Quebec Conference

Quebec Conference name of two meetings held in Quebec, Canada, in World War II. The first meeting (Aug., 1943) was attended by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King of Canada, and Foreign Minister T. V. Soong of China. An important step toward unified Allied command was taken when the China-Burma-India theater of operations was created under the command of Lord Mountbatten. The United States extended limited recognition to Charles de Gaulle's French Committee of National Liberation. Approval was accorded to the Allied military plans for a landing in France; these plans were communicated to Marshal Stalin later in the year at the Tehran Conference. The second Quebec Conference (Sept., 1944), attended by Roosevelt, Churchill, and their chief military advisers, was concerned with the broad strategy of the war and with the future of Germany.

QUADRANT, codename for the first Quebec conference held from 17 to 24 August 1943 to discuss future Allied strategy (see Grand Alliance). Churchill, Roosevelt, and their diplomatic and military advisers were present. They endorsed COSSAC's outline plan for the Normandy landings (see OVERLORD) and approved the artificial harbours to be used there (see MULBERRIES); raised, for the first time, the possibility of the French Riviera landings to coincide with OVERLORD; decided to bypass the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul; and formed a new theatre of war, South-East Asia Command, with Mountbatten as its supreme commander. They also considered a scheme to build a huge carrier from ice (see HABAKKUK), listened to Brigadier Wingate expound his methods of warfare in the Burma campaign, and agreed to pressure Spain to discontinue supplying tungsten to Germany, and to withdraw its Blue Division from the German–Soviet war. Other business included the signing of the secret Quebec agreement by Churchill and Roosevelt. This regulated the procedures for co-operation between the UK and USA regarding the development and production of the atomic bomb in which it was agreed, inter alia, that neither would employ a nuclear weapon against the other; that it would never be used against a third party without mutual consent; and that mutual consent was also required before a third party was given any information that would help that party produce an atomic bomb. See also diplomacy.

OCTAGON, codename for the second Quebec conference held from 12 to 16 September 1944 to discuss future Allied strategy (see Grand Alliance). Present were Churchill and Roosevelt, and their diplomatic and military advisers. Churchill offered a British fleet (see Task Force 57) to operate with the Americans in the Pacific war. The president, having earlier overridden Admiral King's objections, replied that ‘the British Fleet was no sooner offered than accepted.’ The post-war division of Germany into occupation zones was agreed (see Allied Control Commissions) and the Morgenthau Plan for its deindustrialization discussed. It was also agreed that the UK would continue to receive Lend-Lease as long as the war with Japan continued. See also diplomacy.