3 - American Policy toward German Unification, 1949-1955

Summary

When U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained to British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin the goals of American policy toward Germany after the end of the Berlin Blockade in May 1949, he pointed toward two troublesome interconnected problems: European integration and German unification. However, he made it clear beyond doubt that American support for reunification was dependent upon a general relaxation of East-West tensions: “If we can integrate a greater part of Germany than we now control under conditions which help and do not retard what we are now doing, we favor; but only if the circumstances are right.” After his return from the Geneva summit meeting, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared on July 28, 1955, before the National Security Council (NSC), “The West must keep pressing the German unification issue.” He predicted, but did not wish to be held to his prediction, that “we might get a unification in the next two years.”

Both the Democratic and the Republican secretaries of state addressed themselves in their statements to difficult problems and expectations that influenced American policy from the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany to its integration into the NATO alliance. Both statements also show that German reunification remained one of the principal goals of U.S. policy. While Acheson was rather cautious in his approach a few months before the first West German government was formed under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Dulles apparently believed that after West Germany's admission to NATO, fundamental U.S. preconditions for the peaceful solution of the German question had been met.