No. 352
Editorial Note
Documentation on the Berlin Conference comes from three principal sources in Department of State files. The most extensive set of records is in Conference files, lot 60 D 627, CF 193–216. Similar materials are in CFM files, lot M 88, boxes 167–168. The third repository is the central file 396.1 BE, which contains a small but significant amount of documentation. All three sources duplicate each other extensively.
[Page 805]Lots 60 D 627 and M 88 include in their records sets of the documents of the conference (designated FPM (54)–), United States Delegation background papers (designated BER D–), records of the Tripartite Working Group (designated BER MIN), records of the United States Delegation meetings (designated USDEL MIN), sets of the United States Delegation verbatim records of the plenary meetings (usually designated USDEL PLEN/), copies of the telegrams to and from the delegation (designated Secto and Tosec respectively), and records of the six restricted sessions of the conference. In general these records are more nearly complete in the Conference files than in the CFM files. In addition to these records the Conference files have complete sets of the telegrams to and from Secretary Dulles (designated Dulte and Tedul) and have a large collection of memoranda of conversations between members of the United States Delegation and Austrian, British, French, German, and Soviet officials who were attending the conference or were in Berlin while it met. The material in 396.1 BE is largely confined to telegrams to and from the delegation, records of the restricted sessions, and an occasional memorandum of conversation.
Supplementing these sources are two collections of documents on the conference which were made public shortly after its completion. A British publication, Documents relating to the Meeting of Foreign Ministers of France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America, Berlin, January 25–February 18, 1954, Miscellaneous No. 5 (1954) (hereafter cited as Cmd. 9080), presents statements from the plenaries and various documents of the conference. A United States publication, Foreign Ministers Meeting, Berlin Discussions, January 25–February 18, 1954 (hereafter cited as Berlin Discussions), presents a similar record, although the texts of the several statements produced in it are not exactly the same as those in Cmd. 9080, nor are the same ones included in both publications. References to these two sources have been used to provide citations for the full texts of statements which are otherwise summarized in the following documentation. In addition to these publications, Foreign Secretary Eden has written his own account of the conference in Eden, Full Circle, pages 65–85 and 97–100.
The documentation that follows presents the conference in a day-to-day manner from the opening session on January 25 to the twenty-first and final plenary on February 18. The material for each day has been presented in the order in which the events took place as nearly as can be determined. Because of the vagueness concerning the times of some of the meetings and conversations, the editors have been forced to place some records at the end of a given day. Telegrams coming to the United States Delegation have been inserted at the time of their arrival, where possible, and telegrams [Page 806] from the delegation have been printed either at the time of their dispatch or at the time of the event that they are recording. Records of all the plenary and restricted sessions are included, as are records of the most significant conversations which were found in the three principal sources cited above. Unfortunately records of the tripartite Foreign Ministers meetings, which generally preceded a plenary, have not been found with the exception of a very few which have been printed. The editors have also included memoranda of conversations that took place during the conference, but which were not devoted to topics on the agenda. Conversations of lesser importance have been summarized in footnotes or editorial notes where appropriate.
Following the presentation of the daily evolution of the conference, the editors have presented the various documents introduced during the sessions. This section is not inclusive since many of the conference documents appear as parts of the records of the meetings or in the memoranda of conversations, but all those documents which are referred to throughout the conference are accounted for in one place or the other. In the final section the editors have set forth reports and analyses of the conference by major United States participants.