Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Western European Security, Volume V, Part 2

Conference files, lot 60 D 627, CF 370

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of European Affairs (Moore)¹

secret

[London,] September 27, 1954.

Participants:

• The Secretary of State
• Mr. Merchant
• Mr. Bowie
• Mr. Moore
• Ambassador Hughes
• Mr. Hensel
• General Gruenther
• Colonel Richardson
• Colonel Anderson

The Secretary said that he would like to have General Gruenther’s views on the problem raised by the French in their memorandum, namely an armaments pool. He said that our preliminary thinking on this subject suggested that there were two main purposes to be serviced by such a proposal.

One would be the delimitation of certain areas, or zones, in which certain types of production would be prevented or limited, for example atomic weapons. These zones would be drawn in accordance with strategic and military considerations since the German territory would be included in the forward area. The proposal would also serve a political purpose by prohibiting or limiting German production of strategic weapons.

The second main purpose would be a rationalization of arms production within the territories covered, thereby serving an economic, as well as a political, purpose. The thought would be to lower costs of production of certain types of equipment in efficient plants, and at the same time, make it impossible for any one country to provide a balanced arms program independently of its neighbor.

As we analyzed French motives at the conference, they were concerned about two main points; they wished to involve the U.K. as deeply as possible on the Continent and they were concerned to limit German control of an independent military potential. Some form of arms pool would help to meet the second preoccupation, although it was clear that the British attitude was such that it would do little to meet the first. It was probably true also that the French had ulterior motives with a view to getting control over the allocation of arms orders for the benefit of French industry. However, it should be possible to arrange a scheme which would provide safeguards against this danger.

In reply, General Gruenther recounted his conversation with Monsieur Mendes-France,² in which he pointed out that an arms pool was not the most satisfactory method of meeting the French desire to control German military strength. He pointed out to Monsieur Mendes-France that, in NATO, we had a going concern already set up to provide certain safeguards for France. He listed these as follows:

1. Through the Infrastructure Program, NATO controlled the pipelines through which fuel for aircraft must flow in the event of future war, and without this fuel German forces would have no aircraft support and thus could not fight independently.

2. Under NATO, a pooling of reserve supplies and stocks was being worked out, so that no one country would be able to fight for very long in the absence of control over these reserves.

3. NATO had integrated arrangements for air defense which, for military reasons, must be operated from one source through an integrated radar network.

4. The International command structure under NATO would provide a tip-off in the event that any one Member country initiated a process of pulling out its own forces for aggressive purposes.

He said that to improve and strengthen these controls over international forces, SHAPE would need to have its powers strengthened and defined by Council action, but that this should be relatively easy to provide by international agreement. Monsieur Mendes-France had replied that a program of the kind outlined by General Gruenther would be difficult to sell politically in France. German [General] Gruenther said that SHAPE’S experience in talking with various groups of Frenchmen suggested that such a program could be sold if it were properly explained to the average Frenchman. He said further that the EDC had failed in part because of opposition from French military officials. These same officials, including General Juin, would support a proposal of the kind General Gruenther had made. He said that Mendes-France wanted SHAPE to accept responsibility for the inspection of German factories. This would be impracticable since SHAPE had no personnel for this purpose and it would be politically impossible for them to get into this field.

The Secretary pointed out that, if SHAPE were given increased authority by Council action, the Council could only remove this authority by a unanimous vote, and that this should help to satisfy French fears. General Gruenther agreed and pointed out that a Frenchman, General Juin, would administer these NATO controls insofar as they relate to ground forces in the central sector. The air force commander in this sector is also a Frenchman, General Charpentier.

General Gruenther felt that the best tactic with respect to an arms pool would be to ask the French questions about their plan. The Germans, including Mr.______________,³ have no knowledge of the details. He said that the SHAPE analysis suggested that the basis of the French proposal was the so-called Lapie Plan, developed in 1951 to deal with the need for greater integration in aircraft procurement. He suggested that this plan provided the germ of a program which would be acceptable and which could be developed by the experts. It was pointed out that any plan would require some formula for making the basic decisions, such as the voting procedure set forth in the EDC Treaty. Perhaps such a formula could be worked out under the Brussels Treaty. The Secretary felt that it was important to develop some set of counter-proposals, possibly by agreement with the Benelux countries, so that the French could not say that there was only destructive criticism of their proposal. It was agreed that we needed to develop promptly the principles of an effective scheme, so that we could use them informally in our discussion with other Delegations.

1. The source text was circulated to members of the U.S. Delegation to the Nine-Power Conference as document NPT Memo 29.
2. For a summary of Gruenther’s meeting with Mendès-France on Sept. 16, see telegrams 248, 250, and 251 from Paris, Sept. 16, pp. 1200, 1201, and 1202, respectively.
3. The name was left blank in the source text.