323. Telegram From the Delegation at the Foreign Ministers Meetings to the Department of State1

Secto 166. For Acting Secretary from Secretary. Suggest you transmit to President in accordance with Dulte 462 following message classified “secret” from me to Adenauer.

Let me first express my wishes your health will soon be completely restored. I follow bulletins on your health with intense interest and welcome good news of progress.

We here have been heavily engaged in discussion of critical first agenda item of conference—German reunification and European security.

I think we have made good progress from tactical standpoint. Our security proposals3 were so solid that Soviet Union scrapped its original security proposal and advanced a new proposal which closely corresponds with our own, at least in words.4 The result is, we can say, that so far as security is concerned, there are no major obstacles to German reunification. Indeed we are saying that and this has forced Soviet Union into position of defending continued division of Germany on ground this is necessary to preserve “social gains” which have been achieved in Soviet zone.

This is not a position which will gain much sympathy in non-Communist world and I would think it would not gain much sympathy in Germany.

I recall little penciled note which I wrote you from Heads of Govt conference last July when I said I felt that real obstacle to German reunification was not security but political attachment to [Page 681] GDR.5 This is more and more becoming apparent, and I think we have gained a considerable tactical success in bringing that into open.

I do not dare hope that it will bring about any great positive result at this conference. But I think position we have used here can if properly followed up during coming weeks make Soviet position untenable.

I know neither of us expected to bring about German reunification at this particular conference. We did hope to create conditions so that we would thereafter be able to move in that direction and I think we are in a good way toward doing that.

I trust our liaison with your representatives in Geneva has been satisfactory. Perhaps it is too much to hope that it has been wholly satisfactory because we get so deeply engrossed in day-to-day matters we do not always find all the time we would like. However, we want relationship to be close and would welcome any suggestions which you or von Brentano may have to make.6

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 396.1–GE/11–455. Secret; Limited Distribution. Passed to the Denver White House on November 4. The method of delivery to Adenauer is not known.
  2. Document 328.
  3. For text of the Western proposal, October 27, see Foreign Ministers Meeting, pp. 27–33, or Cmd. 9633, pp. 99–103.
  4. For texts of the Soviet proposals of October 28 and 31, see Foreign Ministers Meeting, pp. 45–48 and 79–80, or Cmd. 9633, pp. 104–107.
  5. Reference is unclear; neither the note of July 21 (Document 229) nor July 23 (see footnote 2, Document 250), deals specifically with this topic.
  6. In a brief letter, dated November 7, Adenauer thanked Dulles for keeping him abreast of developments at Geneva and for his determined stand on reunification and European security. He expressed his appreciation for proposing a date for free elections, thus making it apparent who did not want reunification, and hoped that Dulles would succeed in bringing into full relief the East German demand to “Bolshevize” Germany. (Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Name File)