ABSTRACT
The early 1960s witnessed a sea change in the relationship between West German policy and the wider goals of NATO. The key to this change lay in Washington. During the final years of the Eisenhower administration there were increasing signs of weariness regarding the underwriting of Adenauer’s policy at the expense of any possible arrangement with the Soviet Union. Privately, Dulles sympathised with Soviet fear of Germany, believing the latter should be prevented from doing ‘a third time what they had done in 1914 and 1939’.1 Publicly, Dulles even stated that free elections were not necessarily a prerequisite for German reunification.2
But the shift in US policy was far from clear in early 1961. Macmillan lamented privately that while all his economic and détente schemes had failed, Bonn had none of his problems,3 being, as it was, ‘rich and selfish – and German’.4 Yet the development of US policy, especially over Berlin, is fundamental to understanding how the British were rescued from their isolation after the collapse of the Paris Summit.5 Anticipating a flashpoint crisis like Berlin, Eisenhower had written in 1956 that ‘peacemakers are blessed . . . [and] the most effective peacemaker is one who prevents a quarrel from developing, rather than one who has to pick up the pieces remaining after an unfortunate fight’.6 The President informed Adenauer in 1959 that ‘We do not want to perpetuate the present situation in Berlin and keep our Occupation troops there forever. We hope to find a way out
with honor.’7 The Kennedy administration would be even less willing to indulge Bonn.8 Unfortunately for Macmillan, the emerging Anglo-Saxon consensus on the German Question (in which the British were very much the junior partner)9 pushed Adenauer further into the arms of de Gaulle, helping to ensure the exclusion of Britain from the EEC in 1963.10
