Tony SHARP. The Wartime Alliance and the Zonal Division of Germany. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1975. 220 p.

Tony SHARP. The anti-Hitler coalition and the division of Germany into .

Numerous monographs have been written about the events of the Second World War in our country and abroad. Soviet researchers and historians of fraternal socialist countries have recreated a true picture of the great battle against fascism, shown the decisive role of the USSR in the defeat of Hitler's Germany and its allies, and consistently expose bourgeois falsifiers. As for Western historiography, under the influence of the positive changes in international relations achieved in recent years and the recognition of the historical results of World War II, there is a certain tendency to revise the most reactionary assessments and concepts that emerged during the Cold War. In the 70s, some works were published in the West, the authors of which are taking certain steps to objectively cover the history of the last war.

Such works include the book by the English bourgeois liberal historian T. Sharp, devoted to the analysis of diplomatic negotiations between the USSR, the United States, Britain and France on the division of Hitler's Germany into zones of occupation. The successful conclusion of these negotiations, which took place at the end of the war, finally dispelled the Nazis ' hopes for a split in the anti-Hitler coalition, for the armies of the Western allies to clash with Soviet troops during offensive operations on the territory of the third Reich. The decisions taken by the participants in these negotiations largely determined the future development of events on the European continent.

The paper uses new archival materials of the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government departments, which have become available to researchers only recently. The facts found by the author convincingly refute the conclusions of bourgeois historiography on the issues under study, which were considered "unshakable" for a long time.

During the Cold War, reactionary historians propagated the theory that U.S. President Donald Trump was the first President of the United States. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister W. Churchill allegedly "missed the victory", having agreed in advance with the USSR on the zones of occupation of Germany, and thereby contributed to the post-war strengthening of socialism. In fact, as the author shows, it became clear to Western leaders after the radical change in the course of the war, carried out during the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk Bulge, that the Soviet Union was able to crush Nazism alone, without anyone's help, and therefore they found it more profitable to determine the zones of occupation of Germany in advance. One of the most prominent British diplomats frankly noted that "if, as a result of an unfavorable combination of circumstances, we (that is, the United States and England - A. B.) could not advance, say, beyond the Rhine, then we would at least have all the legal grounds to push the Russians from the west to the east of Germany" (p. 4).

Already at the beginning of 1943, the Western Allies began to develop joint plans for the upcoming occupation of Germany. However, as can be seen from the book, there were great doubts among British and American diplomats about whether the Soviet Union would meet the wishes of its allies, having real opportunities to occupy all of Germany. One of the documents prepared by the Foreign Office in early December 1943 stated that "the whole question is whether the Russians, with a huge army many times larger than the Anglo - American forces in Europe, will be content to occupy one - third of Germany" (pp. 52-53). Nevertheless, at the beginning of 1944, within the framework of the European Consultative Commission (ECC), established by the decision of the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers of the three powers in October 1943, negotiations began between representatives of the USSR, the United States and England on the upcoming

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division of German territory into three zones of occupation. These negotiations dragged on for a whole year and turned out to be much more difficult than initially expected by the participants.

The main difficulties were not caused by the Soviet side, as Anglo-American diplomacy claimed, but by bourgeois historiography following it, trying to hide the deep contradictions that existed throughout the war between the monopolistic circles of the United States and England and from time to time came to the surface, as well as to prove the impossibility of effective cooperation between states with different social systems. Using the example of negotiations on the zones of occupation of Germany, T. Sharp shows that the actual relations of the Western Allies among themselves had little in common with the atmosphere of "cordial agreement" and "trust"attributed to them. While the borders of the Soviet occupation zone were agreed upon without any complications at the very beginning of the negotiations, the definition of the American, British and French occupation zones required a long diplomatic effort and almost led the negotiations to a dead end due to serious differences, especially between the United States and Britain.

The American ruling circles put forward claims to the north-western part of Germany, which, in turn, was claimed by Great Britain. Roosevelt strongly opposed the transfer of the southwestern part of Germany to the United States, which the British side persistently sought. Behind the scenes of the diplomatic negotiations, the interests of the large monopolistic groups of the two capitalist states, which clashed over the possession of the industrial center of Germany, the Ruhr, were easily discerned. In one of the Foreign Office memoranda on this subject, it was frankly stated that " American control over most of the industrially developed area of the Reich (i.e., the north-west zone) will lead to the fact that the Americans will have a decisive influence on the future of Germany. They will advocate such projects for the development of German industry that will meet the interests of large American concerns" (p. 54). Naturally, London could not agree with this, and therefore the Anglo-American dispute over whose troops would occupy the north-western region of Germany took on a protracted character.

Despite repeated attempts by Soviet diplomacy to reconcile the warring parties and persuade them to come to a mutually acceptable agreement, the "Protocol on the Zones of Occupation of Germany and on the Administration of Greater Berlin" signed on September 12, 1944 defined only the borders of the Soviet occupation zone and did not lead to a settlement of Anglo-American differences. Only on November 14, 1944, during additional negotiations, the Western Allies were able to overcome the controversial issues on a compromise basis. The United States eventually had to agree to the southwestern part of Germany, receiving as compensation the port of Bremen and the surrounding area, located in the northwestern, British occupation zone, in order to supply the American armies that were to be stationed in the south-west of the country.

As can be seen from the monograph, the issue of granting an independent zone of occupation to France became the subject of acute disagreements between the Allies. This question was raised by the French National Liberation Committee to the British Government in the spring of 1944. On September 14, France, in an official note to the governments of the countries participating in the ECC negotiations, pointed out "the importance for France of everything related to the German problem" (p.101). France's legitimate desire not to stay out of the discussion of vital issues for it did not meet with support in London and caused a particularly negative reaction in Washington, especially from Roosevelt, whose hostility to France and personally to General de Gaulle was well known. On the contrary, the Soviet government, as, in particular, the results of the Soviet-French negotiations in December 1944 showed, was sympathetic to the desire of France to regain its rightful place in the circle of great powers and take part in the occupation of Germany. The clear and unambiguous position of the USSR on this issue to a certain extent forced the governments of the United States and Great Britain to reconsider their approach to the demands of France.

The British representative to the ECC, W. Strang, assessing the significance of the Soviet-French Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance signed on December 14, 1944, during General de Gaulle's visit to Moscow, anxiously informed the Foreign Office that "it would be regrettable to allow the Russians to get ahead of us again."

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The British leadership replied to Strang that the treaty concluded " leaves no doubt that the Soviets will support granting France a zone and a place in the control body." On December 15, 1944, A. I. gave instructions to the British representative in the EC. K agree in principle that France will sign the German surrender act, receive a separate zone of occupation, and participate in the control mechanism (p. 106). Soon, American diplomacy was forced to reconsider its position on this issue. In a memorandum to Roosevelt dated January 4, 1945, the US Secretary of State E. Stettinius proposed to meet the French demands, based mainly on the fact that Britain and the Soviet Union would support France, and then the United States "would be the only government that stood in the way of French aspirations." This document was approved by the President (p. 107). On January 29, 1945, the American Ambassador in London, J. R. R. Tolkien. Winant, who represented the United States at the ECC, was instructed by the State Department to support France's demands in principle.

The powerful Red Army offensive along the entire front, which began in mid-January 1945, forced the Western Allies to put aside their mutual differences. In London and Washington, the author notes, it was feared that the absence of an agreement on the zones of occupation of Germany would lead to "the fact that the Russians, having reached the border of their zone, would continue to move on" (p. 4). At the Yalta Conference of the heads of government of the USSR, the United States and Britain (February 4-12, 1945), the Allies finally agreed among themselves on the delimitation of occupation zones in Germany and came to a common opinion that "France should be given a zone in Germany formed from the British and American zones"1 .

The book also sheds some additional light on the unsuccessful attempts of the Western allies to revise the decisions agreed in Yalta and thereby change the current balance of power in Europe in their favor. In the last days of the war, plans were hatched in London and Washington to capture Berlin by US and British troops, although, as you know, the German capital was supposed to enter the Soviet occupation zone. Churchill, the main promoter of this idea, urged the American leadership that "it would be extremely important to shake hands with the Russians as far east as possible" (p. 131). But these plans were thwarted by the Red Army's last offensive of the war, which began on April 16, 1945, and ended with the fall of Berlin and the surrender of Hitler's Germany.

After the victory, the Western Allies delayed the withdrawal of their troops from the Soviet zone of occupation, hoping, in violation of the Yalta decisions, to establish new occupation borders based on the actual position of the armies at the end of hostilities, or at least to put pressure on the Soviet Union in certain issues. The Foreign Office prepared a special document that suggested using "the God-sent opportunity to push back the Russian zone under the pretext of settling the issue of the French zone" (p. 146). Specifically, it was about the transfer of Thuringia and part of Saxony from the Soviet to the Western occupation zones, although France, as you know, was decided to grant the zone at the expense of part of the territory of Germany, which is subject to occupation by British and American troops. But even these plans were not destined to come true. The firmness and determination shown by the Soviet government on the diplomatic front forced those who expected to negotiate with the USSR "from a position of strength"to retreat. The Western Allies had to fulfill their obligations.

T. Sharp's book is a remarkable phenomenon in bourgeois historiography. The author was able to objectively reveal one of the little-known pages of the history of the anti-Hitler coalition to the Western reader on the basis of reliable facts, which once again confirms the utter failure of bourgeois falsifiers.

A. Y. Borisov

1 "Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam". Collection of documents, Moscow, 1970, p. 196.

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