Editorial Note
On October 30 the Federal Government approved a draft electoral law which provided for free, secret, universal, equal, and direct all-German elections with the preparation and execution placed under international control and protection. Each party in the election would file a single ticket for the whole of Germany and restrictions on travel between the zones of occupation would be lifted three months prior to the election. The assembly elected by this vote would then draft and adopt an all-German Constitution.
On November 2 Grotewohl responded to the draft law by proposing that the Volkskammer draw up its own election law to be submitted to an all-German conference, since the Federal Republic had not responded to the demand for an all-German conference and the speedy conclusion of a Germlan peace treaty. The Volkskammer duly empowered the “German Democratic Republic” to form a commission to work out a law for carrying out free elections to a German National Assembly.
On the same day Wilhelm Pieck, President of the “German Democratic Republic”, addressed a letter to Dr. Theodor Heuss, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, accusing Adenauer of preventing German understanding and appealing to Heuss for a meeting of the two presidents “to discuss ways and means of expediting the convocation of an all-German talk in order to bring about the peaceful unification of Germany and the urgently necessary conclusion of a peace treaty [Page 1805] with Germany.” President Heuss replied on November 7, countering the various assertions that the Federal Government intended to prevent understanding between Eastern and Western Germany, and concluding that the peaceful unification of Germany would “not be achieved by a conversation based on uncertain premises, but will be accomplished as an act of national self-determination and genesis, when freely elected representatives of the entire nation will assemble for the purpose of holding council and taking decisions in a free spirit of personal responsibility.”
Meanwhile on November 5 the United States, the United Kingdom, and France had sent identic letters to Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, asking that the Federal Republic’s desire for a neutral international commission under United Nations auspices be placed on the agenda of the sixth session of the General Assembly. The Secretary-General referred the question to the General Committee of the General Assembly which considered it at its 76th meeting on November 9. Despite the opposition of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, which claimed that the German question was outside the competence of the United Nations, the General Committee decided by a vote of twelve to two to recommend the inclusion of the item on the agenda. The General Assembly approved this recommendation at its 341st meeting on November 13 by a vote of 47 to 6 with 2 abstentions, and on November 13 the question of holding free elections in Germany was referred to the Ad Hoc Political Committee for further consideration.
For the texts of the Federal Republic’s draft law, Grotewohl’s speech, the Volkskammer declaration of November 2, the Pieck-Heuss correspondence, and the letter to the Secretary-General, see Documents on German Unity, volume I, pages 246–253; the Pieck-Heuss correspondence and the letter to the Secretary-General are also in Efforts Made to Re-establish the Unity of Germany, pages 57–61; copies of the draft law and Grotewohl’s speech are also in Folliot, Documents on International Affairs, 1951, pages 283–286 and Grotewohl, Im Kampf um DDR, pages 543–554.