740.00119 Council/10–449
The Acting Chief of the Division of Austrian Affairs (Williamson) to the Minister in Austria (Erhardt)
Dear Jack: I deeply appreciated your two letters of September 16 and September 23.1 There has been so much flip flap that it has been impossible for me to reply to them in detail or to even give you the necessary background of the rapidly moving events on the Austrian Treaty. We have tried to report to you the basic telegrams to and from New York. I was in New York last week and will return tomorrow for the Ministers’ meeting on Thursday. I think you may have gathered from the official report that the meeting can only be described as “gruesome.” Our Secretary did a fine job in defending Austria’s interests and the interests of this Government in the face of British and French willingness to conclude a Treaty at any price and the apparent Soviet unwillingness to conclude a Treaty at any price. The Secretary alternated kid gloves and bare fists on Vishinsky and neither method proved successful in budging the old boy from his position that our records of the Paris meeting were incorrect.
On top of all this, we have had a great deal of local furor. As you know, Louis Johnson has thrown the whole question into the National Security Council and has taken the position that no Treaty with Austria is desirable since the Army can not provide the necessary means for assuring Austrian internal security. Your good friend in Vienna has made a magnificent contribution to this viewpoint and his telegrams of June are quoted on all occasions by our military representatives here. I might state unofficially that the Secretary is slightly burned up about the whole procedure and has expressed himself in no uncertain terms concerning the military attitude. Secondly, the President has become interested in the Austrian settlement and I enclose for your information and for immediate destruction a memorandum of conversation with him of October 1.2 Thirdly, the Planning Staff has become interested in the question and has formulated certain plans for the withdrawal of four-power forces from Austria with appropriate provisions for the German assets settlement. In this connection it is only fair to point out that none of the plans so formulated would be accepted either by our military or by the Russians and the injection of the Planning Staff’s recommendations into the Security Council at this time would have a disastrous [Page 1172] effect. Finally, we are being pushed to unholy lengths by our British and French colleagues to conclude the Treaty on any terms, regardless of the cost. This they can do because they do not bear the cost of keeping Austria alive after the Treaty comes into force and they do not face, therefore, an economic bloc in the Senate which may refuse to ratify the Treaty. The Secretary told Bevin and Schuman, frankly, that before he would agree to conclude the Treaty on the terms they recommend he would wish to have the approval of the National Security Council, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the President. In addition, Ernie Gross is very much upset about possible Congressional reactions and has requested full documentation on such problems as the lump sum payment. Eleanor Dulles has had a group of people working on this problem for some time now and for the life of her can not find sufficient knowledge for the installments which the Soviets will wish to receive on time.
The whole process has been rather trying physically on our entire staff, particularly since the meetings with Vishinsky in New York last three-quarters of the way into the night. We are now preparing two approaches, one for an appeal to Congress in the event that the Treaty is signed for assurances for the continuation of aid in spite of the payments to the Soviets and for sufficient funds for the equipping of the initial force of the Austrian army. Secondly, we are preparing a paper on alternative courses of action in the event that no Treaty is signed at this time. Whatever is done will require NSC approval since Louis Johnson will not let us sign the Treaty until he has 88 million dollars for small arms and ammunition and any change in the composition of the military occupation in Austria will also require the personal approval of Mr. Johnson.
The climax was capped by Gruber’s projected letter to the Secretary.3 We handled Kleinwaechter roughly on this one and I am glad to say that the good Doctor withdrew his draft.
In your wide experience in the Department did you find the Latin-American work difficult? With best regards,
Sincerely yours,
- Not found in Department of State files.↩
- Ante, p. 1168.↩
- Not printed; in it Gruber stated that Austria felt a certain disappointment with the Western Powers over the progress toward an Austrian Treaty. They seemed to be fighting as tenaciously as the Soviet Union for their, rather than for Austrian interests, and Gruber felt that the burden of a treaty would be small compared with the existing burdens of continued occupation. He denied that Austria was seeking a treaty at any price, and warned that while the United States material help was appreciated, it was no compensation for Austrian liberty. Finally Gruber appealed to Secretary Acheson not to prevent the conclusion of the treaty. In transmitting the text of the proposed letter to Erhardt, Webb stated that the Department of State had advised Kleinwaechter that it was “ill-advised and that it constitutes a distortion of US position.” (Telegram 1217, October 4, to Vienna, not printed, 740.00119 Control (Germany)/10–449).↩