The Week in Review reported that the May meeting of the Big Four in Paris meant to settle the remaining unresolved issues of the War was likely to be postponed. Little progress on these issues had been made since the Potsdam Conference eight months earlier. The meeting of foreign ministers in September had resulted in stalemate. According to The Sunday Times there was some speculation that if the USSR remained intransigent in its demands, the US might enter into separate treaties with the former Axis nations, perhaps joined by England and France.
Several contentious issues remained. One was the fate of the Ruhr and Saar where German heavy industry had been concentrated. France wanted the areas to be detached from Germany and placed under international jurisdiction. The US and Britain agreed over the need for international controls but did not want Germany so economically weakened that it weakened all of Europe. The Soviets largely remained out of this one; these districts could be valuable if a united, Communist Germany should emerge in the postwar years but otherwise a weakened Germany would best serve Soviet interests.
Also at issue was the disposition of the Italian colonies in Africa and the Dodecanese Islands, which guarded the Aegean approach to the Bosporus. Trieste and the surrounding Italian territory presented another question. The Soviet Union wanted trusteeship of Tripolitania in western Libya, a Russian base in the Dodecanese and the transfer of Trieste to Yugoslavia. The Tripolitania gambit initially was seen as a Soviet bargaining chip to gain the Dodecanese base and control of the Bosporus but lately western diplomats suspected Russia might be making a serious play to have greater influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. At this point, in time, Libya, which had been incorporated into Italy before the war, was divided into zones occupied by the British and the French armies. Before the war, Italians made up about 12 percent of the Libyan population and another 4% was Jewish. Both groups were concentrated in and around Tripoli. At this time the British occupied the Dodecanese, which both Greece and Turkey wanted. The US and Britain supported the Greek claim and opposed a Soviet base in the islands.
Treaties also had to be finalized with the former Axis nations of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and with Finland. The treaties were complicated by American and British concerns over the level of Soviet influence in this region, which the Soviets claimed was a vital defense zone. At this time the Soviet army occupied both Hungary and Romania and a puppet state had been established in Bulgaria. A Soviet-imposed news blackout was in place. Romania where a Communist government had not yet been established, was being treated as an enemy combatant even though it had joined the Allied cause in 1944 after a coup overthrew the pro-Nazi government. As C.L. Sulzberger, a member of the family that owned The Times, reported in a separate article in this section, Bulgaria presented another problem because under the agreements reached at Potsdam, treaties could only be signed with democratic governments. Neither Britain or the US recognized the puppet government in Bulgaria as democratic. Also under the earlier agreed terms, as a Nazi ally, Bulgaria was to pay reparations to Greece and Yugoslavia but now the Soviet Union was pushing for special treatment for its satellite, freeing it from its obligations.
Finland was a special case. It had pursued a separate war with the Soviet Union, which had been the instigator. The Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939 immediately after the Nazis and the Soviets had signed a treaty agreeing that they would divide Europe between them. Finland, along with the Baltic states, Moldavia and eastern Poland were to be Stalin's prizes. The Communist Parties around the world instantaneously toned down their anti-Fascist rhetoric and in unison denounced Britain and the capitalists for trying to start an imperialist war with Hitler and Stalin over these border adjusments,. As the Nazis intensified their campaign of anti-Semitic atrocities, thousands of Young Communists and their sympathizers, many of them Jewish, rallied to keep America out of "Britain's war." Finland's fierce resistance came as a surprise to the USSR. The Soviets had far greater manpower but were hindered by a dearth of experienced officers many of whom Stalin had executed in one of his paranoid purges. Finland's Scandinavian neighbors and fellow democracies offered their sympathies but little else; with Hitler on the rise this was not a time for a war with Stalin. The Finns held back the Soviet onslaught but could not prevail on its own. They did well enough to retain their sovereignty after ceding territory in the subsequent peace treaty. Finland then cozied warily up to Germany, not from ideology but out of a desire not to become the Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. After the Soviets bombed 18 Finnish cities in 1941, the Finns declared war on the Soviet Union. The British declared war on Finland. The US officially stayed out of this particular conflict.
In a separate article in the section, Pulitzer Prize-winner James Reston wrote an analysis of the foreign policy issues for the administration inherent in the Paris talks.
The Paris Peace Conference was postponed until July. The treaties were signed in February 1947 restoring sovereignty to the former Axis states but saddling them with huge reparations, much of which was to go to the Soviet Union. The USSR swallowed up parts of Romania, Hungary and Finland. Bulgaria's reparation payments were significantly reduced. But the Soviet Union lost out in the Mediterranean with Libya becoming a sovereign state and the Dodecanese Islands transferred to Greece. .A French trusteeship was set up over the Saar. The Ruhr remained part of occupied Germany with restrictions placed on its industrial redevelopment. In short order, Hungary and Romania lost their sovereignty to their Soviet masters. Only Finland paid off its reparations in full.
The concessions made to the Soviets would be a rallying point for conservatives in the US, but at the time the western democracies were in no mood to go to war over these matters. The policy became one of keeping the Soviets contained within this ceded sphere. This containment policy also infuriated the domestic Stalinists who mounted vociferous protests in the coming years against US efforts to provide economic and military assistance to the non-Communist governments of Europe, They even attempted to organize strikes to block shipments of food or machinery to the western democracies, further isolating themselves from the American mainstream.