Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, European Advisory Commission, Austria, Germany, Volume III

740.00119 Control (Germany)/12–1045

The Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of War (Patterson)

Washington, January 12, 1946.

My Dear Mr. Secretary: A reply to your letter of December 10 was deferred for the reason that my letter of December 12, 1945 on the subject of the French proposals for the Rhineland-Ruhr region evidently crossed your communication to me. In the meantime, I have received your letter of December 28, 1945 on the same subject.

For your information, I may say that the French proposals were not discussed during the recent Moscow meetings and therefore there has been no further progress on this matter in so far as the American Government is concerned. M. Alphand, who was sent to Moscow by the French Government to present its proposals to the Soviet Government, had not concluded his conversations there at the time of the conference of the three Foreign Ministers. I have now learned that these conversations have been concluded.

The French Government has requested that a meeting of the four occupying powers of Germany be held in Paris in the near future for the purpose of considering the French proposals after having been discussed in London, Washington and Moscow. The Department of State has not replied to this invitation as the Moscow conference intervened.

As the French representative has concluded his conversations in Moscow, I regard it as probable that at the forthcoming meetings in London⁹⁴ informal conversations between the four Governments concerned may take place. The French Government has not to date urged this Department for a reply to its proposal for a meeting in Paris. I shall not fail to inform you of any developments that may arise in this question of the Rhineland-Ruhr.

With respect to the third paragraph of your letter of December 28, 1945, I can confirm the guidance furnished in the State Department memorandum of November 30, 1945 respecting the geographical areas of Germany for the purpose of determining the industrial capacity of the peacetime German economy. Unless and until there has been a modification of German frontiers, this Government must necessarily base its policy on the Potsdam decisions and earlier agreements respecting the occupation of Germany.

In reply to the concluding paragraph of your letter of December 28, 1945, I should like to remark that the American Government has made its attitude altogether clear with respect to the present deadlock in the Control Council for Germany on the creation of central German agencies. The American position was explained with force and clarity to Mr. Couve de Murville at the time he presented the French proposals in Washington. However, the Agreement on Control Machinery for Germany stipulates that the decisions of the Control Council must be unanimous.⁹⁵ You will no doubt recall that at the time when this agreement was being negotiated in the European Advisory Commission in London, the War Department was emphatic in its insistence on this principle,⁹⁶ which was, with the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, subsequently included in the agreement.

It should also be recalled that under Article 1 of the Agreement on Control Machinery “Supreme authority in Germany will be exercised … by the Commanders-in-Chief of the armed forces of the U.S.A., the U.K., the U.S.S.R. and France, each in his own zone of occupation, and also jointly in matters affecting Germany as a whole …”.⁹⁷ It seems to the Department of State, therefore, that if it is not possible to obtain unanimity in the Control Council on the question of central German agencies, it would still be possible to create these agencies in the zones controlled by the signatories to the Potsdam protocol. It was for this reason that the American Representative on the Control Council was authorized to carry out the Potsdam decision with or without the participation of the French.

It is still the opinion of the Department of State that the American Representative on the Control Council should be instructed again to urge the adoption of the Potsdam decisions on the establishment of central administrative agencies.

Sincerely yours.

Dean Acheson

94. Reference is presumably to the First Session of the United Nations General Assembly, held in London, January 10–February 14, 1946.
95. For text of the agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on control machinery in Germany, signed at London November 14, 1944, and text of the amending agreement between the three signatory powers and the Provisional Government of the French Republic signed at London May 1, 1945, see Department of State, Treaties and Other International Acts Series No. 3070, or United States Treaties and Other International Agreements, vol. v, (pt. 2), pp. 2062–2077.
96. For documentation on the negotiation of the control agreements in the European Advisory Commission, see pp. 1 ff.
97. Omissions indicated in the original communication.