Office of the Historian

740.00119 Control (Austria)/6–745: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Italy (Kirk)

Washington, June 9, 1945—7 p.m.

568. Dept has seen Mat 735 in conjunction with your 2504 June 6 and 2523, June 7 and is gratified by General Flory’s excellent conduct of mission to Vienna.

You will have observed Stalin’s message Deptel 500 May 2151 to Caserta did not refer to any specific area or specific Vienna limits or duration of visit. His original suggestion Moscow’s 54, April 13 to Caserta51a was obviously that officers on the spot should work towards a mutually satisfactory solution of the points not yet settled in EAC; these include (1) whether the pre-1938 city limits or the Gau should be sub-divided and (2) suitable airport for US forces.

We agree that officers should remain until their specific mission is completed, and that it should be completed as expeditiously as possible.

Dept does not share Brit view your 2496 June 552 that mission should insist on remaining in Vienna after completing on the spot examination. Dept has always been skeptical about feasibility of interim arrangements for control machinery in Austria and is inclined to believe that at this stage they would be apt to place us in an inferior position of sharing responsibility without corresponding share in control.

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Dept considers our main objective in Austria now to be completion and entry into force of the formal EAC agreements for zoning and control machinery which would assure us full equality of authority as well as responsibility. War Dept is believed to share this view. Until then it is probably better to maintain the position that each military force is individually responsible in area it occupies.

Dept therefore regards present mission intended solely for reconnaissance to solve problem of Vienna zones, and that it would be preferable thereafter not to insist on remaining in Vienna, pending establishment of the Allied Administration on a basis of equality under the formal control machinery agreement.

Please inform Erhardt.

Sent to Caserta as no. 568; repeated to London as 4631; Paris as 2643; and Moscow 1263.

Grew
  1. Not printed; it repeated Marshal Stalin’s message of May 18 to President Truman (740.00119 Control (Austria)/5–1845)↩
  2. The same as telegram 1162 to the Department, p. 61.↩
  3. Not printed↩