396.1 BE/2–1354: Telegram
No. 474
The United States
Delegation at the Berlin Conference to the Department of State1
Secto 133. Department pass OSD, IBS/NY. Following is text of the Secretary’s statement2 at the 19th plenary session,3 February 13, on the Austrian question:
Verbatim text.
Yesterday afternoon the Soviet Foreign Minister presented us with a rather peculiar sandwich.4 The top and the bottom of his remarks stressed the necessity for the early conclusion of an Austrian state treaty, which would reestablish a free and independent Austria. But in between the top and bottom he inserted some poisonous proposals. They meant that the treaty, instead of re-establishing a free and independent Austria should establish an Austria without freedom and without independence.
I earnestly hope that these new proposals will be withdrawn, so that we may in fact conclude an Austrian state treaty at this very meeting, as promised in 1943.
The Soviet Foreign Minister’s statement completely confirms the view I expressed yesterday that if we adhere to the present draft of the Austrian state treaty there remain only minor differences between us. As the Soviet proposals state, that draft treaty “was in the main agreed among the four-powers in 1949”. Only five articles remain partially unagreed, and I am confident that with good will those articles could quickly be agreed upon. It will not take, as the Soviet Union suggests, three months to reach that agreement. It can be reached in three days or even less, so that we can in fact conclude the treaty at this conference in accordance with the proposal made yesterday by the three Western powers.
However, the Soviet Union has now introduced new proposals which would totally alter the situation. They would cut the heart out of the proposed treaty and turn the clock back, not to 1949, not to 1947, not even to 1943, but to the darker, earlier period when by Hitler’s action Austria seemed hopelessly doomed to be forever the victim of alien occupation.
[Page 1088]The Soviet Union proposes to continue the military occupation of Austria “pending the conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany”.
Since the Soviet Union has rejected all proposals for the unification of Germany on the basis of free elections, and by its own latest German proposal,5 treats the division of Germany as a semi-permanent condition, the Soviet Austrian proposal would mean an indefinite occupation of Austria. By requiring the withdrawal of all allied troops from Vienna, while retaining Soviet forces in the Soviet Zone, the capital of Austria would thus be left as a defenseless island, surrounded by a sea of Russian soldiers.
That occupation of Austria could never be terminated by any action of her own. It would be wholly within the power of the Soviet Union to prolong the occupation forever merely by perpetuating the division of Germany and blocking an all-German peace treaty.
If the Soviet proposal were adopted, it would pervert the Austrian state treaty and require its being rewritten from the preamble to the end.
How could we any longer in the preamble describe the treaty as being one designed to liberate Austria and to make it a free and independent state?
How could we any longer stipulate by Article 1 that “Austria shall be reestablished as a sovereign, independent and democratic state”?
How could we any longer declare as in Article 2 that we “will respect the independence and territorial integrity of Austria”?
Article 33 entitled “withdrawal of allied forces” would be obliterated and have to be replaced by an article entitled “the indefinite military occupation of Austria”.
The treaty would thus become not a treaty for the liberation of Austria, but a treaty for the subjection of Austria.
A second major and related change in the treaty is proposed by the Soviet Union in terms of subjecting Austria to “neutralization”.
A neutral status is an honorable status if it is voluntarily chosen by a nation. Switzerland has chosen to be neutral, and as a neutral she has achieved an honorable place in the family of nations. Under the Austrian state treaty as heretofore drafted, Austria would be free to choose for itself to be a neutral state like Switzerland. Certainly the United States would fully respect its choice in this respect, as it fully respects the comparable choice of the Swiss nation.
[Page 1089]However, it is one thing for a nation to choose to be neutral and it is another thing to have neutrality forcibly imposed on it by other nations as a perpetual servitude.
A state subjected to such imposed neutralization is not in fact a sovereign and independent state. Such a demand makes a mockery of the language which the Soviet proposal retains that “Austria shall be reestablished as a sovereign, independent and democratic state”.
It is difficult to understand why the Soviet Union, at this moment when an Austrian state treaty seemed to be on the point of realization, should now propose provisions which would basically alter the entire character of the treaty and which would violate the Moscow declaration on Austria of November 1, 1943, whereby the three powers with the subsequent adhesion of France undertook “to see re-established a free and independent Austria”. If the Soviet proposal were accepted, there would be not a free Austria, but an enslaved Austria; not an independent Austria, but a subject Austria.
If this four-power meeting accepted the Soviet proposal, we would expose ourselves before the world as being morally and politically bankrupt. We would have forfeited all right to the confidence of others in our willingness to fulfill our solemn pledges.
We do not know, we can only suspect, the reasons which prompt the Soviet to make its present proposal. The reasons given are grotesquely inadequate.
It is given as a reason that there is lacking a treaty with Germany, whereby Germany undertakes to respect the independence of Austria. It is said that until that undertaking is given, Austria must remain occupied.
The Soviet Foreign Minister would have us believe that during the period when Germany is occupied and totally disarmed—at least in the Western zones—the danger to Austria from Germany is so great that Austria must be occupied to protect it against that German danger; but that once Germany is restored to a unified and independent status with a national army of its own, then it will be safe to end the occupation of Austria. Such reasoning will not carry conviction anywhere.
A plausible explanation is the fact that Article 22 of the treaty of peace with Hungary and Article 21 of the treaty of peace with Roumania provide that the Soviet Union may maintain armed forces on the territory of these countries so long as this is needed for the maintenance of the lines of communication of the Soviet army with the Soviet zone of occupation in Austria.
[Page 1090]I can understand that the Soviet Union fears a withdrawal from Austria which would also require it to withdraw its Red armies from Hungary and Roumania.
Is it, however, really decent that little Austria should have to continue to be an occupied state so that the Soviet Union will have a pretext for continuing to occupy also Hungary and Roumania. So cynical an attitude will surely shock the conscience of the world.
We have heard from the Soviet Foreign Minister many words condemning “militarism”. But everything which he proposes, whether it be in relation to Germany or in relation to Austria, or indirectly in relation to Hungary and Roumania, shows dependence on military power. No consideration of humanity prevails as against naked force.
The Soviet Minister has introduced in his Austrian proposal a proposal for the four of us to consider the question of Trieste. That proposal is unacceptable to the United States. In any event, it has no proper relationship to the Austrian question. I hope that its introduction does not mean that it is the intention of the Soviet Foreign Minister to make a conclusion of a state treaty with Austria dependent upon the prior solution of all other European questions, so that the first victim of Hitlerite aggression would automatically be the last to be relieved of the consequences of that aggression.
I earnestly plead with the Soviet Foreign Minister to withdraw the two Austrian proposals which he made yesterday, which, as I say, would completely revolutionize not only the text but also the character of the Austrian state treaty. If he will make that withdrawal, then I have every confidence that the remaining differences, which are very slight, can be composed. Then we could in fact conclude the Austrian state treaty at this meeting of the Foreign Ministers and crown our efforts here with an honorable success.
- Repeated to Bonn, Frankfurt, Paris, London, Moscow, and Vienna.↩
- Secretary Dulles’ statement was circulated as FPM(54)60.↩
- For a report on this session, the sixteenth plenary, see Secto 134, supra.↩
- For the Soviet proposal on Austria, see FPM(54)55, Document 519.↩
- For this Soviet proposal, see FPM(54)33, Document 514.↩