863.01/5–845: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan)
1035. Your 1453, May 3, 10 p.m. Please inform the Soviet Government that we have noted Vyshinski’s letter explaining the need for an administration of local persons in the Soviet-occupied area of Austria, and wish to take this occasion to review developments in Austria as follows:
We fully appreciate the need to have some native local administration in the areas occupied by the Red Army, as we have found desirable in areas occupied by the American Army. It was not our intention to object to this but rather to the Soviet Government’s permitting the establishment of a government claiming to represent all of Austria, including areas occupied by U.S. forces, without prior consultation with us. Effective consultation will be possible only when Allied representatives have arrived in Vienna and joint control has begun.
Until then, while each occupying power is administering alone the area it has cleared, the United States is of course not associated with, and accepts no responsibility for, measures taken in the Vienna area. It will be glad to consider the question of a provisional Austrian national government when the Allied Commission begins to function in the period of joint control.
The occupation of all of Austria is now proceeding so rapidly that it may soon become desirable to place in effect the complete protocols on control machinery and zones of occupation now pending in EAC as soon as they can be agreed.
[Page 118]The American representative in EAC has already stated the zoning needs of the United States in Vienna as weir as they can be described without examining on the spot the actual condition of the area to be zoned following the damage of battle. These requirements appear to be entirely reasonable and justified. A suitable airport with supporting facilities must be an integral part of the U.S. zone in Vienna to assure our independence of communications and make possible the maintenance of our forces in Vienna. Insistence on zoning which would place all five Vienna airdromes in the Soviet zone thus seems to us unreasonable and inexplicable, and were the Soviet Government to persist in this attitude we could only conclude that it desired to delay completion of the agreements.
We have now received (Embassy’s 1490 May 7, 8 p.m.) Vyshinski’s statement that Allied representatives should not arrive in Vienna until after the zones have been agreed in EAC, thus reversing this earlier letter and Marshal Stalin’s original suggestion that the representatives proceed to Vienna to establish the zones.
Vyshinski suggests it should be possible for EAC to zone Vienna as it did Berlin without examination on the spot. All three of the other representatives in EAC have for some time been prepared to do just this, i.e., subdivide the present capital, known as “Greater Vienna” just as “Greater Berlin” was subdivided. It is the Soviet Government alone which has been refusing to do this, seeking instead to subdivide the Vienna of 1938 rather than the Vienna of 1945.
Unless the Soviet Government will make it possible to resume the work on zoning in EAC by giving the Soviet representative sufficient latitude to arrive at a subdivision of the present-day capital “Greater Vienna” which will satisfy the legitimate needs of all the occupation forces there, including an airdrome in the U.S. zone, it is difficult to arrive at agreement in EAC.
Meanwhile, pending consultation among the Allies no government can be considered to represent all of Austria including areas occupied by U.S. forces.
Sent to Moscow as Department’s no. 1035; repeated to London as no. 3622; to Paris as no. 1941, and to Caserta for Erhardt as no. 446.