Paris Peace Treaties, 1947
The Paris Peace Treaties (French: Traités de Paris) were signed on 10 February 1947 following the end of World War II in 1945. The Paris Peace Conference lasted from 29 July until 15 October 1946. The victorious wartime Allied powers (principally the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, United States, and France) negotiated the details of peace treaties with those former Axis powers, namely Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland, which had switched sides and declared war on Germany during the war. They were allowed to fully resume their responsibilities as sovereign states in international affairs and to qualify for membership in the United Nations.[note 1] Nevertheless, the Paris Peace Treaties avoided taking into consideration the consequences of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whose secret clauses included the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the occupation of the Baltic States, and the annexation of parts of Finland and Romania. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact changed the borders agreed after the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), and was signed on August 23, 1939. One week later, World War II started with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, followed three weeks later by the Soviet invasion of Poland, which was completely erased from the map. In the following years, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union changed the borders established by the peace treaties at the end of World War I.
For other uses of "Paris Peace Conference", see Paris Peace Conference (disambiguation).Type
Multilateral treaties
10 February 1947
15 September 1947
United Kingdom
Soviet Union
United States
France- "Party to the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Japan"[1]
Italy- "Ally of Hitlerite Germany"[2]
Romania
Hungary
Bulgaria
Finland
All signatories
The settlement elaborated in the peace treaties included payment of war reparations, commitment to minority rights, and territorial adjustments including the end of the Italian colonial empire in North Africa, East Africa, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Albania, as well as changes to the Italian–Yugoslav, Hungarian–Czechoslovak, Soviet–Romanian, Hungarian–Romanian, French–Italian, and Soviet–Finnish borders. The treaties also obliged the various states to hand over accused war criminals to the Allied powers for war crimes trials.[3]
Political clauses[edit]
The political clauses stipulated that the signatory should "take all measures necessary to secure to all persons under (its) jurisdiction, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, the enjoyment of human rights and of the fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression, of press and publication, of religious worship, of political opinion and of public meeting."
No penalties were to be visited on nationals because of wartime partisanship for the Allies. Each government undertook measures to prevent the resurgence of fascist organizations or any others "whether political, military or semi-military, whose purpose it is to deprive the people of their democratic rights".
The war reparation problem proved to be one of the most difficult arising from post-war conditions. The Soviet Union, the country most heavily ravaged by the war, felt entitled to the maximum amounts possible, with the exception of Bulgaria, which was perceived as being the most sympathetic of the former enemy states. (Bulgaria was part of the Axis but did not declare war on the Soviet Union). In the cases of Romania and Hungary, the reparation terms as set forth in their armistices were relatively high and were not revised.
War reparations at 1938 prices, in United States dollar amounts:
Aftermath[edit]
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s did not lead to any renegotiation of the Paris Peace Treaties. However, in 1990 Finland unilaterally cancelled the restrictions the treaty had placed on its military.[8]