Cessation (1947)

The Cessation was the end of hostilities in the First Euro-American War, declared at 12:00 GMT on 4 March 1947 by the United States and the European Federation in identical declarations read at the same minute in Washington and Prague. Each government declared that its forces would stop firing and hold the positions they occupied. Nothing was signed, and no peace treaty followed; an exchange of notes through Bern provided for the exchange of prisoners and the marking of the lines. The lines of the Cessation, including the division of Canada, were the frontiers of the Kaltkrieg until 2022.

Background

By the end of 1946 the American armies had been driven from France and the Low Countries and had evacuated Brittany and the Biscay coast. On 11 August 1946 the Federation tested a nuclear weapon at Reggane in the Sahara and sent a film of the test to Washington with a demand for a cessation of hostilities. President Wesley Pruitt did not reply, and on 11 September a Federation bomber destroyed Norfolk, Virginia, with a second weapon, killing about 100,000 people. The Federation informed Washington that a third would be ready in December. Pruitt died on 2 November 1946, and his successor, Everett Crane, had opposed the cost of the war. The United States had no nuclear weapon of its own until 1949.

Bern talks

On Crane's instructions, an American envoy, Lowell Kittredge, met the Federation's envoy, Johan Brink, eleven times in a hotel in Bern in January and February 1947, with the Swiss government as host. Neither government acknowledged the meetings as negotiations. The two envoys agreed the text of a declaration and the time at which it would be read.

Declarations

At 12:00 GMT on Tuesday 4 March 1947 Crane in Washington and the President of the Federation's Council of Ministers, Pieter Roosmalen, in Prague read the same declaration, which stated that the forces of each would cease fire and hold where they stood, and that the United States would withdraw its forces from the Iberian peninsula and the Portuguese and Spanish islands by the end of 1947. The Federation's forces in Canada received the order by radio at 07:00 local time.

Bern Notes

Notes exchanged through Bern in 1947 and 1948, known as the Bern Notes, provided for the exchange of prisoners and for a joint survey of the lines. About 510,000 American prisoners held by the Federation and about 610,000 European and Canadian prisoners held by the United States were exchanged through Reykjavík and Lisbon between 1947 and 1949. About 41,000 prisoners died in captivity after the Cessation.

Lines

In Europe the United States withdrew from Portugal and Spain during 1947; the last American troops left Lisbon in December. The Spanish State fell in 1948, and both countries joined the European Federation in 1951. In the Atlantic the Federation held Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, Newfoundland and St Pierre and Miquelon, and the United States held Bermuda and the Caribbean territories it had taken in 1940.

In Canada the line ran from Georgian Bay up the French River, across Lake Nipissing and down the Mattawa to the Ottawa, then up the Ottawa and Lake Timiskaming and north along the boundary between Ontario and Quebec to James Bay. It was surveyed jointly between 1947 and 1949 and marked with concrete pillars every kilometre on land and buoys on the water. The Mattawa Line House was built at the confluence of the Mattawa and the Ottawa in 1949 for the exchange of prisoners.

Legacy

No peace treaty between the European Federation and the United States was ever concluded. The two powers kept the lines of 1947 for 75 years, and went to war again in February 2022 (see Second World War).

See also

• First Euro-American War
• Kaltkrieg
• Mattawa Line House