Word: noted
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Improvising. For an 8,000-word document as cunningly loaded with distortions of the past and with booby traps for the future, the notes that Moscow had sent gave off an air of improvisation. Only the day before, Secretary Dulles -no mean lawyer-had suggested, with the hint of a smile, that the note might have been so long delayed because Soviet lawyers had to correct Khrushchev's initial impetuosity...
...note Khrushchev pointed out that the Western powers, as well as Russia, were in Berlin as occupiers, and that, after all, "every occupation is an event of limited duration." As a philosophical generalization about occupation, this might have some validity. But it was not the people of West Berlin who wanted the West out. Khrushchev promised them their freedom, and the right to "private, capitalist ownership"; they were assured that the Soviet Union, by "placing orders"-whatever that meant-would assure their prosperity. They were told by Khrushchev that the U.N. in "one way or another" could guarantee their status...
...Soviet note was careful not to denounce the 1945 Potsdam agreement outright. In the face of the determinedly solid Allied resolve to stand fast in Berlin, it included another amendment that let out a lot of the heat that Khrushchev had pumped into his crisis. The Soviet ambassador in Bonn had talked jauntily about Soviet troops leaving Berlin before Christmas. Russia now promised to make no change in Berlin for six months...
...Soviet note, with a spurious mildness and plausibility, set out to court every color of German or European political opinion. ''Millions of Englishmen cannot forget the tragic lot of Coventry," or the Czechs, Lidice. Could the West be sure a rearmed West Germany "will not attack its present partners again?" Khrushchev's underlying theme was that he rejects German reunification. The Communists are there to stay in East Germany (see below), and the only kind of reunification that can be hoped for is a confederation...
...permit any negotiation with the East German puppet regime. They say that Germany can never be reunified without talks. Adenauer sees clearly that such talks will not end in reunification, but in recognition of the "two Germanys." Grudgingly, the old man dispatched a reply to Moscow's latest note, conceding for the first time that the status of reunified Germany might be discussed before free, all-German elections are held...