On 10 March 1952, the Soviet Leader Iosif Stalin Proposed—Or
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RuggentThe 1952ha Stalerlin Note on German Unification The 1952 Stalin Note on German Uniªcation The Ongoing Debate ✣ Peter Ruggenthaler On 10 March 1952, the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin proposed—or seemed to propose—a peace treaty that made the reuniªcation of Germany contingent on establishing a neutral status for the country, an offer that sur- prised much of the world and seemed appealing on the surface. In Moscow, Soviet Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko handed identi- cally worded notes containing a draft version of a German peace treaty to dip- lomatic representatives of the Western powers (the United States, Great Brit- ain, and France). Politicians, diplomats, and, above all, historians have long debated whether Stalin was sincere about the goals he laid out in the so-called Stalin Note.1 In the ensuing “Battle of Notes” that dragged on well into the autumn of 1952, the U.S., British, and French governments declined to engage with Sta- lin’s offer and demanded instead binding guarantees that free elections be held everywhere in Germany. After years in which the Soviet Union had shown it- self averse to holding free elections in Germany, Western leaders considered Stalin’s “offer” a propaganda coup at best and a proposal fraught with dangers at worst. Washington in particular was unwilling to abandon the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) with the West. The treaties that were to make West Germany part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) via the European Defense Community (EDC) were ready for sign- ing.2 Relationships between Western governments and the USSR had been 1. The debate that has gone on for decades in the extensive research literature is succinctly summa- rized in Jürgen Zarusky, ed., Die Stalin-Note vom 10. März 1952: Neue Quellen und Analysen, Mit Beiträgen von Wilfried Loth, Hermann Graml und Gerhard Wettig, Vol. 84 of Schriftenreihe der Viertel- jahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002). 2. See, above all, Gerhard Wettig, Bereitschaft zu Einheit in Freiheit? Die sowjetische Deutschlandpolitik 1945–1955 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999); and Rolf Steininger, Deutsche Geschichte: Darstellung und Dokumente in vier Bänden, Vol. 2, 1948–1955 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2002). Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 13, No. 4, Fall 2011, pp. 172–212 © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 172 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00145 by guest on 27 September 2021 The 1952 Stalin Note on German Unification marked by truly glacial temperatures since the Berlin blockade in 1948–1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. The Cold War was in full swing. The Soviet Union in its turn intended to install powerful armed forces in East Germany that would be “capable of delivering a lightning blow to NATO armies and of occupying Western Europe all the way to the English Channel.”3 By early 1952 the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was inte- grated in practical terms into the crash military buildup under way in the Eastern bloc. Stalin is said to have decided as early as 1951 in favor of inte- grating the paramilitary police force (KVP) that had been taking shape clan- destinely since 1948 into a grand coalition army for a possible war with the West. As in the case of other unpopular measures, he was only biding his time in order to be able to pass off whatever step he was planning as a reaction to the behavior of the West.4 The signing of the General Treaty in May 1952 be- tween the Western powers and the FRG, a treaty that was to end the Federal Republic’s status as an occupied territory and give it the rights of a federal state, provided Moscow with the ideal pretext to start constructing and forti- fying a ªve-kilometer-wide cordon sanitaire along the German-German bor- der, a step that could not but deepen the rift between the two German politi- cal entities. The Stalin Note was an additional propaganda maneuver to shore up Sta- lin’s claim that he had given the West the option of German reuniªcation and that the Western governments had refused and moved ahead instead with “West German remilitarization.” The Soviet Union thus could not be held re- sponsible for Germany’s division and could present itself as the champion of German unity. To this day, some historians blame Western politicians, notably FRG Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, for not having shown themselves more ready to enter into a dialogue with Moscow about the Stalin Note.5 According to these critics, the West lost an opportunity for Germany’s reuniªcation without even fully exploring the position of the Soviet government. Western leaders also al- lowed the Soviet Union to take on the mantle of a standard-bearer of German uniªcation and to deºect responsibility for the division of Germany. 3. Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire, The Soviet Union from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: Univer- sity of North Carolina Press, 2007), p. 81. 4. See Gerhard Wettig, “Stalins Aufrüstungsbeschluss: Die Moskauer Beratungen mit den Parteichefs und Verteidigungsministern der ‘Volksdemokratien’ vom 9. bis 12. Januar 1951,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ), Vol. 41, No. 4 (2005), pp. 635–650. 5. See esp. Rolf Steininger, Eine Chance zur Wiedervereinigung? Die Stalin-Note vom 10. März 1952: Darstellung und Dokumentation auf der Grundlage unveröffentlichter britischer und amerikanischer Akten (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1986). 173 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00145 by guest on 27 September 2021 Ruggenthaler The State of Research For a long time the only course open to historians was to speculate about what went on behind the Kremlin’s walls, the goals Stalin was trying to pursue with his note, and the reasons for his ostensible willingness to tolerate a united, neutral Germany on the basis of a peace treaty. After 1991, when his- torians were given sporadic access to the relevant holdings of the Soviet Min- istry of Foreign Affairs, a certain amount of light crept in. Gerhard Wettig, Aleksei Filitov, Vladislav Zubok, Bernd Bonwetsch, Jochen Laufer, Stein Bjørnstad, and Wilfried Loth were among those who imparted signiªcant early impulses to research through their work in Russian archives.6 What they could not give to the community of historians was consensus. The debate became heated on several occasions, particularly among German historians. Wettig saw the results of his research borne out by the new ªndings and argued that the ªles of the Soviet Foreign Ministry showed no trace of sincerity behind the note. Loth took a diametrically opposed view. Laufer was largely in accord with Wettig, emphasizing the continuity of Soviet leaders’ at- titudes toward Germany. Stalin, in Laufer’s view, consistently pursued the goal of Germany’s lasting division from 1944–1945 onward. Filitov, a senior scholar at the Russian Institute of Universal History, referred until only a few years ago to “potential opportunities for a breakthrough on the German ques- tion” in regard to the Stalin Note and was one of Wettig’s most outspoken critics.7 Filitov’s views have since changed considerably in keeping with the re- 6. Gerhard Wettig, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence and Development of East-West Conºict, 1939–1953 (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littleªeld Publishers, 2008); Gerhard Wettig, “Die Note vom 10. März 1952 im Kontext von Stalins Deutschlandpolitik seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Jürgen Zarusky, ed., Stalin und die Deutschen: Neue Beiträge der Forschung, special issue of Schriften- reihe der Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), pp. 139–196; Aleksei M. Filitov, “Sovetskii Soyuz i germanskii vopros v period pozdnego stalinizma (K voprosu o genezise ‘stalinskoy noty’ 10 marta 1952 goda),” in A. O. Chubaryan, ed., Stalin i kholodnaya voina (Moscow: IVI RAN, 1998), pp. 315–349; A. M. Filitov, “Die Note vom 10. März 1952: Eine Diskussion, die nicht endet,” in Zarusky, ed., Stalin und die Deutschen, pp. 159–172; Zubok, A Failed Empire, pp. 80– 99; Vladislav M. Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Vladislav Zubok, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War: The ‘Small’ Committee of Information, 1952–1953,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer 1995), pp. 127–140; Bernd Bonwetsch, “‘Skostit’ polovinu summy reparatsii...my mozhem’: Vstrechi Stalina s rukovodstvom SEPG,” Istochnik, No. 3 (2003), pp. 100–128; Jochen Laufer, “Stalins Friedensziele und die Kontinuität der sowjetischen Deutschlandpolitik 1941–1953,” in Zarusky, ed., Stalin und die Deutschen, pp. 131–157; Stein Bjørnstad, “Soviet Policy and the Stalin Note of 10 March 1952,” University of Oslo, Hovedoppgrave, 1996; Wilfried Loth, “Die Entstehung der ‘Stalin-Note’: Dokumente aus Moskauer Archiven,” in Zarusky, ed., Die Stalin-Note vom 10. März 1952, pp. 19–115; Wilfried Loth, Die Sowjetunion und die deutsche Frage: Studien zur sowjetischen Deutschlandpolitik von Stalin bis Chruschtschow (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007); and Wilfried Loth, Stalins ungeliebtes Kind: Warum Moskau die DDR nicht wollte (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1994). 7. A. M. Filitov, “SSSR i germanskii vopros: Povorotnye punkty (1941–1961gg.),” in N. I. Egorova 174 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00145 by guest on 27 September 2021 The 1952 Stalin Note on German Unification lease of formerly classiªed documents. His most recent interpretation of the Stalin Note paints it as an “instrument of torture” brought into play to ensure the loyalty of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) headed by Walter Ulbricht. This interpretation is incompatible with the thesis that Moscow would have been prepared to “sacriªce” the GDR. In Filitov’s view, Vyache- slav Molotov played a leading role in the genesis of the Stalin Note.8 Zubok, whose work is based on thorough study of the Soviet sources, re- cently said that “Stalin’s policies in Germany in 1952 made sense for only one contingency—total war mobilization.