Letter from John J. Hearne to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
'Germany'
(Confidential and Secret)

I have the honour to report as follows:-

During a conversation which I had with the Secretary of State at the State Department on Tuesday the 23rd June I asked Mr. Dulles whether he felt free to give me his views on the recent riots in Eastern Germany. (Note: I had asked a similar question of General McAuliffe, Assistant Chief of Staff, some days previously, thus: ‘General, what am I to make of the riots in Eastern Germany: are they good news or bad?’ The General had replied: ‘Oh, heavens, yes, good news: the best now we’ve had for a long time from there.’) Mr. Dulles spoke for some minutes on the subject of Germany and Europe. He said that Europe had been ‘bled of its former strength’ material and spiritual during the last, and the present centuries by internecine strife. Twice, in the past forty years, wars between France and Germany had become world wars. Wars between great European countries, like these, would always tend to become world wars. The continent of Europe needed unity as a condition of economic strength and military strength. The Coal-Steel Community launched last year Mr. Dulles regarded as a big step forward towards European economic unity. The European Defence Community would be a big step forward towards European co-operation for defence. The Bonn Government was, so far, the only signatory of the EDC treaty which had ratified it. Mr. Dulles used the word ‘federation’ two or three times, in the context of his thesis on European unity as a condition of European economic and military security. The word had a poetic ring as the Secretary of State pronounced it in his enthusiastic reference to the European Defence Community.

Mr. Dulles related the riots in Eastern Germany to what he had said about European unity. He regarded them as a confirmation of Adenauer’s policies. They were a gesture to Western Germany of confidence in Germany’s ultimate unity in freedom. The Russian program for Germany was to offer her unity under Russian auspices so as to draw her away from the Western Europe alliance. The Soviet Union wanted to neutralise the whole of Germany against the contingency of war. Dr. Adenauer, the Secretary of State said, was the hope of a united free Germany. He asked me whether I had met the Chancellor of Western Germany when he was here. I said that I had met him for a moment at Georgetown University when he received the university doctorate of laws and had been greatly impressed by his fine presence and his speech on the occasion. ‘Yes,’ Mr. Dulles went on, at the end of our conversation, ‘Adenauer is a great German patriot and a great European statesman.’ He implied that he had implicit confidence in his leadership.