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The Opening Phase of the Struggle for Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert M. Slusser
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Ever since the Berlin blockade of 1948 the attention of historians of modern and recent international relations has been engaged by the problem of how Germany and its capital, Berlin, came to be divided, first among the major powers of the anti-Hitler Grand Alliance—Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France—and then, in 1949, into two rival states, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. This problem lies at the heart of the much-debated question regarding the origins of the Cold War. This review article makes no pretense at being a comprehensive report on the literature of the German problem. My aim is, rather, to call attention to some recent contributions to the literature and place them in context.

Type
Review Article
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 1979 , pp. 473 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1979

References

1. The collection of wartime documents published by the Department of State in the series, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, various years), includes volumes on the conferences at Malta and Yalta, the conference at Teheran, and the conference at Berlin (Potsdam). Multivolume annual collections accompany these documents in the same series.

2. For example, no American scholar appears to have made use of the Soviet publication, Otchet o rabote Evropeiskoi konsul'tativnoi komissii (Moscow, 1947).

3. One of the best revisionist studies is Gabriel, Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1943-1945 (New York: Random House, 1968.Google Scholar

4. An example is a University of Geneva doctoral dissertation: Harold, Strauss, The Division and Dismemberment of Germany, from the Casablanca Conference (January 1943) to the Establishment of the East German Republic (October 1949) (Ambilly, 1952).Google Scholar

5. For example, Bruce Kuklick dismisses the EAC as “a monumental failure” in his article, “The Genesis of the European Advisory Commission,” Journal of Contemporary History, 4, no. 4 (October 1969): 189-210. John L. Gaddis renders a somewhat less damning but basically similar verdict in his book, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941-1949 (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 105-12.

6. Ernst Deuerlein, Die Einheit Deutschlands, vol. 1: Die Erorterungen und Entscheidungen der Kriegs- und Nachkriegskonferenzen 1941-1949: Darstellung und Dokumente (Frankfurt/Main: Alfred Metzner Verlag, 1961), p. 36.

7. Nelson, Daniel J., Wartime Origins of the Berlin Dilemma (University Ala.: University. of. Alabama Press, 1978).Google Scholar

8. Philip E., Mosely, “Dismemberment of Germany: The Allied Negotiations from Yalta to Potsdam,” Foreign Affairs, 28, no. 3 (April 1950): 487–98 Google Scholar; Mosely, “The Occupation of Germany: New Light on How the Zones Were Drawn,” ibid., no. 4 (July 1950): 580-604. Both essays were reprinted with additional notes in Mosely, Philip E., The Kremlin and World Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), pp. 131–54, 155-88.Google Scholar

9. Nelson sums up his evaluation of the EAC by calling it “certainly one of the most useful and most extraordinary bodies in the history of allied wartime diplomacy” (Nelson, Wartime Origins, p. 170).

10. Vojtech, Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), pp. 263–65Google Scholar; McCagg, William O. Jr., Stalin Embattled 1943-1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978), p. 173.Google Scholar

11. In one of the first American studies to be based on the Department of State archival publications, Snell, John L. (Wartime Origins of the East-West Dilemma over Germany [New Orleans: Hauser Press, 1959])Google Scholar attributed to Roosevelt a deliberate “policy of postponement” in regard to postwar planning for Germany (chapter 2). For a grudgingly favorable evaluation of Roosevelt's policies toward Germany by a West German historian, see Giinter, Moltmann, “Zur Formulierung der amerikanischen Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” Vierteljahrshejte fiir Zeitgeschichte, 15, no. 3 (July 1967): 308.Google Scholar

12. See, for example, Strauss, The Division and Dismemberment of Germany, pp. 145— 46; McNeill, William H., America, Britain, and Russia: Their Co-operation and Conflict 1941-1946 (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 724 and 733.Google Scholar

13. Catudal, Honore Marc Jr., A Balance Sheet of the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin: Evaluation and Documentation (West Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1978, p. 18.Google Scholar

14. Tony, Sharp, The Wartime Alliance and the Zonal Division of Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.Google Scholar A recent article by Sharp is a valuable supplement to his book (see Tony, Sharp, “The Russian Annexation of the Konigsberg Area 1941-45,” Survey, 23, no. 4 [105] [Autumn 1977-78]: 156–62).Google Scholar

15. When Anthony Eden visited Washington, D.C. in March 1943, Roosevelt, at the suggestion of Hopkins and in Eden's presence, agreed that the British and Americans should work out a plan for the occupation of Germany “and the one agreed upon between the two of us should then be discussed with the Russians” (see Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948], p. 715).Google Scholar Eden, however, made no comment on this proposal and simply ignored it after his return to London.

16. Sharp cites a Foreign Office memorandum evidently dating from May 1945 which noted the” ‘unusual alacrity’ with which the Russians accepted the British proposals [on zones of occupation] in February 1944, [which] suggests ‘that we gave them more than they had ever expected to get'” (Sharp, The Wartime Alliance, p. 146).

17. Boris, Meissner, “Die Vereinbarungen der Europaischen Beratenden Kommission uber Deutschland in 1944/45,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 46 (November 14, 1970): 3–14.Google Scholar

18. Woodward, Sir Llewellyn, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, vol. 5 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1976), pp. 249–60.Google Scholar Sir Llewellyn notes: “It has not been possible within the scope of this History to deal at greater length with the work of the European Advisory Commission” (ibid., p. 249).

19. In addition to the work cited in note 2 above, Soviet documentary publications on the EAC include a selection of documents in the series, “Iz materialov Evropeiskoi konsul'tativnoi komissii,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn', 1968, no. 4, pp. 151-60; no. 5, pp. 152— 60; no. 6, pp. 151-60; and no. 7, pp. 154-59. A new Soviet collection of documentary materials from the wartime conferences was launched in 1978: Gromyko, A. A. et al., eds., Sovetskii Soiuz na mezhdunarodnykh konferentsiiakh perioda Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny 1941-AS (Moscow: Politizdat, 1978).Google Scholar

20. Soviet historians have paid special attention, for example, to a statement made on March 26, 1945 by F. T. Gusev, Soviet representative on the EAC, to the effect that the Soviet government considered the proposed dismemberment of Germany “not as an obligatory plan … but as a possible means of exerting pressure on Germany for the purpose of rendering it harmless if other measures prove insufficient.” Presented at the very time when Stalin was violating the Yalta agreements by unilaterally assigning to Poland the administration (read annexation) of German territories up to the Oder and Western Neisse rivers, Gusev's statement was clearly calculated as a propaganda screen for the Soviet dismemberment of Germany, and its later citation by Soviet historians is designed to serve the same purpose. First published in Mezhdunarodnaia shizn', 1955, no. 5, p. 44, Gusev's statement is cited with approval in such works as: Pravda o politike zapadnykh derzhav v germanskom voprose: Ob otvetstvennosti zapadnykh derzhav za narushenie Potsdamskogo soglasheniia i vosroshdenie germanskogo imperializma ﹛Istoricheskaia spravka) (Moscow, 1959), p. 13; Istoriia diplomatii, 2nd ed., vol. 4 (Moscow, 1975), p. 563; Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny 1941-1945, vol. 5 (Moscow, 1963), p. 450.

21. Bruce, Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany: The Clash with Russia over Reparations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972.Google Scholar

22. John, Gimbel, The Origins of the Marshall Plan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 3 and 55Google Scholar; see also Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, pp. 394-95, n. 130.

23. Bruce Kuklick, review of John H. Backer, The Decision to Divide Germany: American Foreign Policy in Transition, in Anferican Historical Review, 84, no. 1 (February 1979): 275.

24. Peterson, Edward N., The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978 Google Scholar.

25. Backer, John H., The Decision to Divide Germany: American Foreign Policy in Transition (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978).Google Scholar