James F. Byrnes, the Secretary of State under President Roosevelt, was the unsung hero of the Big Three meetings between Roosevelt, Britain’s Winston’s Churchill, and Russia’s Joseph Stalin. Shuttling back and forth on diplomatic errands during their meetings in Yalta and Potsdam during WW II, he continued the work in the early years after the war as the issues turned from defeating Germany to reuniting it. Russia obstinately refused to go along with the reunification plan, citing fears that a consolidated Germany could once again loom as a threat. This was the background against which Byrnes began one of the final Big Three meetings.

On this day, November 25, in 1947, the London Council of Foreign Ministers, that included delegates from the three powers, as well as France, opened. Their main goal was to bring Germany together under one government.

The Russians wanted Germany in their sphere of influence, or failing that, at least out of the hands of the West. They proposed a unification of Germany without any American support; terms deemed unacceptable by the other allies. Byrnes reported from the meetings he was still optimistic the nations will find mutually acceptable terms. “I do believe that peace and political progress in international affairs as in domestic affairs depend upon intelligent compromise,” he wrote in his report. But he cautioned the President to remain committed to his terms: “Compromise … does not mean surrender, and compromise unlike surrender