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

When he met with Kennedy later in the month, Adenauer took much the same line. The United States pressed for German "flexibility" in this area, but Adenauer now resisted even the idea that the Federal Republic might reiterate its 1954 non-production pledge as part of a Berlin settlement. When Kennedy again raised the issue when the two leaders met privately, Adenauer told his old story about Dulles coming up to him at the time the pledge was made and saying that "this declaration was of course valid only as long as circumstances remain unchanged." Nevertheless, he said, "Germany had not undertaken anything in this respect as yet." He also played down the extent of Germany's commitment at a formal meeting of the two delegations. The 1954 declaration, he noted, spoke of "not producing ABC weapons." It did not say Germany could not have them if her allies gave them to her. He also resisted the idea of including a reaffirmation of that pledge in any deal with Russia. "If this matter were now brought into the Soviet negotiations," he warned, "it could have very serious consequences."¹²³¹

The German position on this issue did not change in 1962, in spite of the fact that the U.S. government made it clear, in all sorts of ways, how strongly it felt about the issue. Right after Adenauer left Washington, Kennedy gave an important interview to Alexei Adzhubei, editor of Izvestia and Khrushchev's son-in-law. The President did not mince words on the German nuclear issue. He "would be extremely reluctant," he told Adzhubei, "to see West Germany acquire a nuclear capacity of its own." He could understand the Soviet concern about the prospect of the Germans developing a nuclear capability of their own, and indeed he "would share it." But a non-nuclear West Germany, integrated into NATO, would pose no threat. NATO was under American command; in this system, he said, there was "security for all." Kennedy also took the division of Germany as a fact of life. As long as Soviet policy remained as it was, he told Adzhubei, "Germany will not be reunified." To say this was to state the obvious, but it did not go down well in the Federal Republic.¹²³²

And indeed the Adzhubei interview was widely resented in Germany. Kennedy had told Adzhubei that he could understand Soviet concerns about Germany, and agreed that the Germans had to be kept from getting nuclear weapons. Just who, many Germans thought, was America's ally, and who was the enemy? The American president obviously thought the division of Germany was a simple political reality. Did this mean that America was getting ready to renege on her formal commitment to support German reunification? For some German leaders, this simply underscored the importance of being able to pursue a somewhat independent policy. The Federal Republic was utterly dependent on the United States, and this was how the Americans now treated her. She therefore needed to become more independent and thus had to develop the sort of military power that a truly independent policy could be based on: she needed, in other words, a nuclear force of her own.

And thanks to de Gaulle the German government now felt somewhat freer to move ahead in this direction. The French had cleared the way. They had openly defied America, both on Berlin policy and on the nuclear question. A more assertive German policy was now less likely to come across as parochial and nationalistic. If it were pursued in collaboration with France, it would even have a certain attractive "European" flavor.

So Adenauer now felt able to dig in his heels, especially on the nuclear issue. In June 1962, he met with Rusk and again told his story about the 1954 pledge and how Dulles had supposedly said that the "rebus sic stantibus doctrine would of course apply." To Rusk--and this fact shows how poor American intelligence was on the issue--this came as something of a revelation. The Germans, he was surprised to discover, would not agree to abandon their nuclear option. He therefore reached the conclusion that the problem was not purely theoretical, but that German nuclear aspirations were to be taken seriously. Other high officials had reached similar conclusions by mid-1962. Kohler, for example, was also struck by the fact that the Germans had been careful to say there were no pressures for a national nuclear program "as of now." Nitze told the president in July that in Germany the pressure for a "nuclear capability was very great." And McNamara told Macmillan in March that he was "much concerned about the drive for military power, including nuclear power, which the Germans were beginning to make."¹²³³

How far would Kennedy go in pushing the Germans into line? Initially, in November and December 1961, the U.S. government had held back from a far-reaching policy in the Berlin talks. The agreement with Adenauer had been to focus the talks, at least at first, on narrow issues relating to the problem of Berlin itself. The aim would be to see if access to the city could be put on a more solid basis. But even at the time it was taken for granted that the Soviets would never settle the Berlin issue in a narrow negotiation on terms the West could accept. They were not in the habit of making love-presents to the West, so why should they now agree to arrangements which would improve the situation in Berlin without their getting anything in return? It was taken for granted that the Soviets would "almost inevitably" raise the "broader questions"--the status of East Germany, the frontier issue, the German nuclear question, and the idea of a NATO-Warsaw Pact non-aggression pact.¹²³⁴

But the Americans felt they had to proceed cautiously at this point. For the time being, as a State Department official noted, it was "not wise" to press the Germans on the broader issues. This was for "tactical reasons" and did not relate to the substance of the American position.¹²³⁵ "At the present moment," Rusk himself pointed out in early January 1962, it was important not to "frighten" the Germans by pressing for concessions in those areas. Too assertive a policy, he said, might lead the Germans "to line up once more with the French against the Anglo-Saxons."¹²³⁶ The Germans had to be kept on board and be made to accept their share of the responsibility for whatever concessions ultimately needed to be made.

But in early 1962 Kennedy's attitude began to shift. The present approach--informal "exploratory talks" with the Soviets, based on common positions worked out with the British and the Germans--was unsatisfactory. The Americans were unable to "to talk frankly to the Russians"--that is, the Germans were holding the U.S. government back--but at the same time "we cannot really pull our Allies into a position of responsible participation."¹²³⁷

The president laid out his basic thinking in a February 1962 talk with his close friend David Ormsby Gore, the British ambassador in Washington. He was by this point fed up with the French and the Germans. Their game, he said, "was to make the Americans carry the main responsibility for the whole problem." They expected him "either to threaten nuclear war to preserve the present status quo in Berlin with the fairly clear indication that if Khrushchev called his bluff he would in fact be asked not to start the war he had been threatening" or "to make concessions in order to reach an agreement with the Russians which the French and the Germans could then blame him for if the result turned out to be unsatisfactory." They were not making the kind of serious military effort that might back up the tough policy, nor were they willing to work out a "sensible negotiating position" which might safeguard basic western interests without a war. He thought their policy was irresponsible, and indeed he was coming to the conclusion that none of the European countries "cared enough about West Berlin to take any of the unpopular steps which would be required in order to bring about some solution to the problem." The time had come to change this whole state of affairs. The present approaches to Moscow were a "waste of time," since the West had put nothing on the table which had "any attraction for the Russians." He was "not prepared to allow this situation to continue." He had told the State Department that he was going to take personal charge of U.S. policy in this area. Adenauer's attitude was "the key to the whole situation." He was not sure how he would approach Adenauer, but he was thinking in terms of confronting him "with the blunt alternative of deciding against serious negotiations and preparing in the final analysis to fight a war, or of deciding in favour of negotiations which have some hope of a successful outcome. Put like this, he would hope and expect that Adenauer would exert himself in favour of the second alternative."¹²³⁸

Adenauer was not directly confronted with such a choice, but it soon became clear that Kennedy was determined to move ahead on a more unilateral basis in the talks with the Russians. In early March the President made a fundamental decision. He was going to "throw off" the "Franco-German shackles and talk freely to the Russians, although without commitment."¹²³⁹

Kennedy had now decided to move ahead and engage in "informal bilateral" talks with the Russians on the broader issues. A proposal for a modus vivendi was being prepared. The written draft, he said, did not go very far "mainly because we must not put on paper things which might shock our Allies if presented without prior consultation." But it was to be intimated to the Soviets verbally that the United States would be quite accommodating on the broader issues if a satisfactory Berlin arrangement could be worked out. He recognized that secret, unilateral initiatives would pose a threat to the alliance. The Germans would therefore be given "appropriate oral indications" of what the United States was doing. But the policy was no longer to do nothing which they did not consent to in advance. And in fact the Germans did not approve of the broadening of the talks. Kennedy was nonetheless determined to move ahead.¹²⁴⁰

Soon Rusk was off to Switzerland for a round of meetings with the British and German foreign ministers, and then with Gromyko. "We must not spare any effort to find a modus vivendi," Kennedy cabled him.¹²⁴¹ The president was prepared, in the final analysis, to accept a military confrontation over Berlin, but before the crisis became acute, he felt he had to make sure that no stone had been left unturned and that it was only because of Soviet intransigence that a reasonable settlement could not be reached.¹²⁴²

On March 12, Rusk laid out the basic lines of the new American approach in a long meeting with Gromyko. The American plan was for the two sides to reach agreement on certain principles, and then to agree on a "procedure for negotiations on the basis of those principles." The two sides would also accept certain interim arrangements which would hold until those talks resulted in more definitive agreements.¹²⁴³ The plan would cover both Berlin and the broader issues. The "Principles" paper, the document in which the Americans laid out the new approach, was handed to Gromyko on March 22.¹²⁴⁴ This the Americans had done on their own. The German foreign minister, Gerhard Schröder, was not shown the paper until after it had been given to the Soviets. It was only after Gromyko had seen it that Schröder gave the Americans his okay.¹²⁴⁵

The U.S. government made it clear that it was presenting a package. If the Soviets were willing to respect the vital interests of the West on Berlin, everything else, it said, would "fall into place."¹²⁴⁶ Agreement on the "broader issues"--German borders, a non-aggression pact, the nuclear status of Germany, and so on--could then be reached quickly. If the Soviets wished to "stabilize the situation on the basis of existing facts," Rusk told Gromyko, "we had considerable understanding for this." The United States, he stressed, was not a "prisoner" of West Germany, but was rather concerned with vital American interests.¹²⁴⁷ The U.S. goal was peace on the basis of the status quo, with America and Russia relating to each other as great powers, and respecting each others' most vital interests.¹²⁴⁸

The Soviets showed "considerable interest" in what the Americans were now putting on the table. The German nuclear question was for them a matter of fundamental importance. As Gromyko had told Rusk in October 1961, the Soviet government "placed utmost emphasis on this question." In his March 1962 meetings with the Secretary of State, Gromyko again showed great interest in this issue. To be sure, he had certain reservations about the American plan. The arrangement outlined in the "Principles" paper was not targeted sufficiently on Germany for Gromyko's taste, and placed excessive emphasis on the two major powers' more general interest in non-proliferation. He also noted that the American plan did not adequately cover the possibility of the Germans getting control of nuclear weapons through some kind of NATO multilateral force.¹²⁴⁹

But these were not fundamental problems. The American document had been deliberately framed in general terms for tactical reasons. It was best to play down the fact that Germany was the target. The U.S. government naturally preferred to take the line, as Kennedy himself put it in a meeting with Brentano, "that our policy was a general one not directed against Germany."¹²⁵⁰

The same sort of point applied to the other issue Gromyko raised. The Soviets were afraid the Germans would get their hands on nuclear weapons through the MLF. Rusk repeatedly made the American position quite clear to Soviet officials. "Whatever multilateral arrangements come out of NATO," he told Ambassador Dobrynin in August, "we did not intend they would involve transfer of national control."¹²⁵¹ The U.S. government was in effect saying that as part of a deal that would settle the Berlin crisis and stabilize the political situation in central Europe, it would see to it that Germany would remain non-nuclear, and in particular that the MLF would not serve as a vehicle which would allow Germany to get effective control over nuclear weapons. Indeed, it intended to make sure that no one in the West, not even "Europe" as a whole, could use nuclear forces without American consent. But again U.S. officials preferred not to be too explicit about these matters in writing. A settlement would have to be sold to the Germans. Many Germans wanted the door to be left open to the possibility of at least a European nuclear force, independent of the United States. Why rub their noses in the fact that the Americans were determined to rule out anything of the sort, except perhaps in the very distant future after a truly unified and fully sovereign federal European state had emerged? What harm was there in dangling the carrot--in suggesting that some sort of European nuclear force might be possible just a few years down the road--so the Germans could be kept on board?

From the Soviet standpoint, the Americans were offering something real, indeed something of truly fundamental importance. Preventing the Germans from getting control of nuclear weapons was a vital Soviet interest. The other issues in the Berlin talks were not nearly so important. The Soviets did not insist, for example, on formal recognition of the GDR. Gromyko, in fact, said that the western powers already recognized the East German state de facto. Rusk reported Gromyko's remark to the other western foreign ministers and noted that "if existing Western practice was enough for the Russians, there was really no problem here."¹²⁵² The Soviets, moreover, spoke only of the need for the western powers to "respect the sovereignty" of the GDR, and refused repeatedly to explain exactly what they meant by this phrase.¹²⁵³ This implied that the issue was not vital in itself, but rather was deliberately being kept open only for bargaining purposes. Other issues were also of relatively limited importance. "On the face of it," as Couve told the other western foreign ministers, "non-aggression declarations seemed harmless." And German foreign minister Schröder noted that he had long "been inclined to accept a non-aggression agreement." Declarations that no one would change existing frontiers through force would simply reiterate existing policy. The whole issue of the inviolability of existing borders, Rusk noted, referring to both the Oder-Neisse line and the intra-German border, "did not have high priority in his talks with Dobrynin."¹²⁵⁴ It was the nuclear question that was central for the Soviets. These other issues were of secondary importance.

It thus seemed that a settlement might be within reach. The Soviets liked what the Americans were now offering. They signaled their interest in a very tangible way. Western flights in the air corridors to Berlin were being harassed by Soviet aircraft. After the Rusk-Gromyko meeting in March, the harassment was "suspended." This was understood by both sides as a political signal.¹²⁵⁵ Even more important, it seemed for a time that the hard-line Soviet stance on Berlin proper might be softening. In April, Dobrynin suggested to Rusk that the "present position" of the USSR on the key issue of a western troop presence in the city might be about to shift. "As of now," Dobrynin stressed, the USSR wanted the western forces out as part of an access agreement, but added: "What the future attitude of my Government might be, I would not be in a position to say."¹²⁵⁶

Adenauer, however, did not at all like the sort of settlement that seemed to be taking shape. He was "shocked" by the Principles paper, and evidently leaked the substance of the new American proposal to the press.¹²⁵⁷ He complained that he had been given only two days to respond to the paper, and the claim is still often made that Adenauer had been presented with something like an ultimatum. The Americans were infuriated by the leak. As for the complaint about an "ultimatum," they pointed out that the version of the Principles paper that Adenauer had seen was almost identical to another draft that had already been cleared with foreign minister Schröder.¹²⁵⁸ "Astonished" in April by the intensity of the official German reaction, U.S. leaders were also angered by a "stream" of anti-American comments coming from the chancellor himself later that spring. Adenauer had in fact decided to rise up in opposition to American policy. Germany had to be ready, he thought, to go through a certain period of tension in her relations with the United States, and to form a kind of bloc with France. He made little secret of his views, which the press was now reporting on in detail. And in a press conference in early May, he openly attacked America's whole Berlin policy.¹²⁵⁹

Once again, the German nuclear question was fundamental. Adenauer's criticism of the American plan focused on the nuclear issue and the proposal for a Berlin access authority.¹²⁶⁰ If the access authority came into being, he claimed that allied rights would be eclipsed. The argument was that under this arrangement power would pass into the hands of relatively weak neutrals, whose representatives would cast the deciding votes within the authority. But this objection to the Access Authority idea was not valid, and was probably trumped up to obscure the fact that the nuclear issue was Adenauer's only real concern.

The goal of the access authority proposal had in fact been to make access to the city more secure. Under the current regime, the East Germans fully controlled non-military traffic between Berlin and the Federal Republic. That power, it was felt, might be diluted by setting up an authority in which neutral powers like Sweden and Switzerland would play a decisive role in resolving any disputes that arose. Indeed, the plan for an access authority had been rooted in the idea that the other American proposals had all amounted to concessions to the USSR, and that unless the West insisted on something in return, it would be on a "dangerous slope of appeasement." That quid pro quo might come in the form of an access agreement on Berlin, based on the idea of moving away from full East German control.¹²⁶¹

All of this was obvious to American officials, and they bitterly resented Adenauer's attack on the proposal. In October, for example, Kennedy told Willy Brandt, the Mayor of West Berlin, that since the earlier U.S. plan for an access authority had been rejected, the United States "would make no more proposals on the subject." It was now up to the Germans to come up with a plan of their own, if they wanted to. America had been burned, the president obviously felt, and was not going to make the same kind of effort a second time. When the German ambassador came to complain about this, saying that the president must have been misinformed, and that the German government had been "in basic agreement" with the earlier U.S. plan, American officials did not mince words, so great was their continuing bitterness about what had happened five months earlier. The Germans certainly had publicly "shot down" the U.S. plan for an access authority. The U.S. government still resented "the great public hullaballoo" which had resulted from Adenauer's "public denunciation last Spring of the international access proposal."¹²⁶²

Adenauer was in revolt against America, and the nuclear issue and not the access plan was the real bone of contention. But what effect did Adenauer's actions actually have? The key point here is that even his open opposition to the Kennedy policy did not lead the Americans to shift course. In the talks with Russia, the U.S. proposals remained on the table. If the Soviets had been willing to accept a settlement along the lines the Americans had in mind, the United States would have been prepared to force the Germans into line. Indeed, Kennedy made it clear to the Russians that German obstructionism would not be a problem. If the United States and the USSR reached an understanding, he told the Soviet ambassador in July, there were "issues on which we would be willing to press the Germans quite hard." But things never reached that point in 1962, and it was not Adenauer who deserves the blame, or the credit, for sabotaging an agreement.¹²⁶³

The problem had to do with Soviet intransigence on the question of a western military presence in Berlin--that is, with West Berlin's status as a territory under the military protection of the western powers. This was the key to the continued freedom of West Berlin, and the U.S. government made it abundantly clear that as part of a settlement western rights in Berlin would have to be respected. The Soviets would have to give way on this point if they were to get the kind of settlement the United States was offering them. But this, for reasons that remain hard to understand, the USSR simply would not do. The United States was ready to give the Russians everything they could legitimately ask for, but the USSR was unwilling to give America the one thing she insisted on: a free West Berlin, securely tied to the West, with western military forces, and western forces alone, in the city as guarantors of its extraordinary status.

This Soviet attitude was increasingly resented. Initially the assumption had been that the Soviets had perhaps staked out an extreme position for bargaining purposes, and that as the talks proceeded they might well become more reasonable. But this was turning out not to be the case. The Soviets seemed to think they could simply take everything the United States was prepared to offer and, as Rusk said, store it "away in the refrigerator."¹²⁶⁴ They were just putting the U.S. concessions "in a bag," and giving nothing in return.¹²⁶⁵ The basic issue was reciprocity. The United States was not going to accept a purely one-sided arrangement, but rather sought an agreement negotiated "on the basis of equality." What the Soviets proposed, Kennedy told Gromyko in October 1961, amounted to "trading an apple for an orchard."¹²⁶⁶ The Soviets said the western powers had to accept facts, that the East German regime was a reality and its authority had to be accepted. Very well, the Americans replied, a settlement could indeed be based on the "factual situation." But all the facts had to be taken into account, not just those which the Soviets found it convenient to recognize. The western presence in Berlin was a reality which the Soviets, for their part, had to respect.¹²⁶⁷ But this was something which the USSR simply refused to accept, and in the talks were never able to deal effectively with this argument.¹²⁶⁸