740.00119 Control (Austria)/4–1345: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan)
907. Please inform the Soviet Government substantially as follows: This Government was glad to learn from Embassy’s 1162 April 13, midnight, that Marshal Stalin suggests that American, British and French representatives go at once to Vienna to consider arrangements for zones of occupation of Vienna. It welcomes this suggestion. It understands that the British Government also is accepting it. The views of the French Government have been requested and they have also agreed. This Government is holding its representatives in readiness at AFHQ in Caserta to proceed to Vienna.
[Page 74]We agree that it is urgently necessary to settle the zones for Vienna and this Government has accordingly given Ambassador Winant full instructions to enable him to complete EAC recommendations for the protocols now pending in the EAC for (1) control machinery for Austria, and (2) the zoning of Austria, including Vienna, provided there is agreement on their content and adequate facilities can be arranged for the occupation forces.
The principal thing now holding up agreement in EAC on these matters is the question of zoning Vienna, on which the Soviet and American Governments have so far been unable to agree. The Soviet representative has been insisting upon use of the pre-1938 city limits which would place all of the five Vienna airfields within the Soviet zone of occupation, leaving none to the United States, while the United States military authorities are unable to accept any United States zone in Vienna that fails to extend far enough to assure adequate airfield facilities for U.S. forces. It is hoped that the Allied representatives will be able to work out on the spot a suitable arrangement of zones which will accomplish this and furnish the basis for an agreement on zones in EAC.
Since the occupying powers will have an equal interest and responsibility in the management of resources found in Austria and in the denazification of Austria and the reconstitution of an independent democratic state in fulfillment of the Moscow Declaration, this Government relies upon the Soviet Government to provide its forces with appropriate instructions to prevent the removal of industrial equipment or other property from Austria, or other changes which might prejudice our common objectives, until appropriate decisions about them have been made by the four powers acting in concert.
The United States will be glad to give urgent consideration to interim arrangements of the kind proposed by the British representative in the EAC on April 12,43 as well as to placing the complete control machinery protocol into effect as soon as the text has been agreed and conditions warrant placing it in operation.
Sent to Moscow as Department’s 907; repeated to London as 3038, Paris as 1557, and Caserta as 350.