The East-West Procedural Conflict over the 1946 Paris Peace Conference

Abstract

The article presents the procedure for the conclusion of peace treaties with the five former satellites of Nazi Germany after the end of the Second World War. The paper uses the methodology of the historical and legal analysis. The focus is on the accessible State Department archives for the Potsdam Conference of the Big Three, the first session of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London, and the December 1945 conference of the Foreign Ministers of the USSR, the United States, and the United Kingdom in Moscow. The negotiations between the three Great Powers leading to the decision to hold the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 are examined. Conclusions are made about how the USA, the United Kingdom and the USSR did not spare efforts to maintain complete control over the process without allowing other powers to interfere.