Attlee meets with Byrnes and Stettinius in Havana
Havana Conference were a series of negotiations between the Allies and the Soviet Union, held in late 1946 in the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales in Havana in Cuba to end the Second World War in Europe. The conference was attended by President James Byrnes and Secretary of State Edward Stettinius for the United States, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and foreign affairs minister Ernest Bevin for the United Kingdom and foriegn affairs minister Vyacheslav Molotov and ambassador to the United States Andrei Gromyko for the Soviet Union. On the insistence of the Cuban president Eleuterio Pedraza, he and the Cuban minister of foreign affairs José Manuel Cortina was also allowed to attend the conference, but was forbidden from participation in the negotiations. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was not present in Havana, but he had outlined the Soviet aims for the outcome of the conference to Molotov and Gromyko beforehand. France, the last major power on the Allied side, which had been at war with the Soviet Union since 1940 and reentered the war against Germany in 1944, was not invited. The negotiations resulted in a truce between the Allied and Soviet troops. The Allied powers also promised to recognise the government led by Erich Weinert, which had been installed in Germany by the Soviet Union after the fall of Berlin in 1946.
Background[]
In 1946, the Red Army entered Berlin and captured Rudolf Hess, who had been reconfirmed as Deputy Führer in a radio broadcast of Adolf Hitler's will shortly before, as he tried to flee the city. The remains of Hitler were found in his bunker shortly after and the following day the Soviet Union also announced the discovery of the dead body of Herman Göring, who was named Hitler's successor. This made Hess the de jure leader of the German Reich and as such he was forced by the Red Army to surrender to the Soviets and relieve all government powers to the provisional government under Erich Weinert, which had been established from the National Comittee for a Free Germany after the capture of the city. Hess obliged and signed the instrument of surrender before annoucing the surrender and transfer of government on radio.
Anton Ackermann, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the new German government, quickly announced the intention to end the war with the Allies through diplomatic means, which had been personally approved by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin earlier. The Allies had occupied Italy at that point, but in Germany only France had meaningful military presence, which occupied the west bank of the Rhine and parts of Switzerland, while the United Kingdom only recently landed in the Netherlands. In their discussion regarding the Ackermann's announcement, American President James Byrnes pressured British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to accept the offer and end the war in Europe so that the war effort can focus on Japan in the Pacific. Attlee agreed with the necessity of ending the war in Europe, but refused to recognise the new German goverment which he considered a Soviet puppet. He however agreed to negotiations with the Soviet Union and soon Bevin made this offer to the Soviet Union in a broadcast.
Stalin accepted the proposal and invited representatives of the Allied states to Potsdam in occupied Germany, but the British government refused and insisted that the conference should take place on the territory of a neutral country. Eleuterio Pedraza, President of Cuba, sensed an opportunity to improve relations with the major powers and the public opinion of him and offered location in Havana to the United States, who were to be a third party in the negotiations under British conditions. French leader Philippe Pétain was upset by the exclusion of France from the conference, initiating measures for a hopeful unilateral annexation of the Rhineland and parts of Romandy and Wallonia into France.
Negotiations[]
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American and Soviet delegates in Havana
The participants arrived in Havana a day early. The first day of the negotiations Bevin and Molotov signed an agreement under which a truce between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union and set the demarcation line to follow the Rhine and the Rhein-Herne and Dortmund-Ems canals. The Allies objected to majority of Germany falling under Soviet control, but Molotov and Gromyko insisted that Germany needed to be occupied as quickly as possible to prevent the self-proclaimed government of Heinrich Himmler from regrouping. In return, the Soviets agreed to adjustments to the western German border. On the second day, the fate of Germany was brought up again, with the Allies suggesting an international occupation. The Allies hoped that this would lead to a division of Germany with most of it falling into the western sphere of influence. The Soviet delegation, however, opposed any division of Germany and proposed Germany as an united neutral democratic state without an army. To counter the Allied proposal for a division of Germany Molotov proposed that Italy was also divided, which the British and American delegation rejected.
The attendees also discussed the fate of the rest post-war Europe. The Allies had already recognised the governments of Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece, who all emerged from partisan groups, but they were reluctant to recognise the new governments of the rest of Eastern Europe, who all were seen as puppet governments installed by the Soviet Union. Poland and Czechoslovakia proved to be especially problematic, as the United Kingdom still recognised the governments-in-exile of Władysław Raczkiewicz and Edvard Beneš as the legitimate governments of their respective countries. The Soviets on the other hand had little interest in the return of the exiled governments with Molotov calling them "past relics with little to no support from the people". In the end, an agreement was reached under which free elections would be held in the occupied nations of Central and Eastern Europe. The Polish and Czechoslovak governments-in-exile would be advised to negotiate a coalition government with the Soviet-installed governments in Warsaw and Prague. The Soviet delegation also suggested that a free election should also be organised in France, which fought alongside the Allies despite Pétain's authoritaritarian regime. Denmark and Norway, both still under German occupation at the time of the conference, would see the return of their pre-war governments, as would Sweden. As part of the agreement, the Allies also recongnised the Weinert government of Germany so that the later peace negotiations could follow.
Aside from the Soviet promise for changes to the western border of Germany, little territorial changes were negotiated in Havana. The Allies refused to recognise the proposed eastern border of Germany, which was agreed on by the Soviet Union and the communist governments of Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia as well as the expansion of the Soviet Union's border westwards. The Soviet delegation was unwilling to revise these borders and the question of post-war borders was postponed until the peace conference. The Soviets however agreed to the return of Zadar and parts of the Julian March to Yugoslavia, while the Allies agreed to awarding Northern Transylvania to Hungary. The question of war reparations was also brought up at the conference, but was also ultimately postponed until the peace negotiations.
Near the end of the conference, President Byrnes suggested to Attlee that the Soviet Union should be invited to the planned United Nations, but Attlee refused this proposal.