The German “Peace Contract“: A Brief Analysis

Abstract

It would be hard to find a precedent for the convention recently concluded between Western Germany and the three leading western Powers. In a situation which debarred the negotiation of a formal peace treaty, an attempt has been made to establish to the maximum degree the substance of peacetime relations. The maximum, however, stops well short of the restoration of full sovereignty to the Germans, even while it involves the abandonment by the western Allies of the effective exercise of their occupation rights. There is a revealing contrast between this agreement and the recent treaty with Japan. In this latter case the refusal of Russia to participate was no insuperable barrier. The western Powers were still free, practically as well as legally, to make their own terms. All of Japan's ex-enemies who chose to associate themselves with those terms could become parties to the treaty. Japan might still remain in a technical state of war with Russia, as well as with China and India, but that in no way affected the full restoration of peaceful relations between her and the other signatories of the treaty. An attempt to follow the same procedure in the case of Germany would have run into almost insuperable difficulties. It could only have been done if the western Powers were prepared to abandon all idea of German unification, to treat Western Germany as a separate sovereign entity, to reach with her an agreement on a definitive boundary settlement, and to reject and even resist all Russian claims to any rights whatever in the western zones under the instrument of surrender.