93. Letter From Chancellor Erhard to President Johnson1
Dear Mr. President:
In your address on the occasion of your inauguration to the high office of President of the United States,2 you have described the great tasks which confront your country in the interest of maintaining peace and freedom in the world and you have stressed the heavy burdens which your country is prepared to carry toward that end. That you may be granted to come closer to these high aims through a successful policy which serves peace is my sincere and cordial wish for your new term of office. On the occasion of your solemn inauguration you have expressed your desire to cooperate and to stand together with the free peoples. I am happy to be able to tell you that it is my firm conviction that my discussions in Rambouillet have also been useful in the sense of furthering the political unity of Europe, but also with regard to a close cooperation with the United States in the framework of the Western Alliance.
I have already informed your Ambassador about the course of my discussions with President de Gaulle.3 I have received the impression that we are well on our way to reestablish a firmer basis for the vital questions of the Western Alliance.
It gave me particular satisfaction to note the very positive remarks of the French President with regard to the reunification of Germany and the readiness of the French Government to discuss the German problem [Page 221] on the level of the Western Powers together with the Federal Republic and to examine if and in what way the Soviet Union might be prepared to find on a Four Power basis progress or solutions in all questions concerning divided Germany.
General de Gaulle concurred with me in recognizing that the preservation of peace and the protection of Europe cannot be guaranteed without the immense military potential of your country. France, he said, was adhering to the alliance with the United States and was faithfully supporting the Western Alliance. I noted these very remarks with particular satisfaction.
As far as the European questions in particular are concerned, the consent of the French President to preparing until summer of this year a conference of Heads of States and Governments of the EEC-countries is certainly a good beginning in the direction of a political unification of Europe.
I very much hope that your plans to come to Europe in the near future will soon take shape and I am sincerely looking forward to the opportunity then to continue our exchange of views on the most important political questions. A renewed greater clarity, certainty and consent in all questions of common policy of the Western world seem to me highly desirable if not indispensable in the interest of peace.
With my good wishes for a very early and complete recovery of your health, I combine my cordial greetings and respectful regards for Mrs. Johnson.
m.p.: In friendship,
sincerely yours,
- Source: Department of State, Central Files,POL 17 GER W–US. Secret. The source text is marked “Unofficial Translation.”↩
- For text, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, Book I, pp. 71–74.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 90.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩