of nations which had not been a particularly successful collective security organization. As i said, many of the issues were worked out. On the United Nations issue, such as a future General Assembly where the four policemen as roosevelt called them would govern the United Nations. Premiere powers in the world, United States, great britain, soviet union and china would sort of dominate as the four policemen of the United Nations. There would be a againGeneral Assembly where all will be represented. One of the sore points with the soviet was that the soviet union insisted they wanted to have all their 16 republics represented in the General Assembly, georgia, ukraine, whatever would be representing as individual states would be represented there. Churchill and roosevelt were not excited about that. Im not going to talk more about it. Im sure they will pick up that issue. The future of germany was a very important discussion part in all of these conferences. Namely, the decision that ge germany would be ak pie e occup military by the big three. There was an incident in tehran where they were talking about dena denazification. Stalin said, we need to kill 50,000 officers. Churchill was aghast at this. Roosevelt choked back, well, 49,000 is enough. Of course, nothing came off this. Of course, they had to talk about the future order of postwar germany in the sense of what are we going to do with all of the nazis . That was a very important subject matter. European Advisory Commission was established. Let me just mention one more thing that was very important at the quebec conference, late in 1944, the american secretary of the treasury insisted on a severe treatment of germany, namely that germany would be deindustrialized so it could not be a threat to the future of the world again. This socalled morganthal plan was accepted by churchill. When the state department heard it, they were aghast at the idea of deindustrialize germany because they knew germany was the center of the continental european economy and that germany deindustrialized would hurt everybody around them. This strange thing was then rejected later on by roosevelt and didnt come to fruition. We still dont know exactly how it came about, but one idea that has been discussed more recently was that this was actually a soviet idea and that high official in the Treasury Department was actually a soviet spy we think today. It might have come via him, this idea. Finally, one last important meeting before the yalta meeting is when churchill came to moscow in october of 1943. Of course, roosevelt couldnt come because he was in the middle of his Fourth Campaign for being reelected. In this meeting, the infamous percentage agreement was agreed upon by the two leaders. The percentage agreement said, this is something that apparently churchill wrote down on a napkin and roosevelt excuse me, stalin checked off the various percentages and they agreed upon them. But its really european diplomacy. This percentage agreement said that in the case of romania, the soviet union should have 090 ad grace, 90 influence for the british. In bulgaria, the soviets would have 75 influence. The west 25 . Notes that poland is not part of this agreement, czechoslovakia is not part of it. Austria is not part of it. Certainly in terms of the future influence taking in Eastern Europe, it was very important what was agreed upon by these two leaders in moscow. Did roosevelt know about it . Yes, he did, because harriman was reporting on the percentages. He reported back to washington. Since roosevelt did not outrightly reject the percentages, stalin was led to believe it was sort of an agreement between the big three. Ladies and gentlemen, i think im going to stop here. This is the outline of the preyalta conferences that took place where many of the important decisions that would figure at yalta on poland, on germany, on the postw