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

Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson. He was a key figure in the creation of the North Atlantic alliance and the effort to bring West Germany into a Western European community. (Photo taken at Acheson’s office in 1950, from collection of Harry S. Truman Library, accession number 85-63).

French Told U.S. that West Germany Could Join NATO as Long as There Was “No Independent Wehrmacht”

State Department Intelligence Saw NATO as a “Place” to Help West Germany “Satisfy its Reasonable Aspirations and Contain any Potential Unreasonable Ones”

 

Washington, D.C., December 11, 2018 – In the Fall  of 1966, as part of an ongoing debate about the U.S. troop presence in Western Europe and the role of NATO during the Cold War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sent an illuminating memo to President Lyndon B. Johnson to explain the political reasons for keeping U.S. troops in Europe.  The rationales, he wrote, were to maintain NATO’s “cohesion,” to prevent Soviet “political blackmail,” to deter “any bilateral Soviet-FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] security agreement,” and to discourage “the revival of German militarism,” according to a collection of previously classified documents published today for the first time by the National Security Archive, 

Against the current backdrop of discussions at the top levels of the U.S. government over security guarantees in Europe , McNamara’s  memo and a selection of other declassified U.S. documentation posted today by the National Security Archive provide historical context for decades of U.S. policy toward Europe and more specifically the functions of NATO and the relationship between Germany and European security.  Since the formation of the North Atlantic alliance in the early years of the Cold War and the decision to keep U.S. troops in Europe, U.S. policymakers have generally seen those commitments as critical to both U.S. and European security.

With World War II then only two decades past, concern that a West Germany unmoored from alliance relations could turn revanchist or make deals with the Soviet Union remained in the thinking of top American policymakers.  Declassified documents in today’s Web posting demonstrate how the United States and its allies established NATO partly to reassure France about Germany. The allies then brought West Germany into the alliance as a deterrent against the Soviet Union but also to ensure that it did not develop independent military forces. During the 1960s State Department intelligence analysts described that arrangement as a means to “contain” the West German state so that it developed in harmonious association with former adversaries and avoided militarism or security arrangements with the Soviet Union.

Today’s configurations of power are different:  The Soviet Union no longer exists, Germany is united, and several former Warsaw Pact states have joined NATO.  Few see Germany as a potential aggressor, although unease about German economic power is common. In short, the old formulation attributed to NATO's first secretary general, Lord Ismay, is substantially outdated: “Keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Yet, the international situation is in some ways reminiscent of the Cold War years, with U.S.-Russian relations tense and Moscow hostile to NATO.  With rightwing nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment attracting greater support, new elements of instability have emerged in Western Europe. If outside political pressures intensify, Western European concern about U.S. security guarantees could lead NATO's European members to explore other options, including a larger relative role for themselves.

 

Origins of Double Containment

Nazi Germany’s unprecedented criminal violation of international norms starting in the 1930s prompted the members of the Grand Alliance to impose constraints that would “permanently and pre-emptively retard a third effort to achieve European hegemony.” Immediately after World War II, U.S., British, French, and Soviet policy aimed at demilitarizing Germany for good.  In the context of emerging Cold War tensions, Western European states signed the Brussels Treaty, partly to constrain German power. Washington and its European allies also negotiated the North Atlantic Treaty to offer security guarantees against potential aggression not only from the Soviet Union but also German revanchism.  To assure German assistance for Western European recovery the U.S. and its allies helped create a West German state organized on a politically decentralized basis.  The Soviet blockade of West Berlin during 1948-1949 failed to prevent the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.[1]

As far as U.S. policy was concerned, the NATO alliance that developed during the Cold War was partly a means to integrate Germany into the West so that it could never again become a menacing independent power, much less a neutral one that could play off East against West or develop an entente with Russia.  Also operating as a “countervailing power” or a tacit constraint on the exercise of German power was the presence of U.S., British, and French troops in West Germany and Soviet forces in East Germany.[2] 

The goal of demilitarization faded as Cold War tensions intensified during the Korean War. Washington sought a West German military contribution to NATO but under arrangements that would prevent the new West German state from having autonomous military power.  A proposal to do so, the proposed European Defense Community, failed, but the United States and its allies quickly agreed to a plan supported by the British and the French: West German admission into NATO under controlled conditions.

Thus, as a result of decisions made by the Nine-Power Conference in September 1954, West Germany joined the alliance in 1955 with its armed forces under the authority of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).  The same arrangement applied to other continental European members of NATO, but the British and French supported it specifically to constrain the West German military. Further, as a step toward joining NATO, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer renounced West German production of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons. To monitor military production, the Nine-Power agreement created a special arms control agency within the Western European Union.[3]

French support for bringing West Germany into NATO partly depended on British and U.S. commitments to keep troops in Western Europe. Both Washington and London made such guarantees during the Nine-Power Conference, with Eisenhower later announcing a virtually unlimited commitment to keep a “fair share of the forces needed for the joint defense of the North Atlantic area while a threat to that area exists.” But that promise and West German membership in NATO was only part of the story of the effort to bringing the Federal Republic into a broader community of interest.  Seeing an integrated Western Europe as essential to developing healthy relations between West Germany and its neighbors – France in particular – Washington supported the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s and the European Economic Community in the late 1950s and beyond.

By the 1960s, as they watched Bonn become a constructive member of the European and international community, U.S. officials took for granted the constraints on West German power that they had developed during the late 1940s and the 1950s.  To explain U.S. policy toward Bonn, State Department intelligence analysts used the language of “containment.”  Thus, a State Department INR report referred to “NATO’s function of containing West German strength and predominance on the continent.” Ideas about “containing” the Germans presaged the “double containment” thesis of German political scientist Wolfram Hanrieder, who argued that during the decades after World War II and beyond the United States sought to contain the Soviet Union “at arm’s length” and West Germany “with an embrace.”[4]

As implied by Hanrieder’s tongue-in-cheek use of “embrace,” tensions and suspicions between Washington and Bonn were seldom far from the surface. Thus, during the 1960s U.S.-West German relations were strained over offset payments supporting the cost of U.S. troop deployments and when Washington sought Bonn’s support for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. After Richard Nixon became president in 1969, he and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, were deeply suspicious that Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik might end up bringing West Germany to close to the Soviet bloc. Later in the 1970s, West German apprehensions about the direction of U.S. nuclear policy had an important impact on the Carter administration’s support for deployments of Pershing II and ground launched cruise missiles in NATO Europe.  And during the Euro-missile crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, broad swaths of West German opinion feared that Washington might launch a nuclear war that could destroy the Federal Republic.[5]

When the Cold War ended and German unification was achieved in 1990, the constraints developed by the Nine-Power Conference remained in place. Without controls over German armed forces, the Soviet Union would not have acquiesced in unified Germany’s option to join NATO. The Two plus Four Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, signed on 12 September 1990, included built-in limitations on German power. Specifically, Article 3, Section 2, put a ceiling on levels of German armed forces. Moreover, the Treaty continued the arms control limitations of the Nine-Power agreement by prohibiting German manufacture of ABC weapons, but also their “possession and control.” While not mentioned in the Treaty, SACEUR controls over NATO forces deployed on the continent applied to a unified Germany as they had to West Germany.[6]

On French insistence the deal-making over German unification also involved the deepening of European integration to bind the Berlin republic into European institutions. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl readily agreed, but also sought to ensure that the new arrangements comported with German financial policy. Thus, Kohl played a central role in the 1992 negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty that created the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the European Monetary Union, and ultimately the Euro. Another step toward integration was the creation of the Eurocorps, initially based on a French-German brigade. This involved tensions with Washington, which saw it as a potential threat to the central role of NATO for European security, but the French and Germans mitigated the problem by agreeing that in the event of a war the Eurocorps would report to SACEUR.[7]

  

Contemporary Strains in NATO and Europe

Nearly 30 years since Two Plus Four, the multinational arrangements created after World War II are in duress. Serious structural flaws in European Union financial policy have weakened public support for the EU.  Right-wing nationalist forces have made political gains by attacking the EU and immigrants. Brexit is one example; another is the Alternative for Germany, which plays down the horrors of the 1930s and World War II, with some members denying the Holocaust. 

Meanwhile, U.S.-West German ties have been weakened by White House criticisms of Chancellor Merkel and demands for higher German financial contributions to NATO. Questions have been raised in Washington about the validity of U.S. security guarantees to Europe.  The prospect of U.S.-European trade wars also threatens to undermine trans-Atlantic political ties.  Broader U.S.-European tensions or the continuing growth of rightwing political forces on the continent could wind up encouraging France, Germany, and their neighbors to create a regional security arrangement, a concept that has widening appeal in some quarters, for better or worse. The future is unpredictable, but whichever direction events flow it is worth keeping in mind the range of issues, considerations, and complexities that went into creating a constructive relationship between Germany and its neighbors and allies after 1945.[8]

 

I. Guarantees Against German Resurgence

Document-01-Memorandum-for-Major-General

Document 01

Memorandum for Major General Maddocks, enclosing "National Military Establishment Views on Situation in Germany," 3 July 1948, Top Secret, attached to unsigned memorandum to Maddocks from Colonel R. T. McConnell, 30 June 1948
Source

National Archives, Record Group 219, Records of U.S. Army Staff, Plans and Operations Top Secret Decimal Files, 1946-1948, box 35, 092 TS (Section IX) (Cases 136-150)

This briefing paper was prepared as background information for General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had become president of Columbia University. Explaining the Berlin Crisis and blockade, the report gave background on the London conference of the U.S. and its British and French allies and their decisions to reform the currency in the zones of West Germany that they occupied and to move toward a separate West German government. The Western allies had also agreed on measures to prevent the development of West German "war making potential" so "she might not again take up the role of aggressor."[9]

Document-02-Henry-Byroade-Acting-Deputy-Director

Document 02

Henry Byroade, Acting Deputy Director, Office of German Affairs, to Mr. Rusk [et al.], "US CFM Program on Germany," 25 April 1949, Top Secret
Source

National Archives, Records of International Conferences, Record Group 43, Jessup-Malik Agreement, May 1943, box 304, Jessup-Malik Conversations, March, April, May 1949

Prepared while the Truman administration was developing its final position for the forthcoming May 1949 Conference of Foreign Ministers, this paper by Henry Byroade offered perspective on Washington's shorter-term preference for a divided Germany so that the new West German state could be tightly integrated with its Western European neighbors. According to Byroade, early action leading to reunification, even if a unified Germany was closely tied to the West at the beginning, posed too many risks to European security and stability:

At the best, were [a unified Germany] to associate itself with western Europe, it would risk dominating that combination by its sheer magnitude and increased opportunity to strengthen itself as a free agent profiting from both the western and eastern political and economic systems. At the worst, Germany would be an uncertain factor either as a strong nationalist state or as a willing partner of Soviet Russia, in either eventuality placing an intolerable strain upon the western defense arrangements.

Document-04-Consultation-Prior-to-the-Foreign

Document 04

"Consultation Prior to the Foreign Ministers' Conference," Testimony by Secretary of State Dean Acheson before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 19 May 1949
Source

Excerpt from U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Historical Series, Hearings Held in Executive Session, Reviews of the World Situation 1949-1950 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1974)

On the eve of the CFM, Secretary of State Dean Acheson briefed a secret executive session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on U.S. objectives. As a condition for U.S. acceptance of a CFM, the Soviets had ended the Berlin blockade and the Western Allies halted their counter-blockade of East Germany. While the Soviets supported proposals for German unification, Acheson had no interest in reaching a German settlement because he feared that it would "involve delay or postponement or abandonment of what we have done." The U.S. position was to "go forward with what we have" by supporting the creation of a Federal Republic of Germany based on the Western occupation zones, which would be closely integrated into Western Europe. Moreover, the North Atlantic Treaty would provide security against the Soviet Union and possible German revanchism. When Acheson was asked whether "The Atlantic Treaty has given these Western European nations some confidence against a resurgent Germany as well as Russia?" he responded: "Yes. It works in all directions." That applied especially to France which, according to Acheson, accepted the economic integration of Western Germany into Western Europe "solely and only on account of the North Atlantic Treaty."

The Western proposal for the unification of Germany called for the incorporation of East Germany into the proposed Federal Republic of Germany, a proposal that Moscow was certain to reject (and did). During the hearings, Committee Chairman Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI) asked whether there was any "sugar that you can put on this sour apple that you are presenting?" Acheson replied that "We have tried to find some, but the only kind of sugar you can put on it is so dangerous to what you are doing ..." He did not complete the thought because Vandenberg interrupted him, but it was evident that Acheson did not see any concessions that were worth jeopardizing the effort to knit close ties between West Germany and its Western neighbors.

Document-05-U-S-High-Commission-in-West-Germany

Document 05

U.S. High Commission in West Germany (Frankfurt) telegram 962 to the State Department, 3 August 1950, Top Secret
Source

RG 59, State Department decimal files 1950-1954, box 3427, 840.5/8-350, also published in Foreign Relations of the United States 1950, Volume III Western Europe (Washington, D.C., 1977)

After the outbreak of the Korean War, senior U.S. officials, deeply worried about the possibility of Soviet military and political pressure on Western Europe, believed that it was necessary to make West German military potential available to NATO in the event of war. Yet even as they dropped the project to disarm Germany top officials assumed the need for controls over any new German forces. One voice in favor of new arrangements was U.S. High Commissioner to West Germany John J. McCloy, but he opposed the creation of a German "national army now or in the foreseeable future" on the grounds that "a separate German force under German command would involve serious risk of their playing off east and west and ultimately joining the Soviets." For McCloy, a European army with West German units would aid the defense against the Soviet Union but also "contribute to our own basic objectives in Western Europe": by "fully integrat[ing] Germany into Western Europe" it would be "the best possible insurance against further German aggression."[10]

II. The Nine-Power Conference and the Integration of West Germany into NATO

Document-06-Assistant-Secretary-of-State-for

Document 06

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Livingston T. Merchant to Secretary of State, "Alternative to EDC," 10 September 1954, Top Secret
Source

RG 59, Conference Files, box 56, CF 359 Secretary's Trip to Bonn-London Sept. 15-18, 1954 (Also published in Foreign Relations of the United States 1952-1954 Volume 5 Part II Western European Washington, D.C., 1983)

To bring West German forces into a regional security arrangement, the Truman administration developed a plan for a European Defense Community (EDC) that received strong support from Eisenhower when he became president in January 1953. The plan collapsed in August 1954, when the French National Assembly voted for the EDC partly because they did not want to share an army with the Germans. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had made a major personal and political investment in the EDC and reluctantly accepted a fallback scheme proposed by British and French leaders: overhaul the 1948 Brussels Treaty (which had been partly aimed at Germany) by changing the name of its operating organization, the European Union, to the Western European Union, bring West Germany and its troops into the WEU, and commit WEU forces to NATO. Moreover, West Germany would become a member of NATO. The September 1954 Nine-Power Conference ratified those ideas.[11]

In this report to Dulles, Livingston Merchant reviewed plans to assure West Germany's association with the "West": by bringing Bonn into NATO yet limiting its military independence. As Merchant noted, "Many of the provisions in our program which will limit German control over their military establishment are multilateral." He explained that the multilateral arrangements would as a "by-product limit autonomy of any forces committed to NATO which would include all German forces." Thus, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), NATO's top military leader, would have "control over deployment of forces committed to him so that they will be deployed in accordance with NATO plans." Such arrangements, Merchant observed, were "desirable in [their] own right and non-discriminatory vis-à-vis Germany."

As one price of its admission into WEU and NATO, West Germany would "state ... that she would not produce atomic and thermo-nuclear weapons, military aircraft, etc. ... because of her exposed strategic position except as agreed by NATO." As explained by the British (see Document 10 below), Adenauer's statement during the Nine-Power Conference included language about "strategically exposed zones" because it was a way to accept "de facto discrimination" against West Germany. Although all of Western Europe was strategically exposed, West Germany was the only NATO country that accepted that designation.

Document-07-Nine-Power-Meeting-September-28-29

Document 07

Nine Power Meeting, September 28-29, 1954, London: "Eden-Benelux Foreign Ministers Meeting September 11," 20 September 1954, Top Secret
Source

RG 59, Conference Files, box 56, CF 359 Secretary's Trip to Bonn-London Sept. 15-18, 1954

On 11 September, a few weeks before the Nine-Power Conference, British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden brought his plan to bring West Germany into NATO to the foreign ministers of the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg), a predecessor of today's European Union. Luxembourg's Prime Minister Joseph Bech provided a secret record of the meeting to Wiley Buchanan, chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy to Luxembourg (later becoming ambassador).

During the British-Benelux meeting, the participants agreed on the "great danger [of] the renaissance of German militarism" and that it was to be "feared that German military does not crystallize around autonomous German divisions." Also concerned about the danger of a "Germany living outside the European community," the foreign ministers wanted to "definitely fix Germany in the Western orbit."

To prevent the development of independent West German armed forces, the foreign ministers agreed on the need for "guarantees" through various controls, including limitations on the German military contribution to NATO. The goal was to seek restrictions that "would not appear discriminatory" and "would be accepted" by West Germany.

The great problem was getting the French government, notably Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France, to accept the arrangements. Highly suspicious of Mendes-France, but unaware that he agreed with their approach, the participants considered the possibility of isolating France if the government did not accept "a reasonable solution." If Mendes-France "wishes to install a neutralist policy" by keeping France out, "he must carry all the responsibility."

Document-08-Memorandum-of-Conversation-Exchange

Document 08

Memorandum of Conversation, "Exchange of Views on European Situation," 14 September 1954, Secret
Source

RG 59, Central Decimal Files 1950-1954, 740.5/9-1454

In this conversation with French Ambassador Henri Bonnet, Secretary of State Dulles made clear his unhappiness over the collapse of the EDC. While Washington "would not do anything... to hinder the European nations from arriving at the best solution possible," Europe "could not expect the same support from the U.S. that it had been prepared to give to a true European community." That worried Bonnet who observed that if U.S. troops did not remain in Europe it would be difficult for French Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France to persuade the National Assembly to agree to German admission into NATO: "without assurance of continuing American presence and support in Europe his task would be next to impossible." Dulles made no promises, but at the Nine Power meeting a few weeks later, he made a commitment on the U.S. troops presence, which Eisenhower publicly confirmed in March 1955.[12]

Document-09-U-S-Embassy-France-telegram-1135-to

Document 09

U.S. Embassy France telegram 1135 to State Department, 16 September 1954, Secret
Source

RG 59, Central Decimal Files 1950-1954, 740.5/9-1654

During this conversation with U.S. Ambassador C. Douglas Dillon, Mendes-France indicated the convergence of his and British thinking on West German admission into NATO. He told Dillon that French opinion objected to West German membership. but because the U.S. and key allies supported the British plan, he wanted to make it more "palatable" to domestic opinion. Favoring the idea of using the Brussels Treaty and Western European Union as a substitute for the EDC, he wanted "an assurance that there would be no independent Wehrmacht." The political problem was "difficult," but Mendes-France saw a "reasonable chance of success" for National Assembly approval of the deal. As it turned out, the debates were bitter and emotional and it was not until the end of December 1954 that the National Assembly ratified the Paris agreements, but not before London and Washington had threatened that they would go ahead with West German rearmament whether the Assembly approved or not.[13]

Document-10

Document 10

United Kingdom Foreign Office, "German Chancellor's Undertaking Not to Manufacture Atomic, Chemical, or Biological Weapons in The Territory of the Federal Republic," circa March 1966, Confidential, with Cover Memorandum to Albert Melbourne "Mel" Christopher, Office of General Counsel, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1 April 1966
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

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."

III. Containment of West Germany

Document-11-Thomas-L-Hughes-to-the-Acting

Document 11

Thomas L. Hughes to the Acting Secretary, "Rapallo?", Research Memorandum INR-36, 28 September 1963, Secret
Source

RG 59, Records of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR], Reports Coordination and Review Staff, Intelligence Reports,1961, 1963-67, box 3, Chron Sept. '63.

In 1963, with the Kennedy administration wondering about the direction of West German foreign policy, State Department intelligence analysts looked closely at Bonn's foreign policy and security goals and motivations. They also looked back at the 1922 Rapallo conference, when diplomats from Germany and the Soviet Union, both of which had tense relations with the World War I victors, met at a small town on the Italian Riviera and reached agreement on establishing diplomatic relations. The deal-making between the Bolsheviks and the defeated German enemy gave Rapallo troubling connotations, but in post-World War II Europe their meaning shifted because the West German state had become allied with the West. In the different context, "Rapallo may be taken as denoting that radical reversal of Atlantic relationships that would result if West Germany were to seek its security by cooperation with Russia instead of continuing its dependence on the US."

By looking closely at security issues, West Germany's international status, and prospects for German reunification, INR concluded that the "likelihood of a modern Rapallo is small" because Bonn was unlikely to jeopardize "the continuing need to rely on the US as ally and protector." Nevertheless, the situation could change "if the Germans should come to feel that through slackened will, relative decline in military power, or for other reasons, the US no longer served as a secure protector for them, then they might well consider seriously bargaining an accommodation with the Russians."

Document-12-INR-Thomas-L-Hughes-to-the-Secretary

Document 12

INR-Thomas L. Hughes to the Secretary, "Can We Do Business with de Gaulle?" REU-4, 5 February 1965, Secret
Source

RG 59, INR, Reports Coordination and Review Staff. Intelligence Reports, 1965-1966, box 155, REU-4-RM

This report, prepared while the crisis over France's role in NATO was heating up, includes pithy descriptions of NATO's purposes, including "since 1950, to provide a 'place' for West Germany which will satisfy its reasonable aspirations and contain any potential unreasonable ones." Along the same lines, the post-World War II "revival of Germany was to be balanced and contained within organizations of which France was the principal other member." This might be one of the earliest written references to the notion of the "containment" of West Germany.

Document-13-INR-Thomas-L-Hughes-to-the-Secretary

Document 13

INR-Thomas L. Hughes to the Secretary, "The Significance of NATO - Present and Future," REU-34, 13 August 1965, Secret
Source

RG 59, INR, Reports Coordination and Review Staff. Intelligence Reports, 1965-1966, box 160, REU-34-RM

The continuing crisis over the French role in NATO stimulated INR analysts to prepare a report on the importance of the alliance for U.S. diplomacy and security policy. According to the report, "NATO remains essential to the U.S. as a well-established and easily available instrument for exercising American political influence in Europe." Influence was valuable because a "stable and prosperous" North Atlantic area was a basic U.S. interest, not only for Cold War but for commercial reasons. Owing to its broad interest in regional stability, the U.S. government "opposes any tendencies to a revival of internal dissensions within West Europe or to any resurgence of hostility between East and West Europe, whether because of Germany or any other serious problem."

INR analysts could point to plenty of low-level tensions within the alliance involving "envy of U.S. wealth and power," "noticeable unhappiness about the ... American failure to consult with ... NATO allies before undertaking major new policy departures," and "resistance against American attempts to enroll its allies into supporting U.S. policies elsewhere in the world [e.g., Vietnam War] which are of little or no concern to West Europeans." Far outweighing those problems were "other factors which continue to make the U.S. presence and even its political and military pre-eminence not only tolerable but positively desirable" to Western Europe. NATO provided the Europeans a "framework within which they have achieved and can maintain a certain satisfactory political equilibrium among themselves," and which "integrates West Germany into their region without upsetting the balance, because even Germany is greatly overshadowed by the U.S." In other words, "NATO sharply reduces the scope for traditional power politics among the West Europeans."

INR conceded that "from a strictly military point of view, NATO in its existing form is probably not now indispensable to American purposes" and that it would be possible to provide security to Western European governments through bilateral agreements. Nevertheless, from a broader perspective, NATO "is important for the protection of American interests in Europe." In a reference to the work of the Nine-Power Conference, INR also found that it was "important that West Germany not be cast adrift politically and not be forced down a road which would require it to create a high command structure that does not now even exist (because all Bundeswehr forces are committed to SACEUR)."

Document-14-INR-Thomas-L-Hughes-to-the-Secretary

Document 14

INR-Thomas L. Hughes to the Secretary, "Possible Implications of a Substantial Cutback of US Forces in Europe,"26 April 1966, REU-37-RM, Secret, attached to INR Report and Release form
Source

RG 59, Records of Bureau of Intelligence and Research 1965-1966, box 165, REU-37-RM

With the continuing escalation of the Vietnam War, a group of INR analysts led by Frank E. Maestrone considered the possibility that Washington would cut U.S. forces in Western Europe so they could be redeployed to Southeast Asia. If that happened, what would be the implications for U.S. relations with other members of NATO? How might they react? The estimate of West German reaction and the implication for West Germany were central to the findings. As U.S. force levels in Germany had been a "symbol of the US intention to support NATO and to offer protection against the Soviet Union," a significant cut for the reasons stated would "[symbolize] a priority for US commitments in the Far East." That, in turn, could "not but help to stimulate wider reconsideration [in Bonn] of Germany's present foreign policy."

The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, and Denmark would be more concerned, above all, because of the prospect of a further enhancement of the role of the FRG in Alliance and European affairs, beyond the increase already in prospect as the result of France's anti-NATO actions. For these countries as for others, the Alliance as such and US leadership of it were important because they provide a framework within which the Federal Republic can be both "satisfied" and "contained." The British would also be concerned because a U.S. cutback would be seen as "endangering NATO's function of containing West Garman strength and predominance on the continent."

Document-15-Secretary-of-Defense-Robert-McNamara

Document 15

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara Memorandum for the President, "NATO Strategy and Force Structure," 21 September 1966, Top Secret, excised copy
Source

Department of Defense MDR release

After France pulled its forces out of NATO, in this report to President Johnson, Robert McNamara reviewed NATO's conventional capabilities and the degree to which they could successful resist Soviet forces in various contingencies ranging from "rapid full-scale nonnuclear aggression" to "small unexpected conflicts" or limited "surprise attacks." McNamara prefaced the analysis with a summary of the political motivations, over and above military reasons, for keeping U.S. troops in Western Europe: 1) preventing Soviet "political blackmail" in Western Europe, 2) alliance political cohesion, 3) "deterrence of any bilateral Soviet-FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] security agreement," and 4) "discouraging the revival of German militarism."

Document-16-INR-Thomas-L-Hughes-to-the-Secretary

Document 16

INR-Thomas L. Hughes to the Secretary, "The Special Committee: Can It Satisfy European Nuclear Aspirations?" 22 September 1966, Secret
Source

RG 59, Records of Policy Planning Council Country and Subject Files 1965-1969, box 313, Europe 1966

This report provides some of the background to the creation of NATO's Nuclear Planning Group which has been central to alliance nuclear policy making since its creation in the mid-1960s. Originally named the Nuclear Planning Working Group (or the Special Committee), the NPG had four permanent members, the U.S., the UK, Italy, and West Germany, with three other NATO countries participating on a rotating basis. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara saw the NPG as a way to make its European members more sensitive to the predicaments of nuclear weapons use, but it had another purpose: to satisfy West Germany's aspirations for a "wider role in nuclear defense."

Having one of the most "exposed" geographic positions of all NATO members West Germany had a "very real interest in the question of when and where nuclear weapons would be used in the event of war." If a Warsaw Pact invasion led to the collapse of NATO defenses, West German territory would be rapidly occupied and associated "exchanges of tactical nuclear weapons in Central Europe would undoubtedly have devastating effects on Germany." No NATO mechanism was in place for West German defense officials to discuss this problem at a high level of policy.

According to INR, concerns about status and prestige reasons had informed West German interest in a "hardware" solution such as the MLF as a way to get a voice in NATO nuclear policy. Since the creation of the Special Committee, however, the "urgency" of West German interest in a "hardware solution" had diminished. "Membership in [the Special Committee] would seem to meet adequately Germany's aspirations for status and prestige" and also address the problem of nuclear weapons use in a Central European conflict. In other words, trying to satisfy Bonn's legitimate aspirations through a role in the Special Committee represented fine tuning of the containment approach to West Germany.

Notes

[1]. James Sperling, “Neither Hegemony Nor Dominance” Reconsidering German Power in Post- Cold-War Europe,” British Journal of Political Science 31 (2001): 418-419; Melvyn P. Leffler, The Struggle for Germany and the Origins of the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: The German Historical Institute, 1996).

[2]. Sperling, “Neither Hegemony nor Dominance,” at page 411 for “countervailing power.”

[3]. Ibid., 423.

[4]. Wolfram Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 6.

[5]. For a useful survey, see Frank Costigliola, “An 'Arm Around the Shoulder': The United States, NATO and German Reunification, 1989-90,” Contemporary European History 3 (1994), 92-95.

[6]. Sperling, “Neither Hegemony nor Dominance,” 423-424.

[7]. For helpful coverage of key issues, see Franz-Josef Meiers, “A Change of Course? German Foreign and Security Policy After Unification,” German Politics 11 (3), 195-216.

[8]. Marc Fisher, “Trump Thinks NATO is Just About Russia. It’s About Germany, Too," Washington Post, 13 July 2018 . See also Klaus Larres and Ruth Wittlinger, eds., “A Fragile Friendship: German-American Relations in the 21st Century,” German Politics 27 (2018), and Gunther Hellmann, “Germany’s Strategic Repositioning,” Lawfare, 14 October 2018.

[9]. This and the following four documents are cited in Leffler, The Struggle for Germany, as well as A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1992). For a different perspective on U.S. policy, see Carolyne Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

[10]. See also Secretary of State Dean Acheson, “Meeting with the President: Item 2 The Position of Germany in the Defense of Europe,” 31 July 1950, Foreign Relations of the United States 1950, Volume III Western Europe (Washington, D.C., 1977). For McCloy’s role generally, see Thomas Schwartz. America's Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

[11]. For the EDC debate and the Nine Power Conference, William Hitchcock, France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 190-202. See also Richard Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1998), 99-104.

[12]. Hitchcock, France Restored, 199.

[13]. For background, see Hitchcock, France Restored, 199-201, and Jean Lacoutre, Pierre Mendes-France (New York: Holmes & Meir, 1984). 277-282 and 320-327