Chapter 4 brings the paths taken by state and defense together, presents their joint answer to President Truman’s eight questions, and segues to the 12 September 1950 tripartite meeting and the demand to rearm Germany that led to the development of the French Pleven Plan (which soon became the EDC) and the problems that confronted it. This chapter also addresses the Eisenhower administration’s plans and attempts to save the EDC from rejection by France and its inability to come up with an alternative.
Chapter 5 continues the narration to the defeat of EDC and the US quandary over what to do next in light of the administration’s belief that there was no alternative to EDC. It concludes this history with the solution to the “German problem” found and implemented through the efforts of the British foreign minister, Sir Anthony Eden, who brought West Germany into NATO and opened the way to create a German military force.
The epilogue that follows addresses the activities undertaken and obstacles faced by the three US military services during the EDC phase (as they prepared to train what would become the new West German Bundeswehr) until the FRG’s admission to NATO in 1955.
Seven appendices follow that provide additional information on the European Advisory Commission (EAC), a list of the Eclipse memoranda and other directives relating to German disarmament, the Himmerod Conference, an essay on Acheson and the “Single Package,” and the “Great Debate” over the power of the president to send troops overseas.
The evidence presented in this book calls for a revision of certain conventional views about West German rearmament and the beginnings of the Cold War. First, once the decision was made to change standing US national policy and arm the Germans, the US government lost effective control of the process when it voluntarily ceded leadership of the implementation of German rearmament to France. Second, despite the efforts of two US administrations, neither pleas nor threats were able to save the EDC from defeat. Third, the United States’ total commitment (at the highest levels of the US administration) to German rearmament within the EDC precluded consideration of an alternative. Lastly, when a solution to the German rearmament problem was found following the defeat of the EDC, the United States found itself pledging an open-ended troop commitment on the European continent, a pledge that remains in force today, albeit somewhat diminished from what it was prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
1
Operation Eclipse
The idea to disarm, demobilize, and demilitarize Germany was first enunciated in the Atlantic Charter of 14 August 1941, and began to take concrete form in May of 1943 when the Combined Chiefs of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (designate; COSSAC), under Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan, were charged by the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) to plan, among other things, for the occupation of Germany in the event of a sudden German collapse.1
This plan, originally called Operation Rankin and then Operation Talisman before it became Operation Eclipse, was two years in the making, and this chapter, which relates its history, also serves to establish a starting point from which to view the underlying theme of this book—the rearming of the Federal Republic of Germany—and the problems encountered by the United States as a result of reversing a long-standing policy to keep the Germans disarmed for decades. This chapter also speaks to the lack of government guidance given to US military forces as they prepared to occupy Germany and, to a lesser extent, the belated and misguided plans and preparations the government had for the occupation without a full understanding of what the occupation would entail.
The total demilitarization of Germany became a major undertaking requiring the development of agreed-upon guidance, policy directives, manpower, and time. Plans were developed at various levels and in various agencies on both sides of the Atlantic, which were embroiled in interdepartmental rivalries and tensions. Furthermore, they had also been left to act in the absence of authoritative guidance and, in the case of the United States, presidential decisiveness. During the Roosevelt administration, for example, decision-making was unstructured and interdepartmental coordination was both informal and haphazard. Additionally, the State Department had lost the president’s confidence and its influence waned while the military assumed considerable prestige.2
Two months later, in July 1943, the British War Cabinet revised its 1942 organization to create a posthostilities subcommittee under COSSAC to tackle the question of how Germany was to be treated after victory was achieved. The purpose of this new committee was “confined to the consideration of drafts for instruments to conclude hostilities and to enforce compliance with armistice or surrender terms.”3 It assigned Colonel T. N. Grazebrook to head the subcommittee and tasked it to “prepare drafts of documents . . . required in connection with the formal suspension of hostilities . . . and to submit plans for the enforcement of such instruments by armistice and disarmament commissions.”4
In December 1943, a British government report entitled Occupation of Germany outlined the cases for and against total occupation and asked whether it was necessary. The report specified that one of the United Nations’ (UN) objectives upon cessation of hostilities should be the “rapid and total disarmament of Germany and the breakup of the German military machine.” It made the case that the situation that existed following World War I should not again be tolerated and that sufficient armed forces should be distributed throughout Germany to prevent the delay in and difficulty enforcing the terms of surrender in the Versailles Treaty. The point was further made that the sooner Germany was disarmed, the sooner the work of reconstruction could begin. The authors believed it would take two years after the war ended to complete the total disarmament of Germany and the destruction of its armaments industries.
To ensure that the post–World War I scenario would not be repeated, the British proposed that eleven divisions of land forces, seven regiments of armored cars plus the necessary nondivisional units—a total of 310,000 personnel—supervise the first two years of the posthostilities period. To back this force up, twenty-eight air force squadrons, to include light and fighter-bombers as well as reconnaissance aircraft, would be needed.5 The assumptions made in the report show the level of distrust the British had for Germany, as well as British fears that a resurgent Germany would somehow find a way to circumvent the disarmament regime that would be imposed upon it.
The British also believed that once the Allies entered Germany they would find a significant amount of civil disorder as well as large numbers of German troops who would need to be disarmed, hence the need for the large number of ground forces. The report also indicates that the presence of a large Allied air force as well as occasional mass formation flights would have a considerable effect on German morale by reminding the Germans that they had been defeated.6
It was not until 1944, however, that the broader concepts of occupation began to be reflected in Allied planning. With the establishment of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) under General Dwight D. Eisenhower in January 1944, the disarmament and demilitarization issue became the responsibility of the deputy chief of staff for operations (G-3), Major General Harold R. Bull (US), and, following the cessation of hostilities, the deputy chief of staff for civil affairs (G-5, Civil Affairs Division), Lieutenant General A. E. Grasset (UK).7 What little direction SHAEF could get came from the US War Department, the British War Office, and the joint European Advisory Commission (EAC) established by the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in October 1943.8 It was, however, in the posthostilities subcommittee under Colonel Grazebrook, now part of SHAEF’s Operations Division (G-3), that many of the most important demilitarization staff studies and memoranda were developed.
Among the various agencies responsible for formulating presurrender and postwar policy for Germany, those in Washington were slowest to recognize the need for postwar planning and most severely plagued by serious divisions and fundamental differences in outlook. The Working Security Committee (WSC), composed