38. Editorial Note
On December 10, 1955, Secretary of State Dulles wrote to British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan regarding a number of European related matters. Among the subjects was the Federal Republic of Germany. In his letter, Secretary Dulles wrote:
“I have no doubt about the present devotion of the Adenauer Government to full cooperation with the West. There is, however, the danger that the appeal of reunification wiil, over a period of time, become so strong in Germany as to give rise to temptation to discard the associations with the West in an effort to advance reunification on terms which would at best result in a neutral Germany and at worst in an Eastern-oriented Germany. Our problem is to prevent this possibility arising. The best means of doing this, in my judgment, is to so tie Germany into the whole complex of Western institutions—military, political and economic—and to so command her loyalties that neutrality or orientation to the East will be commonly accepted as unthinkable. This is a large order, I know, but I see no other alternative.”
For full text of the letter, see volume IV, pages 362–364.