762.00/2–2751
The Ambassador in France (Bruce) to the Secretary of State 1
No. 2438
Ref: Bonn’s telegram 556 to Dept of February 21, 1951 Deptel to Frankfurt 5670 of February 17, 19512
Subject: French Foreign Ministry position re HICOM endorsement of Bundestag response to Volkskammer resolution
The Foreign Ministry has sent instructions several days ago to its representatives in Bonn to oppose any reiteration of, or even reference to, the previous HICOM letters to General Chuikov, in connection with transmittal of the expected Bundestag reply to the Volkskammer resolution on German unity. In a discussion of the Ministry’s reasoning, Sauvagnargues, the chief of its Division of Central European Affairs, made the following observations:
The most embarrassing thing that could happen to us immediately prior to the anticipated CFM would be Soviet acceptance of the proposals last made to Chuikov on October 9, 1950. It is true, Sauvagnargues said, that (as incidentally pointed out in Frankfurt’s telegram 6749 to the Department, February 153) the Soviets could in any event, at any time, accept the outstanding proposals for free elections, but the Ministry sees no reason for an already bad situation to be made worse and considers, moreover, that German public opinion in connection with the Volkskammer resolution is of less importance to us than German public opinion in connection with the anticipated CFM. [Page 1764] Furthermore, in view of our agreed tripartite position that the problems of Germany cannot be solved in isolation, it would be unsatisfactory either to bring that view out explicitly (which would detract from the propaganda value of our letter of transmittal) or to pass it over in silence (which would impair our substantive position), and it is therefore felt by the Ministry that the less said about the anticipated Bundestag resolution the better.
If the Soviets were to accept free elections at this time on the basis of the London “statement on German unity” of May 1950, our position would have to be that conditions have changed since that time in two respects, Sauvagnargues said. The first change is involved in promulgation by the GDR of the Law for the Protection of Peace, and the second concerns the sanctioning of the Oder-Neisse boundary by the GDR.
The Ministry considers that a very brief acknowledgment of the Bundestag resolution might be in order, but that if any letter of transmittal is drafted it should merely indicate that the three western powers “take note of the resolution and will defend the Bundestag’s position at the forthcoming four-power conference.” (It should be noted that in all recent dealings at the Foreign Ministry, as previously reported in the Embassy’s despatch 2052 of January 27,4 the holding of a CFM is entirely taken for granted.) Furthermore, Sauvagnargues said, the Federal Government might well be informed, pursuant to the Ministry’s thoughts expressed in Embtel 4371 of January 25,4 that the question of German unification in the light of the most recent exchanges on the subject could be made part of any exploratory conversations between the High Commission and the Federal Government prior to the CFM.
If the French Government desired to “sabotage” the agreed western position with respect to a German contribution to European defense, Sauvagnargues said, it would probably have encouraged the US in its proposal for reiteration of the HICOM position on German unity. In such a case, he said, there might be a further drift toward the kind of situation in which rejection of a possible Soviet acceptance of free elections would become even more difficult than it is at present. In such an event, Sauvagnargues said—i.e., in the event that the French Government were favoring an “Austrian-type” solution to the question of German unity, which it does not—the principal point would nevertheless not be the freedom of the elections preceding unification but the Allied control mechanism for a reunited Germany; for the Austrian pattern would only exist if the Soviets also agreed, at the same time, to a system of straight majority voting in an Allied Commission.