Talk:Quebec Agreement

Secret agreement with Hans von Halban?

It is claimed that there was a "secret agreement with Hans von Halban to share nuclear information with France after the war in exchange for free use of a number of patents related to nuclear reactors and filed by Frédéric Joliot-Curie and his Collège de France team". Is there a source for that? It sounds unlikely that there would have been an agreement with one man to share nuclear secrets with another country.Royalcourtier (talk) 23:42, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Hewlett and Anderson The New World (1962), p. 332, have this to say:

Halban and Kowarski, who had brought Joliot's heavy water to England, had a special relationship. After prolonged negotiations, they had assigned their rights in past and future inventions to Britain. Halban further undertook to try to have the French Government assign Britain all rights in the patents it held. In return, Britain pledged herself to reassign to France all rights for metropolitan France and the French Empire in the Halban-Kowarski patents, in patents that the physicists might apply for on information which they brought with them from France, and in future patents they might obtain which were dominated by any of the others.

Sir John [Anderson] argued that the United States and Britain could not treat the French scientists as prisoners. Besides, whatever was done, the information eventually would reach Joliot and the French authorities. By virtue of the pioneering researches of her scientists and their help during the war, France had a better claim than any fourth country to participate in postwar arrangements. How far that claim should be recognized, if at all, was a matter for the signatories of the Quebec Agreement to decide at an appropriate time. Meanwhile, it seemed unwise to take action which might give French officials a sense of grievance and lead them to raise their claims prematurely.

When Groves saw the aide-memoire, he was astonished. He had never heard of these British obligations. Neither had Bush. In August, 1942, Anderson had written to Bush that Britain had acquired the rights of Halban and Kowarski and had taken steps to acquire the rights of other French inventors associated with them, but he had not indicated that Britain had agreed in return to extend certain rights to the French Government. The situation was awkward. At Quebec in 1943, Churchill had proposed and Roosevelt had agreed that neither partner should pass information to third parties without obtaining the consent of the other. Yet no one on the British side had taken that occasion to make clear the fact that prior obligations existed.

See also Groves Now It Can Be Told (1962), pp. 224-228. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:35, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Hyde Park Agreement misfiled

It is frankly implausible that the existence of the Hyde Park Agreement could have been overlooked because a copy at Hyde Park had been filed where it ought to have been - under Tube Alloys! The agreement was between heads of government, copies would have been held by the governments. There would not have been a single copy filed or misfiled in "Hyde Park" - as the article confirms. What is the source of the claim that the Agreement was overlooked?

In the Wikipedia article on High Explosive Research it is stated that "Even then, Groves questioned the document's authenticity until the American copy was located years later in the papers of Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, Jr., Roosevelt's naval aide, apparently misfiled by someone unaware of what Tube Alloys was, who thought it had something to do with naval guns". That sounds more plausible.Royalcourtier (talk) 23:55, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

In the High Explosive Research article I cited Hewlett and Anderson The New World (1962), pp. 457–458, which reads:

The aide-memoire Roosevelt and Churchill had signed at Hyde Park in September, 1944, specified full collaboration after the defeat of Japan. But this informal document was even less substantial than the Quebec Agreement. When Sir Henry Maitland-Wilson of the Combined Policy Committee asked about it some two months after Roosevelt's death, the American copy could not be found. Some years later it turned up in the files of Admiral Wilson Brown, Roosevelt's naval aide. Apparently someone had looked at the heading, "Tube Alloys," and concluded the paper dealt with naval supplies.

Hewlett and Anderson are the official historians of the Atomic Energy Commission. They also found a copy of the Hyde Park agreement among Roosevelt's own papers. (p. 659) I don't know how many copies there were. The photocopy the British supplied is in the National Archives in College Park today. Note that the Quebec Agreement was a secret until 1954.

In his book Now It Can Be Told (1962), pp. 401-402, Groves had this to say:

British representatives in Washington had begun urging the preparation of an agreement to provide for postwar nuclear collaboration between the United States and the United Kingdom as far back as the spring of 1945. In later discussions on the subject after President Roosevelt's death, the British representatives on the Combined Policy Committee suddenly brought to our a1tention a document they referred to as the Hyde Park aide-memoire. They told us that this paper summarized a conversation that they believed took place between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at Hyde Park on September 18, 1944. This was the first intimation we had had of the existence of any such document, and I got the impression that the regular British representatives in Washington were every bit as surprised at its sudden emergence on the scene as we were.

Despite numerous thorough searches, we were unable to discover any trace of the aide-memoire in any American files. Neither were we able to find any American who remembered seeing it or hearing of it. We were told that Churchill thought the agreement had been handed to Admiral Leahy, but Leahy said he recalled nothing in the form of an agreement and further that he recalled no discussion of any kind on atomic energy during the Hyde Park visit. (Apparently he failed to consult his notes, for his book on the war years, I Was There, gave an account of a long discussion On atomic energy on the evening of September 19, between President Roosevelt and Churchill, although it did not mention the agreement.)

While the mutual confidence which had prevailed throughout the war continued undiminished, we were completely mystified by the British references to this document. I am sure that, on their part, the British must have been annoyed by our insistence that we could find no copy of what they considered to be a valid and binding agreement. Where was it? Why had President Roosevelt never told any of us about this highly important document? This still remains a mystery.

At our request, Secretary Stimson was furnished with a copy of this paper by Field Marshal Wilson. Later Mr. Churchill sent us a photostatic copy of the original for our permanent records. Not until many years later, when the Roosevelt papers were being catalogued at Hyde Park, was the mystery of the whereabouts of the missing Hyde Park aide-memoire finally cleared up. At that time, a copy of it was found in a file of papers pertaining to naval matters. The misfiling was due, I suppose, to the fact that the paper referred to Tube Alloys, the British code name for the atomic project, and the file clerk must have thought it had something to do with ship boiler tubes. Just how such an important and highly secret paper could have been handed over for routine filing no one has been able to explain. Such a mistake, under less propitious conditions, could have had disastrous results.

Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:19, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Truman stated afterwards almost certainly truthfully that he had been unaware of the British contribution to the Manhattan Project and that if he had been aware he would have specifically excluded the UK and Canada from being included by the terms of the 1948 McMahon Act. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.52 (talk) 09:22, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Can't be true, as he knew about it before McMahon introduced his version of the bill. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:45, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Quebec Agreement/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Display name 99 (talk · contribs) 21:44, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm starting this review now. I've done a preliminary reading of about half the article. It looks very good and is something I could imagine seeing as an FAC in the future. I should be back with an update and any necessary comments within a day or two. Display name 99 (talk) 21:44, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

This article is extremely well done. I confess I'm not very knowledgeable on the topic, but I can't find any issues. Therefore, I'm going to go ahead and promote it. Display name 99 (talk) 14:33, 17 January 2018 (UTC)