Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Berlin Crisis, 1958–1959, Volume VIII

163. Telegram From Secretary of State Dulles to the Department of State⁰

Paris, February 6, 1959, 9 p.m.

Dulte 8. Eyes only Acting Secretary for President from Secretary.

Dear Mr. President:

We had a surprisingly good day here with the French. We first met with Couve de Murville at the Quai d’Orsay.¹ I outlined our general thinking about handling the Berlin situation and my views seemed to coincide largely with those of the French. Then we went to the Elysee and met with General de Gaulle, Prime Minister Debre and Couve.² With only Debre, Couve and Joxe, we were four on the side and sat around informally in chairs in the living-room instead of sitting across a table. The atmosphere was relaxed and the General seemed to be in good spirits. We developed again our German thesis and found acceptance. The French, unlike the U.K., seemed quite specific that we could not accept a substitution of the GDR for the Soviet Union in the exercise of our reserved rights in Berlin as victors in the war. I emphasized that we could not permit roles to be reversed and the vanquished in effect rule the victors. This appealed to the General and was strongly reinforced by Couve. The French would, I think, be willing immediately on May 27th or as soon as Soviet turnover is an accomplished fact to attempt use force to go through. I doubt whether they have thought this out and realize all the implications. In any event they accepted my view that though we should at that time begin military preparations we should not actually move until we had made a final effort to mobilize world opinion against the Soviets on the basis of not mere threats but such actual deeds as blowing up bridges, creating roadblocks and the like. There was a slight difference of opinion as to the desirability at this juncture of going to the United Nations. The French are pretty gun shy about the United Nations. I said of course we would not advocate going unless we felt confident that we could get a solid vote to support our position. De Gaulle is fearful that the General Assembly would be in a mood to compromise and might, for example, call on Hammarskjöld to negotiate a settlement. I think there is no doubt but what there is ground for apprehension on this score and we would have to make a careful count of votes before going to the General Assembly.

[Here follow two paragraphs on the French fleet and tripartitism; see volume VII, Part 2, Document 95.]

This afternoon I had a meeting with Spaak.³ I brought him pretty well up to date as to our thinking. He himself has been doing quite a lot of thinking, particularly about the German problem as a whole. He has not come up with anything very new or brilliant but I urged him to continue studying the matter as we needed his kind of mind applied to this problem and he had some advantages over governments.

Spaak had been thinking in terms of our accepting a substitution of the GDR for the Soviet Union and only react if thereafter they imposed more severe restrictions. However, when I explained to him the theory of our position, he said that he had not thought of this and was inclined to agree.

Tomorrow morning I go on to Bonn. There seems to be agreement both in London and in Paris that the Chancellor is pretty much out of touch with his advisers and with current developments, and both the British and the French and Spaak are hopeful that I may be able to bring him to see possibilities in the situation to which he is now blind. However, these possibilities are not so brilliant that I feel confident that they have much penetrating power. As Spaak said, a great deal is to be said in favor of the status quo. Almost any change would be a change for the worse and would open up serious problems. I do not think, however, nor does he, that that is a position which we can take publicly and command the support of public opinion.

Faithfully yours,

Foster

Dulles

0. Source: Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 64 D 560, CF 1202, Secret.
1. See Document 161.
2. See Document 162.
3. A memorandum of Dulles’ conversation with Spaak, SVE/MC–13, is in Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 64 D 560, CF 1198.