Word: germanized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Seemingly by reflex, Nikita Khrushchev gave the gathering diplomats their first reminder of the ugly possibilities beneath the bland protestations of peace. He told a group of West German visitors to Moscow that Russia could put their homeland "out of action" with not more than eight H-bombs; in a nuclear war, he conceded, Russia would suffer "losses, and great ones," but "the Western powers would be literally wiped off the face of the earth...
...with less than 24 hours to go before the conference opened. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko-at 49 the youngest of the foreign ministers-suddenly demanded that the two German delegations be included as full-fledged participants. To the West, this would be to concede in advance what the argument is about: it would involve its recognition of the legitimacy of the East German Communist regime. The Western powers flatly refused, insisted that the two German delegations could appear in the Council Chamber only as "advisers." Britain's Selwyn Lloyd conferred privately with Gromyko, who would not budge...
...issue was obviously more than procedural, and there were mutterings that the conference might break down even before it got started. At best, the Western delegations expected an early Soviet rejection of the Western "package plan" (TIME, May 11) for settling in one interlinked proposal the future of Berlin, German reunification and European armaments levels. "The first phase of the conference," predicted a gloomy West German diplomat, "will be to wait until the Russians stop laughing at the Western proposals...
...seemingly overriding desire for a summit meeting. Trading on this, the U.S. had already served indirect notice that any Russian move during the conference to shut off Western access routes to Berlin, or even to sign a separate World War II peace treaty with its Communist East German satellite, would result in an immediate Western walkout at Geneva and an end to all hope for a later summit conference...
After a month at the Black Sea, Nikita Khrushchev was tanned and full of beans, homilies, pleasantries and high spirits. Except for his bluster at a group of German editors about nuclear annihilation, he radiated good will toward the rest of the world. In fact, he seemed to be on a Be-Kind-to-Americans...