740.00119 EAC/2–545: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11: 50 p.m.]
1277. Cornea 173. Attention of Assistant Secretary Dunn. Since receiving Department’s instruction 4980 of January 13, I have been making a careful study of the revised 1067 Military Government Directive, exclusive of its appendices, with a view to working out the best approach for negotiating it in the European Advisory Commission. I should appreciate Department’s comments on the following points in order to be prepared to answer certain questions which are likely to be raised in the Commission.
- 1.
- Several articles of the revised 1067 are paraphrases of subjects on which agreement has already been reached in the surrender instrument and the control machinery agreement. For example, article 2 of 1067 in general repeats articles 1, 3 and 5 of the control machinery agreement. Article 6 is basically a restatement of the underlying purpose of the surrender instrument. The second sentence of article 9 repeats article 9 of the control machinery agreement. I should appreciate being informed on the grounds which the Department wishes to have advanced in the EAC for negotiating these points a second time.
- 2.
- Articles 7 B, 8, and the first sentence of article 9 deal with matters lying within the jurisdiction of each of the Commanders-in-Chief and not readily susceptible of inter-Allied agreement.
- 3.
- Article 3 is declaratory and expository in character. Article 4, similarly, sets forth a statement of intentions or promises [premises?] rather than a precise basis of agreement. Article 5 is exhortatory in its wording and would be difficult to negotiate as an agreement without fuller definition of such words as “just”, “firm”, and “fraternization”. Article 10 proclaims a desirable ultimate objective without setting forth any defined arrangements to be made between the Allies for its attainment during the period of Allied military government.
In general, most of the provisions of this draft directive would seem to be more suitable for issuance to the German people as a broad statement of Allied intentions than for negotiation as an agreement among the Allied Governments. Reference is made in this connection to paragraph 10 of the Commission’s report transmitting the control machinery agreement to the three Governments.
Experience in negotiating the agreements on unconditional surrender, zones of occupation and control machinery shows the need for precise and clear wording of any undertakings designed to regulate the joint action of the occupying forces. If the Commission is to devote a large amount of time to inserting a clear and definite content in the revised 1067, it will be greatly delayed in its basic task of arriving at agreements on the really vital questions of broad policy toward Germany.
If the Department, nevertheless, wishes the revised 1067 to be pressed energetically in the Commission, I should appreciate being forearmed with its comments regarding 1, 2 and 3 above. Likewise, since I am directed to state, in presenting 1067, that it will be supplemented by “other statements of policy on subjects not covered by it” or by United States draft directives now before the EAC (Department’s 60387a) it will be essential to give the Commission some indication of the nature and scope of those supplementary statements, of the subjects they will cover, and of the time when they will be presented in the EAC.
As the Department is aware, the United States draft directives which we have prepared here have been submitted to Washington for consideration not as finished expositions of United States policy, but as a means of eliciting broad statements of United States policy as a basis for arriving at Allied agreement, leaving the implementation of broad policy to be worked out by the Commanders-in-Chief in the Control Council. The following United States draft directives on political and administrative subjects are awaiting consideration in Washington: control of education, disposition of political prisoners, international agreements, war criminals, removal of German officials and civilians from territory formerly under German control, control of German foreign relations, control of public health.88
A clear indication of the time when these draft directives, or of policy statements dealing with these subjects, can be considered and cleared in Washington for presentation to the EAC might assist me considerably in persuading the Commission that a prompt discussion of revised 1067 will be followed by the presentation of United States policy on further matters requiring agreement between the occupying powers and not covered or not covered adequately in 1067.