IntO Three Parts

The European Advisory Commission's first big job--a chart for dividing conquered Germany among U.S., British, Russian occupation armies--was practically finished last week. Five months of brainwork in London had produced a tentative, deceptively simple plan:

P: The Red Army to control everything east of the River Elbe.

P: The British to administer the area between the Elbe and the Low Countries.

P:The U.S. to run the southern regions, including predominantly Catholic Baden, Wurttemberg, Bavaria.

P:Berlin, perhaps all Austria, to be under a jointly staffed, three-flag occupation.

The Secret Three. Created at the Moscow Conference (Hull, Eden, Molotov), the Advisory Commission began work last December in London's barnlike Lancaster House, overlooking flat, shady Green Park. The commissioners: Lincolnesque U.S. Ambassador John Gilbert Winant; cautious, deadpan Russian Ambassador Fedor Gusev; the British Foreign Office's lanky, tireless Sir William Strang.

Ambassadors Winant and Gusev worked as part-time Commissioners, but for Sir William it was a full-time job. Ethnographers, geographers, military advisers worked too. At Moscow's insistence, the Commission functioned in deepest secrecy. Even the name of the chief of the Russian advisory staff was withheld.

The Commission's plan looked practical --on paper. But there were several catches. The Commission was set up as a quasi-permanent, experimental extension of the Moscow Conference. It could make plans, but the plans had to be approved by the Big Three Governments.

The Confused Three. Lack of authority to make even minor decisions slowed the Commission to hopscotch pace. Gusev could not agree with Winant on any point without asking Moscow. Usually he got a Soviet counterproposal which Winant had to stall until he could hear from Washington. In spite of all the machinery set up for collaboration, the final collaborators remained the Big Three's Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin). There were signs of real progress toward concrete agreement (see p. 12). If so, the progress was made outside of the Advisory Commission.

Over all stood the painful fact that there was no clear understanding between the Big Three as to exactly what problems the Commission should consider. Russia submitted only military plans; Britain posed civil, economic as .well as military matters; the U.S. offered no specifications, only general "observations." Sample, reported by the London Sunday Observer: Russia proposed to make reconstruction gangs of the whole German Army. The U.S. and Britain declined to consider it, saying that they were bound by the Hague convention which outlaws such proposals.

Europe's smaller nations--Belgium, The Netherlands, et al--which had their own plans, felt that they had been ignored. Gaullist France, never willing to accept a place with "small nations," was also to be heard from. And so were the Germans.

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