An Enemy Becomes a Partner : Germany

An Enemy Becomes a Partner With his famous speech in Stuttgart on 6September 1946, U.S. Secretary of State Byrnes had indicated the changed approach. Stalin’s occupation of Poland and the redrawing of that country’s borders were described as merely temporary measures. As Byrnes saw it, the military role of the Western Allies in western Germany had changed from one of occupation and control to that of protecting powers. And he said that a “soft” reparations policy was intended to deter the Germans from any nationalist thoughts of revenge and encourage their cooperation.

Finally, on the initiative of the United Kingdom and the United States, a trizone was established as a unified Western economic area, after initial French resistance. The threat of another Soviet advance westwards following the coup d’etat in Prague on 25 February 1948 induced the French to fall into line. Byrnes’ views were reflected first in the Brussels Pact of 17March 1948 and ultimately in the North Atlantic Treaty of 4 April 1949.

‘”Or such an organization to work, western Germany had to have a coherent political and economic system. Thus at the Six-Power Conference in London (23 February to 3 March and 20 April to 1 June 1948), which was attended for the first time by the Benelux countries, France, the United Kingdom and the United States agreed that the Western occupation zones should have a common political structure. At the 82nd meeting of the Allied Control Council on 20 March 1948, the Soviet representative, Marshal Sokolovski, asked for information on the London Conference. When his Western colleagues answered evasively, Sokolovski walked out, never to return.

While the Western powers were still finalizing their recommendations for a constituent assembly to be convened by the western German minister-presidents (the heads of government of the states), Stalin used the introduction of the Deutsche Mark (DM) in the west (currency reform of 20June 1948) as a pretext for imposing a blockade on Berlin (West) with the aim of annexing it to the Soviet-occupied zone. During the night of 23June 1948, all land routes between the Western zones and Berlin (West) were closed. Supplies of energy and food from the Eastern sector of Berlin and the Soviet zone stopped.

On 3 August 1948 Stalin demanded that Berlin (East) be recognized as the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which on 7 October 1949 was given a government of its own. But U.S. President Harry Truman refused to budge, having declared on 20July that the Western Allies could not forgo Berlin (West) (”no Munich of 1948″) or the creation of a west German state. Until 12 May 1949 Berlin (West) was kept supplied by an Allied airlift. This visible solidarity with Berlin (West) as a Western outpost, together with America’s demonstration of trength, evoked a spirit of cooperation in western Cermany, with the result that former enemies became Partners.