69. Telegram From Secretary of State Rusk to the Department of State0
Secto 48. Eyes only for President and Acting Secretary. No other distribution. I am satisfied that the visit to Berlin and Bonn was a good investment.
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Despite the deliberate restraint and relative brevity of my arrival statement and speech at the Golden Book ceremony,1 both the Berliners and the West Germans seemed to accept without question my presence perhaps even more than my words as a reassuring reaffirmation of US commitments.
The only criticism I have heard came from American correspondents who considered there was not enough fire and brimstone.
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- My report on and discussion of the talks with the Soviets with the Berlin Senat indicated that they would go considerably farther than the Federal Republic in proposing practical arrangements to alleviate the situation both in Berlin and on the access routes and that they have fewer illusions about what we can get without paying the price of some practical political concessions.
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- In Bonn I followed the deliberate tactic of first bolstering personal relations with the Chancellor and then building up Schroeder. It [Page 201] seemed to have had the desired result. The Chancellor was effusive in his expressions of confidence and Schroeder was clearly well satisfied.
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I had an hour’s talk with the Chancellor alone. I found him far more lively and mentally alert than I had expected. Indeed his mood, including two full evenings of friendly and animated discussions with him and other German leaders, surprised his own colleagues. In our private conversation he expressed his concern about the stubborn strength of Communism in Western Europe especially in France and Italy; he was obviously distressed that there are still some thirty thousand Communists in the Federal Republic. He spent some time on Red China, beginning with the repetition of his story about Khrushchev having asked him for help against the Chinese during his Moscow visit in 1956. Yoshida, who recently visited Bonn, had underlined to him the “national” character of what was happening in China and had expressed the view that the path of safety lies in developing somewhat more normal relations. The Chancellor asked me about reports that a change in US policy toward China might be in the making. I told him that we had no completely dogmatic view but that any such opportunity was severely limited by Peiping’s attitude that the sine qua non of any improvement must be the turning over of Formosa and its ten million people. I pointed out that this presented us with an issue similar to that of West Berlin. The Chancellor then introduced his relations with De Gaulle by saying that he was deeply aware of the fact that the memories of Nazism made it impossible for Germany to assume a leading role in Europe. He then recalled de Gaulle’s visit to Moscow in 1944 to sign a Franco-Russian agreement against Germany. Diagramming the geographical relationship between the USSR, Germany and France he said Germany must do everything possible to prevent a Franco-Russian arrangement against Germany. Therefore complete intimacy between Germany and France was utterly fundamental. This, incidentally, was Adenauer’s reflection of the same underlying longer range Franco-German distrust which I saw from the other end in Paris.
I told the Chancellor that I thought he had greatly overestimated the obstacles to a leading role on Germany’s part deriving from the Hitler period. I told him that he personally could now see his bold and statesmanlike dreams for Europe on the edge of realization. I emphasized that it was a fundamental interest and policy of the US that Germany and France be intimately associated but that we saw this within the framework of joint leadership and a united Europe and in an Atlantic Community with ever closer associations with North America. I pointed out that the Atlantic Community is a nexus of interlocking special relationships reaching around the globe, including the inter-American system, the Commonwealth, French associations in Africa and the welcome development of German interests outside Europe.
[Page 202]The Chancellor then repeated a view I have heard in Paris that the entry of Britain, Norway, Denmark and Ireland into the Common Market would change the entire character of Europe. Again I told him that I thought this was an exaggerated fear; since World War Britain has become increasingly European in its orientation and far less involved, for example, in that vast area from California to Suez. From across the Atlantic, we found it at least as natural that Britain could become an integral part of Europe as that Germany and France could set aside so much history and become the closest partners. I told him that he could write his name in the largest letters in history if he could achieve a situation in which it could finally be said, after several centuries, that war would not break out over inter-Western European issues. I emphasized to him that I was not in Bonn to create any problems between him and de Gaulle but that I thought that both of us would have a temporary and minor problem if De Gaulle’s understandable campaign to increase the prestige of France should be undertaken at the expense of his friends rather than of the enemies of the free world.
Adenauer made no reference to the irritations of recent weeks nor to any personality problems within the present German Govt.
He concluded by saying that he had occasionally felt that he would like to write an informal personal letter about one or another matter to President Kennedy but that he had been reluctant to do so because of the President’s obvious heavy responsibilities. I told him that I thought informal and very private exchanges of that sort would be welcome.
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- My visit to Bonn removed any doubt I might have had as to the inevitable growth of German pressure for nuclear weapons unless there are multilateral arrangements in NATO or Europe or unless there are significant steps toward disarmament in this field. The Chancellor asserted in the most positive terms that his 1954 declaration renouncing the production of nuclear weapons was made under and subject to then prevailing conditions (rebus sic stantibus) and that, indeed, this interpretation was offered by Dulles on the latter’s initiative. Schroeder wrestled very hard to get a flat commitment that we would not refer to the non-diffusion of nuclear weapons in any paper we submitted to the Russians on Berlin. This I refused to do but simply pointed out that the matter might become moot because the US and USSR have agreed to discuss non-diffusion in Geneva immediately upon return in mid-July from the current recess.
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- How effective the Chancellor will be with President De Gaulle next week remains to be seen. The German officials and politicians here obviously have great fears that he will be seduced. I cannot help but share the fear that the Chancellor will not stand up well, if the two statesmen do much business alone. Schroeder, for example, is as conscious of the deficiencies of the French contribution to collective defense, especially [Page 203] by providing conventional forces for the standing strategy, as Strauss showed himself to be in Washington. However when I brought the subject up with the Chancellor he referred to De Gaulle’s troubles with his Generals and need to rebuild the morale of the French armed forces. He appeared to accept this as justification from [for] the lack of an effective French conventional contribution to the central front and not to be aware of the diversion of French resources involved in the financing of the force de frappe. He tended to dismiss the subject with the confident assertion that if trouble came De Gaulle could be counted on to put everything France had into the fray.
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- Despite a certain restraint on the part of the Chancellor himself about the Common Market, I found general support in Bonn for UK accession and the confident expectation that the present negotiations will succeed; this from men like Schroeder, Erhard, Abs, Rosenberg and others.
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- I also got the impression that political leaders such as Schroeder, Mende, Dehler and Brandt went out of their way to let me know that there is more flexibility in Germany about a Berlin settlement than one would suppose in talking with people like Von Brentano.
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- Above is too long but gives background prior to Adenauer visit to Paris where De Gaulle will undoubtedly make a major effort. I took some satisfaction from Adenauer’s volunteered assurance that he would write me a long letter after his visit to Paris.