Date

Mar 1, 1966

Description

This retrospective British Foreign Office paper explained that when Adenauer made an important "self-binding" commitment by avowing that ABC weapons would not be produced on West German "territory," everyone at the Nine-Power Conference understood that the agreement "exclud[ed] any possibility of the manufacture of nuclear weapons by West Germany." The Foreign Office also detailed the implications of the non-discriminatory controls over West German forces that the Nine-Power conference approved. According to the Foreign Office, the Federal Republic was in a situation where it "cannot, consistent with its Treaty obligations, maintain armed forces other than those committed to NATO, or recognized by NATO as being suitable for retention under a national command (e.g., internal defense forces and training establishments); cannot exceed certain maxima for these forces as agreed to by the Brussels Treaty Powers; cannot equip these forces with more or better weapons (whether manufactured in Germany or abroad) than those acceptable to NATO or the WEU; cannot, of course, manufacture nuclear etc. weapons in its territory at all; and cannot manufacture certain categories of ships, missiles, bombers, etc., except by a decision of a two-thirds majority of the Brussels Treaty Powers."

Source

RG 383, Records of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Subject Files 1957-1968, box 1, Arms Control Issue-Germany, France, Soviet Policy Toward Germany and NATO-March 1964-October 1965

Document published in following posting(s):

NATO's Original Purpose: Double Containment of the Soviet Union and "Resurgent" Germany

Dec 11, 2018