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The Ruhr Authority and the German Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Amos Yoder
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 1955 , pp. 345 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1955

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References

1 The economic importance of the Ruhr and the history of the Ruhr problem up to the formation of the Ruhr Authority in 1949 is traced in detail in the author's Ph.D. dissertation entitled “The Problem of the Ruhr in the Peace Settlement” which was accepted at the University of Chicago in September, 1949.

2 Noble, George Bernard, Policies and Opinions at Paris 1919 (New York, 1935), pp. 159, 240–268.Google Scholar

3 Miller, D. H., My Diary at the Conference of Paris (Appeal Printing Company, Privately Printed), pp. 239, 267 et. seq., Vol. XIV.Google Scholar

4 Toynbee, Arnold J., Survey of International Affairs 1920–1923 (London, 1925), pp. 109–188.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., pp. 330–336.

6 Fisher, Ruth's Stalin and German Communism (Cambridge, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar gives a detailed and well documented account of German Communist Party history during the Weimar period. Ruth Fisher, a German Communist leader during this period, later broke away from the Party.

7 Morgenthau, Henry Jr., Germany Is Our Problem (New York, 1945), preface and p. 50.Google Scholar

8 Byrnes, James F., Speaking Frankly (New York, 1947), p. 186Google Scholar; Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), p. 818.Google Scholar

9 New Times, 03 7, 1947, p. 7.Google Scholar

10 New York Herald Tribune, 10 13, 1945.Google Scholar

11 Byrnes, , op. cit., p. 194.Google Scholar

12 The Christian Science Monitor, 04 12 and 15, 1947.Google Scholar

13 The Christian Science Monitor, 05 26, 1948Google Scholar; the New York Times, 06 3, 1948Google Scholar; the New York Herald Tribune, 06 3, 1948.Google Scholar

14 Clay, Lucius D., Decision in Germany (New York, 1950), pp. 401–402.Google Scholar

15 The text of the Ruhr Agreement and related agreements is in the U. S. Department of State “Treaties and Other International Act Series,” No. 2718.

16 The text of this agreement and related agreements is in U. S. Departit of State “Treaties and Other International Act Series” 2718.