A constructed Peace The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963
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The Americans were also willing to give the Russians a substantial share of the industrial capital in the western zones that the allies could agree was "unnecessary for the German peace economy." Fifteen percent of this surplus capital would be sent east in exchange for food and certain other raw materials, and a further ten percent would be transferred free and clear to the Soviets, with no return payment of any kind required.87 Both parts of this arrangement were quite significant. The first part reflected the basic assumption, as a British official noted at the end of the year, "that Eastern and Western Germany are two separate economic units, run by Russia and the three Western Powers respectively."88 A barter arrangement of this sort would scarcely make sense if Germany were in fact being thought of as a unit. The second part of the plan--the part relating to the ten percent of the surplus capital in the western zones that the Soviets would be getting free and clear--is worth noting for a different reason. The American goal here was to avoid slamming the door in the faces of the Russians. At Yalta, and in further discussions in Moscow, the U.S. government had recognized the right of the USSR to receive half of whatever could be gotten out of Germany as reparations, and although the USSR would have to "bow" to whatever the western powers decided about the Soviets' "right to receive reparations from the Western Zone," American officials did not want to renege on their commitment. The eastern zone would supply the USSR with something on the order of forty to forty-five percent of the total available for reparation in Germany as a whole, and the deliveries from western Germany--that is, the ten percent of surplus capital that the Soviets would be getting outright--would approximately make up the difference between the eastern zone reparations and the fifty percent to which the Russians were entitled. This was "rough justice": the Soviets were still to be treated as allies whose interests were legitimate and whose goodwill was important.89 The American government, in other words, did not want to just impose the de facto arrangement that would exist in the absence of an agreement. The Americans worked for an agreement because they placed a certain premium on relatively friendly relations with the USSR, and to get an agreement the Soviets could accept, they were willing to sweeten the pot by making what they thought of as two major concessions to the Soviets. The two sides would go their separate ways, but the United States would try to be accommodating: the divorce need not be bitter. And at Potsdam the Soviets, after some initial hesitation, grasped the hand that the Americans had held out and accepted the sort of relationship Byrnes had in mind. The Soviets had endorsed the principle of central administrations, but this did not mean that they were not thinking primarily in zonal terms: the all-German administrations, in their conception at Potsdam, would just play a "coordinating" role, and real power in each zone would remain in the hands of the occupying power.90 They were in fact determined to run the eastern zone as they saw fit, and Stalin was realistic enough to understand that the other side of this coin was that the western powers would dominate the part of the country they occupied--although that, of course, would not prevent him from asking for some say over what went on there.91 So the sort of arrangement Byrnes was proposing was in line with Stalin's own basic thinking. Even before Potsdam, the Soviet leader had come to the conclusion that there would be "two Germanies"; for him it was natural that each side would impose its kind of system on the part of country its armies occupied.92 This of course did not mean that the rhetoric about four-power control, and institutions like the Control Council, would have to be abandoned. They symbolized the common interest of the four powers in keeping Germany in line. But in more concrete ways, Germany was not really to be run as a unit. From the very start, for example, the Soviets opposed the idea of managing German exports and imports on an all-German basis.93 This was the great touchstone issue, the great test of whether the allies really believed that the German economy, and thus ultimately the German polity, was to be managed on a unitary basis. The Soviets, moreover, were not at all upset when the French at the beginning of October vetoed the establishment of central administrations for Germany.94 At the end of the year, the USSR refused to go ahead with America and Britain in running the great bulk of the country without the French--something they would have been willing to do, of course, if they had been serious about circumventing French obstructionism.95 And in late 1945 and early 1946, they made it abundantly clear that they did not take the level of industry negotiations seriously, even though these talks were supposed to be concerned with how the German economy was to be managed on a four-power basis.96 Given the basic Soviet approach, it is not surprising that Stalin at Potsdam embraced the new U.S. concept wholeheartedly. He in fact took the lead in extending the idea to cover the most liquid, and thus most readily transferable, German assets--gold, German holdings abroad, and shares in German firms. According to his plan, German gold, foreign assets, and shares of stock would not be pooled and apportioned on an all-German basis. Instead he proposed a simple rule for dividing those assets between east and west. The east-west line of demarcation, "the line running from the Baltic to the Adriatic," would be taken as a dividing line. Everything east of that line, assets in the eastern zone and German investments in eastern Europe, would go to Russia. Everything west of the line would go to the western powers. In particular, the Soviets would waive their claim to a share of the German gold that had fallen into the hands of their western allies. The whole plan was quickly accepted by his British and American partners.97 That this arrangement reflected a basic spheres of influence orientation is clear from its content and phrasing, and is also suggested by the fact that Stalin British at first proposed that it be kept secret. But the most important point to note here is Stalin's role in pressing for it. He was so taken with the basic idea of a spheres of influence solution for Germany, and implicitly for Europe as a whole, that he was even willing to abandon any claim to the German gold that had fallen into the hands of the western armies. A reasonable Soviet case could be made for at least a share of this all-German asset. A unilateral concession of this sort, which was not at all in keeping with the Russians' usual practice at Potsdam of presenting their allies with one demand after another, was thus a striking demonstration of Stalin's wholehearted acceptance of the basic Byrnes concept. And indeed at the very end of the conference, the Soviet leader took what was for him the unusual step of expressing his gratitude to Byrnes, "who has worked harder perhaps than any of us to make this conference a success." It was Byrnes, he said, who "brought us together in reaching so many important decisions." Byrnes had "worked hard" and had "worked very well"; "those sentiments, Secretary Byrnes, come from my heart."98 So Stalin and Byrnes (supported in a very general way by Truman) had reached a real understanding at Potsdam. Each side was essentially to have a free hand in its part of Germany. To be sure, the Potsdam Protocol was full of passages which called for treating Germany as a unit.99 Even foreign trade, according to the text, was supposed to be managed on an all-German basis. But the all-German language of the final agreement was simply a figleaf. The way the key foreign trade issue was handled again shows the real thrust of American and Soviet thinking at this time. It is clear from the drafting history that the unitary language of the official Potsdam Protocol was not meant to be taken seriously. Byrnes in fact had proposed droppping the provision in the draft agreement calling for the Control Council to formulate an import program for Germany as a whole soon after the new reparation plan was accepted.100 Stalin agreed with Byrnes, and if it had just been up to the two of them the paragraph would have been completely dropped. But Ernest Bevin objected. Bevin, foreign secretary in the new Labour government that had been swept into power in Britain in the middle of the Potsdam Conference, was personally not a great supporter of German unity, but in his first days in office he did not want to take a line that diverged too radically from the views of his subordinates in the Foreign Office--or really of key Treasury officials--on this fundamental question. Byrnes, in keeping with his general philosophy, urged Bevin to deal with the problem of exports and imports and the financing of the German trade deficit on a zonal basis. Why couldn't the British, he asked, just "handle this in their own way since they were in control in their zone"? Because to do so would "cut across the agreement to treat Germany as a whole economy," Bevin rather innocently replied. "It would divide Germany into three zones."101 As a result of Bevin's resistance, a watered-down version of the provision on foreign trade made it into the final agreement. This provision seemed to imply that Germany was to be treated as a unit: "in working out the economic balance of Germany the necessary means must be provided to pay for imports approved by the Control Council in Germany. The proceeds of exports from current production and stocks shall be available in the first place for payment for such imports."102 But this changed nothing of substance, and the Americans who negotiated this part of the Potsdam agreement explained at the time (in internal documents) why such unitary language was harmless. The provisions calling for all-German arrangements in this area, they wrote, were subject to the already accepted principle that "if the Control Council failed to agree," policy would be managed on a zonal basis. And they thought it "quite likely" that the Control Council would deadlock on this issue. The control and financing of foreign trade would then "revert to the zone commanders," in which case the three western powers would probably be able to come up with a common import program for western Germany as a whole. So the all-German language of the agreement would probably have no substantive effect. Germany in all likelihood would still end up being divided between the Soviet Union and the western powers.103 Such assumptions formed the real basis of the Potsdam understanding. The formal agreement might have given a very different impression, but it was scarcely to be expected that a written accord would provide directly for an overt partition of Germany. And indeed what was the point of being too explicit about these matters? As long as the real issues had been settled with the agreement on the Byrnes plan, there was no harm in paying a little lip service to Wilsonian platitudes. But if all this is true--if the western powers and the Soviets as well were prepared in late 1945 to accept a spheres of influence settlement in Europe--how then is the Cold War to be understood? Why was it that the sort of arrangement Byrnes and Stalin had agreed to at Potsdam failed to provide the basis for stable relations between the Soviet Union and her western allies? For by early 1946 things had moved off the track. By that point, the western powers and the USSR were attacking each other with great bitterness, especially on the German issue. What had gone wrong? The general problem of the origins of the Cold War turns on the answer to that question. CHAPTER TWO TOWARD THE RUBICON
What had happened to the Potsdam understanding? The conflict in 1946 was preeminently about Germany; if both sides had kept to the Potsdam understanding, no such conflict could have arisen. But the U.S. government had shifted its position: the Byrnes policy was abandoned by the American government itself. At Potsdam, the division of Germany had been accepted as inevitable: the Americans had built their policy on the assumption that the Soviet Union and the western powers would not be able to "pull together in governing Germany."104 In particular, Byrnes had made it quite clear that Germany's foreign trade would not be managed on an all-German basis. But by the spring of 1946, U.S. representatives were insisting with increasing stridency that Germany had to be treated as an economic unit. This, they stressed, meant above all that Germany's exports and imports had to be handled on an all-German basis. The Soviet preference for dealing with German foreign trade on a zonal basis was, in the new American view, "a complete negation of Potsdam." U.S. officials demanded, loudly and repeatedly, a common import-export policy. The claim now was that at Potsdam it had been agreed that Germany would be run as an economic unit, and that the Soviets were reneging on this agreement.105 America's German policy had been totally transformed, and this transformation was to play a fundamental role in setting the major powers at odds with each other. It meant that Germany, and implicitly Europe as a whole, was not going to be divided on a more or less friendly basis, as Byrnes and the others at Potsdam had intended. By mid-1946 the former allies were at each others' throats, each blaming the other for Germany's division. What the western powers were doing in Germany was coming to have a distinct anti-Soviet edge; the Soviets were coming to feel that they needed to deal with the situation before it got totally out of hand; soon it seemed that the two sides might be headed for a showdown. The transformation of America's German policy thus played a key role in setting the two sides at odds. But how is this shift in policy itself to be understood? The problem will be approached here on two levels. First the general course of international politics in late 1945 and early 1946 will be examined; the focus will then shift to an analysis of the diplomacy of the German question during this period and beyond.
The Cold War did not develop out of the quarrel over eastern Europe. It was the dispute over Iran and Turkey that instead played the key role in triggering the conflict. This dispute led to a shift in America's general policy toward the Soviet Union, and that shift in turn led by early 1946 to a fundamental transformation of U.S. policy on the German question. Both the British and the Americans had in effect accepted eastern Europe as a Soviet sphere of influence by December 1945. In late 1945, the U.S government, for example, went through the motions of standing up for the principle of self-determination as a basis for a political settlement in that part of the world, irritating the Soviets in the process. But by the end of the year even that policy had been effectively dropped. Both Britain and America had by that point for all intents and purposes accepted eastern Europe as an area that the USSR would control. The question was whether Stalin would be willing in exchange to recognize that western interests were predominant in other key areas. If he were, the British certainly were ready to make a straightforward deal. If the Soviets were willing to recognize the Middle East and the Mediterranean as a western sphere of influence, Bevin for his part would be ready to accept the status quo in eastern Europe. He, and Prime Minister Attlee as well, might have disliked the idea of a spheres of influence settlement. But by the end of 1945 they had come to the conclusion that the alternative policy of working for the establishment of democratic governments in countries like Bulgaria and Rumania was bankrupt. And if, by recognizing political realities in eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Mediterranean could be made secure, then this was a price they were quite willing to pay.106 Would the Soviets, however, go along with the idea? Given Stalin's general policy, a spheres of influence deal was by no means out of the question. The Soviet leader had readily accepted, and lived up to, the percentage agreement with Churchill, and that basic policy choice still seemed to guide his thinking at Potsdam.107 On Germany, he had backed the Byrnes plan wholeheartedly, and his policy in Korea, the other divided country, was also inspired by the same general "spheres of influence" spirit.108 It seemed in 1945 that Stalin was quite ready to accept the principle of a division of the world philosophically. "This war is not as in the past," he told the Yugoslav Communist leaders in April 1945. "Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise."109 But to get Stalin to accept a spheres of influence settlement, how far would the Soviet sphere have to extend? Even in mid- and late 1945, the Soviets were pressing claims that had little to do with a security zone in eastern Europe. They asked for a trusteeship over one of the former Italian colonies in the Mediterranean and a zone of occupation in Japan. They sought control over northern Iran and demanded military bases on the Turkish Straits. In 1945, western leaders were not sure what to make of these claims. Perhaps the Soviets simply wanted to see what they could get on the cheap. Or perhaps these demands, or at least some of them, were not meant to be taken seriously at all. The Soviets might just be reacting, on a tit-for-tat basis, to western interference in the Soviet sphere, thus driving home to the western powers the importance of adopting a consistent spheres of influence policy and granting the Soviets a free hand in eastern Europe as the price for operating freely in the areas they controlled.110 But it soon became clear that their goals were not merely tactical and that the Soviets were serious about expanding their power beyond eastern Europe. And indeed Stalin in effect rejected the idea of a spheres of influence settlement on a status quo basis in a December 1945 meeting with Bevin. The Soviet leader was not happy with Soviet gains after the war; the status quo of a Soviet-dominated eastern Europe was obviously not good enough. The western allies each had their sphere but the Russians, he complained, "had nothing"--a stunning claim, given the obvious point, which Bevin was quick to make, "that the Soviet sphere extended from Lübeck to Port Arthur."111 The Soviets were pushing ahead in an area where the British were particularly sensitive: the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. In mid-1945, Stalin made it clear to Molotov that the south was the one area where he was dissatisfied with Russia's new frontiers.112 By late 1945, the USSR was promoting leftist regimes in the area their armies occupied in northern Iran. According to their wartime agreement with the western allies on Iran, the Soviets were to withdraw their forces from that country within six months after the end of the war. But although they repeatedly promised to be out by that deadline, it was becoming increasingly clear in early 1946 that the Russians were not going to honor that commitment.113 The USSR also wanted to build military bases on the Turkish Straits. The issue had been raised with the Turks just before Potsdam, and at that conference Stalin pressed his allies to accept his right to control the Straits. America had the Panama Canal and Britain controlled Suez, so why shouldn't Russia control a waterway of equivalent strategic importance? The implication was that the USSR should have this right no matter how the Turks felt about the idea of Soviet bases on their territory. And when Turkey did resist their claims, the Soviets adopted tougher tactics. The press campaign against Turkey escalated, there were menacing troop movements in the Balkans, and diplomatic pressure on Turkey intensified.114 Stalin had taken his measure of the other great powers. The British were too weak to hold him back by themselves. With the United States it was a different story. In areas where the Americans had made their interests clear, and especially in key areas where U.S. troops were present--above all, western Germany and Japan--Stalin would not seriously challenge the status quo. What interest, however, did the Americans have in Iran or Turkey? There was no sign in late 1945 that they would use their power to block a Soviet advance. There was no reason, therefore, not to push ahead in that region. But what the Soviets were doing in the Near East deeply alienated the American government. The top U.S. leadership was rapidly turning against Russia in late 1945 and early 1946. In October 1945, Byrnes, for example, came down hard on Joseph Davies, the pro-Soviet former ambassador to Moscow, who lectured him on the importance of seeing things from the Russian point of view. "Molotov was 'insufferable,' he told Davies. He said that he was 'almost ashamed' of himself for having taken what he did from Molotov."115 Byrnes's inclination now was to accept eastern Europe as a Soviet sphere of influence, but to block any further advance. And Truman's view at the end of 1945 was not much different. At Potsdam, as he later recalled, he had been a "Russophile as most of us were." He thought he could manage to live with Stalin, and in fact "liked the little son of a bitch."116 The Soviet leader, Truman said at the time, was "straightforward"; Stalin "knows what he wants and will compromise when he can't get it."117 Truman might have disliked what the Soviets were doing in the areas they controlled, and he was certainly irritated with the way they had presented the United States with one fait accompli after another. But this did not lead him to embrace an anti-Soviet policy. And, indeed, even as late as November 1945, he was still talking about how America had to get along with Russia.118 So Truman in late 1945 was still comfortable with the strategy Byrnes, with his general support, had pursued at Potsdam. His idea was that although the Russians were "naturally looters," they had been so "thoroughly looted by the Germans over and over again" that one could "hardly blame them for their attitude"; they could therefore go ahead and strip the eastern zone, so long as the Americans could keep their "skirts clean" and did not have to foot any share of the bill.119 This was not really a hostile attitude. The assumption was simply that the Soviets were difficult to deal with and should therefore be kept at arms' length. But given what the USSR was doing with Turkey and Iran, that attitude began to change very rapidly in late 1945. As late as November 19, Truman thought that America would stand aside if Russia tried to "grab control of the Black Sea straits." The Turks would fight, "but it would be like the Russian-Finnish war." America, he thought, would not go to war with Russia over the issue.120 A month later Truman was no longer sure what American policy should be. The Soviets, he said, had presented America with a fait accompli in the case of Poland. They now had half a million men in Bulgaria and he was afraid that some day they were "going to move down and take the Black Sea straits" and confront America with another fait accompli. The only thing they understood was "divisions," but the U.S. government could not "send any divisions over to prevent them" from moving into Turkey: "I don't know what we're going to do."121 And then, just three weeks after that, he opted for a hard line: "There isn't a doubt in my mind that Russia intends an invasion of Turkey and the seizure of the Black Sea Straits to the Mediterranean. Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand--'How many divisions have you?'" With regard to Iran as well, Truman was by now beginning to take a hard line. Soviet policy in Iran, Truman now complained, was an "outrage if I ever saw one." Iran was an ally during the war and the use of Iranian territory as a channel for millions of tons of supplies had been crucial to Russia's survival, "yet now Russia stirs up rebellion and keeps troops on the soil of her friend and ally, Iran."122 Directory: polisci -> faculty -> trachtenberg trachtenberg -> The United States, France, and the Question of German Power, 1945-1960 polisci -> Transylvania university committee on program and curriculum polisci -> Pos 6933: History of American Political Thought Course Description polisci -> Urban politics political science polisci -> International political economy polisci -> J. B. Weter History Honors Fellowship, Stanford University (1965-66) polisci -> Handbook on Migration and Social Policy trachtenberg -> The Economic Decline and Soviet Foreign Policy trachtenberg -> Assessing Soviet Economic Performance during the Cold War: a failure of Intelligence? Download 2.48 Mb. Share with your friends:
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