740.5/2–2652: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Office of the United States High Commissioner for Germany, at Bonn 1
secret
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21. For McCloy. Please give this msg from the Secy personally to the Chancellor.

“In the next few hours we shall succeed or fail in the last step in a truly historic series of achievements—the London meetings, the Lisbon mtgs, and the final agrmts with the FedRep. I have done my best solve all the problems involved with a view to the parliamentary problems of all of us. Yours, exposed as you are to hostile propaganda, have been always before me. I think you have seen this.

We have recd your govt’s views on the financial matters. What you propose to do is good. What has been proposed to be said is bad. Eden, Schuman and I are sending you proposals for procedure and announcement.

What I wish to add, personally, is the vast importance of your govt’s agreeing to our suggestions quickly. If the settlement of these questions—and those of the controlled items of armaments production which I hope to work out among us three tomorrow along lines which you know—can be added to the achievements of London and Lisbon, we shall have made vast progress. Without it all is obscure.

What is needed now is another of those acts of statesmanship of which you have proved yourself so capable in the past—an act of help to me in my efforts—which only you can give. I am counting on it. Sincerely yours, Dean Acheson.”

Acheson
  1. This telegram was repeated for information to Washington as Secto 81. Regarding the circumstances attending the preparation and transmission of this message, see footnote 1, supra.