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

American leaders expected the Soviets to be emboldened by this situation and looked for signs of an upsurge in Soviet aggressiveness. The evidence was not long in coming. The Soviets, for example, were telling the East European Communist leaders that their side currently enjoyed a strategic edge, that their superiority in Europe was, however, merely transitory and would not last for more than a few years, and that the time for action had now come.³²³ The western governments got wind of this through intelligence channels, the east European regimes being far more effectively penetrated than the USSR itself.³²⁴ The Soviets themselves were making extensive material preparations for a global conflict. Their economy was being placed on a war footing. In August 1950 the CIA outlined some of the most revealing material indicators:

A program of extensive industrial mobilization for production of war materiel began throughout the Soviet Orbit about January 1949. Conversion of most plants in the entire Soviet Orbit scheduled to be converted under this program was completed by January 1950. Conversion of installations requiring major industrial readjustments will be completed in September or October 1950. Current industrial production plus the large stocks of military and civilian supplies which have been built up, are sufficient to support major operations. The current reserves stockpiling program has virtually been completed, with a flooding of reserves depots; the production of high octane aviation, jet, and diesel fuel have been stepped up beyond current consumption requirements and is straining storage capacity. (This is significant because part of the increase in aviation fuel stocks has been achieved by the use of stocks of components which are much more stable in storage than when blended in finished fuel.) In certain peripheral areas, military air fields are being rushed to completion; and supplies needed to support military operations have been moving into forward areas.³²⁵

As a result, as another intelligence report pointed out in early 1951, the USSR had been in "an advanced stage of readiness for war" since mid-1950 at least.³²⁶

In early 1950, American officials were coming to think that some Soviet action was imminent--perhaps against Yugoslavia, or around Berlin, or in Korea. As it turned out, of course, the North Koreans launched their attack on South Korea in June 1950. It was taken for granted--correctly, as we now know--that Stalin had approved the attack in advance. This act of military aggression was so overt that the American government, reversing its prior policy of disengagement from Korea, decided to intervene. But the fact of blatant armed aggression showed how dangerous the general situation had become. And then, of course, there was the obvious parallel between the two divided countries, Korea and Germany. The Soviets had set up a Communist regime in East Germany, which they were now arming. Would East German forces be used as the spearhead of an attack on West Germany? East German leaders were suggesting that what had happened in Korea might well be repeated in central Europe, and defecting East German troops revealed that they had been training for action against the Federal Republic.³²⁷

In the fall of 1950 the situation worsened. Stalin might not have expected the United States to intervene in Korea when he gave the North Koreans the green light. The Americans, after all, had given many indications that they had written off South Korea. But now in November Communist China was coming into the war, inflicting serious defeats on U.S. forces, threatening to push America not just out of North Korea but entirely off the Korean peninsula. This was a much more serious act than the initial North Korean invasion in June. It meant that the Communists had consciously decided to take on the United States in a major way. Why were they being so aggressive? Was it because they viewed the military situation as so favorable? Was it because they were tempted to precipitate a third world war at a time when victory might actually be within their reach?³²⁸

These were dark days for America, this period in late 1950 and early 1951, and it was a frightening time for Europe as well. The one thing that was clear was that the military balance would have to be rectified quickly, and that indeed a massive effort would be required. This, it was understood, entailed the risk that Stalin would be provoked into action--that he might feel that he would have to move before the western buildup wiped out the military edge he now enjoyed and made it impossible for him to accept a confrontation with the West. A real military showdown would of course be very risky, but if it was a question of now or never, perhaps he would be well-advised to bring matters to a head while he still had a good chance of winning a war. U.S. leaders assumed that Stalin was poised on the brink and therefore held back from certain measures, relating especially to an expansion of the Korean conflict, which they were afraid might tip the balance and lead the Soviets to opt for general war. But on the central issue of building up U.S. military power they were undeterred. The risks of a buildup were clear, but Truman and Acheson--now Secretary of State--would not be intimidated into accepting a situation where the USSR had the upper hand. The low military spending policy of the late 1940s was now seen as a terrible mistake. But the fact that a great error had been made then was no reason for holding back from a massive buildup now. And extraordinary steps were taken, especially in December 1950. Military spending more than tripled, and only a small fraction of that was directly related to the Korean War. The European allies also began to build up their military forces, both with American assistance and through greatly expanded defense budgets of their own.³²⁹

This enormous buildup had two main military objectives. The United States wanted to be able to launch a decisive attack on the Soviet homeland, and above all on the Soviet nuclear force, at the very start of a war. The other great objective was to prevent the USSR from being able to overrun western Europe. Europe, it was now clear, had to be defended on the ground, and defended as far to the east as possible. Even in early 1949 it had been obvious that this strategy, what was called "forward defense," was the only strategy that could hold the western alliance together over the long run. General Bradley, then U.S. Army Chief of Staff, made the point quite eloquently at the time. "It must be perfectly apparent to the people of the United States," he said, "that we cannot count on friends in Western Europe if our strategy in the event of war dictates that we shall first abandon them to the enemy with a promise of later liberation." And yet that was what would happen under the then current strategy of relying on air power and wartime mobilization. That strategy, Bradley argued, would produce "nothing better than impotent and disillusioned Allies in the event of a war." If the people of western Europe were to be asked "to stake their lives on the common cause," the West would need a strategy that could offer them real security, and America, he said, would have to move toward a strategy of "sharing our strength" with the Europeans "on a common defensive front."³³⁰

With the U.S. nuclear monopoly broken, these arguments carried much greater force. The Soviets, it was assumed, would be more aggressive in this new strategic environment. They might well calculate that the prospect of a two-sided atomic war would lead the United States to back down. The weakening of the U.S. nuclear guarantee would thus mean that the USSR would feel freer to push ahead more aggressively in political disputes. It also meant that it was more important than ever that a strong ground defense be built up in western Europe. This basic political argument for an effective ground defense was supported by a whole series of military arguments, which were particularly salient in the context of a two-sided air-atomic war: arguments about the importance of avoiding the loss to the Soviet Union of western Europe with its great human and economic resources, which might be decisive in a long military conflict; arguments about the need to provide defense in some minimal depth for the U.S. medium bombers based in England; arguments about how essential it was to maintain a foothold on the continent, since a repeat of the Normandy invasion would obviously be impossible if the USSR possessed any nuclear weapons at all.

The basic point about the importance of an effective forward defense applied with particular force to western Germany. If the Germans were to stand with the West, they obviously had to be defended. As Acheson, for example, pointed out, one had to "offer security to Germany" if she were to be "irrevocably aligned" with the western powers.³³¹ Moreover, if the rest of western Europe was to be defended, the NATO allies would have to fight on German soil. Including German territory in the area of military operations was necessary if the western armies were to have any room for maneuver at all--and they needed to be able to maneuver, since fixed positions would be quickly overwhelmed.³³² If the war was to be fought in Germany, the cooperation of the German civil authorities would be of considerable value; but Germany would cooperate as an ally only if she were defended as an ally. If, on the other hand, the allies simply viewed German territory as the scene of military operations and not as an area to be defended, the effect on German opinion could be catastrophic. The French military authorities did in fact regard Germany as a buffer area. But British military leaders were reluctant to commit themselves fully to the defense of continental Europe, and their American counterparts tended to feel the same way about Europe as a whole. In each case that attitude was bound to be a source of resentment in the forward area. West Germany, as the most exposed area, and the country whose status as an ally was the most problematic, was particularly sensitive to this sort of problem. Kurt Schumacher, the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, the main opposition group in the Federal Republic, used this argument to discredit the pro-western policy of the West German government, headed from the start by Konrad Adenauer. The allies simply could not afford to alienate the Germans or to weaken the Adenauer government by adopting a strategy which treated West Germany as essentially a buffer zone. The obvious solution to all these problems was to make an effective defense of West Germany a fundamental objective of the western alliance.³³³

But if the Federal Republic was to be defended, it was clear that the other western countries should not have to do the whole job. It was only fair that West Germany contribute to her own defense. Without German troops it was hard to see how even Europe west of the Rhine could be defended. If West German territory were included in the area to be defended, even more troops would be required, and no one but Germany could supply them. Officially in late 1949 the western powers still opposed German rearmament in any form, but in military circles in all three of the major western countries, it was taken for granted that German troops would be needed. And in November 1949, just a couple of months after the Soviet nuclear explosion had been announced, the whole issue of a German military contribution suddenly, and by no means coincidentally, moved to the top of the political agenda.³³⁴

A military contribution, however, implied a major change in West Germany's political status. For how could the Federal Republic really throw her lot in with the West and devote herself to the common defense if she were distrusted and subjected to all kinds of restrictions and discriminations--in short, if it were clear that she could never be more than a second-class member of the western community? If West Germany was to be a real partner in military terms, she could no longer be treated as an occupied power. Political relations would have to be recast and put much more on a basis of equality and mutual respect.³³⁵ Allied troops would remain on German soil, but their role would change. They would no longer be a "symbol of coercion," but rather would be there to protect the West as a whole.³³⁶ The Federal Republic and the North Atlantic powers would together be defending western civilization; their soldiers would be standing "shoulder to shoulder."³³⁷ In such circumstances, they would have to relate to each other as partners, and that meant that the Germans' basic political rights would have to be restored, and restored rather quickly. If the energies of the Germans were to be mobilized effectively on behalf of the West as a whole, the Federal Republic could not be discredited in the eyes of its own people as an allied puppet state. But if West Germany was to be accepted into the western bloc as a partner, then it stood to reason that she should bear her fair share of the defense burden. Germany's willingness to provide troops and join in the common defense would be the test of her commitment to the West, of her sense of herself as part of the western world--just as the western countries, by putting their bodies on the line to defend Germany, would be demonstrating their willingness to accept the Federal Republic as one of their own.³³⁸

So everything was beginning to point in the same direction: toward the rearmament of the West, and the rearmament of the Federal Republic as part of the West; and, both as consequence and as cause, the restoration of Germany's political rights and her integration into the western community as a full, or nearly full, partner.

In late 1949 and early 1950, this whole way of thinking was beginning to have a major impact on the West's German policy. The western powers were certainly willing to live with the status quo in central Europe. In February 1949 Bevin had noted that the division of Germany was "essential to our plans," at least for the time being.³³⁹ The French felt essentially the same way. Both they and the British had by this point rallied so completely to the western strategy that their main worry was that America might break with that strategy and make a deal with Russia providing for a unified Germany.³⁴⁰ Indeed, throughout the whole period down to 1963 and beyond, both Britain and France felt quite comfortable with the status quo and had little real interest in German reunification.³⁴¹

The Americans did not approach the issue in quite the same way, and did not view the division of Germany as a fundamental element of the political system they wanted to create. Acheson, for example, would have been happy to take the eastern zone if the Soviets were willing to turn it over with no strings attached.³⁴² But if the USSR insisted that Germany could be reunified only if the whole country were removed from the western system, he would prefer to keep things as they were. Acheson had no intention of abandoning the basic strategy of linking western Germany to the western world and tying her to a bloc capable of standing firm against Soviet pressure. If that meant that reunification was a political impossibility, then a divided Germany would have to be accepted.

That basic strategy had not been universally accepted within the American government. George Kennan, then head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, was the main critic within the government of the official American line, and in 1948 and 1949 he argued forcefully for a radical shift in U.S. policy. The Germans, Kennan said, would never accept the regime that was being set up--the division of their country and the various constraints on their national power. A West German government, he thought, was bound to become "the spokesman of a resentful and defiant nationalism," and the "edge of this resentment" would "inevitably be turned against the Western governments themselves."³⁴³ Under the emerging system, the three western powers would have to keep the West Germans "properly in their place and at the same time contain the Russians," but in Kennan's view they simply were not "strong enough to do it." The West should instead, he argued, allow a balance of power to come into being in Europe, with Germany, or a continental Europe dominated by Germany, as the prime balancer against Russia. The Germans, after all, knew "more about how to handle" countries like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland than the Americans did. He was aware of "the horrifying significance of this," which was that the Germans would again be playing a "very important" role. But it often seemed to him, "during the war, living over there, that what was wrong with Hitler's new order was that it was Hitler's." Something more like pre-1914 Germany, not a "westernized force," but "something between ourselves and the Russians," would be able to organize continental Europe, and would be "vigorous enough to back against the Russians."³⁴⁴ But Kennan's views were not broadly shared. American policy makers, by and large, did not trust Germany enough to cast her "loose in the hope that things will work out for the best." The prevailing view was that Kennan's thinking was a little bizarre, and that the best course was still "to develop Western Germany politically and economically as part of a Western European system under the supervision and protection of the Western Allies."³⁴⁵

So by the time the Federal Republic was established in 1949, the three western powers knew in general terms how they wanted to deal with the German problem. Their long-term goal was to make the West German state part of the western bloc--to integrate it into western Europe and into the western community as a whole. Their aim in this period was not simply to prevent the USSR from taking over all of Germany. A strong and fully independent German state capable of standing up to the Soviet Union on its own was also unacceptable. Germany could not be allowed to become too powerful or too independent. She could not be permitted, as Acheson put it in July 1950, to "act as the balance of power in Europe." Instead Germany was to be "irrevocably aligned" with the West, integrated into the western system, incapable of making trouble on her own.³⁴⁶

But would they actually be able to get the Germans to accept these arrangements? U.S. leaders did not think that success was certain. As the American High Commissioner in Germany, John McCloy, put it, the allies were engaged in a "struggle for the soul of Faust." This was a struggle which they might conceivably lose, but if they played their cards skilfully, there was an excellent chance that they would win in the end.³⁴⁷ The western powers had to move ahead toward transforming their relationship with the Germans, but the assumption in 1949 was that they should not move ahead too quickly. They had to make sure that German nationalism remained under control. "We have the power," McCloy said, "and we should have the determination to crack down immediately on the Germans if they get out of line."³⁴⁸ McCloy was worried about the possibility of "dangerous back-slidings" on the part of the Germans. The democratic elements the western powers were counting on, he wrote in early 1950, still needed "an umbrella under which to develop," and the allies therefore needed to hold on to their basic powers within Germany, at least for the time being.³⁴⁹ On the other hand, the U.S. government understood from the very beginning that the West would not succeed if it opted for a simple policy of coercion. The Germans could not simply be forced to do what the western allies wanted them to do. Instead, Germany had to be brought in as a "willing participant" and eventually as a "full partner" in the "concert of democratic powers."³⁵⁰ There was a risk that if the West was too hesitant and made concessions only grudgingly, the Germans would be alienated, and the pro-western Adenauer government discredited in the eyes of its own people.

British and French views were not fundamentally different. It was clear to all three governments, even in 1949, that the occupation regime was not consistent with the policy of integrating Germany into the western community. In the long run it clearly would have to go, but it would be dangerous to dismantle it too quickly. It was all a question of timing and of striking the right balance. The allies would have to move carefully and deliberately, gradually relaxing the controls as they became increasingly confident that things were going their way in Germany--that the pro-western elements in the Federal Republic would win out and that the Germans would take their place in the framework the western powers were constructing.³⁵¹

That, in any case, was the prevailing assumption in 1949 and early 1950. But by mid-1950 this basic strategy was being rethought. A quicker pace might be necessary; greater risks might have to be taken; a more radical transformation of West Germany's status might be essential. The defense of Europe had become a matter of considerable urgency. Perhaps there was no immediate threat of Soviet invasion, but there might well be a great crisis two or three years down the road.³⁵² And it was obvious that existing arrangements were far from adequate. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military structure the allies had set up in 1949, was in Acheson's view "absolutely hopeless and was not getting anywhere," and this situation had to be rectified.³⁵³ It was vital that western Europe be defended, and it was quite clear that this could not be done without German troops. Military leaders in all three western countries had understood this very early on, but the top political leadership had been reluctant to push ahead in this area. When the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, called for changing the existing demilitarization policy so that the West Germans could take part in NATO defensive arrangements and "contribute effectively to the security of western Europe," President Truman on June 16 sharply criticized their report as "decidedly militaristic." "We certainly don't want to make the same mistake," he wrote Acheson, "that was made after World War I when Germany was authorized to train one hundred thousand soldiers, principally for maintaining order locally in Germany. As you know, that hundred thousand was used for the basis of training the greatest war machine that ever came forth in European history."³⁵⁴

But Truman's resistance was soon overcome. Even in 1949, Acheson had felt that one could not "have any sort of security in western Europe without using German power," and now, in July 1950, he told the president that the real question was not whether Germany should be rearmed, but rather how it should be done.³⁵⁵ It was quickly agreed that there could be no German national army under German command. The Germans, McCloy argued in August, could not be allowed to develop a degree of power which would enable them to play off east against west, and a national army would undermine "much that we have so far achieved in democratizing German society." To recreate such an army would in his view be a "tragic mistake," and Acheson called it "the worst possible move."³⁵⁶ If the Germans were to make a military contribution without having a national army, there would have to be some kind of integrated force--a European army or a North Atlantic army--which would include German contingents but which would guarantee that the Germans could not operate independently. As one leading U.S. diplomat put it, reflecting what was by now the consensus view, a truly common effort was "the only way out."³⁵⁷ The British felt the same way. An integrated force, in Bevin's view, was the only way the West could be certain that "Germany's defense effort" remained "under allied control."³⁵⁸ But a German contribution, even at this level, implied a transformation of the Federal Republic's relationship with the western allies. She would have to become much more of a partner, and more of an equal. The old gradualist strategy was no longer viable. The occupation regime would have to be transformed relatively quickly. But it was by no means clear how fast or how far the western powers would have to go.