A constructed Peace The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963
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| Britain and the Cold War, 1941-1947 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), pp. 89, 122, 124-125.
55. Reported in Massigli to Bidault, July 30, 1945, Massigli Papers [MP], vol. 92, French Foreign Ministry Archives [FFMA], Paris, henceforth cited in the following form: MP/92/FFMA. 56. See, for example, McCloy-Stimson phone conversation, May 19, 1945, Henry Stimson Papers, box 172, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven (reel 128 in the microfilm edition). Note especially the references to "the pattern which Russian policy was disclosing in the Balkans, Austria and in Poland" and the "growing feeling that we should be reluctant to break up SHAEF and institute the Control Council management of Germany." SHAEF--Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force--was the organization, commanded by General Eisenhower, that Britain and America had established to control military operations in western Europe. 57. Clay (signed Eisenhower) to JCS, June 6, 1945, in Jean Smith, ed., The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay: Germany 1945-1949, two vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), 1:18-20. 58. Churchill's comment at Yalta is quoted in Keith Sainsbury, "British Policy and German Unity at the End of the Second World War," English Historical Review 93 (October 1979): 798. For the British official's remark, see Harrison to Bevin, July 30, 1945, DBPO I, 1:1009. On this issue in general, see also Frank King, "Allied Negotiations and the Dismemberment of Germany," Journal of Contemporary History 16 (1981), esp. 589-592; Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany, pp. 75-76, 164; Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, p. 44; and Stettinius to Winant, April 10, 1945, Hopkins to Truman, May 30, 1945, and Balfour to Stettinius, August 18, 1945, in FRUS 1945, 3:221-222, 317-318, 367-368. 59. For a typical State Department view, see the briefing paper on the "treatment of Germany," January 12, 1945, FRUS Yalta, pp. 185-186. 60. See, for example, Stimson's views in a phone conversation with McCloy, May 19, 1945, Stimson Papers, box 172 (reel 128). Note also Clay's comments in a meeting with key U.S. officials in Washington. Germany, he said, was a kind of a laboratory; if the two countries could not cooperate effectively there, then "our entire foreign policy with respect to Russia would be in jeopardy." This belief led him to exaggerate how cooperative the Russians were in fact being--and some scholars have taken these remarks as proving that the Russians really were willing to go along with the "unitary" policy. "The entire record of the Control Council," Clay said at this meeting, "showed that the USSR was willing to cooperate with the other powers in operating Germany as a single political and economic unit." But a month earlier, he had informed the War Department that the Soviets, who had "hitherto been cooperative with reference to uniform policies and to early establishment of central administrative machinery," seemed to be "laboring under instructions to be obstructive." Meeting at State Department, November 3, 1945, and Clay to War Department, October 4, 1945, Clay Papers, 1:113, 90. For another example of Clay misrepresenting the facts in order to promote his policy of trying to run Germany in cooperation with Russia, see B.U. Ratchford and W.D. Ross, Berlin Reparations Assignment: Round One of the German Peace Settlement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 129. In a January 1946 cable to the War Department, these two former officials wrote, Clay "made the generalization, startling to those familiar with negotiations at lower levels, that in most economic matters the U.S. position was about midway between the Soviet and British positions and that by slight compromises downward we were usually able to reach agreement with the Soviets." 61. Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin meeting, February 5, 1945, FRUS Yalta, p. 612. Note also Roosevelt's remark in late 1944 that the Russians would do "more or less what they wish[ed]" in the eastern zone, which suggests a certain continuity between his thinking and the policy later pursued by Byrnes at Potsdam. Roosevelt to Hull, September 29, 1944, FRUS Yalta, p. 155. 62. Draft directive, January 6, 1945; Winant to Dunn, January 26 and February 5, 1945; Mosely memorandum, February 3, 1945; Winant to McCloy, February 24, 1945; State-War-Navy meeting, March 14, 1945; high-level meeting, March 15, 1945; State Department memorandum, March 16, 1945; Winant to Stettinius, May 7, 1945; in FRUS 1945, 3:378-388, 396-403, 430, 451-457, and 504-5 (for somewhat less extreme British and even French views). For another example of a more moderate French view, see Gunter Mai, Der Alliierte Kontrollrat in Deutschland 1945-1948: Alliierte Einheit - deutsche Teilung? (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), p. 83. 63. Montgomery notes, July 6, 1945, DBPO I, 1:71. On Soviet policy in Germany at this time, see Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1995). 64. For examples of this sort of thinking, see Churchill's remark at the Potsdam Conference, July 25, 1945, FRUS Potsdam 2:385, and Anne Deighton, The Impossible Peace: Britain, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), p. 72. These attitudes were embedded in a more general feeling that relations between the USSR and the western powers could not be conducted in the sort of one-sided way the Soviets evidently had in mind. Truman, for example, often insisted that relations with Russia could not be a "one way street," and that the same rules had to be applied to both sides. See, for instance, White House meeting and Truman-Molotov meeting, both April 23, 1945, FRUS 1945, 5:253, 258. 65. Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany, pp. 143-144; U.S. Delegation working paper, July 23, 1945, Rubin to Oliver, July 25, 1945, and Pauley and Lubin to Truman, September 20, 1945, in FRUS Potsdam, 2:857, 871, 943. 66. For the thinking behind the new U.S. plan, see especially Pauley to Maisky, July 27, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:894-896. Pauley pointed out that it was obvious from its behavior that the Soviet government had concluded that "the reparations program can best be conducted on a zonal basis" and not by "treating Germany as a single economic unit"; he argued that the United States, if she was not going to end up in effect paying Germany's reparations for her, would therefore have to "deal with reparations along the same lines." The zonal approach, he concluded, was a "regrettable but inescapable" consequence of the USSR's own unilateral actions. This letter had been approved in advance by Byrnes, Truman and Clayton; see ibid., p. 894n. 67. Byrnes-Truman-Molotov meeting, July 29, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:474-475. Emphasis added. Byrnes's statement here that "under his scheme nothing was changed in regard to overall treatment of German finance, transport, foreign trade, etc." could not have been meant seriously, since (as will become clear from the following discussion) Byrnes fully understood that foreign trade, and thus also the financing of German needs, could not under his plan be managed on an all-German basis. His claim that the principle of running Germany as a unit was not being sacrificed has to be seen instead as part of a policy of paying lip service to that principle, no matter what was really being done. One should also note that in the process of drafting the Potsdam agreement, various provisions which would have preserved the rudiments of the policy of treating Germany as a unit were simply dropped. The original American proposal, for example, had sought to reconcile the Byrnes plan with the basic policy of supporting German unity. The plan was to be an "interim" arrangement; it would "not preclude a coordinated administration of Germany"; and removals were not to be "inconsistent with the treatment of Germany as a single economic unit." But such attempts to square the circle were soon abandoned. These provisions were deleted from the revised version of the proposal, which emphasized the ultimate authority of the zonal commander to decide what could be removed from his zone, and which provided the basis for the final agreement. See FRUS Potsdam 2:867-869, 926-927, 1485-87, for the initial U.S. proposal, the revised proposal, and the section of the Potsdam Protocol containing the final agreement. Note also the discussion in the foreign ministers' meeting, July 30, 1945, ibid., p. 488, for a striking example of Byrnes's insistence on the prerogatives of the zonal commander as opposed to the Control Council--something which strictly speaking was unnecessary since the Control Council could act in any event only on the basis of unanimity, but was important symbolically as an example of the U.S. government underscoring its preference for the zonal approach. 68. Heath to Byrnes, December 11, 1946, FRUS 1946, 5:650-651. 69. On first charge principle, see, for example, Gaddis, United States and the Origins of the Cold War, pp. 127, 221-222; Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany, pp. 123, 134, 135, 145. This insistence that the United States not, in effect, pay Germany's reparations for her is a very common theme in the documents. For various examples, see FRUS Yalta, p. 632; FRUS Potsdam, 1:470, 520; and FRUS Potsdam, 2:279 (for the quotation in the text), 896, 1558-59. 70. Foreign ministers' meeting, July 30, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:491. 71. See Collado to Thorp and Reinstein, July 23, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:812. 72. Memorandum for Clayton, July 23, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:813. 73. Byrnes-Bidault meeting, August 23, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:1557; Rubin to Oliver, July 25, 1945, ibid., p. 871. The view that the initial goal of treating Germany as a unit had been abandoned was shared by many key officials back in Washington who were violently opposed to the new policy. One high-ranking State Department official, for example, wrote angrily that the Byrnes plan "virtually abandoned the whole concept of joint economic treatment of Germany in favor of splitting the country sharply between the Russian and the three western zones" and would "go very far toward a de facto division of Germany into two halves." Thorp memo, c. July 28, 1945, quoted in Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany, pp. 161-162. See also Kindleberger to Lubin, July 28, 1945, quoted in ibid., p. 162. 74. The document is quoted in Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 177n. 75. Waley memorandum, August 2, 1945, DBPO I, 1:1258. See also Waley's comments in a staff meeting with the Bevin and Attlee, July 31, 1945, and Cadogan note, July 28, 1945, DBPO I, 1:948, 1053. For Waley's July 31 meeting with Byrnes--it was technically a Byrnes-Attlee meeting but the new prime minister let Waley do most of the talking--see Waley to Eady, July 31, 1945, DBPO I, 1:1050-51. Waley argued here that the Byrnes Plan, by drawing a "line across the middle of Europe," had an "importance far transcending reparations," but he could not convince the Secretary to change course. 76. Mark Turner to Treasury, July 28, 1945, quoted in Foschepoth, "Britische Deutschlandpolitik," p. 714 n. 162. 77. Byrnes-Molotov meeting, July 27, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:450. 78. See, for example, Potsdam conference, foreign ministers' meeting, July 30, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:485, 487, 488, 491; and Clayton to Byrnes, July 29, 1945, ibid., p. 901. 79. Collado to Thorp and Reinstein, July 23, 1945, and Clayton and Collado to Thorp, August 16, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:812, 829. The shift in the American approach is reflected in a memorandum Stimson sent to Truman on July 24. The Secretary of War had earlier leaned toward a policy of trying to run Germany together with the Russians, but now he wrote the president that what the Soviets were doing in their zone was "bound to force us to preserve the economy in western Germany in close cooperation with the British." FRUS Potsdam, 2:808-809. For Stimson's earlier view, see the document cited in n. xxx above. One should also note that the French, at the time of Potsdam, were also considering the possibility of a tripartite system limited to the western zones in the event of a failure of the Control Council regime. See Mai, Alliierte Kontrollrat, p. 84. 80. Walter Brown diary, July 24, 1945, quoted in Yergin, Shattered Peace, p. 118. 81. Byrnes-Molotov meeting, July 23, 1945; foreign ministers' meetings, July 27 and 30, 1945; Byrnes-Truman-Molotov meeting, July 29, 1945; Rubin to Oliver, July 25, 1945; in FRUS Potsdam, 2:274, 430, 474, 487, 491, 871. 82. Truman diary entry for July 30, 1945, Diplomatic History 4 (1980): 325-326; Truman to Bess Truman, July 31, 1945, in Robert Ferrell, ed., Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 (New York: Norton, 1983), p. 522. 83. James Forrestal diary entry for July 28, 1945, Forrestal Diaries [FD], vol. 2, Forrestal Papers [FP], ML. Only Truman's reference to his being "very realistic" appears in the version published at the height of the Cold War; the comment about a "Slav Europe" not being "so bad" was deleted from the published text. See Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking, 1951), p. 78. 84. For the claim that the pushing through of the Byrnes plan reflected a new American toughness resulting from the first successful test of an atomic bomb, see Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy, pp. 164-173, and, in milder form, Messer, End of an Alliance, pp. 94, 114, 131, 138, 139. 85. Foreign ministers' meeting, July 27, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:430. 86. Truman-Byrnes-Molotov meeting, July 29, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:472. 87. For the bargaining, and evidence of the ever-rising Soviet share the Americans were willing to concede, see FRUS Potsdam, 2:475, 481, 489, 932. 88. G.D.A. MacDougall, "Some Random Notes on the Reparation Discussions in Berlin, September-November 1945," DBPO I, 5:520n. 89. U.S. working paper, July 23, 1945, and Clayton to Byrnes, July 29, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:857, 900-901. For various other documents bearing on this issue, see ibid., pp. 862, 871-872, 883-885, 897, 1557. 90. See Mai, Alliierte Kontrollrat, pp. 82, 106-108, 218-219. 91. See Jochen Laufer, "Konfrontation oder Kooperation? Zur sowjetischen Politik in Deutschland und im Alliierten Kontrollrat 1945-1948," in Alexander Fischer, ed., Studien zur Geschichte der SBZ/DDR (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1993), p. 69, for a summary judgment very much in line with my own. On political developments in eastern Germany, see Jochen Laufer, "Die Ursprünge des Überwachungsstaates in Ostdeutschland: Zur Bildung der Deutschen Verwaltung des Innern in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone (1946)," in Bernd Florath, Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, eds., Die Ohnmacht der Allmächtigen: Geheimdienste und politische Polizei in der modernen Gesellschaft (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1992), pp. 146-168, and Dietrich Staritz, "Das ganze oder das halbe Deutschland? Zur Deutschlandpolitik der Sowjetunion und der KPD/SED (1945-1955)," in Jürgen Weber, ed., Die Republik der fünfziger Jahre: Adenauers Deutschlandpolitik auf dem Prüfstand (Munich: Olzog, 1989). 92. See especially the notes of a June 4, 1945 meeting in Moscow between German Communist leaders and top Soviet officials (including Stalin and Molotov). "'Es wird zwei Deutschlands geben': Entscheidung über die Zusammensetzung der Kader," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 30, 1991, p. 6; also in Rolf Badstübner and Wilfried Loth, eds., Wilhelm Pieck: Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschlandpolitik, 1945-1963 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), p. 50. To be sure, Stalin at this meeting called on the German Communists to champion the cause of a united Germany. But his instructions ("secure the unity of Germany through a unified Communist Party, a unified Central Committee, a unified working class party") had a certain sloganistic quality, and my own view is that he did not really take the prospect of a united Germany very seriously. The Soviet leader could scarcely have believed, especially given what he knew was going on in the Soviet zone, that the Communists could ever come to power in Germany except at the point of Soviet bayonets. The common view that the Soviets followed an inconsistent policy, subjecting the Germans in their zone to a "barrage of mistreatment and exploitation, while expecting not only them, but eventually their compatriots in the West, to choose socialism and an alliance with the Soviet Union," assumes that Stalin was unrealistic in the extreme--that in fact he was stupid. Given his overall behavior, and especially his respect for power realities, and given also his well-known distrust even of his own people, the assumption that he expected the Germans as a whole to opt for Communist rule more or less voluntarily is very hard to accept; it follows that his calls for German unity are to be understood in essentially tactical terms. The quotation is from Odd Arne Westad, "Secrets of the Second World: The Russian Archives and the Reinterpretation of Cold War History," Diplomatic History 21 (1997): 266, but one comes across this sort of argument in many discussions of the USSR's German policy at this time. For Stalin's assumption that military occupation would lead to political control, see the famous quotation in Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962), p. 114. 93. Laufer, "Konfrontation oder Kooperation," p. 70. 94. See Mai, Alliierte Kontrollrat, pp. 91 and 91n. 95. See below chapter two, n. xxx. 96. See MacDougall, "Random Notes," DBPO I, 5:527. The Soviets, MacDougall writes, often simply failed to turn up at meetings of the Level of Industry Committee in Berlin, without giving western representatives "any explanation before or after." "Towards the end," he writes, "their manners improved somewhat." They occasionally even told their western partners "at the time the meeting was due to begin that they could not come," and there was even "a notable occasion" when they informed the western officials the day before, and thus "saved us half an hour's car drive to and from the Allied Control Authority Building." See also Murphy to Byrnes, March 25, 1946, FRUS 1946, 5:533. The Soviets' real interest was to get as much by way of reparation from the western zones as they could, and that meant setting the "level of industry" as low as possible so that the surplus of plant and equipment available for reparation would be as high as possible. They rejected the western idea of approaching the problem in a more or less impartial way, and the negotiations ended up as a simple bargaining process. See Ratchford and Ross, Berlin Reparations Assignment, esp. pp. 89, 95, 97, 172-173. 97. Potsdam conference, plenary session, August 1, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:566-569. 98. Potsdam conference, plenary meeting, August 1, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:601; James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper, 1947), p. 86. Note also the evidence of Stalin's, and Molotov's satisfaction with Potsdam, and in particular with the reparation settlement, in Vladislav Zuvok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 37 and 40. Stalin, a document they cite shows, was also quite pleased that at Potsdam, Bulgaria was "recognized as within our sphere of influence." In fact, the Soviet leadership saw Potsdam as amounting to an acknowledgement by the western powers that they, the western countries, had "lost eastern Europe and the Balkans." Molotov as cited by the Yugoslav ambassador in Moscow, quoted in Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 22. 99. For the text, see FRUS Potsdam, 2:1477-98. 100. Potsdam conference, plenary meeting, July 31, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:520. 101. Potsdam conference, plenary meeting, July 31, 1945, FRUS Potsdam, 2:521. For Bevin's views on German unity, see Deighton, 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. 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