Chapter 1 – The Blenheim Conference
Woodstock, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
23rd April – 14th May 1960
Woodstock, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
23rd April – 14th May 1960
Germany's surrender on the 12th of March 1960 brought more than 20 years of war in Europe to an end, achieved by the combined might of the United States and the British Commonwealth. In the immediate aftermath, Europe was a devastated, starving and diseased mess. As much destruction had been wrought by fighting as had been done by the SS on their retreat, purposely destroying the physical support mechanisms to sustain life as well as the cultural and spiritual elements of Western Civilization.
It was a mess that needed to be cleared up. Rough details on the post-war world had been drawn up at the 1959 Montreal Conference but final decisions still needed to be made as the situation on the ground made itself clear [1]. It was decided that the major Allied leaders would meet after the war to hash out outstanding matters including the borders of Europe and how Germany was to be treated. Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire was selected as the location for the conference as the region had seen little bomb damage during the war and the location could be easily secured [2]. The United Kingdom would act as host nation.
Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The venue for the post-war Allied Conference.
On the 21st of April 1960, just over a month after the end of the war in Europe, the presidential Lockheed C-121 Constellation aircraft used by President Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. touched down at RAF Heathrow in Middlesex [3]. Greeting him on the runway was British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden. The arrival of the other major Allied leaders (or the "Big Five" as they were sometimes informally known) from Canada, Australia and India arrived in the UK over the next two days with Prime Minister Nehru of India arriving last, late in the evening of the 22nd.
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., 34th President of the United States
Sir Anthony Eden, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Jawaharal Nehru, Prime Minister of India
Louis St. Laurent, Prime Minister of Canada
Sir Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia
In March of 1960, the map of Europe had seven Allied army groups laid on top of it:
- US 11th Army Group
- US 12th Army Group
- US 14th Army Group
- US 15th Army Group
- Commonwealth 12th Army Group
- British 21st Army Group
- British 22nd Army Group [4]
Most of France was under American occupation whilst Commonwealth armies occupied the Low Countries and most of Eastern Europe. The Balkan states who had allied themselves with Germany surrendered with hardly a shot fired in Operation Crossroad, many of them keeping their armies mobilised until the Allies found spare forces to oversee their surrender. Italy, who had jumped ship in December 1958, occupied a few Austrian mountain passes yet as a former Axis nation they still weren't entirely trusted. Their 22nd and 23rd Divisions who had taken part in that campaign were sent home as soon as the Brazilian 4th Infantry Brigade took their place on the 15th of April.
Despite the war being over, the dying was not. Over 1,000 Allied troops would be killed in "Werewolf" attacks, guerrilla saboteurs created in case of a Nazi defeat to "continue the European struggle", over the remaining nine months of 1960 with most estimates putting the German death toll from these actions at nearly 20,000 [5]. Similar actions took place against fascist insurgents in France, which was stuck in a constitutional limbo with the mainland under Allied military occupation, a fact which infuriated Charles de Gaulle, leader of "Free France" in control of most of the French colonial empire sans Indochina. De Gaulle was not invited to Blenheim, further incensing him.
Charles de Gaulle, Leader of Free France
The conference began on the 23rd of April. Rebuilding the smouldering ruin that was Europe would be a daunting task that would take years if not generations, if full recovery was even possible. As the conference panned out, it became clear that the British and American leaders dominated the talks with Australia and Canada defaulting to their more senior allies whilst India acted as something of a break on London and Washington's more draconian plans.
The stated Allied goals for Europe were "denazification and democratization."
To reconstruct Europe, the continent was divided into regions under the oversight of an "Allied Protecting Power." This was whichever power happened to have the most forces stationed in the region as of the 12th of March, to whom all other Allied forces stationed there would take orders from. For Poland and Norway, this was the United States. The Low Countries and most of the rest of the former Soviet territories fell under British control. Much to de Gaulle's fury, France fell under American oversight. Whilst the Balkans fell under British protection, London's influence there was limited by commitments in other areas. Germany meanwhile was to be under collective Allied occupation.
The first item on the agenda was Poland, the reason the war had begun in the first place. The British government was insistent that, at a minimum, Poland's 1939 borders should be restored and all German settlers in the country should be expelled, echoing the position of the Polish government-in-exile. This was accepted by all other attendees, including the Americans who had three divisions stationed in Poland to keep the peace. Free elections were also to be held in the country "as soon as the social and security situation allows."
In Western Europe, the situation was only slightly easier to deal with than Poland, if only because the region hadn't been subjected to genocide for 20 years. The independence of Luxembourg was restored whilst the governments-in-exile of all three of the Benelux countries would be restored to power until free elections could be held. The only region in Western Europe to not immediately be restored to pre-war borders was Alsace-Lorraine, which was to be treated as part of occupied Germany. This was largely due to the lack of sympathy the "Big Five" held towards France given the hostility of French forces and civilians to Allied liberation. Regarding the goal of democratization, the situation on the ground made it likely that France would take longer than the Low Countries to restore to civilian rule, with an ongoing fascist insurgency in France and the general hostility towards the Allies among the population.
Germany was the easy part. The country's expansions since 1937 were immediately reversed and returned to their pre-war administrators (minus Alsace-Lorraine). This included reversing the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, which was treated by the Allies much the same as any other part of the Reich. Additionally, East Prussia was to be carved up between Poland and a restored Lithuania. A further chunk of southern Silesia was given to Poland. Additionally, all Nazi laws were to be abolished and Nazi institutions were immediately outlawed and disbanded. Furthermore, Germany was to be completely stripped of the ability to wage war. For some, this meant total deindustrialization. Eventually this was ruled out as impractical. Still, given the state of the country they weren't going to be producing much anyway.
The Balkans were the hardest region to decide on what to do with. The borders of the region hadn't altered since the Second Vienna Award in 1940 and the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941. During that time period, a series of brutal population shifts had taken place in areas whilst outright genocide occurred in others (most infamously Croatia). The region was almost always brewing with some kind of conflict, with German mediation needed to prevent a border incident between Hungary and Romania escalating into war in 1952. After the war's end, the area fell under the responsibility of the United Kingdom as "Allied Protecting Power." Taking advantage of America's "Right of Self Determination" doctrine, the Brits unveiled their plan for the region, which largely consisted of leaving the borders of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece as well newly liberated Serbia, Albania and Montenegro as they were. In the words of Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan "One world war from there is enough." Whilst appearing to legitimise the Nazi and fascist border changes of the 40s, the plan was accepted. Namely because the British had so few troops in the region and didn't want to set a precedent for border disputes resulting in war [6]. With India supporting the plan, the other 3 Allies accepted it. For their part, the new leaders of the Balkan countries were happy to go along with this plan as well.
With all major decisions wound up, the conference came to a close on the 14th of May, just two days before the results of Britain's first post-war general election were announced.
Footnotes
- [1] Roughly akin to OTL's Yalta Conference.
- [2] Like in OTL, the main area of Oxford isn't heavily targeted by Hitler or Himmler as there were more important military targets to strike, and London would make for a larger civilian strike. The end result is that Oxford is one of the most undamaged UK cities ITTL.
- [3] Known in OTL as Heathrow Airport, more on that in a future chapter.
- [4] Having read over the main timeline again, I'm fairly sure this is right. Please let me know otherwise.
- [5] As mentioned in Chapter 61 of CalBear's timeline.
- [6] Similar to OTL's convention on maintaining the colonial borders in Africa post-independence.
Comments?
EDIT: List of chapters on the first post, including chapters soon to come.
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