Department discussions with or about the Western Union, the issue of Western Germany often arose, but the State Department’s position remained constant: Germany’s participation in Europe’s defense was premature. In addition, the United States remained adamant that it could not and would not offer any security guarantees.49
Rumors of Remilitarization
Throughout 1948, the Department of State and its ambassadors in Western Europe reiterated that the fundamental US policy objective toward Germany was “to insure that Germany [did] not again menace the peace of the world and [that it made] a vital contribution to the economic rehabilitation and political security of Europe.” Specifically, “disarmament, demilitarization and reduction and lasting control over Germany’s capacity to make war, including security against renewed German or other aggression” were some of the several major US policies that would be sought through a closer US–West European association.50 On 31 December 1948, an article in the New York Herald Tribune by Marguerite Higgens stated that the United States, Britain, and France had appointed a “three-man Military Security Board which [would] send inspection teams throughout West Germany to insure continued disarmament.” The three appointees were Major General James P. Hodges (US), Major General Victor J. E. Westropp (UK), and General Etienne Paskiewicz (France).51
US-Soviet and US–West European diplomatic encounters in this period, however, raised press speculation about German rearmament. For example, on 21 February 1948, a New York Times article reported that the French foreign ministry learned the United States had dropped the Byrnes treaty objective of keeping Germany disarmed for forty years. The article stated further that an assumption being “freely discussed in some quarters” was that the Soviets would “enlist German rearmament in its service,” leading to the idea that the United States had better not remain committed “to keeping Germany down in the matter of armaments.”52 Although rumors continued, the topic of German rearmament dropped from the American public’s view for the most part until late 1949 when it picked up again following the formation of the FRG.
Toward the end of 1948, the consulates in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Bremen were reporting on additional rumors and active discussions among West Germans regarding plans to remilitarize Germany. In November, a report from the consulate in Bremen mentioned that rumors pertaining to the creation of a strong police force as the nucleus for a future Germany army had begun to circulate.53 In December, the consulates in Frankfurt and Stuttgart were reporting on statements made by (former Nazi) Lieutenant General Franz Halder, who had been until 1942 the Wehrmacht’s chief of general staff, Dr. Rudolph Vogel, a member of the Land Executive Committee of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Eugen Kogon, publisher of the Frankfurter Heft and a prominent person in Württemberg-Baden, calling for the rearmament of West Germany. Dr. Vogel’s articles, several of which appeared in the Schwäbische Post, were allegedly inspired by a 24 October article written by Walter Lippman in the New York Herald Tribune.54
In essence, the German discussions were in favor of a voluntary German contribution to an Allied force in the event of an East German or Soviet attack. These rumors and discussions were abetted by rumors stemming from Moscow and East Berlin that the British were not only recruiting Germans and putting them in British uniforms, but that they were forming German artillery, cavalry, and engineer units as well as establishing special flying and armored schools. While these discussions appear to have run their course by January 1949, one effect was to force the West German political parties to take positions on this issue, which they did by rejecting it.55
As 1949 unfolded, the issue of arming West Germany remained unsettled, particularly in France. On 3 January, for example, Bérard was given instructions from Paris to query the State Department about information the French had received that the United States was contemplating the establishment of a German Army. The French government, he was told to say, would view such a step with “extreme seriousness.” Samuel Reber of the European Division replied that the position of the US government regarding the demilitarization and disarmament of Germany, which had been set forth repeatedly, had not changed, nor was there any intention to change that policy.56
Then, in mid-January, Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall wrote President Truman strongly recommending that all nonmilitary functions of the occupation be taken over by the Department of State and that a high commissioner for Germany be appointed. This shift had originally been proposed in early 1948 but the Berlin Blockade and fears what it might lead to found everyone in agreement that the army should continue its total control of West Germany. Royall went on to say that the problems now being confronted in the administration of Germany were primarily political and economic and, as a result, problems that arose between the army and the Department of State were often difficult to reconcile.57 Subsequent interdepartmental correspondence within the State Department on the role of the high commissioner recommended that its responsibilities be taken on simultaneously with the establishment of the new West German government. Former World War II assistant secretary of war and president of the World Bank John J. McCloy was first put forward as the appointee for high commissioner in this correspondence, and the suggestion was made that the office of high commissioner be occupied no earlier than 1 July.58
Two months later, in March 1949, the Department of State undertook a review of its Germany policy and reaffirmed that the primary interest of the United States with respect to Germany was to guard against any renewal of German aggression. Regardless of what form Germany would take in the foreseeable future—divided or whole—an essential element of US \policy had to be security. It was therefore in the interest of the United States “to prevent the Germans, or any part of them, from developing military forces until any security threat inherent in them is obviated by European union or other collective safeguards against aggression.” The review stated further that the United States would look with favor upon the creation of such a union but that it could only assist in whatever initiative the Europeans themselves took. This latter statement was significant because it reflected the core of what would become Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s key policy issue (i.e., that the inclusion of West Germany in such an undertaking must be as an equal).59
A major problem at that time, however, was that despite the desire to integrate Germany into Europe, there was no body—no European union—within which Germany could be integrated. As one State Department official put it, “Plainly, Germany cannot be fitted into the European community in a satisfactory manner until there is an adequate framework of general European union into which Germany can be absorbed. The other countries cannot be expected to cope with the problem of Germany until there is a closer relationship among them than the existing one.”60
That same month, however, a policy paper written by Kennan indicated that there was still considerable belief among US policy elites that even the advent of a West German government would not solve the “problem of Germany.” The new West German government, the paper stated, would become “the spokesman of a resentful and defiant nationalism,” and the “dominant force in Germany [would] become one not oriented to the integration of Germany into Europe but the re-emergence of that unilateral German strength which has proven so impossible for Western Europe to digest in the past. A Western German government will thus be neither friendly nor frank nor trustworthy from the standpoint of the western occupiers.”61 For his part, Kennan only wanted a provisional German administration, leaving the ultimate authority over security and other matters in the hands of the three high commissioners. The US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Lewis Douglas, appears to have believed, like Kennan, that once a West German government was established, US freedom of action would be gone.62
Thus, by 1949, the United States was forced to recognize that until a decision was made on Germany it would be necessary, both for its own and Germany’s security, to maintain occupation forces in the West German zones until the peace of Europe was secured. The Department of State, however, recognized that as the German people, or a large part of them, might become part of a structure of free
