from rearming. The disposal of Germany’s war industries fell under the rearming issue, which was a long-term matter best handled at a later time when there might be a clear economic policy.122
Disarming the German forces was relatively easy: most simply dropped their weapons, raised their arms, and surrendered. According to a trip report written by Lieutenant Colonel A. F. S. MacKenzie, assistant G-1 in SHAEF’s German Affairs Division, following his visit to the headquarters and units of the US 3rd Army, the disbandment process as directed by Eclipse Memo No. 17 was working relatively well. MacKenzie concluded that “Eclipse Memo 17, as written is essentially sound, operationally, and should be continued in effect ‘as is.’” He found, however, that although 3rd Army was not complying with the spirit of Eclipse Memo 17, its operating units appeared to be and that Germans were being discharged at a rate of 25,000–30,000 per day. The report highlighted several administrative and procedural problems but stated that as of 8 June, the 3rd Army had discharged approximately 550,000 Germans.123
As van Cutsem stated, the remainder of the demilitarization program, which was primarily directed at preventing the remilitarization of Germany, was more involved and took longer. However, Allied forces were given little to no guidance regarding the destruction of enemy fortifications other than it was to be accomplished during the occupation period. It was not until the end of July 1945 that orders to destroy German fortifications and defensive works were issued by USFET with a completion date of 31 January 1946.
Even more remained to be done regarding the disposal of enemy war matériel, the destruction and demilitarization of German fortifications and war industries, and especially the eradication of militarism from the German psyche. The memoranda prepared for Operation Eclipse had begun that process and showed the way for its completion. By mid-1946, more than eight million prisoners had been discharged and two years later, in early 1948, the ACC reported to the Council of Foreign Ministers that the western occupation zones of Germany had been effectively disarmed and demilitarized as of mid-1947.124 This notwithstanding, negotiations within the quadripartite commission over establishing a disarmament commission, which began in earnest in July 1946 and continued into February 1948, remained partially unresolved.125 Ironically, while this thoroughly invasive inspection proposal to ensure that a German military potential could never be re-created was being pushed forward by the western Allies, the US Army staff was beginning to draft its first studies on rearming the western part of the soon-to-be-divided Germany.
2
The Diplomatic Path to 12 September 1950
Heinrich August Winkler wrote that the successful Allied invasions and aerial bombardments that took place during World War II brought Germany to its knees. The bombs, the expulsions, and the internal collapse changed German society far more than the first ten years of the Reich had.1 Still, despite the advent of the Cold War and the increasing hostility of the Soviet Union, the United States (and the State Department in particular) was slow to recognize the significant transformation that had taken place among the war-weary Germans in the western zone and continued to view them with distrust.
Nonetheless, US policy toward Western Europe underwent a major alteration beginning in early 1949. It was a change that precluded the United States from returning to its prewar isolationism and pushed it, by necessity, into a deep and lasting involvement in Western Europe. It resulted, furthermore, in vigorous debates within the Department of State and between it and the Department of Defense over the direction of US–West European and West German policy. This change, in the middle of President Truman’s second term, caused several senior State Department officials (including Secretary of State Acheson) to revise their long-held opposition to German rearmament, leading the United States to reverse its European policy completely and formally demand on 12 September 1950 that West Germany be armed.
Throughout this period, the “German problem” remained at the forefront of US policy deliberations regarding Western Europe. The Department of State’s position regarding the possibility of German rearmament was contained in the answer to a question posed by the Foreign Assistance Correlation Committee in June 1949. When asked “What will be the relationship of Germany . . . to the problem of increasing the defensive military strength of the Western European countries?” the State Department responded thus: “The United States Government does not envisage that Germany will be in a position to undertake cooperative military efforts with other Western European Governments, as we are fully committed to the complete and absolute disarmament and demilitarization of Germany. She will not have military forces of her own. She will not have industrial capacity for the production of armaments.”2 In Europe, however, the question of German rearmament was on the table during the formation of the Brussels Treaty Organization in 1948 and influenced decisions regarding the duration of the occupation and the need to keep US forces in Germany. Nonetheless, the focus of the Department of State remained on West Germany’s political and economic integration and continued disarmament.
Beginning in 1946, relations with the Soviet Union began to deteriorate and the United States increasingly saw the Soviet Union as a real military threat to both European and US security.3 These perceptions, fortified by Stalin’s election speech of 9 February 1946 and by George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” two weeks later, as well as Soviet actions in Iran and toward Turkey, led, in part, to the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, the merging of the US and British zones of occupation in May, and the initiation of the European Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan) in June of that year.4 This perception of the Soviet threat was voiced in mid-February 1947 by John D. Hickerson, the deputy director of the Office of European Affairs, in a memo written to his boss, H. Freeman Matthews. Hickerson wrote that Soviet actions in foreign affairs left them “no alternative other than to assume that the USSR [had] aggressive intentions.” Hickerson stated further that the United States must be determined to resist that aggression by force of arms if necessary because “there could be no deals or arrangements” with the USSR.5
By early 1948, the Communist-led coup d’état in Czechoslovakia deepened the perception that the Soviet Union was bent on dominating Europe.6 Following discussions between Great Britain and the United States in which the British sought US participation in an Atlantic defense pact, the British were given to understand that they and the West European nations would first have to organize themselves. Britain’s foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, took the lead and on 17 March 1948 the Brussels Treaty was signed by the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. While outwardly directed against a resurgent Germany, the possibility of German participation in the pact was supported by all the signatories except France.7 Three days later, on 20 March, the Soviet military delegation to the ACC in Berlin walked out, and on 1 April, the Soviets initiated restrictions on travel to Berlin followed in mid-June by a total blockade of the city that lasted until 12 May 1949. The blockade and resulting Berlin crisis ended any thought or desire for accommodating the Soviet Union.8
In early 1949, Truman transferred responsibility for German policy from the US Army to the Department of State.9 The United States also departed from its age-old policy of nonentanglement and became a major force behind the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), joining with the five Brussels Treaty nations, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, Italy, and Norway, in a defensive alliance designed to deter Soviet aggression but also to contain, if necessary, a resurgent and expansionist Germany.10 The major policy of keeping Germany disarmed and demilitarized still remained front and center, but the State Department’s focus shifted to ending the occupation, returning some degree of sovereignty to Western Germany, and tying it closely to the other West European states in some form of federal entity or union.11 The unexpected outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula on 25 June 1950, however, resulted in a major reversal of US policy, which would strain relations between the United States and its European allies, especially the French, and would lead to West German rearmament.
