Office of the Historian

033.62A11/11–2353

No. 233
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Director of the Office of German Affairs (Lewis)

confidential
[Washington,] November 23, 1953.

Subject: Courtesy Call of Dr. Ludwig Erhard, Minister of Economics, Federal Republic of Germany.

  • Participants: The Secretary of State
  • Dr. Ludwig Erhard
  • Dr. Heinz L. Krekeler, Ambassador, Chargé d’Affaires of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • Mr. Geoffrey W. Lewis—GER
  • Fraulein Grosse-Schware—Interpreter

Dr. Erhard, who is in this country at the invitation of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Commerce, paid a fifteen minute courtesy call on the Secretary this afternoon.1

After an exchange of greetings, Dr. Erhard said he was in this country to discuss economic problems not political ones. He was happy to note the understanding of Germany’s economic problems on the part of US officials. The Secretary then asked him how the European Coal and Steel Community was operating.

Dr. Erhard replied that there was some difficulty in setting up a common market due, in his view, to the fact that many European countries maintained false exchange rates. This pointed to the necessity for obtaining free convertibility immediately, and he was gratified at the interest shown in the US on this problem. The Secretary then alluded to the British difficulties on this matter and to [Page 559] the discussions he had had with Chancellor of the Exchequer Butler last spring. Dr. Erhard appreciated the British problem but disagreed with Mr. Butler on two points, namely, that convertibility must mean convertibility of currency and goods and that to establish convertibility greater dollar reserves would be needed.

The Secretary then asked if Dr. Erhard attached importance to the recent increased Soviet sales of gold. Dr. Erhard thought that this indicated internal difficulties in the Soviet Union which led them to want to increase the standard of living and the supply of consumers goods. In response to a further question from the Secretary, he admitted the possibility that the Soviets were deliberately dumping gold in order to promote currency difficulties in the rest of the world.

  1. Erhard was in Washington for economic conversations, Nov. 23–25, at the invitation of the U.S. Government. Records of seven memoranda of conversation with him have been found in Department of State files, but only this one and that infra have been printed. In addition to these two, there are memoranda for conversations at the Departments of Commerce and State on Nov. 23, at the Foreign Operations Administration and the Council of Economic Advisers on Nov. 24, and a second conversation at the Department of State on Nov. 25. These memoranda are in file 862A.00/11–2353 through 11–2553.↩