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Volume V · Page 13
| this criticism was directed
against the expulsion clause or the demanded oath of allegiance. At any rate
what is important is that the United States never revoked the order. As the last important precedent, showing the British views on the problem of admissibility of annexations during a war, is the British statement on the annexation of Polish territory by the Russians in 1939. This annexation was recognized as legal while the war was still on. In his book, "Frankly Speaking", the former Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, quotes a remark which British Prime Minister Churchill made at the Yalta conference, which was printed as follows in the New York Herald Tribune (European edition), of 18 October 1947: |
“Prime Minister Churchill pointed out, that he supported the Curzon line and the Soviet Union's claim for Lemberg [Lvov] in Parliament. The Soviet Union's claim, he said, ‘is not founded on violence but on right’.” |
| If two countries do the same thing,
each annexing parts of a fully occupied country which has ceased to be a
powerful factor, then this is regarded as lawful in one case and unlawful in
the other, according to whether this identical act was committed by an ally or
an enemy. Another case seems a particularly good example. In the Potsdam Agreement of 2 August 1945 the Big Four recognized the Soviet Union's annexation of the northern part of the German province of East Prussia, including Koenigsberg (Meyer-Hetling 65 and 66, Meyer-Hetling Exs. 65 and 66). It is true that certain reservations were phrased in such general terms that they can at best be regarded as resolutive clauses. Anyhow, they were meanwhile eliminated because of the way in which the other parts of the agreement treated the annexation as final throughout. This is particularly clearly demonstrated by the way in which the Soviet elections were carried out against which neither the British nor the Americans raised objections. The annexation of the German province of East Prussia at a time when the armies of one of Germany's allies — Japan — were still in the field, is therefore no different from the annexation of Polish territory by the Soviet Union and Germany in October 1939. Against the argument that there was this difference between the two annexations, that at the time the Potsdam Agreement was concluded, Japan's surrender was imminent, it must be said that in 1939-40 Germany and her then friend, the Soviet Union, were likewise the undisputed lords of the European continent. As things were then nobody could have expected that the restoration of Poland through British armies landing on the continent would ever become a reality. |
