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

The policy makers in Washington saw things in much the same light. Many State Department officials had in fact been quicker than Clay to give up on the possibility of four-power cooperation on Germany.¹⁵⁵ Secretary Byrnes himself had of course essentially abandoned that hope at Potsdam, although this was not generally known, even within the government. But now the U.S. authorities had reclaimed the freedom to move ahead without the Soviets.

So the reparation stop served to pave the way for what was called the "organization" of the western zones. This was made clear in an important State Department dispatch of May 9, 1946. The basic question was whether Germany was to be treated as a unit. The suspension of reparation deliveries, Acting Secretary Acheson wrote Byrnes, served to bring the issue of to a head with the Russians. He urged the Secretary, then at a foreign ministers' meeting in Paris, to warn the Russians that if Germany could not be run as a unit, then America would have to consider the "disagreeable but inevitable alternative" of treating western Germany as an "economic unit and integrating this unit closely" with the west European economy.¹⁵⁶ A west-only solution was the obvious alternative to the failed "Potsdam" policy. Clay in fact was questioned on this point at a press conference on May 27.¹⁵⁷ It was still too early to deal with the issue in public, but in an important policy document that he had just written, Clay had already called for a merger of the British and American zones.¹⁵⁸

And Byrnes agreed with Acheson and Clay. At the foreign ministers' meetings, he went through what had now become the Americans' standard arguments. The Potsdam agreement, he said, had provided that Germany was to be treated as a unit, but this agreement was not being carried out. The reparation level had been set on the assumption that Germany would be run as a unit; the failure of the Potsdam policy meant that that plan was no longer valid, and had thus led to the suspension of the deliveries. The American government still wanted the Potsdam arrangement to be put into effect, but if this turned out to be impossible, Byrnes announced in July, it would have no choice but to merge its zone with whichever other zone was willing to go along with the multizonal policy it had in mind.¹⁵⁹

The offer to merge zones was quickly accepted by the British government.¹⁶⁰ As far as France was concerned, key foreign ministry officials, and above all the foreign minister himself, Georges Bidault, wanted to work with the Anglo-Saxons. But for a variety of reasons, the government could not openly take sides against the Soviet Union. These officials anticipated that France would naturally--but gradually, and through informal arrangements--gravitate to the Anglo-Saxon side.¹⁶¹ But for the time being, only the British and American zones were to be merged, and the Anglo-American bizone was soon officially brought into being.

It was clear from the start that this was a move of enormous political importance: the bizonal arrangements were not, as is sometimes said, a "temporary expedient" worked out for purely economic purposes.¹⁶² An important step was being taken toward the establishment of a west German state. In public, the political significance of what was going on was played down, since neither America nor Britain wanted to be blamed for the division of Germany. But U.S. officials understood that their goal was the establishment of a German government. On April 2, for example, General Walter Bedell Smith, the ambassador to the USSR, wrote the State Department to convey impressions gathered during a brief trip to Germany. Everyone there agreed that a government should be formed in Germany "by organizing from the bottom up" in the western zones, with the "ultimate idea" of combining the western government with the Soviet-sponsored government in the east. His personal view, undoubtedly shared by many other officials, was that "this final step may never be taken."¹⁶³ And Clay in particular was fully aware of what he referred to as the "political implications" of an Anglo-American zonal merger. He in fact called explicitly for the creation of a German government, a project which he thought might well be implemented only in the Anglo-American area.¹⁶⁴

So in setting up the bizone a major threshold had been crossed. The western powers were moving inexorably toward the establishment of a west German state. And American officials understood what they were doing. They may not have liked the term "state," since it implied too sharp a rupture with past policies, so they resorted to a variety of circumlocutions. Bedell Smith, for example, referred to "the integration of the western zones of Germany into a political unit oriented toward western Europe and western democracy."¹⁶⁵ But no matter how guarded the language, no one could doubt how events were moving.

And this policy of "organizing" western Germany was coming to have a distinct anti-Soviet coloration. America and Britain were forced to move ahead in the western zones, it was said over and over again, because the Russians had reneged on their promises and had sabotaged the Potsdam agreement. What the Soviets were doing in the eastern zone, running it as they saw fit, which at Potsdam the Americans had been willing to take philosophically, was now said to be totally unacceptable. If Germany was not being run as a unit, it was the Soviets who were to blame. What nerve they had blocking a common import-export program for all of Germany! This was in fact the key charge being leveled against them in early 1946. The implication was that the western powers were identifying themselves with German national aspirations, and were pointing to the Soviet Union as the great enemy of a unified German state.¹⁶⁶

How is this change of course to be understood? Why had the Americans shifted away from Byrnes's spheres of influence approach at Potsdam to the policy of insisting on German unity and of blaming the Soviet Union for blocking it? Clay might not have understood the real Potsdam understanding, but Byrnes certainly did. And the Secretary of State clearly knew what he was doing. He knew that American policy in 1946, especially on the question of the control of Germany's foreign trade, was totally at variance with the policy he pursued at Potsdam, and that it was highly misleading from the American government to charge the Soviets with violating the Potsdam agreement.

Why did Byrnes take this course? He was not the prisoner of his subordinates, and could have intervened at any point to restrain their "unitary" fervor. He could, in particular, have prevented American officials from insisting that Germany's foreign trade be managed on an all-German basis. He could at any point have put out the word about what the real Potsdam understanding was. In particular, he could have been much more open with General Clay, the strongest American personality pushing the unitary policy. Byrnes and Clay had worked together during the war and were on close personal terms. Indeed, Byrnes had been responsible for Clay's appointment as head of the military government, and it would have been easy for him to talk with Clay one-on-one and get him to pursue the policy he wanted him to follow.¹⁶⁷

But Byrnes did none of these things, and the question is why. Evidence on this point is scarce, and the answer must remain somewhat speculative. But it does seem that Byrnes's motivation changed over time. Initially--that is, right after Potsdam--he was not looking for a quarrel with Russia, and thought that an amicable divorce was the key to tolerable U.S.-Soviet relations. But (as noted above) there were many people who felt, for a variety of reasons, that Germany should be run as a unit. Why not let them have their chance? If the attempt was not made, he would have to deal with criticism from a variety of quarters that he had been too quick to consign east Germany to Soviet rule, too willing to give up on four-power cooperation, too ready to accept a spheres of influence deal. Why not let the advocates of the quadripartite regime beat their heads for a while on the hard rock of political realities?

But if that was Byrnes's thinking in late 1945, by early 1946 his motivation was different. By now it was clear that the policy of insisting that Germany be treated as a unit was leading directly to a clash with the Soviets. If Byrnes chose to let this happen, then this could only be because by that point he wanted it to happen. American officials had tried hard to create a four-power regime in Germany and Byrnes had given them free rein. The upshot was that by early 1946 a stick had fallen into his hands, and he was now ready to beat the Russians with it.

This new policy was clearly linked to the sharp deterioration of U.S.-Soviet relations at the beginning of 1946. But Byrnes was not simply getting back at the Russians for their brutish behavior in the Near East and elsewhere. Rather, the impression was taking hold that Soviet actions fell into a pattern. The USSR was an expansionist state and could only be contained if American power was brought to bear and if other countries could be brought to resist Soviet pressure.

American policy in 1946 was, in fact, directed above all at two audiences: the American public and the Germans in the western zones. If the Soviets were expansionist and could only be kept in check by countervailing power, then American power had to be committed to the defense of key areas on the Soviet periphery, and especially to the defense of western Germany. To commit power meant that the risk of war in certain contingencies would have to be accepted. And Byrnes certainly wanted to commit American power to Europe. Indeed, he had taken the lead in pressing for policies of this sort. This, he said in April 1946, was the point of his offer of a treaty of guarantee against a revival of German aggression.¹⁶⁸ And in September of that year, in a major address he gave at Stuttgart, Byrnes declared that American forces were not going to be withdrawn from Germany as long as any other power maintained a force of occupation there--a very important commitment which Byrnes made on his own, without first obtaining Truman's approval.¹⁶⁹

For a policy of involvement to be sustained, however, the American people had to be behind it. Perhaps the nation was now in an anti-Soviet mood, but how long were such feelings likely to last? In high policy-making circles, there was a pervasive fear that the U.S. public might sooner or later turn away from world politics. After years of deprivation, after a long depression and then a long war, calls for further sacrifice might well fall on deaf ears. The country, secure within its own borders, might revert to isolationism: everyone remembered very clearly what had happened after the last war.

The way to counteract this danger and to mobilize opinion in support of a policy of continued involvement--especially a policy of military involvement--was to present the international situation in stark and morally-charged terms. America was engaged in a struggle for the future of civilization; the Soviets were solely responsible for the new threat to peace; the West now had to stand up and defend its liberty and the independence of other nations menaced by Soviet expansionism. This was the message of the Truman Doctrine speech of March 1947, and it was this message that sold the Marshall Plan to Congress that same year. Dean Acheson, the number two man in the State Department in 1946 and 1947, the same Acheson who as Secretary of State in 1950 recognized the need to make things "clearer than truth" for political reasons, was the most fervent practitioner of this tactic. But other top officials also understood the need to administer "necessary shocks to public opinion," and it can be taken for granted that Byrnes, consummate politician that he was, was not oblivious to considerations of this sort.¹⁷⁰

On the central issue of Germany, what all this meant was that the Soviets had to be blamed in no uncertain terms for the breakdown of international cooperation. On May 9, Acheson and Assistant Secretary of State Hilldring wrote Byrnes that Soviet "loyalty to Potsdam" needed to be tested. The aim was to "fix blame" on them in the event they failed this test.¹⁷¹ And this was in fact the policy that Byrnes pursued at the Paris foreign ministers' meeting in mid-1946: the United States insisted that Russia comply with "Potsdam"; the Soviets failed the "test"; and the Americans then very publicly stressed Soviet responsibility for the collapse of the quadripartite regime. The British government also felt that it was "most important to ensure that responsibility for the break was put squarely on the Russians."¹⁷²

The finger was being pointed at the USSR, but the goal was not simply to mobilize support for a firm policy within Britain and America. German opinion was the other major target of the policy. In "organizing" the western zones, the United States and Britain were admitting that Germany could not be run on a four-power basis. They were therefore running a risk that the German people would blame the western powers for writing off an all-German solution too quickly. By 1946 a divided Germany was coming to be seen as unavoidable, but as one British Foreign Office official put it, a division of the country could not be the "ostensible object of our policy since we have to make the Russians appear to the German public as the saboteurs of German unity."¹⁷³ The Germans were being told, in other words, that the USSR was their enemy, and that the western powers were basically in sympathy with German national rights.

To pull Germany toward the West, responsibility for the split thus had to be placed on Russia, and the deeper the split with Russia, the more important it was that western Germany be aligned with the western powers.¹⁷⁴ Increasingly in 1946 the German attitude was coming to be seen as crucial. The western governments had begun to see themselves as engaged in a struggle for Germany, and in their view the outcome of this struggle would be decided not by the presence of small armies of occupation in the western zones but ultimately by the sympathies of the Germans themselves. If matters continued to drift, the British military governor warned in May 1946, the Germans would become "increasingly hostile" and "eventually begin to look east."¹⁷⁵ No one thought the Germans were such convinced democrats that the West could count on their loyalty, no matter what policy it pursued.

And no one thought that the western powers were so strong that they could afford to ignore considerations of this sort. U.S. policy in particular in the early Cold War period in 1946 was not rooted in a sense of America's overwhelming strength. The American government did not feel that it was in control of so much power that it could do more or less whatever it wanted. Quite the contrary: the internal political situation placed limits on what the government could do, and especially on how much military strength could be generated. U.S. policy makers had to work within those constraints, but they were also looking for a way to increase their freedom of action.

So if American power was limited--if the United States could not do what it wanted in western Germany through brute force alone--and if that area could not be lost to the Soviets, then it was obvious that the West Germans somehow had to be won over to the western side. The Germans, long before they had a state of their own, were thus more than just a passive object of other countries' policies; their political sympathies, their political choices, were now of the utmost importance.

The most obvious implication was that the western zones had to be allowed to recover economically. The Germans in the eastern zone were better fed than those in the more heavily industrialized west. Unless this situation were reversed, and reversed quickly, all of Germany might soon be lost. There was little choice, Clay wrote in March, "between becoming a Communist on 1500 calories [a day] and a believer in democracy on 1000 calories. It is my sincere belief that our proposed ration allowance in Germany will not only defeat our objectives in middle Europe but will pave the road to a Communist Germany."¹⁷⁶ In May he pressed for a policy of economic and political reform--on a bizonal basis, if broader arrangements could not be worked out--with the argument that if the West failed to act, the Germans would turn toward Communism.¹⁷⁷

By July, America and Russia were competing openly for German favor. The Soviets were angered by the reparation stop, and concerned by what it implied. The United States was simply tearing up an important part of the Potsdam agreement. The Americans said that this was because the USSR refused to cooperate in running Germany as a unit. The Soviets could not answer this by pointing out that the real Potsdam understanding was based on the idea that Germany would in fact be divided between east and west, that foreign trade, in particular, would not be run on an all-German basis, and that the Americans were therefore reneging on the fundamental agreement that had been reached the previous year. The USSR, like the western powers, had a political interest in officially backing the principle of a unified Germany. But although they could not develop the point openly, the Soviets certainly understood that there had been a radical shift in American policy since Potsdam. There was no getting around the fact that the reparation stop, a clear repudiation of what to the Russians was an unambiguous American promise, reflected a new American hostility toward the Soviet Union.

The Soviets were now worried about the whole thrust of America's new German policy. It seemed that western Germany was going to be "organized" not just without them, but quite possibly against them. They decided to try to counter that policy by appealing directly to the Germans. Molotov gave a major speech at the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers meeting on July 10 taking what was at that time a very soft line on the German question.

The American government, and Clay especially, felt that a strong response was in order.¹⁷⁸ On July 19, Clay drafted a summary of what he thought American policy should be. Some high officials thought that his draft tended "a bit in tone toward wooing the Germans."¹⁷⁹ But Byrnes agreed with Clay about what was necessary. At Stuttgart, on September 6, he laid out America's fundamental policy. The Stuttgart speech was in fact based on Clay's draft of July 19 and took the same moderate line.¹⁸⁰ "It is the view of the American government," Byrnes declared, "that the German people, throughout Germany and under proper safeguards, should now be given the primary responsibility for the running of their own affairs." The goal was to give the Germans some hope--some sense that they would eventually be given some control over their own destiny and that their future lay in partnership with the West.¹⁸¹

The importance of these developments can scarcely be exaggerated. The United States was blaming the USSR for the failure of the Potsdam agreement and thus for the division of Germany. The Americans were in effect saying that the division of Germany was illegitimate, and thus the Soviet policy of maintaining total control of their zone was also illegitimate. In order to win the Germans over to the West, the U.S. government seemed to be playing up to them, moving toward the creation of a German state and endorsing German national goals. From the Soviet point of view, the dangers were obvious. In late 1946, Molotov brought together a group of advisors to analyze the Stuttgart speech. Byrnes's basic goal at Stuttgart, as that group saw it, was to "obtain for the United States support from German revanchist groups." The speech was "an attempt to convince the Germans that the United States is the only country which sympathizes with the German people and which is willing and able to help them."¹⁸² The USSR's most fundamental security interests were at stake. Germany was on the road to independence, and the more independent she became, the more likely it was that she would be allowed once again to develop her power--that to keep western Germany on the American side, no matter what U.S. and British leaders now said, the controls on German power would have to be gradually dismantled. And this was a Germany that was being told that its most basic national goals were blocked by a Soviet policy which the western powers insisted was illegitimate. This therefore was a Germany which was being directed against Russia, a Germany which one day might pursue an active revisionist policy in central Europe, a policy aimed at the recovery of the eastern zone and perhaps even at the reconquest of the territories east of the Oder-Neisse line. And the United States might feel obliged to underwrite this irredentist policy as the price of keeping Germany in the western camp.

All these problems might take years to develop, but the ball had started to roll, and if nothing were done there was no reason to think that it would stop before it reached the bottom of the hill. Wasn't it best, therefore, to try to head off the danger before it was too late? Even in 1945, even as they tightened their grip on the eastern zone and embraced the Byrnes plan, the Soviets were not quite ready to give the western powers a completely free hand in the western part of Germany. They wanted total control in their own zone, but they also asked for some real say over developments in western Germany, especially in the Ruhr. This policy irritated the western powers. It was yet another example of the "one-way street," which Truman in particular complained about repeatedly. And this had fed into the growing sense that a relatively friendly settlement, based on a simple division of Europe, where each side allowed the other a totally free hand on its side of the line of demaracation, was really not to be expected, and that the western powers therefore needed to take much stronger measures to defend their interests in Europe.

But if the Soviets, even in 1945, had not quite been ready to accept a clean spheres of influence arrangement for Germany, it was only to be expected that the new course of American policy in 1946 would greatly intensify their interest in having some control over developments in the western zones. The Russians understood what was at stake. They violently objected to the suspension of reparation deliveries and bitterly attacked the establishment of the bizone. But mere words would not prevent the western powers from pursuing their policy. The Soviets thus had to think about how their power could be brought to bear to prevent America and her friends from moving ahead with their new policy in western Germany.

The developing situation was very serious. The United States and the Soviet Union were embarked on a path that could lead to a third world war. The other disputes of the early cold war period were of transient importance. The quarrels over eastern Europe and the Near East were in essence disputes about where precisely the line of demarcation between east and west was to be drawn. These conflicts ran their course, policies were tested, and the limits of each side's sphere of influence were clarified. Eastern Europe was effectively recognized as a Soviet sphere, and Turkey and Iran were seen as lying on the other side of the line.

But with Germany it was different. In the clash over Germany, the vital interests of both sides were now engaged. There was a good chance that the two blocs were set on a collision course. There was no longer any chance that the two sides would accept a settlement based on the simple idea that the Soviets could do what they wanted in the east, while America and her friends would have a free hand in the western zones. The clash over Germany was thus to be the mainspring of international conflict during the Cold War period.