Office of the Historian

171. Memorandum of Conversation0

US/MC/17
Paris, May 16, 1960, 5 p.m.

MEETING OF CHIEFS OF STATE AND HEADS OF GOVERNMENT

PARTICIPANTS

  • United States
    • The Secretary of State
    • Mr. Kohler
  • UK
    • Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd

SUBJECT

  • Berlin Situation

Following today’s meeting of the three Western Foreign Ministers at Quai d’Orsay,1 British Foreign Secretary SelwynLloyd approached Secretary Herter and spoke with some emotion about the possibilities of trouble over Berlin after the breakdown of the Summit conference. He said that it was unthinkable that the British Government should ask the British people to go to war over a question of the formalities of access of West Berlin when on a commercial basis the West Germans were dealing on a very large scale with the East Germans. The Secretary rather demurred at the strength of his statement but did refer to the discussions in the Western quadripartite Heads of Government meeting yesterday2 when President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Macmillan had been unable to get any kind of satisfactory response either from Chancellor Adenauer or President de Gaulle as to their estimate of what might happen if the Soviets harassed access to Berlin over a period of some years.

Mr. Lloyd then resumed this theme saying that honor required that the Western allies make clear that they were not prepared to go to war for the sake of a stamp on travel documents.

Mr. Kohler interjected that the question of a stamp was not the issue and that we should be careful not to refer to the question in these terms.

[Page 456]

Mr. Lloyd retorted that the stamp was not the issue, the only issue was Western access to the garrisons in West Berlin and as long as this continued satisfactorily we could not bring about a conflict over a question of procedures connected with access.

The Secretary refrained from comment or commitment and the conversation on this subject terminated at this point.

  1. Source: Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 64 D 559, CF 1664. Secret. Drafted by Kohler and approved in S on May 18. The conversation took place at Quai d’Orsay.↩
  2. See Document 170.↩
  3. See Document 161.↩