The Ruhr Authority and the German Problem

Abstract

Not long ago—early in 1954—the world observed a debate at Berlin between diplomats of East and West who offered their alternatives for solving the German problem. The Soviet solution as set forth by Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, was to use Germans as pawns in a diplomatic maneuver whose object was clearly to wreck Western European integration and to strengthen the Soviet Union. The solution proposed by the Western diplomats, John Foster Dulles, Anthony Eden and George Bidault, was to regard Germans as equals with whom they would negotiate a solution to Germany's problems. The Soviets have used the satellite East German regime to parrot their program and they have groomed it to neutralize Germany or lead it into the Communist camp. The Western diplomats have concluded that in order to obtain a lasting German settlement there must be free elections to establish an all-German government, which would be competent to negotiate about Germany's future and would be free to join the Western Alliance, if it chose to do so.