Rendezvous with Destiny

(See Cover)

It was no longer a question after Moscow. The whole world, tongue aclack, waited only to hear when & where Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill would meet. The Nazi satellite radios guessed at everything but Mr. Roosevelt's room number. There was even talk that the Big Three might turn out to be a Big Four, with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek joining the historic rendezvous.

What Will They Talk About? When the President, the Prime Minister and the Premier-Marshal sit down with Pavlov, Stalin's brilliant interpreter who can take English shorthand notes of Russian conversation and vice versa, not they but History will decide the prime agenda of their talk. The course of history for a generation would be influenced by what they said. But as they began the Big Three would be driven no less than lesser men by the compulsions of History-past and History-present. Plainly, the first question which history poses to Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, the one on which the other answers all depend is: How to defeat Germany most swiftly?

The outlines of future Allied strategy may have been drawn at Casablanca and Quebec, but the kaleidoscope of the war leaves many a great military decision to be taken by the commanders in chief. Exactly when, exactly where and in how much force shall the "second front" be opened? Vast problems of supply must be worked out. A sample major accomplishment possible: the granting of Russian bases to U.S. and British airmen in western Russia, for the aerial destruction of eastern Germany and the industrial targets of the Balkans.

Another sample of the momentous decisions to be reached: it is definitely believed that before Christmas General George C. Marshall will go abroad to assume his supreme command of the Anglo-American armies, to direct the main attack on the German Fortress. On his staff are to be Russian officers, experienced in battling the Germans in the East. The Soviets can thus not only trade knowledge but can time their strategy more intimately. The plan is, further, for General Dwight D. Eisenhower to return to Washington as Chief of Staff, but not, he hopes, until he captures Rome. In the interim, Lieut. General Joseph T. McNarney is to be Acting Chief of Staff.

With the mass assault cross-channel thus coming on, the time is obviously near when the Allies must agree on how they shall deal with a defeated Germany. An Allied Council to govern Germany during the periods between military collapse and final peace terms, was reportedly agreed on in principle at Moscow. The complex details of its policy remain to be worked out. If the Big Three could agree on the broader terms of the peace, they could make great political moves. Item: they might issue a joint ultimatum to the German people, stating for the first time the detailed aftermath of surrender, thus trying to alienate them from Hitler, as Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points wedged between them and the Kaiser in 1918.