Confidential report from John A. Belton to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Secret)

After two days of a tense and at times heated debate on foreign affairs, the Government policy was approved by a majority of the German Parliament with certain reservations as to the Saar.

Two days before the debate, the Chancellor held a meeting of the four-party coalition Cabinet which unanimously approved a draft Government declaration on the Saar problem and the international situation. Three conditions were agreed for a settlement of the Saar question in negotiations with France, namely:-

1. The Saar population must have a chance to vote freely on a possible European statute for the tiny 900 Square mile industrial valley turning the coal-and-steel district into Europe’s first ‘supranational’ territory.
2. A Europeanization of the Saar should go ‘hand in hand’ with the unification of Europe and should be only provisional, pending a peace treaty with Germany.
3. Germany must gradually receive the same privileged economic position as France now maintains in the Saar on the basis of the French-Saaroise economic conventions.

Dr. Adenauer said at the meeting that the Saar question should not be approached by ‘a nationalistic way of thinking.’ He listed five points which should be clarified before a settlement of the issue:

1. Solution of the Saar problem must not lead to the establishment of an autonomous state.
2. The planned Europeanization of the Saar serves primarily the establishment of European authorities in that territory.
3. The Saar population must approve the European statue.
4. The solution must be provisional pending a German peace treaty.
5. The one-sided economic ties between France and the Saar must be abolished gradually.

On the question of EDC the Chancellor’s definite view [is] that there is no alternative now or in the future to EDC. He had already denied reports that alternative solutions to the EDC were being considered in case France rejected that plan. He also said ‘The United States and Britain have always decisively declared that there is only one solution, namely the EDC, and later a European political community.’ The Chancellor felt that these categorical statements were necessary to still the increasing uneasiness in German political circles, including his own Christian Democratic Union party, that he was contemplating an alternative should France continue to maintain its intransigent attitude.

In this connection, it is very important to bear in mind how vital it is for the Chancellor’s political future that the EDC should become an established fact. The German Government has based its entire foreign policy on the closest possible relations with Washington. Its highest goal is to build Germany as an integral part of Western Europe along the lines advocated by the United States. There is no desire or intention of making Western Germany the holder of the balance of power between Russia and the USA in the hope that by playing one against the other Germany would be the eventual winner. Western Germany is a definitely if not violently anti-Communist country, but it is still an occupied country and it is, at the moment, difficult to see when that status will change. The people of Western Germany are as sensitive to 1) the fact of occupation and 2) their own unarmed helplessness as would be any other people in similar circumstances. The fact that the Communist party is of so very little significance that they cannot return even one member of parliament to the Bundestag does not mean that Soviet Russia has abandoned its plans to neutralise Western Germany and to drive a wedge between it and the USA. The failure of the EDC concept would be a very serious blow not only to the foreign policy of the German Government but also to the personal prestige of Dr. Adenauer.

There still exists a certain feeling that the Allied Foreign Ministers did not do their utmost at the Berlin Conference for the re-unification of Germany. In this connection, I should say that this view is not shared by Dr. Adenauer who told me himself a few days ago that he would not have added a word to the case made in Berlin if he had been there himself.

On all the facts now before us, it is more than ever abundantly clear that the future of Western Germany and consequently of Western Europe lies in the hands of the French and, insofar as that it is so, lies immediately in a solution of the Saar problem. In the course of a conversation last week with M. Francois-Ponçet,¹ French High Commissioner in Germany, I asked him how far would the French Government really go in their declared policy that a solution of the Saar problem was an essential prerequisite to agreement to the EDC. He assured me most categorically that there was no question of limit to this policy. It was and would remain the immutable policy of the French Government. Western Europe accordingly seems to be faced with the old difficulty of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.

There is no doubt whatever as to the vehemence of the United States desire to have EDC established and that very quickly. The United States Government may in the near future be in a position to bargain with France, using assistance to Indo-China as a very material consideration. It is equally possible that France might pull out of Indo-China 1) because it would like to do so in present circumstances and 2) that it would prefer that to the spectre of a rearmed Germany.

The material consideration as far as Western Germany is concerned, is what would happen if, as a result of the failure of EDC, Dr. Adenauer were ousted and a new coalition government led by the Socialist Party came into power. That party has so far declared, as its policy, not only the possibility but the desirability of negotiating with Soviet Russia. If that ever happens, it will be not only the end of Western Germany, but would involve the transfer of the overwhelming balance of power to Soviet Russia.