Office of the Historian

740.00119 Control (Austria)/1–1345: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)

Washington, January 24, 1945—midnight.

566. In the last EAC minutes of discussion of Austria29 and in your 460 of January 13, 6 p.m.30 we have followed with interest and admiration your efforts to achieve zoning of Vienna that would meet our very real needs and avoid cutting up the natural geography of [Page 8] the city to return to an old line which has the merit of ignoring the Nazi delimitation of the city but also ignores its natural delimitations.

We note that the sole Soviet objection expressed by Gousev to the Vienna Gau line is its Nazi origin. If you consider it a useful move, the Department would be glad to take up with JCS31 consideration of a new line drawn in EAC to take in a slightly larger area than the Gau (rather than the smaller area proposed in the Soviet draft) in order to meet Gousev’s desires.

(It is recalled that in the Department’s 117 January 5, 8 p.m. the JCS did not necessarily propose the Gau line as such, but rather that the U.S. zone in Vienna must extend sufficiently beyond the city limits to provide adequate facilities for US forces.)

Grew
  1. The minutes of the informal meeting of the European Advisory Commission held on January 9, 1945, not printed; see footnote 23, p. 3.↩
  2. Not printed; see footnote 24, p. 4.↩
  3. Joint Chiefs of Staff.↩