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OCR Page 1 of 133/14/54: Reel 7, Track 1,
age 1
MR. ACHESON: As I say, it had this provision that the future of united Germany would be
bound by the provisions of the contractual relations. This bothered
the Germans very much; it bothered them for political reasons; it bothered
them for ideological reasons. On the technical ideological side, they
said, "How can you bind a government which doesn't yet exist?" For
political-public opinion reasons, they said, "Talking about binding a
future e Germany is very difficult for us." However, Adenauer said that
he
was bound. He was not trying to get out of the fact that he was bound
by this, and therefore in the meetings with von Brentano and the others,
TRUMAND
I suggested to them, and we worked out, a provision which is in the treaty,
"VATIONAL
ARCHIVES a
that West Germany of course was bound by these provisions in the con-
RECORDS
ADNING
Es
tractual relations, which also of course comprised the EDC, and that
West Germany would not enter into any agreement, or combination, or
whatever we called it, with anybody which would prejudice the rights of
France and
Great Britain/m the United States under the contractual arrangements.
Well, that accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, which was that,
although the new government would not be bound, the old government was,
and axd it would not enter into any new government which would not accept
these. That was agreed to very cheerfully by all the Germans, who thought
that that was fine, and that was put into the treaty and that's the way
it was. We had further meetings on the security declaration on Sunday
and some on Monday. The Germans wanted a new declaration on Berlin.
MR. FEIS:
Can I perhaps interrupt you at this point, Dean, to ask a question? This
understanding that you've just commented on and explained, and the state-
ments made at the recent Berlin conference--I may be wrong, in my under-
standing of these things--tha we would be willing to agree that the
future Germany, the future unified Germany, would be able to decide for
itself what its political relations would be. Did not the Secretary
of State, at the recent Berlin meeting, make a statement to that effect,
and perhaps it was even put in a more formal way, that is, more than a
Relations
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