Word: molotovs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Soviet Union made an astonishing proposal last week. In 1,700-word notes to Britain, France and the U.S., Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov invited the U.S. to join his proposed pan-European security alliance and in return asked for a seat for Russia in the councils of NATO...
...Western diplomats promptly skewered the Soviet maneuver for the impossible thing it was. The State Department noted that only a few weeks ago at Berlin, Molotov had lambasted NATO and introduced his pan-European pact idea with the specific proviso that the U.S. should be excluded except as an "observer." Now he was switching decks. "It is a maneuver," said the U.S. spokesman, "to gain admittance within the walls of the West, to undermine its security...
...Britain, while Laborites complained of this "unilateral" U.S. action on the Molotov offer, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden rose in the House of Commons to add Britain's thumbs down. If Russia really seeks relaxation of world tensions, disarmament and security, said he, the United Nations "affords the best forum and the most hopeful opportunity...
...first time, the Communists called the so-called police by their proper name: the East German Streitkrafte (fighting forces). Diplomatically, the Kremlin hoped for even greater gains. A "sovereign" East Germany could plausibly be a step toward the gargantuan pan-European security pact that Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov proposed at the Berlin Conference as a Red alternative to NATO (TIME, Feb. 22). It might also force the West, which has previously been able to ignore the East German regime as "illegitimate" and deal only with Soviet occupiers, to deal directly with the Grotewohl regime, thus bolstering its claim to sovereignty...
...sense this was progress, though only because the French, à la Molotov, had taken an untenable position, and then retreated from it. The hard fact remains that the Germans cannot start rearming until France has ratified EDC. To persuade the French to get moving, Britain leaked the news that some of its troops on the Continent might be placed under an EDC general. More important, the U.S. bluntly served notice that it soon plans to press for West Germany's return to sovereignty, with or without EDC. "The occupying powers are agreed," said U.S. High Commissioner James B. Conant...