From Disarmament to Rearmament. Sheldon A. Goldberg

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.

       US Thinking on Disarmament

      Memories of German troops marching home following the 1918 armistice and of the expansion of the Wehrmacht following Germany’s withdrawal from the Geneva Disarmament Conference in October 1933 led to a decision that the mistakes made in the armistice agreement and Treaty of Versailles would not be repeated.¹² Even before World War II ended, it became the seemingly unalterable policy of the United States that Germany would be completely and totally disarmed and demilitarized following its surrender. This policy was made very clear on numerous occasions following the war, the last of which ironically came only weeks before Acheson presented the US demand that West Germany be armed to the foreign ministers of Great Britain and France on 12 September 1950.¹³

      Perhaps the first and most definitive enunciation of US policy toward the defeated Germany came at the 1946 Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Paris on 30 April when Secretary of State James F. Byrnes presented the text of a draft treaty on the disarmament and demilitarization of Germany. In the preamble, which indirectly referred to the Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany of 5 June 1945, the four Allied Powers “declared their intention to effect the total disarmament and demobilization of Germany” and promised that this total disarmament and demilitarization would “be enforced as long as the peace and security of the world may require.”¹⁴

      The body of the draft treaty reflected and expanded upon that declaration by stating that all German forces “shall be and shall remain completely disarmed, demobilized and disbanded” and it specifically included the German General Staff Corps. The final article, Article V, specified that this proposed treaty was to remain in force for a period of twenty-five years and be renewable, if deemed necessary. It was meant to be incorporated in a future peace treaty with Germany, thereby making it the law of the land and binding Germany to it.¹⁵

      Byrnes subsequently addressed keeping Germany disarmed and demilitarized for a generation in an address delivered in Stuttgart, Germany, on 6 September and again in a speech he gave to the American Club in Paris in October.¹⁶ In that latter speech, he repeatedly cited the proposed draft treaty and stressed that there should be no doubt as to American foreign policy toward Germany. He emphasized the US government’s firm opposition to any revival of German militarism and proposed that the occupation of Germany not end until a German government accepted the disarmament and demilitarization clauses of the Four-Power Treaty he had proposed. Byrnes then underscored the need to maintain “limited but adequate Allied armed forces” to ensure compliance, and suggested the use of Allied bombers “from France, Britain, the United States or the Soviet Union” to enforce immediate compliance should the German government fail to do so. While the United States initially proposed to continue the disarmament and demilitarization of Germany for forty years after the peace settlement, Byrnes asked only that the Allies agree to keep Germany disarmed and demilitarized for at least a generation. This, he indicated, would assuage the fears of France and the other European nations as Germany rebuilt its powerful industrial economy.¹⁷

      Byrnes’s replacement as secretary of state, retired US Army general George C. Marshall, also proposed Brynes’s treaty in Moscow in 1947. Although it was rejected by the USSR on both occasions, US policy remained unchanged. This continuity is evident in the summary of the February–March 1948 London Tripartite Conference, which refers to several agreements made by the Allies that the occupation of Germany and the prohibition on the German armed forces and general staff would continue for a long time. Further, it was agreed that the military governors should continue to exercise control pertaining to disarmament and demilitarization, and that a working party should be established to decide which industries should remain prohibited and set production levels for those that were no longer prohibited. The summary also stated that a military security board would be established in the western zones of Germany whose function would be to cover the entire spectrum of disarmament and demilitarization. The summary concluded that even after the occupation ended, Germany would not be allowed to become a military threat and that an inspection mechanism should be created to ensure that it remained disarmed and demilitarized.¹⁸

      By 1947, the United States had decided it had to move forward on Germany without agreement from the USSR. The idea then developed in higher policymaking circles that Western Europe should develop a political personality of its own and that Western Germany could be integrated into that community, which might in time develop into a third force able to stand up to the Soviets without direct US involvement.¹⁹ It was believed that so integrated, West German freedom of action would be sufficiently constrained and no longer pose a threat.²⁰ In discussions regarding what became the Brussels Treaty Organization and its relation to Germany, Hickerson told Lord Inverchapel that the US envisioned the creation of a European organization capable of standing up to both the United States and USSR.

      President Truman and his advisors were ambivalent about the emergence of Soviet power. On the one hand, they saw a need for cooperation; on the other hand, they saw that Soviet actions could endanger US security. These officials did not fear a Soviet attack on the United States—at the time, the Soviet Union lacked both long-range strategic bombers and atomic weapons. What were causes for concern were the increase in Communist party membership in some nations of Western Europe such as France and Italy and the possible takeover of key Western industrial power centers, which would end US hopes for Western Europe’s political and economic integration and the continuation of democratic forms of government.²¹ Soviet