Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Berlin Crisis, 1959–1960; Germany; Austria, Volume IX

207. Intelligence Report Prepared in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research⁰

No. 8330

Washington, August 25, 1960.

INCREASING COMMUNIST ATTENTION TO BERLIN¹

[Here follows a 2–page abstract of the report.]

Khrushchev, Ulbricht Threats

In a Vienna press conference on July 8, Khrushchev introduced a new element of pressure into the Soviet Union’s stance on Berlin by alluding to a date when the USSR might sign a separate peace treaty with the GDR. The threat—combining a precise date with an imprecise Soviet newspaper correspondent about the “best solution… for West Berlin.”² In his reply Khrushchev first reiterated the standard Soviet position that a peace treaty with “the two German states” would automatically solve the problem, and then continued:

We have information from West Germany that an idea is now developing there to hold the Bundestag meeting in September in West Berlin. This is done for purposes of provocation. Perhaps we should think it over with comrades Grotewohl and Ulbricht and with representatives of other socialist states which took part in the war against Hitlerite Germany. Perhaps the signing of a peace treaty with the GDR should be timed to the convening of the Bundestag in West Berlin. And then all the Bundestag deputies would have to receive visas from Grotewohl in order to be able to return home to Bonn from Berlin.

Earlier in his Austrian visit, Khrushchev had privately made an almost identical statement to Austrian officials regarding the Bundestag meeting and a separate bloc–GDR peace treaty. In making his threat, Khrushchev clearly sought to alarm the West by raising again the spectre of unilateral Soviet action on Berlin without, however, binding the Soviet Union to an unalterable course of action in the future or suggesting that such a course of action was in train at present.

The communist desire to retain the element of imprecision in the separate peace treaty threat was shown by East German treatment of party leader Walter Ulbricht’s statement on the Bundestag meeting, made at a July 19 press conference³ attended by Western reporters. Western press sources reported Ulbricht to have said that negotiations to sign a peace treaty if the Bundestag met in Berlin in September were “under way at the moment.” On the afternoon of the press conference, the East German radio, too, broadcast excerpts which quoted Ulbricht as saying rather cryptically that negotiations were under way “in the spirit” of Khrushchev’s Vienna statement. However, Ulbricht’s assertion was completely excised from both East German and Soviet published accounts of the press conference. The East German text of the conference, published in Neues Deutschland on July 20, contained the following reply from Ulbricht in answer to the question about the Bundestag meeting:

… You all know that there have already been some Bundestag sessions in West Berlin which served the purpose of waging psychological warfare against the GDR, the Soviet Union, and countries in the socialist camp… .I should like to state quite unmistakably that neither the Bonn Bundestag nor the Bonn authorities have anything to do with West Berlin. West Berlin lies on the territory of the GDR and is a part of its territory. You know our point of view. I can do without presenting it to you in detail here. We shall not deviate from it. We are sitting at the long end of the lever—everyone should consider that. And if it should be required the GDR Government will take the necessary measures at the appropriate time. You are all certainly aware of Premier Khrushchev’s answer to a similar question in Vienna ….

The transformation of Ulbricht’s remarks from “negotiations are under way at the moment” to “necessary measures will be taken at the appropriate time” was designed to bring his position on the Bundestag session into line with that of Khrushchev and thereby to retain the flexibility inherent in the ambiguous Khrushchev formulation. Neither Ulbricht nor Khrushchev mentioned the consequences of a separate peace treaty in referring to the Bundestag session in Berlin.

In oblique recognition of the worrisome value of the unfulfilled threat to conclude a bloc–GDR peace treaty, Ulbricht, at his press conference, went so far as to claim for the first time that some in the West are seeking to goad the bloc into signing a separate peace treaty. He asserted: “We have the impression that certain aggressive circles in Bonn and West Berlin cannot wait for West Berlin to become a demilitarized free city and thus are striving to accelerate the conclusion of a peace treaty” (Neues Deutschland’s emphasis)

The volume of Soviet and East German follow-up propaganda on the Khrushchev and Ulbricht remarks regarding the Bundestag has been slight. Commentaries have been couched in vaguely threatening tones, but there has been no elaboration of Khrushchev’s Vienna formulation; instead, Soviet and East German comment has concentrated on attempting to justify the Soviet position.

Gromyko Memorandum

In early July, during Khrushchev’s visit to Austria, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko handed a memorandum on a German peace treaty and Berlin to Austrian Foreign Minister Kreisky.⁴ The memorandum, whose ultimate recipient was intended to be West Berlin Mayor Brandt, divided itself into two parts—one expository, the other minatory.

The expository section of the Gromyko memorandum consisted of a straightforward repetition of the standard, maximum Soviet position on Germany and Berlin as embodied in the Soviet draft German peace treaty of January 10, 1959,⁵ and elaborated upon by Soviet spokesmen on innumerable occasions since that time. The conclusion of a peace treaty with the “two existing German states” and the establishment of “Free city of West Berlin” on the basis of such a treaty, the memorandum asserted, would represent a sacrifice on the part of the GDR “on whose territory West Berlin is located.” The memorandum also portrayed a value, but idyllic future for the free city under the guardianship of the Big Four, a special commission, and the UN. The threat of a separate GDR–bloc peace treaty was also reiterated and the consequences of such a pact for Allied access to Berlin were delineated. The memorandum made no mention of an interim settlement limited to Berlin, such as was discussed at the Geneva Foreign Ministers’ Conference in 1959 and about which Moscow submitted its most recent proposals in a May 9 message from Khrushchev to De Gaulle.⁶

The memorandum, however, was not written to repeat well-known and thoroughly unacceptable Soviet proposals of the past. Its real purpose was to frighten those who would read it—particularly Brandt and West Berlin officialdom—and to shake their confidence in Allied fidelity to the Western position in Berlin by simultaneously invoking the horrors of nuclear war and disparaging Western willingness to wage such a war over Berlin.

The memorandum asserted that if Brandt were relying on the strength of the Western Powers, “he is building on sand.” The US, it asserted, would not initiate war over a separate GDR peace treaty, for “moral reasons” make it difficult “to decide to be the first to start the fire of a missile or nuclear war.” Moreover, the US would be deterred by a “regard for actual power relationships” whereby the USSR “can transform all, even the remotest objects on the territory of the aggressor [i.e., the US]⁷ into fire and ashes.” Similar statements were made to buttress the memorandum’s claims regarding supposed British, French, and West German unwillingness to risk nuclear-missile war over West Berlin. The Gromyko memorandum also made a transparent effort to capitalize on Brandt’s political ambitions by alluding to the rise which allegedly would occur in the prestige of those in the West who “properly evaluate the situation,” and contribute to settling the Berlin problem. It also hinted at the desirability of a Brandt–Khrushchev meeting, without actually issuing an invitation to the West Berlin Mayor. Finally, the memorandum spoke about the necessity of negotiating a settlement of the Berlin problem “in a quiet atmosphere.”

Khrushchev, in an August 4 letter to Prime Minister Macmillan⁸ dealing with a variety of international topics, seemed to go out of his way to juxtapose the possibility of a future nuclear holocaust with the Berlin problem. (Macmillan, in fact, had not even mentioned Berlin in his letter,⁹ to which Khrushchev was writing in reply.) In a general discussion of the possibility that war might arise through mistake or accident, Khrushchev wrote:

We say that it is necessary to eliminate the circumstances which might give rise to dangerous accidents. We must not wait for a madman who might in his folly take the fatal step which would cause the outbreak of a third world war, which would burn up West Berlin, and not just West Berlin, but also all those who are now unwilling to recognize the necessity of concluding a peace with the two German states ….

Further on, after the standard threat that the USSR would sign a separate peace treaty with the GDR if it “does not meet with understanding,” Khrushchev curtly said: “It would be unreasonable to threaten war against this peaceful action of ours. You know that it is dangerous to threaten us with war.” Khrushchev’s remarks, while subtler than Gromyko’s, were probably made with the same purpose in mind: to frighten his Western audience by explicitly raising the danger of nuclear war over Berlin.

Soviet desire to elaborate further the current line on Berlin and, at the same time, probe for possible internal German political differences over Berlin also emerged in Bonn in early July. There, according to intelligence reports, the Soviet Embassy asked for and arranged meetings between Ambassador Smirnov and leaders of the major West German opposition parties, the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats. Only the FDP meeting has apparently occurred (the Smirnov–SPD talk was postponed by the Soviets because of the ambassador’s departure from Bonn on July 15) and what transpired is now known, but Smirnov probably took the line of the Gromyko memorandum—either verbally or by handing yet another Soviet declaration on Berlin to opposition party leaders. (Prior to the Gromyko memorandum, the USSR last used the West German opposition as a channel for disseminating its views on the German and Berlin problems in January 1960, when Smirnov gave SPD leaders a memorandum on the subject. The memorandum was published in February.)¹⁰

Diplomatic Moves

Moscow and the GDR have continued their campaign to exploit some ambiguities inherent in West Berlin’s internal and external relations, with the goal of sapping Western unity on the Berlin issue. In identical notes to the US, the UK, and France, published on July 15,¹¹ the GDR protested the June 27 arrest and “kidnapping” of an East German citizen by the West Berlin police on the property of the GDR-operated Berlin elevated railway located in West Berlin. The note sought to use the incident to emphasize earlier East German claims to complete control of the railway, which is an important escape route for those fleeing to West Berlin from the GDR.

In notes to the US, the UK, and France published on July 29,¹² the USSR—recalling its note on November 11, 1959¹³—protested the Bundestag passage of a bill establishing a Federal German radio broadcasting council to be situated in West Berlin. The note called the Bundestag’s action “an open encroachment of the Federal Government on West Berlin.” In a similar move one month earlier, the Soviet Union on June 30 sent notes to the Allies protesting the alleged recruitment of West Berliners into the West German army and the subordination of West Berlin’s economy to West German rearmament.¹⁴ The notes declared that it was the Allies’ responsibility to end the FRG efforts “to utilize West Berlin for its military preparations,” but it contained no warning of possible consequences for the Allied position in Berlin if the supposed recruiting were to continue. Both notes were designed to point up alleged FRG violations of West Berlin’s special status, and possibly to serve as the basis for some future Soviet actions.

Reports of Planned Soviet GDR Moves Against Berlin

Beginning in early July, there appeared a number of intelligence reports—most, but not all of which emanated from East Berlin—which indicated that Berlin had recently been the subject of bloc-wide discussions, and that the Soviet timetable for definite action on Berlin had been projected. Ulbricht reportedly told his staff that at the communist parties’ conference in Bucharest at the end of June it had been agreed that West Berlin would be incorporated into the GDR “at the next suitable opportunity,” and that the Bundestag meeting would be sufficient cause for such action. An East German Politburo member was also reported to have told his associates that West Berlin would definitely be made a part of the GDR by the spring of 1961, but that annexation could come sooner. Other reports forecast the imminent convocation of a conference to discuss a peace treaty with the GDR.

Apart from the public and private threats of future communist moves on the German and Berlin scene, the most significant recent action has been the intermittent East German harassment of Western Military Liaison Missions in the GDR. In his July 19 press conference Ulbricht once again accused members of the US and British Mission of spying on military objectives in the GDR, and he produced maps and photographs to “document” his charges. Clear Soviet support for East German pressure tactics had been forthcoming earlier, when, in a July 4, letter to the British,¹⁵ the commander of the Soviet forces in East Germany asserted that members of the British mission had “carried out activities which … could lead to undesirable consequences.” Such remarks had seemed at the time to testify to a Soviet desire to provoke, or, at the very least, a willingness to see a mutual withdrawal of the Military Missions—whether on Soviet or Western initiative. However, after some retaliatory Western obstruction of the Soviet Military Mission in the FRG at the end of July, harassment of the Western Missions was markedly reduced. Evidently the Soviet Union judges the Military Liaison Missions to have enough value—reciprocal or otherwise—for them to remain in operation for some indeterminate period.

One can only speculate on the reasons that might lead Moscow to conclude the Military Liaison Missions ought to be maintained. As regards its own Mission in the FRG, the Soviet Union might well ascribe greater importance to the reports it receives from Frankfurt than Western observers have previously allowed. There are no service attachés at the Soviet Embassy in Bonn, and it is possible that Soviet military authorities regard the professionally-trained men attached to their Frankfurt Mission as a necessary substitute. Reliable sources of information on military happenings in the FRG which seem quite abundant to the West may seem less so to the USSR.

As regards the Western Military Missions in East Germany, there are several considerations which might impel Moscow either to desire their continuing operation or, at least, to acquiesce in it. First of all, the Missions can fulfill a limited but useful liaison function from Moscow’s point of view by providing an official channel of communication between the USSR and the Allies below the diplomatic level. The existence of such a channel enables the USSR, when it desires to do so, to deflate incidents which could potentially heighten tension. When Moscow chose not to exploit the forced landing of a US C–47 transport in East Germany last May for enhancing East German claims to sovereignty, it used the Missions to settle the affair. The USSR may estimate that the personnel of the Western Missions fulfill relatively harmless reconnaissance functions in view of their circumscribed movements in East Germany and the surveillance to which they are subject. Moscow, and the GDR, may consider the maintenance of the Missions worthwhile for their scapegoat value; it is quite possible that the East Germans overestimate the impact of their propaganda—exemplified by Ulbricht’s July 19 press conference—designed to paint the Missions as nothing but the vanguard of a revenge-minded Bundeswehr thirsting to invade the GDR. Finally, it may be that the USSR regards its or the FDR’s treatment of the Missions in general as a means of probing for and determining Allied willingness to defend Western rights in Berlin. Although the establishment of Military Liaison Missions in East and West Germany did not stem from the same complex of agreements that set up Four-Power rule in Germany and Berlin, Moscow may nevertheless judge Allied reaction to obstruction of the Western Missions as a useful general indicator of Allied attitudes regarding Berlin. Whichever of these, or other factors have thus far had a decisive effect on Soviet thinking as regards the Military Liaison Missions, the central fact seems clear: the USSR does want the Missions to continue functioning, at least for the present.

Conclusions

The welter of recent Soviet and East German public and private assertions and intimations regarding the Bundestag, Berlin, and a separate GDR peace treaty permits general conclusions to be drawn regarding Moscow’s future policy toward Berlin. East German reports of a possible GDR coup de main planned against West Berlin probably reflect one extreme of the discussions concerning the broad spectrum of possible Soviet bloc actions on Berlin and Germany. Within the SED the circulation of reports on the imminent incorporation of West Berlin into the GDR is undoubtedly designed to combat the strong initial disappointment caused by the relative mildness of Khrushchev’s post-summit statement of May 20 on Berlin,¹⁶ and to maintain the confidence of the party faithful. Such reports, which SED leaders probably assume find their way to the West, also serve the useful, if marginal function of keeping up a psychological war of nerves against the West in general, and West Berlin’s leadership and populace in particular.

The weight of the evidence, however, still points to a Soviet desire to engage the West in another round of negotiations on Berlin and Germany. It is to this end that the threat of a separate FDR–bloc peace treaty is directed—to maintain pressure on the Berlin issue preparatory to renewed negotiations, to break down the ties between West Berlin and the FRG, and to exploit the delicate Allied-FRG-West Berlin relationship. The threat, however, retains its maximum value only as long as it is both credible and unfulfilled. Moscow would therefore probably prefer to enter renewed negotiations without having expended the threat, in order to retain the bargaining maneuverability that the unspent threat gives it. Ulbricht’s significant assertion, cited above, that “certain aggressive circles in Bonn and West Berlin… are striving to accelerate the conclusion of a [separate] peace treaty” would seem to testify to high-level bloc recognition of this facet of the peace treaty threat.

It would also appear that at present neither of two principal conditions exists which might impel the USSR to fulfill its separate treaty threat: Moscow has evidently not written off the possibility of holding negotiations on Berlin with the new American administration; and Moscow apparently judges that it cannot face with impunity possible Western reaction to Soviet unilateral action on Berlin. (In a July 7 conversation with a high American legislative official, Soviet Ambassador Menshikov indicated continuing Soviet interest in further negotiations on Berlin and sought for some US reassurance on that score.)¹⁷

If, then, Moscow anticipates at present the holding of future negotiations on Berlin—and Khrushchev indicated as much in his letter to Macmillan—it cannot realistically expect such negotiations to take place much before the spring or summer of 1961. This period may be very desirable for negotiations from the Soviet point of view, but, whether it is or not, the Soviet Union faces the task of adjusting its Berlin policy to exploit the pre-negotiating period as usefully as possible to further Soviet goals. The gamut of actions open to Moscow in this interim period is a broad one, but there would appear to be three main categories of probable activity: the patience-exhausting, the tension-raising, and the rocket-rattling.

On the patience-exhausting tack, Moscow would seek to demonstrate its reasonableness in exploring the paths to an “agreed solution” of the Berlin problem, without, however, weakening the essentials of its former position. The goal, of course, would be to build up a case of supposed Soviet flexibility and Western intransigence on Berlin. The advancement of new proposals and the refurbishment of old ones would be the principal Soviet method of exhibiting “patience.” To achieve this end, Moscow could publicize—with appropriate fanfare—the still-secret provisions of the USSR’s May 9 proposal for an interim agreement on Berlin. By emphasizing the concessionary elements of the plan—lengthening the period of the interim agreement from 18 to 24 months, dropping the link between an interim arrangement and the establishment of an all-German committee—the USSR would seek to establish its readiness to “compromise” differences with the West over Berlin.

On the tension-raising tack, the possibility for Soviet, but more likely East German, action designed to show that West Berlin is a “time bomb” are extremely broad. The goal would be to show covert West Berlin involvement in the “war plans” of the FRG, and hence NATO. Since the GDR has not yet buttressed its claim that the Bundeswehr recruits West Berliners by producing a West Berlin defector who claims to have been drafted into the Bundeswehr from West Berlin, it could seek “documentary evidence” of its charge. A demonstrative raid on a Federal office in West Berlin that supplies informational data on the Bundeswehr might garner enough material for presentation at an international press conference. Access incidents would also be provoked, stemming from an alleged GDR desire to prevent FRG war plans from being hatched in West Berlin: a “Bundeswehr-enlistee” could be removed from a train bearing him to West Germany, and such action could serve as a pretext for impeding civilian traffic between the FGR and West Berlin. “War matériel” has already been discovered and held up in transit between the FRG and West Berlin; such a “discovery” could be used in the future to justify a slowing down or even temporary stoppage of goods moving over the Berlin access routes.

Future intensified Soviet moves on the patience-exhausting and tension-raising tacks would represent a change in degree rather than kind, for similar tactics were pursued by the USSR in the periods of March–May 1959 and December 1959–May 1960, which preceded negotiations on Berlin. A new and dangerous element would enter into future Soviet-Berlin tactics, however, if Moscow were to calculate that the advance of Soviet missile capabilities—combined with demonstrative evidence thereof—could be translated into direct political leverage against the Allied position in West Berlin. The Gromyko memorandum, crudely alluding to the East-West power balance and boasting of Soviet missile strength, could well be a harbinger of future Soviet efforts to bring an implied threat of nuclear holocaust to bear on any settlement of the Berlin problem. In this connection, it may be noted that Soviet leaders have become increasingly categorical in claiming that the USSR is now the world’s most powerful country militarily. Mikoyan asserted in Oslo on June 29¹⁸ that the Soviet Union has a “vast” superiority over the West in the means of delivering nuclear weapons, and Khrushchev referred to an “indubitable” Soviet superiority in this field in a speech in Vienna on July 7.¹⁹ Soviet delegate Zorin made similar claims during the Geneva disarmament talks. The ways in which the USSR could seek to flaunt its missile capacities are varied, but broadly speaking would seem to separate into private and/or public demonstrations. In view of frequent Soviet statements referring to Western “prestige” involvement in Berlin, private and unpublicized showings of Soviet missile capabilities—either to visiting Western military men of appropriately high rank, or to Western service attachés in Moscow—might commend itself to the USSR as the most effective way of making its point.

0. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, OSS–INR Intelligence Reports. Secret; Noforn. No drafting information appears on the source text.
1. See also IIB–309, Recent East German Developments Relating to Berlin, August 25, 1960. [Footnote in the source text. IIB–309 has not been found. According to another footnote in the source text, this report was based on information available through August 11.]
2. All ellipses are in the source text.
3. For text of this statement and a transcript of the press conference, see Dokumente, Band 5, 1960, pp. 69–87.
4. See Document 203.
5. See vol. VIII, Document 124.
6. See Document 154.
7. All brackets are in the source text.
8. For text of this letter, see Dokumente, Band 5, 1960, pp. 124–126.
9. For text of MacMillan’s letter, July 19, see Documents on International Affairs, 1960, pp. 50–52.
10. See footnote 1, Document 69.
11. For text, see Dokumente, Band 5, 1960, pp. 51–52.
12. For text, see ibid., 113–114.
13. For text, see ibid., Band 3, 1959, pp. 608–609.
14. For text, see Documents on Germany, 1944–1985, pp. 707–708.
15. Not found.
16. See Document 192.
17. A memorandum of Menshikov’s conversation with Senator John Sherman Cooper on July 7 is in Department of State, Central Files, 396.1–PA/7–760.
18. Mikoyan visited Norway at the end of June to open a Soviet exhibition at Oslo. For texts of his statements on June 25 and 30, see Pravda, June 26 and July 1, 1960. The reference to a June 29 statement has not been further identified.
19. For text of Khrushchev’s speech at Vienna, see Pravda, July 8, 1960, or Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol. XII, no. 27, pp. 8–10.