II. OUR RIGHT TO REPARATIONS
Our formal right to reparations from Germany is based
upon decisions twice adopted by the Allies: everybody
remembers the decisions taken at Potsdam and, still earlier,
in the Crimea.
The Crimea protocol, as is known, was signed by the
heads of the Governments of the United States of America,
Great Britain and the Soviet Union. At the Crimea confer-
ence the United States agreed to accept as a> basis for dis-
cussion a proposal for the payment of reparations to the
Soviet Union in the amount of 10 billion dollars. Only
Great Britain refrained from expressing her view on this
question. At the Crimea conference both the Government of
the United States and the Government of Great Britain
accepted it as indisputable that there should be reparations
in the form of annual goods deliveries from Germany. This
point did not raise any doubt on the part of any participant
of the Crimea conference.
It is sometimes said nowadays that the Potsdam (Berlin)
decisions cancelled the decisions adopted at the Crimea
conference. This is merely an arbitrary interpretation of
the Potsdam decisions, which cannot be substantiated. The
Crimea conference decision on reparations has not been
cancelled. Show us where it says in the Potsdam conference
decisions that the Crimea conference decision on repa-
rations is cancelled. It isn't there. Consequently, the Crimea
conference decision remains in force.
More, the Potsdam decision directly states that it is
adopted "in accordance with the Crimea conference deci-
sion." And in another place it says that "the purpose of
this agreement is to carry out the Crimea Declaration on
Germany."
This reference in the Potsdam conference decisions
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