86. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Germany1
1980. To Ambassador McGhee from McGeorge Bundy. For your private information, the President has read some but not all of your recent reports and also what Bohlen has reported of the view that Fontaine of Le Monde brought back from Germany.2 He is not troubled by what the French say, but he does want you to know of his reaction to the German nervousness which you report. The President has made his position on Germany most amply clear on many occasions. He remembers how firm [Page 210] and clear he was with Chancellor Erhard at the Ranch.3 He recollects the extended assurance and the full exposition in his Georgetown speech only a month ago. He recalls that at the request of the Germans he made a further and explicit reference to reunification in his State of the Union message. He recalls his own recent conversations with you at the Ranch4 in which further reassurances were given and in which you explained your conviction that the Germans would be greatly relieved by the President’s shift away from pressure tactics on the MLF. The President does not now find it agreeable to have repeated and renewed German questions about the firmness of his purpose or the direction of his policy.
I have discussed with the President the psychological and electoral causes of the reactions you have encountered as I understand it. He hears me but he would like you to hear him.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files,POL 32–4 GER. Secret; Immediate; Nodis. Drafted in the White House and approved by Bundy.↩
- Telegram 3922 from Paris, January 11. (Ibid., INF 7 FR–GER W)↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. XV, Document 248.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 79.↩