A constructed Peace The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963

The basic idea was that if concessions had to be made, even if Berlin itself had to be abandoned, it was vital that West Germany not be lost in the process. That meant that France had to take a tough line--or more precisely, that France had to appear to take a tough line. The Germans must not come to feel that the West had broken faith with them. They needed to be carried along: they themselves had to agree that the West had little choice but to make those concessions if war was to be avoided. What the French objected to was what they saw as the British policy of giving away too much too quickly. As Couve put it in early 1959, Berlin was an albatross, and it would perhaps have been better never to have gone into the city in the first place. But a withdrawal now would mean the collapse of western policy. It was clear, he said, that the western powers were about to enter into "a very long negotiation" with the Russians, and all hope for a relatively successful outcome depended on allied firmness at the outset. "We can be flexible in the course of the negotiations," he said, but it would be a grave mistake, he thought, to start out from a "position of weakness."⁹⁷⁶

The French government was thus not opposed to talks with the USSR. "With regard to the German question," de Gaulle himself said in early 1959, "one must accept a negotiation." He was "not opposed to a summit conference." He in fact "hoped that there would be a conference" on the German question as a whole. In October, he was calling for a summit conference to be held about seven months later.⁹⁷⁷ De Gaulle's main subordinates were more explicit about what the French had in mind. Debré thought just after the collapse of the Paris Summit Conference in May 1960 that since force was out of the question, and economic counter-measures would not be very effective, the West should "as soon as we could without a great loss of face" resume negotiations, perhaps at the foreign minister or ambassadorial level.⁹⁷⁸ Couve in August 1961 said that deciding what the West was prepared to do in these talks was a "disagreeable responsibility which had to be faced."⁹⁷⁹ The French view, as he bluntly pointed out to his British and American counterparts (but in the absence of the Germans, as he observed), was that "we obviously had to try to make a deal and this involved giving something away." The problem was how to bring the Germans along. At present, there was a gap between what the Germans could accept and what the three western powers "might wish to propose." As the crisis set in, the German position might change. But no one could tell what the German attitude would be "when it came to the real trial."⁹⁸⁰ Even in September 1961, when Secretary of State Rusk was about to begin talks with Gromyko, Couve noted that those talks "would constitute real negotiations." He believed in the idea of direct, bilateral talks that would deal with substantive issues, and said that Rusk could proceed "with the general support of all."⁹⁸¹

As for de Gaulle himself, in his own meeting with Rusk on August 8, he took what was at first glance a much tougher line. The western powers, he pointed out, could have said simply that they were in Berlin by right, and that they would maintain their position in Berlin, by force if necessary. If the Americans had taken that course, "we would have been with you." The policy of pressing for negotiations was "not our way." But in practically the same breath, he told Rusk that France did not object to what America was doing. "Please go on with your probing," he said, "we have nothing against it. Tell us if you find some substance in these negotiations and we shall join you."⁹⁸² To British and American officials, it seemed increasingly that de Gaulle wanted to have it both ways: to allow the search for a settlement to proceed, but to avoid taking responsibility for the sacrifices that would have to be made.

The French government was thus thinking in terms of a negotiated settlement, and in fact in terms of concessions that the West might eventually have to make. De Gaulle differed with his allies--first with the British, and then, from late 1961 on, with the Americans as well--on tactics. To appear too eager for talks was counter-productive. The West should be hard bargainers. The French were concerned about the effect of a soft line both on Russia and on Germany. But sooner or later a settlement would have to be worked out and concessions of as yet indeterminate size would be unavoidable.

What sort of arrangement did the French have in mind? Their basic aim was to preserve the status quo. The present situation might not be perfect, but people had lived with it since the end of the war, and there was no reason why one could not go on living with it indefinitely. The Soviets said that realities had to be accepted. The division of Germany, the Communist regime in the east, and the Oder-Neisse line, they argued, were all facts of life that the West needed to recognize. From the French point of view, there was no problem with that in principle. The French were not dogmatic on questions relating to the status of the East German regime. Like the Americans, they had no real problem with allowing the East Germans to stamp documents or to take over Soviet responsibilities on the access routes.⁹⁸³ De Gaulle, again like the Americans, favored increased contacts between the two parts of Germany.⁹⁸⁴ On the general issue of dealings with the Communist authorities, he agreed with Dulles that the West Germans had behaved "rather stuffily."⁹⁸⁵ Full de jure recognition was out of the question, but the French president thought in early 1959 that it might be possible to work out a modus vivendi involving "de facto relations between the Federal Republic and the Western Powers on the one hand and the GDR on the other."⁹⁸⁶ Indeed, as part of a Berlin settlement, de Gaulle in 1959 could (like Eisenhower) imagine a peace treaty, presumably with both parts of Germany, after the West German elections in 1961.⁹⁸⁷ As far as the Oder-Neisse line was concerned, de Gaulle made it clear that he accepted that border as final. A western guarantee of the Oder-Neisse line, he and Eisenhower both felt, might be a "valuable card to play" in negotiations with the USSR if they could get the Germans, even tacitly, to go along with it.⁹⁸⁸ There were thus certain realities which the West should ultimately be prepared to accept, and indeed he hoped that an agreement reflecting these "facts" might "be reached with the Russians." But the West had to get something in return. The Communists for their part also had to accept the status quo in Berlin.⁹⁸⁹

The French would have regarded a settlement of this sort as a very successful outcome of the crisis, and in reality were prepared to accept a good deal less. Even in 1959, they were willing to make certain concessions to meet Soviet wishes on Berlin. The Russians had certain complaints about West Berlin--about the city as a base for western propaganda and espionage, and as an escape hatch for East German refugees. Couve was prepared to go a long way toward meeting Soviet concerns in all these areas; he was also willing to limit the political ties linking West Berlin to the Federal Republic.⁹⁹⁰ By late 1961 the French were ready to go further still. For Couve in August 1961, a deal was necessary and it would inevitably involve making concessions. It was, he said, the use of allied "military rights as a camouflage for essential German traffic," and especially the movement of East German refugees by air from West Berlin to West Germany, that caused problems. Allied protection of that German traffic was therefore one of the things that might have to be sacrificed if a settlement was to be reached. West German political ties with West Berlin might also have to be discontinued. The Soviets would insist on it, and this was a fact that had to be faced "if there was to be any agreement with the Soviets."⁹⁹¹ And finally there was the question of Germany's nuclear status. Here too the French were willing to make major concessions as part of a settlement with the USSR--or really half-concessions, since these were things that the French themselves were not fundamentally opposed to. A reunified Germany, in their view, should be subject to the same constraints in this area as the Federal Republic. The regime established by the Paris accords would be applied to Germany as a whole. This in fact was the American view as well. The more important question was whether limitations of this sort could be made part of an agreement with Russia that would settle the Berlin Crisis even if Germany remained divided, and it is important to note that the French in 1959 would not rule this out. Although de Gaulle, of course, took exactly the opposite line in his meetings with Adenauer, the real French view (at least until 1962 or so, when their attitude became more ambivalent) was that a "certain inequality of status" with Germany in this area had to be maintained.⁹⁹² Indeed, their assumption was that restrictions on West Germany's nuclear status might well emerge in the course of the negotiations.⁹⁹³

Thus the French, practically from the start of the crisis, were thinking in terms of a negotiated settlement, and they knew where they were ready to make concessions. On fundamentals, France and the United States were not far apart.⁹⁹⁴ Both governments were comfortable with the status quo, although the United States, under Eisenhower at least, was more interested than France in seeing Germany reunified. Both governments were willing to give the status quo a degree of formal acceptance as part of a modus vivendi that would save Berlin and avoid a war. Both were held back, the French more than the Americans, by concerns about the German reaction. And both countries took a tough line on the fundamental issue of the use of force if no agreement were reached and the Communists actually followed through on their threats--although here the Americans were clearly more willing in the final analysis to resort to military action.

But whatever the French really felt about the use of force, de Gaulle's standard line was that the risk of war would have to be accepted. What this meant was that the Americans could feel that they were not simply imposing a tough stance on Europe. The iron in the western position would not depend on the United States alone. And the fact that France supported the idea of negotiations, at least until late 1961, meant that a policy that aimed at a negotiated settlement might also be easier to implement. The Germans would probably be more willing to make certain sacrifices and go along with a negotiated settlement if all three of the other major western governments thought those arrangements were necessary.
German Policy in the Crisis

In principle German policy was fundamentally different from that of the three western allies. The goal for Britain, France and the United States was essentially defensive. They wanted the Soviets to accept the status quo, in particular around Berlin. Neither force nor the threat of force should be used to try to effect change. The western powers were willing to coexist with the Russians on this basis, and they were not fundamentally averse to a policy aimed at stabilizing the status quo. But the Germans were basically opposed to a policy of that sort. Efforts in that direction, they argued, would lead to a hardening of the division of their country. For Adenauer in particular, the very idea of détente was suspect. It was associated in his mind with the notion of America and Russia together running the world, with the political eclipse of Europe, with permanent constraints on German power and independence, perhaps even with an eventual American withdrawal from Europe and a neutralization of Germany--in short, with a sellout of the most basic German interests.

The great question was which view would prevail. Would the Germans go along with a policy of stabilization, or would the western allies, worried about a possible loss of Germany, end up deferring to Adenauer on all the key issues? The United States might be by far the strongest power in the western alliance, but during the Eisenhower period U.S. leaders were reluctant to simply lay down the law. Eisenhower himself strongly disliked the idea of moving ahead without the allies. A remark he made in October 1959 typifies his general approach: "he thought that he could strike a bargain of his own with Khrushchev if he were to try to do so, but he knew our allies would not accept his acting unilaterally."⁹⁹⁵ The German government in particular could not be ignored. Adenauer had violently opposed the idea of dealing with the East Germans as "agents" of the Soviet Union: he insisted that they not be allowed to exercise the controls on the access routes that the Soviets were already exercising. The Americans then officially abandoned that idea. Even if East Germany promised "to carry out the responsibilities heretofore exercised by the Soviets," Eisenhower said, "we could not, even though tempted to accept, give it consideration, because it would be death to Adenauer."⁹⁹⁶

But the old chancellor's victory was more apparent than real. The U.S. government had no intention of beginning military operations before access was cut off, and something close to the agent theory was in effect adopted as policy.⁹⁹⁷ The Americans were not going to allow Adenauer to set policy for the West as a whole. They had a whole series of complaints about the line Adenauer wanted the western powers to follow. The West Germans themselves had no problem dealing with the East German authorities when it suited them--on intra-zonal trade, most notably. What then gave them the right to object so violently to any dealings between the western powers and East Germany?⁹⁹⁸ The whole point of a firm stand in the crisis was to save the Berliners, but Adenauer had no answer for Eisenhower's argument, which the president made over and over again, that the Soviets could, without violating the rights of the western powers, cut off Berlin's trade with West Germany, that the city's economy would die, that for the sake of the city, a modus vivendi with the Communists was a practical necessity, and that for this reason alone a degree of flexibility was essential.⁹⁹⁹

There was an even more basic problem with Adenauer's position. He took a rigid line on the political issues, but at the same time he made it clear that he felt that armed conflict absolutely had to be avoided. Berlin, he felt, was not worth a war. He took it as fundamental, he told Dulles in February 1959, that "under no circumstances should atomic weapons be used." Dulles responded by laying out the American position. Nuclear weapons, he said, would not be used at the outset, but the western powers had to be prepared to escalate. If they were, the Soviets would almost certainly back down. If, on the other hand, the use of nuclear weapons was to be ruled out from the start, the West would "suffer defeat after defeat" because of Communist superiority in conventional forces. If the Federal Republic would not back America's "strong policy," the U.S. government should "know this from the outset so that it would not commit itself and its prestige." Adenauer then tried to cover his tracks. He had been misunderstood, he said. Germany would of course support the tough American line. But the cat was out of the bag, and Adenauer's real feelings were clear enough.¹⁰⁰⁰ When he met with Eisenhower in August, he again insisted that "no one could or should carry on a nuclear war over these questions." He nevertheless thought the three western powers had to stand on their rights in Berlin. He did not think the Soviets "would let it come to war," but if the USSR did not back down, he was prepared to give way. "For the most extreme emergency," he said, the Soviet proposal to make Berlin a "free city" might be accepted.¹⁰⁰¹

The Americans were not happy with Adenauer's position. It seemed that the Germans wanted the West to bluff its way through the crisis, but this was just not an acceptable way of managing the situation. The bluff might not work. A more serious policy had to be worked out. If the NATO powers simply relied on words and did nothing in the military area to show that they were ready for a showdown, then the Soviets would see through their bluff and bring the crisis to a head. If they did, and if at the climax of the crisis "everybody backs down and puts pressure on us to accept the free city proposal"--the line Adenauer had taken with the president in August--"this would obviously be a fiasco." American leaders often argued along these lines with German officials.¹⁰⁰² And when they did, the Germans always gave way and conceded the fundamental point. The Federal Republic would support the Americans and agree to military action when the time came. But it was clear that the Germans were in their hearts opposed to military action, and that they remained opposed to it for the entire crisis period.

So the Americans in 1959 were coming to have little patience with the basic German position. The western powers had to stand on their rights and could accept no change in the status quo--but the use of force had to be ruled out? There was a sense that the Germans were clinging to theories that were increasingly remote from reality. They seemed caught up in a theology of their own making. The western powers could not deal with the East Germans, they argued, because that would be a step toward formal recognition of the East German regime, and recognition would mean that all hope of reunification was being abandoned and that the status quo was being accepted as final. But why was this more compelling than the counterargument that reunification could only come about after political tensions had eased, and that détente implied better relations with the East German regime? The American view, in fact, was that if Germany was ever to be reunified, it could not be through force. The "only way" it could be achieved, Eisenhower thought, was through a "peaceful agreement" with the East German authorities. It therefore did not make sense for Adenauer to be so opposed to a policy of détente in central Europe. The hard line was supposed to keep the hope of reunification alive, but Dulles and Eisenhower both thought that a softer line was more likely in the long run to lead to a fusion of the two German states.¹⁰⁰³

Couldn't the German government be brought to see this? Privately, Adenauer agreed with Eisenhower that reunification "would have to be achieved in a step-by-step process in which the two sides of Germany would themselves have to exhibit a clear readiness to be conciliatory and reasonable."¹⁰⁰⁴ But if he conceded the principle, why did he cling so rigidly in practice to the opposite kind of policy, one which rejected the idea of anything like a "normalization" of relations between the two German states? Maybe Adenauer did not really care about reunification. Maybe he had adopted the hard line in the past for domestic political purposes--that he in fact had never taken the "policy of strength" seriously, that its real purpose had been to outflank his nationalistic opponents at home from the right, that his real but unavowed aim was to neutralize the pressure for a deal with Russia that would reunify Germany but would at the same time take the country out of the western bloc.¹⁰⁰⁵

American and other western leaders had assumed for some time that reunification was not a matter of high priority for Adenauer. In the east, the SPD was much stronger than the CDU. Reunification would quite possibly tip the political balance within the country and bring the socialists to power; the assumption was that Adenauer therefore was not particularly eager to see East Germany brought into the Federal Republic. Herter, for example, thought that Adenauer for this reason "does not want a reunified Germany, even though he continues to call for reunification publicly, as he must."¹⁰⁰⁶

And this was not just pure speculation: the German leaders had made it quite clear that they were not terribly interested in reunification. The western countries were wrong, Adenauer complained in early 1959, to place so much emphasis on this issue.¹⁰⁰⁷ He and other German leaders intimated that their coolness toward reunification really did have a lot to do with SPD voting strength in the east. In April, Brentano admitted to Herter that the German position on the Berlin question was essentially negative, but he argued that his government had to protect the interests of the fifty million people in the Federal Republic. "A great part of the opposition in the Federal Republic favored 'undemocratic socialism,'" he said, and a coalition between the SPD and "Communist elements in the GDR might result in a loss of control of developments in Germany." He did not disagree when Herter pointed out that this seemed to mean that "the Federal Republic did not appear to want reunification."¹⁰⁰⁸

Even more amazingly, Adenauer himself made it clear to Herter a year later "that he had no interest in bringing East Germany into reunification with West Germany at all. He said that reunification is not practicable, and referred to the Socialist voting strength in East Germany."¹⁰⁰⁹ But given all this, how could the Americans be expected to support a policy that despite official claims was not rooted in any genuine concern with reunification? Eisenhower especially was very much out of sympathy with a policy based on parochial domestic political calculations. If the Germans, he felt, could get a "true free reunification," then they would "have to take their chances on politics."¹⁰¹⁰

So the Americans were increasingly unhappy with what they saw as Adenauer's rigidity, and in mid-1959 they began to make their displeasure felt. The president told Adenauer in August that "he was getting tired of standing pat," and Herter told Brentano "that the United States was tired of a negative attitude."¹⁰¹¹ The Germans were repeatedly "needled" about their inflexibility and urged to "come up with some new ideas."¹⁰¹² In March 1960, the president was thinking of telling Adenauer directly that the American people were not going to "subordinate themselves and their objectives to those of the Chancellor."¹⁰¹³ His view was that the West "could not really afford to stand on a dime for the next fifty years."¹⁰¹⁴

This pressure could not easily be ignored, and the German attitude did become more flexible in the course of 1959. On the whole cluster of issues relating to the division of Germany, dealings with the East German regime, and the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line--in short, on the general question of the stabilization of the status quo--Adenauer was in principle inclined to shift course and take a more "realistic" line. Reunification, he now recognized, was not a serious goal; the maintenance of the status quo was the most one could hope for.¹⁰¹⁵ The objective now was to get the Soviets to make life more bearable for the Germans in the east, and the theme of "menschliche Erleitungen," of a softening of Communist rule in the east, now became a leitmotif of German policy. The whole question, Adenauer told the American president in August 1959, "was really a human and not a national problem. He would like to see the people in the Soviet Zone lead a freer life." For him, he said, "it was a matter of human beings and not one of frontiers." Of course, he said, he could not come out in public and talk realistically about such things as the Oder-Neisse line because there were "refugees and other groups" in Germany who put "nationalistic feelings above human problems."¹⁰¹⁶ But he personally, as Eisenhower later reported, "accepted the present frontiers of Germany as a fait accompli."¹⁰¹⁷ As far as dealings with the East German authorities were concerned, he was again prepared to be realistic. De jure recognition was out of the question, he told the other western leaders at Rambouillet in December 1959, but whether "some de facto arrangement for treating with them should be worked out was another matter which would have to be examined in the light of developments."¹⁰¹⁸ Brentano argued along similar lines when he met with Herter in August. There were political problems having to do with the ten million refugees from the east now in the Federal Republic. "He was very frank in saying," Herter wrote, "that he believed the relationship between West Germany and East Germany could be settled if it were not for the emotional problems involved in a settlement of the Berlin question." Once the German government had gotten through the 1961 elections, he implied, it could take a less "emotional" and more realistic line. And that meant making concessions, even on Berlin. The occupation regime might be ended; West Berlin could become "some kind of free or guaranteed city with U.N. responsibility."¹⁰¹⁹