144

THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS

ple in the Western sectors of Berlin, the U.S.S.R. had further offered to co-operate in the establishment of West Berlin as a demilitarized "free city," though without any guarantees that the Western governments could have considered at all reliable. But the important thing, the Soviet note had emphasized, was to start negotiations promptly to terminate the existing military occupation. Failing such negotiations, Moscow had threatened, it would turn over all its own rights in Berlin to the "German Democratic Republic" and would fully support the latter in case of any trouble with the Western powers.⁶ Implicit in Moscow's communication had been the possibility that if its wishes were disregarded the East German regime might try to make the Western position in Berlin untenable through harassment of the Western garrisons and their lines of communication across Eastern Germany. Conceivably it might even try to starve out West Berlin itself by means of a new blockade such as Stalin had imposed in 1948-49.

The three Western powers, while differing both about the motives of this unexpected thrust and about the best way of parrying it, had been fully agreed that the proposed Soviet moves were illegal and that they could not accept the "free city" status which was suggested for the Western sectors of Berlin. Their response to the Soviet note, approved by the NATO Council and embodied in separate communications delivered in Moscow on December 31, 1958, had taken the line that Western rights in Berlin, including the right of access to the city, must and would be upheld, and that no negotiations with the Soviet Union could be carried on "under menace or ultimatum." On the other hand, they had expressed their readiness to discuss the Berlin question with the U.S.S.R., on two conditions: that the discussions should take place "in an atmosphere devoid of coercion or threats," and that the question of Berlin should be taken up "in the wider framework of negotiations for a solution of the German problem as well as that of European security."⁶

BERLIN, DISARMAMENT, AND THE ATOM

145

What this meant, in nondiplomatic language, was that if the U.S.S.R. wanted to talk about Berlin it must first withdraw or explain away the time limit it had fixed for the negotiations; and it must also recognize that the Berlin question was a part of the much wider problem of East-West relations in Germany and Europe, and could not be treated in isolation. The Western notes were silent as to the specific changes in the Berlin situation that the three governments might be willing to discuss if these basic conditions were met. Indeed, the Western governments had yet to face this question in any serious way. Their willingness to talk at all, however, seemed to imply that they might at some point find it necessary to make certain concessions to Soviet wishes now that the question had been raised in so pressing a fashion. From Moscow's point of view, this possibility alone made it well worth while to pursue the conversation.

The question of a time limit for negotiations was easily disposed of. First Deputy Premier Mikoyan during his January visit to the United States (Section 2) repeatedly pooh-poohed the notion that in asking for negotiations before May 27 Moscow had been laying down anything in the nature of an "ultimatum." The time limit was not significant, he implied; the main thing was to start negotiating. Khrushchev and other Soviet spokesmen took a similar line. They had not said "ultimatum," they proffered; therefore there had been no "ultimatum." At the same time, they took care to emphasize that they really did look for some kind of positive action by May 27 or shortly thereafter. Thus the psychological pressure on the West was maintained in fact even while the notion of a fixed time limit was nominally repudiated.

A measure of satisfaction was also accorded the Western demand that the Berlin issue be taken up in a broader context. Replying to the Western notes on January 10, the U.S.S.R. declined to link the Berlin problem with German reunification or European security. It did, however, renew its long-standing proposal to conclude an all-German

146

peace treaty applying to both German states, and to settle
the Berlin matter within that framework.⁷ Although the
draft treaty appended to the Soviet note was no more ac-
ceptable to the West than previous Soviet drafts had been,
a wider area was thus opened up to diplomatic maneuver-
ing, and the Western governments were correspondingly
encouraged to start thinking in terms of constructive
counterproposals. If the Western powers disliked the
Soviet plan, Mikoyan repeatedly implied, it was up to
them—especially to the United States—to suggest some-
thing better.

A more far-reaching consequence of the Mikoyan trip was the encouragement of a general sense of optimism about the possibility of ending the "cold war" and scheduling a conference "at the summit" to deal with Berlin and all other "cold war" issues. The Soviet First Deputy Premier had not been forty-eight hours in the United States before the prospects for a meeting at the highest level had again become the foremost issue of current international politics. Khrushchev took up the theme with a fervor which suggested that this might have been his real aim in raising the Berlin issue. Prime Minister Macmillan, followed by a large share of British and some continental opinion, enthusiastically favored the idea. President Eisenhower and President de Gaulle, however, were much more dubious, while Chancellor Adenauer appeared downright fearful of what the Big Four leaders might agree to if they should get together without him.

The misgivings of the German Chancellor, which were
to become a source of considerable friction within the
Western camp, were not entirely unjustified. In the atmos-
phere of conciliation and flexibility induced by the Miko-
yan trip, some of the Western leaders appeared to be tak-
ing a fresh view of certain aspects of allied policy that had
hitherto been considered well-nigh sacrosanct. No one sug-
gested that Germany's right to "reunification in freedom"
should be sacrificed, or that there should be any abandon-
ment of West Berlin. But Secretary Dulles himself sug-

147

gested at a news conference on January 13 that perhaps,
after all, free elections might not be the only way of re-
unifying Germany as the West had hitherto insisted. Mr.
Dulles' subsequent elaborations failed to dispel the un-
easiness his comment immediately aroused in Western
Germany.

Prime Minister Macmillan, who gave Dr. Adenauer a
second grave shock by his decision to go to Moscow, fur-
ther disconcerted Bonn (and Washington as well) by
agreeing with Khrushchev at the conclusion of his visit on
March 3 that consideration could usefully be given to pro-
moting European security "by some limitation of forces
and weapons, both conventional and nuclear, in an agreed
area of Europe." Although the British leader rejected the
interpretation, this sounded like a variant on the popular
idea of military "disengagement" in Europe, an idea that
had been much favored in certain Communist and neu-
tralist quarters but was strongly opposed by the United
States, by NATO military authorities, and by the West
German government. President de Gaulle, in turn, for-
sook another well-established Western position by imply-
ing at his March 25 news conference that Germany ought
to be permanently contented with the Oder-Neisse bound-
ary in the east, a matter the Western allies had hitherto
insisted on treating as an open question. This piecemeal
surrender of allied positions, as Dr. Adenauer felt it to be,
reflected a lack of co-ordination in Western policy which
became increasingly noticeable during Secretary Dulles'
illness. It also reflected considerably more anxiety to find
common ground with the Soviet Union than had been ap-
parent up to November 1958.

For many observers, however, the details of the German
question had become less important than the question
whether a summit conference would be scheduled, and
how soon. Khrushchev, it was believed in the West, might
be willing to make concessions of his own if he could thus
be assured of a meeting with his Western opposites. Al-
ready he had made an implied withdrawal from some of

148 THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS

the extreme positions taken up in the note of November 27. On March 19 he had even conceded that the Western powers had a right to keep certain military forces in Berlin pending the conclusion of a peace treaty. His general strategy appeared to be one of alternating "hardness" and "softness," presumably aimed less at clarifying the diplomatic picture than at hurrying his opponents along toward the summit in a mixed mood of anxiety and hope.

As in the past, the decisive voice with respect to the holding of a summit conference was recognized to lie with President Eisenhower. Mr. Eisenhower's disinclination to take part in such a meeting, unless assured in advance of a positive outcome, was of long standing and had in no wise been diminished by the illness of his principal diplomatic adviser. The President's basic position, repeatedly stated throughout the spring, was that a summit conference could be of value only if (1) any remaining element of threat to the allied position in Berlin was withdrawn, (2) the issues to be considered by the heads of government were thoroughly clarified by previous discussion at lower levels, and (3) there were indications of sufficient flexibility in the Soviet position to afford some real prospect of agreement at the summit, thus avoiding the danger of a subsequent letdown to world opinion. An essential preliminary to a summit conference, in other words, would be a meeting of the Soviet and Western Foreign Ministers to find out whether there was any point in bringing the heads of government together.

Such a meeting at the Foreign Ministers' level had in fact been proposed by the Western powers as early as February 16 and had been agreed to, with some important qualifications, in a Soviet note of March 2.⁸ A further exchange of notes at the end of March established general agreement that the Foreign Ministers of the Big Four would meet in Geneva on May 11, that they would there consider "questions relating to Germany, including a peace treaty with Germany and the question of Berlin," and that some kind of hearing would be accorded to repre-

BERLIN, DISARMAMENT, AND THE ATOM 149

sentatives from Western and Eastern Germany and possibly to Polish and Czechoslovak representatives as well.⁹

Agreement on these arrangements, which was arrived at with considerable difficulty and embodied some important concessions on both sides, appeared to remove any immediate threat of unilateral action against Berlin by the U.S.S.R. or the East German puppet state. It thus served to allay much of the anxiety occasioned by statements in Moscow, East Berlin, and Washington, by threatening incidents in the air corridors leading to Berlin, and by doubts about the ability and readiness of the Western powers to defend their rights in Berlin by military means should that become necessary. (Cf. Section 33.) Still in suspense, however, was the question what kind of alternative to the Moscow program the West would be prepared to offer at Geneva; what kind of "progress" would be needed there in order to justify a later summit meeting; and, perhaps most important, what would happen at Berlin if no progress was made.

## 28. THE GENEVA FOREIGN MINISTERS' CONFERENCE

Khrushchev had not in the least desired a conference at the Foreign Ministers' level, and had made it clear that he consented only because of President Eisenhower's insistence that there be some progress toward a resolution of East-West differences before any summit conference was scheduled. The way to achieve progress, Khrushchev had repeatedly asserted, was to go directly to the summit. In sending Foreign Minister Gromyko to Geneva, but denying him any real power to negotiate, it seems probable that Khrushchev hoped to reinforce this argument by demonstrating that no progress was in fact possible unless and until the heads of government were brought into the picture. Soviet diplomacy at Geneva, it soon appeared, would be characterized by the same combination of diplomatic obduracy and superficial good fellowship that had become familiar in all recent phases of Soviet political

150

warfare. Those Westerners who had observed Gromyko's
dour manner at past diplomatic conferences were as struck
by his apparent good nature outside the United Nations
European Headquarters, where the conference took place,
as they were dismayed by his inflexibility at the confer-
ence table.

The negotiations that led up to the Geneva conference had afforded the U.S.S.R. an opportunity to pursue another of its important objectives, the achievement of wider international recognition for the East German regime. Each move in this direction was a step toward the permanent consolidation of Communist rule in Eastern Germany, and away from the alternative program of German "reunification in freedom" espoused by the West German republic and the Western allies. Moscow had long since made clear that it was not interested in German reunification on any terms the West seemed likely to accept. Its whole effort in recent years had been directed to forcing the Western allies, the West Germans, and world opinion generally to accept the East German authorities as a genuine government with the same rights and prerogatives as those of the German Federal Government at Bonn.

In continuation of this strategy, the U.S.S.R. had in-
sisted throughout the diplomatic exchanges that preceded
the Geneva meeting that both of the German regimes
should be represented in the Foreign Ministers' discus-
sions. Though sharing Chancellor Adenauer's misgivings
about the wisdom of allowing East Germany the prestige
that would flow from participation in such a meeting, the
Western powers had felt it necessary to concede the point.
Nevertheless the conference did not get under way with-
out a sharp argument about the precise form and extent
of German participation. Eventually it was agreed that
the representatives of the Big Four (Gromyko, Secretary
Heiter, Foreign Secretary Lloyd, and French Foreign
Minister Maurice Couve de Murville) would be seated at
a central table while the East and West German delega-
tions were relegated to flanking tables from which they

151

were permitted to speak if none of the Big Four objected.
This arrangement, which was quite enough to dramatize
the position of East Germany in the eyes of Europe and
the world, made it relatively easy for Gromyko to drop
the Soviet demand that Poland and Czechoslovakia should
also be represented.

The membership of the conference, however, was not
the central issue. The main question before the Foreign
Ministers was what arrangements could be arrived at for
the future of Germany and Berlin. In preparing their ap-
proach to this fundamental problem, the task of the West-
ern powers had been to find some reasonable alternative to
the wholly unacceptable program set forth in the Soviet
notes. Being determined to maintain their rights in Ber-
lin itself, the Western governments had been constrained
to re-examine their position on the whole complex of
problems relating to Germany and European security in
order to see whether there were any other areas in which
they could safely make concessions to the Soviet view-
point. A special working group had been engaged on this
effort through most of the spring, and the matter had been
periodically canvassed by the three Foreign Ministers in
consultation with the Bonn government. The result of
these efforts, an elaborate "package" plan embodying prin-
ciples for a permanent settlement of outstanding problems
in Central Europe and even beyond, was laid before the
Geneva conference by Secretary of State Herter on
May 14.¹⁰

What the Western "package" plan amounted to was a
fusion, an updating, and, in some respects, a softening of
the proposals on Germany and European security which
the Western powers had put forward at the last Foreign
Ministers' meeting, held in Geneva in 1955 shortly after
the "summit conference" of that year.¹¹ Like the 1955 pro-
posals, the new Western plan provided for the reunifica-
tion both of Berlin and of Germany as a whole by means
of free elections; the conclusion of a definitive peace treaty
with a new all-German government; and a limitation of

152

armaments, under effective control and inspection, in an
agreed area of Central Europe. Unlike the 1955 plan, it
set up a detailed schedule for the accomplishment of
these ends in a co-ordinated series of four stages (though
without specific dates), linked with a general reduction of
armaments and armed forces by the Big Four and other
states.

Other departures from the 1955 program, admittedly
introduced with an eye to meeting Soviet arguments, in-
cluded a provision for a mixed commission of East and
West Germans to prepare for all-German elections. This
body would be so organized that the West Germans
would have a majority, but the East German members
could not be outvoted; and, as a further concession to
Soviet views, provision was made for a waiting period of
up to thirty months before the elections were actually
held. On the other hand, the new plan still envisaged the
eventual reunification of Germany through free elections,
which the Russians were known to oppose. It also retained
another feature that was known to be particularly objec-
tionable to the U.S.S.R.: it stipulated that a reunited Ger-
many would not be required to accept a neutral status,
but would be permitted to belong to NATO if it chose
to do so. Should that be the case, various additional secur-
ity guarantees were offered to the Russians. But, as the
*Manchester Guardian* immediately pointed out, the West
had refrained from asking the one question that might
really have caused the Russians embarrassment: "Will you
agree to reunion through free elections if Germany leaves
NATO?" Germany's departure from NATO was a bigger
price than the West had been willing to offer for German
"reunification in freedom."

Not a few Western observers felt that the three govern-
ments had already gone dangerously far in trying to meet
Soviet desires. They need not have worried, because
Gromyko would have nothing to do with the Western
"package plan." No more would Khrushchev, who seri-
ously annoyed the Western Foreign Ministers by keeping

153

up a running commentary on the Geneva discussions from
wherever he happened to be at the moment. The sum and
substance of the Soviet position was the program set forth
in the two notes of November 27, 1958 and January 10,
1959. From the essentials of this program Gromyko re-
fused to budge.

Finding themselves unable to start a discussion of the
Berlin problem within the "wider framework" of their
"package plan," the Western spokesmen had no alterna-
tive but to discuss the Berlin issue by itself, as the U.S.S.R.
had suggested in the first place and as they had for six
months been trying to avoid doing. With great regret, the
West prepared to "unwrap" its laboriously assembled
"package." It could derive some consolation from the
fact that the original Soviet deadline of May 27 was about
to pass, with no indication that any action against Berlin
was imminent. Although the U.S.S.R. had repeatedly
threatened that if the West proved laggard it would sign
a separate peace treaty with East Germany—a step which,
if taken, would place the West in a very awkward position
vis-à-vis the East German authorities—Moscow now seemed
disposed at least to await the outcome of the Geneva dis-
cussions. The further course of those discussions would
determine how far the West might be prepared to yield if
the pressure was maintained.

On May 26, just before the Ministers took a two-day
recess to attend the funeral of Secretary Dulles, Mr. Herter
laid on the conference table a seven-point "interim" plan
for Berlin which had originally been included within the
Western "package."¹² But like the larger plan of which it
had formed a part, this elaboration of Western ideas on
the main issue fell far short of meeting the Soviet de-
mands. Where the U.S.S.R. had sought the incorporation
of Berlin into the "German Democratic Republic" or, at
most, the maintenance of West Berlin as an unprotected
"free city," the West proposed to treat the whole of
Greater Berlin as a single entity, completely separate from
East Germany, and to reunify it by free elections. And,

154

where the U.S.S.R. had demanded the early withdrawal of the occupation forces of all four powers, the Western plan explicitly provided for the maintenance of occupation forces, with a guarantee of unrestricted access to the city, pending the coming into force of an all-German peace treaty.

This, in other words, was a plan for strengthening the Western position in Berlin, not for liquidating it as the Russians had proposed. Gromyko's response was contemptuous. Instead of attempting to discuss the Western plan on its merits, he proceeded to lay down a barrage of complaints about the "subversion and espionage" allegedly being carried on against East Germany from the territory of West Berlin—activities which, as Secretary Herter pointed out in detail on June 5, were in reality far less serious than those being carried on in East Berlin against the West. Making a further complaint about the size of the Western garrisons in Berlin, totaling about 11,000 men, Gromyko demanded their prompt reduction to "symbolic" contingents pending a definitive agreement on the whole question. On June 10 he reopened the issue of a time limit by suggesting that the West might continue to exercise its occupation rights, though in a severely restricted form, for a maximum of one year while definitive arrangements were worked out. Otherwise, he said, the Soviet Union would promptly conclude a separate peace treaty with the "German Democratic Republic."

Though professing to be scandalized by this renewed "ultimatum," the West on June 16 put forward one more "interim" proposal for Berlin which embodied some fairly substantial concessions, among them an undertaking not to increase their existing forces in Berlin, not to arm them with atomic weapons (which there had been no thought of doing in any case), and not to countenance subversive activities against East Berlin and East Germany provided the Russians would give a corresponding pledge.¹³ The most Gromyko would offer in response, however, was an extension of his new deadline from twelve months to eighteen;

155

and he refused to say what would happen at the end of that period if no agreement had been reached. On June 20 the conference recessed until July 13.¹⁴

The second phase of the Foreign Ministers' meeting, which lasted from July 13 to August 5, was no more rewarding than the first in terms of producing the kind of "progress" that would have met President Eisenhower's conditions for a summit conference. This was perhaps not surprising in view of the fact that the President himself had by now made up his mind to bypass the summit for the time being and talk directly to Khrushchev.¹⁵ Although the latest Western proposal on Berlin had seemed to most observers to provide the basis for a reasonable compromise if the Russians wanted it, Gromyko now chose to complicate matters still further by linking the Berlin question with the issue of an all-German committee to prepare for a peace treaty. After having been forced to lay aside their own "package" plan, the Western representatives found themselves in the paradoxical position of arguing for an agreement on Berlin alone, the very thing they had originally tried to avoid. "We are in complete confusion," M. Couve de Murville observed on July 16. "We have reached a point where neither side knows what the other is talking about."

Various new gambits were attempted during the next fortnight, but Gromyko doggedly stuck to his eighteen-month plan and refused to say definitely what would become of the Western occupation rights when the eighteen months had expired. The Western ministers offered a new version of their Berlin plan which included a five-year time limit, but insisted that the Western occupation rights would remain intact thereafter if no other agreement had been reached.¹⁶ If despite this impasse the conference adjourned on August 5 with an air of moderate good cheer, the explanation lay in the prospect that President Eisenhower's talks with Khrushchev would open a new phase in the whole East-West relationship. In their final communiqué,¹⁷ the four ministers stated that the positions

"THE MAIN THING IS TO KEEP THE DOOR OPEN"

(Reproduced by permission of the Register and Tribune Syndicate)
Low in The Manchester Guardian

156

157

of both sides had become closer during the talks, even though further discussions were necessary in order to reach an agreement. They also revealed that they had been in consultation about the possibility of a new start toward disarmament negotiations, and that an announcement on the subject would be made in due course. (See Section 30.)

29. NEGOTIATIONS ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS TESTS

Gromyko's uncompromising behavior at Geneva had encouraged a belief in some quarters that the Soviet Government, if it really wanted a summit meeting despite its unwillingness to make concessions on the German question, might permit the necessary "progress" to be made at the concurrent negotiations in Geneva on the problem of a discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. The diplomatic conference on this matter which had been intermittently in session since October 31, 1958 involved only the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, the three powers that had actually developed and tested nuclear weapons. The negotiations had revealed the usual basic differences of approach as between the Soviet and Western governments. Nevertheless, the Soviet delegation headed by Semyon K. Tsaparkin had expressed considerable interest in reaching agreement and had shown remarkable readiness to compromise, at least on nonessential matters. The American and British negotiators, James J. Wadsworth and David Ormsby-Gore, had become convinced that patience and persistence might in the end bring a positive result. This hope appeared to be ardently shared by the political, if not necessarily by the military, authorities in Washington and London.

A three-power agreement to discontinue the testing of nuclear weapons would admittedly represent only a marginal contribution to the resolution of the East-West conflict and the halting of the international arms race. Such an agreement would not, presumably, be binding on other powers, although it was known that France was already

184

34. ON TO GENEVA!

Unpalatable though it might be to the West, the road to a negotiated settlement of the Berlin difficulty appeared to lead in the opposite direction from that of past Western policy in Europe. The consistent object of that policy had been a strengthening of the Western military and political position in relation to the Soviet Union, primarily through the build-up of NATO and the reunification of Germany as a member of the Western family. This objective had presupposed a curtailment of Soviet influence in Europe and the withdrawal of Soviet power at least to the eastern frontiers of Germany. But in seeking a diplomatic solution of the Berlin impasse, the West now faced the necessity of reviewing and perhaps accepting some reduction in the objectives it had sought in the past. As early as January 13, at the same news conference in which he admitted the possibility that Germany might theoretically be unified by some method other than free elections (Section 27), Secretary Dulles suggested that it would be unrealistic to try to settle European problems in such a way that the Soviet Union would be placed at a military or political disadvantage. Soviet strategic interests, he indicated, needed to be taken into account no less than those of the West.¹² While he did not commit the West or the United States to any specific modification of past diplomatic positions, Mr. Dulles strongly implied that Soviet views would have to be treated with more consideration than hitherto. In this respect he set the tone of much of the discussion of diplomatic issues in the West during the next few months.

Traditionally, it was the United Kingdom rather than the United States that had been accustomed to take the lead in seeking negotiated settlements of East-West diplomatic problems. British initiative in this field had sometimes been felt in Washington to reflect an unduly optimistic estimate of the intentions of the Communist powers and an insufficient awareness of the pitfalls of

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negotiation, whether at the "summit" or at lower levels. But the paralysis of American diplomacy which set in with Secretary Dulles' illness increased the pressure on Prime Minister Macmillan to take the diplomatic leadership into his own hands. The Berlin situation, the British statesman felt, was serious enough so that someone had to give a lead, and Britain seemed to be the only major power in a position to do so. France, which in recent months had shown considerable skepticism about Soviet intentions as well as a marked distaste for "personal diplomacy," was fully occupied at the moment with the institutional re-arrangements involved in setting up the Fifth Republic under General de Gaulle's presidency. Chancellor Adenauer and the West German Government, which stood in the direct line of the current Soviet diplomatic offensive, were loath to contemplate any modification of the traditional Western program for Berlin and Germany and seemed badly frightened by the growing talk of concessions among their allies. Italy, after a mild flirtation with neutralist ideas during a part of 1958, had returned to a strict "Western" and "Atlantic" line with the induction of Premier Antonio Segni in February 1959, but appeared content to follow the lead of its major allies rather than striking out on its own.

Whether or not Mr. Macmillan was also influenced by the approach of a British general election and the knowledge that British opinion warmly favored direct contact with the Soviet leaders, his visit to the U.S.S.R. with Foreign Minister Lloyd on February 21-March 3 undoubtedly represented the most important Western initiative to be undertaken since the start of the Berlin crisis. While its influence on the development of East-West relations was open to varying estimates, one of its unmistakable effects was to strengthen the fear of the West German Government that its interests might be sacrificed in a vain and ill-advised attempt to come to terms with Soviet imperialism. Particularly obnoxious to the German Chancellor (and disconcerting to many others in the West, including

186

"IN UNITY THERE IS STRENGTH"

Edmund Valtman in The Hartford Times

President Eisenhower) was the reference in the Anglo-Soviet communiqué of March 3 to a possible limitation of forces and weapons, both conventional and nuclear, in an agreed area of Europe under an appropriate inspection system.¹³ (Cf. Section 27.) This concept, which bore at least a superficial resemblance to the Rapacki Plan, had been strongly opposed at SHAPE on military grounds and entirely lacked the approval of the United States. To the

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West German Government it implied various highly objectionable consequences—a “freezing” of German armaments at their present, nonnuclear level, a weakening of NATO’s over-all defensive capabilities, and, in all probability, the abandonment of further allied efforts to bring about German reunification.

This idea of a limitation of forces in Central Europe evoked scant applause in Washington when Messrs. Macmillan and Lloyd crossed the Atlantic on March 19 for discussions with the President and the ailing Secretary Dulles. General de Gaulle, too, expressed the opinion in his March 25 news conference¹⁴ that a demilitarized zone in Europe would not afford adequate protection unless it was expanded in a way the Russians presumably would not accept. Such a zone, the French leader said, would have to extend into Russia and be wide enough to “prevent an aggressor from crossing by a leap or a flight the undefended German no man’s land.” Mindful of the new solidarity that had grown up between Paris and Bonn, General de Gaulle also promised that France would “support nothing which would . . . lead the German people to despair or . . . compromise its peaceful future.” Although he further indicated that he looked upon the question of Germany’s eastern frontier as a closed issue, the French President left no doubt that he shared Dr. Adenauer’s reservations about the intentions of the Soviet Government and was far less sanguine than Mr. Macmillan about the possibility of negotiating under present circumstances without substantial damage to Western interests.

A more important result of the Macmillan mission had been the renewed impetus given to the idea of a conference "at the summit" such as Moscow had been urging since the beginning of the year. Despite President Eisenhower's lingering resistance, the British Prime Minister felt able to tell the House of Commons on March 26, following his return from Washington, that expectation of such a meeting now seemed to be general. That a summit

188

meeting would be held, provided there was some preliminary "progress" to justify it, was the underlying assumption of the arrangements for the meeting of the Big Four Foreign Ministers at Geneva starting on May 11. In the meantime the American, British, and French Foreign Ministers conferred in Washington at the end of March, on the eve of the special tenth anniversary session of the NATO Council. This latter meeting, also held in Washington on April 2-4, brought a public reaffirmation of NATO views on the Berlin crisis, together with a renewed emphasis on the importance of the alliance as a bulwark of Western security and world peace.¹⁵ In the course of these discussions there was also some tactful criticism of a new American policy of sending military aircraft through to Berlin at high altitudes, apparently in preparation for a possible blockade. Soviet interference with such flights had already led to one incident in the air corridor and a formal protest from the U.S.S.R.,¹⁶ and the practice was presently discontinued in deference to allied, particularly British, misgivings.

A more disturbing result of the discussions in Washington was an eruption of the smoldering quarrel between Britain and West Germany, a quarrel compounded of various old memories as well as recent differences on commercial and diplomatic policy. Chancellor Adenauer, who had just surprised the world by announcing that he intended to resign his post in order to seek the constitutionally much less influential position of Federal President, implied in a broadcast of April 8 that Great Britain was not only endangering the Western cause in relation to the U.S.S.R. but was deliberately seeking to damage West German interests. So disturbed was the Chancellor by the current trend of Western policy that he was to allow himself an unprecedented display of irresolution about his own political future. Contrary to his apparent expectation, he presently discovered that he would not be permitted to hand-pick his successor as Federal Chancellor but would probably have to reckon with the choice of

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Vice-Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, a man of acknowledged ability but one who differed with Dr. Adenauer on matters of European economic and political organization and appeared to favor a somewhat more flexible line in East-West relations. To avert this prospect, Dr. Adenauer announced early in June, to the dismay of some of his political associates, that he had decided to remain as Chancellor after all. The upheaval in German political circles that accompanied these developments did not subside for several weeks. Communist and other critics of the Bonn government enjoyed an unlooked-for opportunity to decry the Adenauer "dictatorship" and disparage the quality of West German democracy.

In spite of these differences within the Western family, the principal Western powers were gradually working out a unified approach to the forthcoming Foreign Ministers' conference. At a second meeting in Paris at the end of April, the American, British, French, and West German Foreign Ministers announced a complete agreement on the strategy to be pursued at Geneva.¹⁷ The basis of this agreement, subsequently approved by the permanent NATO Council, was the Western "package plan" which was submitted to the Russians early in the Geneva conference—a plan which, as already noted (Section 27), offered some concessions to the U.S.S.R. on the procedure and timing of German reunification, but still adhered to the main lines of past Western policy on Berlin, Germany, and European security. Although there was a reference in the plan to the possibility of a demilitarized zone in Europe, any move in this direction was to be deferred until after German reunification, and was to require the agreement of the future all-German government.¹⁸ Thus far, even Dr. Adenauer could not complain that the Western position had been irremediably compromised, although his government was far from satisfied with the details of the plan and was even more unhappy about the prospective admission of East Germany to the conference. The most serious difficulty lay in the virtual certainty that the