‘We are not seeking strength for its own sake’: the British
Labour Party, West Germany and the Cold War, 1951-64
©
R. Gerald Hughes
Article for Cold War History (September 2002)
Department of History and Welsh History
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth, Wales SY23 3DY
Telephone: 01970 622671 – Mobile: 0797 4927864 – E-mail: rbh@aber.ac.uk
Please do not cite without permission of the author
1
Article by R. Gerald Hughes for Cold War History (September 2002)
‘We are not seeking strength for its own sake’: the British
Labour Party, West Germany and the Cold War, 1951-64
Despite its vocal left-wing the Labour Party was committed to the
Western alliance from its inception in 1949. By the 1950s, this
seemed imperilled by the newly rearmed Adenauer government’s
hard-line towards the Soviet bloc. Antagonism towards the new
Federal Republic was strengthened by the anti-militarism and anticapitalism inherent in British socialism. In order to forestall
internal party attacks on NATO, the leadership of the Labour Party
thus sought to push West Germany towards a less intransigent antiCommunist position, more commensurate with facilitating EastWest negotiation. Using Labour Party archives this article seeks to
demonstrate that Labour’s anti-Adenauer policy was designed to
marginalize the pro-GDR and anti-NATO factions within the
Labour movement and strengthen support for a non-revisionist West
Germany within NATO.
Labour foreign policy in the Cold War was broadly characterised by staunch support
for British membership of the NATO alliance against the perceived Soviet threat.
Indeed, many significant figures in the Labour Party leadership (for example, Hugh
Gaitskell and Denis Healey) were, in fact, committed to a Cold War policy that
readily accepted a rather unambiguous pro-Western vision of the struggle with
Communism.1 This is not to say that there was not a significant (if fluctuating)
portion of the Labour Party that seemed hostile to the overall direction of Western
Cold War strategy. In order to avoid stimulating such feelings the Labour Party
leadership naturally sought to ensure that Western policy avoided excessive
aggression or intransigence.
In this vein the Labour Party leadership sought to
ameliorate the perceived worst effects of the staunch anti-Communist policies of the
Adenauer government in West Germany. It was hoped that this would ease Cold War
tensions over Europe and, at the same time, placate the strong anti-German faction in
the Labour Party. In essence, it is argued here that an anti-Adenauer policy was
pursued so as to facilitate a pro-German and pro-NATO consensus within the Labour
Party.
While in opposition between 1951 and 1964, substantial portions of the Labour Party
found itself at odds with the substance of the anti-Communist foreign policy of West
2
Germany. Differences over policy, inevitably, became inextricably linked with older
anti-German prejudices. In 1961 the US Ambassador in London concluded that, if the
British had their way, the division of Germany would be made permanent given the
widespread manifestations of anti-German feeling in a country where the word ‘Hun’
was still in common usage.2 The Labour movement was, of course, far from immune
from such prejudice. Antipathy for the recently created Federal Republic of Germany
ranged from a dislike for ‘capitalist’, ‘militarist’ West Germany to a sense of ‘socialist
fraternity’ with the East German ‘underdog’.3
Reflecting this, Labour Party
Headquarters was constantly bombarded by constituency and Trades Union
resolutions of varying degrees of hostility to West Germany. 4 Such grassroots feeling
alarmed a Labour leadership that had opted for alliance with he Federal Republic of
Germany. Having accepted the need for West Germany’s participation in western
defence, it was clear that anti-German sentiment in the party could undermine support
for West German membership of NATO. This, in turn, would fatally weaken the
commitment of the Labour Party to the NATO alliance. It was therefore vital for
those in the Labour Party who were committed to the Western alliance that support
for West German membership of the NATO was as widespread as possible within the
Labour movement.
Unfortunately, for those in the Labour movement who favoured NATO, as the 1950s
progressed opponents of West German rearmament within the Labour Party seemed
vindicated in their suspicions of the new West German state. That this was so was
due, in no small part, to the fact that West Germany adopted foreign policy positions
of such intransigence so as to render East-West negotiation virtually impossible. The
Labour Party leadership had supported West German membership of NATO so as to
enhance Western security.
Such a consolidation would only be a prelude for
negotiation (via the maxim of ‘negotiation through strength’). This was not the same
perspective as that adopted by the West German state. West German policy under the
conservative Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1949-63) was essentially characterised by
staunch anti-Communism known, in its heyday in the 1950s, as the Politik der Stärke
(‘Policy of Strength’). The central elements of this policy were; first, an assertion that
Germany existed within in its 1937 borders in international law, with Berlin as its
capital; second, a refusal to recognise the division of Germany; third, a denial of the
legitimacy of the GDR and a policy of isolating that state internationally; and fourth, a
3
refusal to recognise the loss of German territories east of the Oder-Neiße rivers (at
least not until a ‘final peace settlement’).5 And, fifth, the right of expelled German
‘refugees’ to return to their place of origin.6 Aneurin Bevan went to the very heart of
the matter when he warned the Adenauer government that ‘what we [in the West] are
seeking is … to be strong enough to be peaceful. We are not seeking strength for its
own sake.’7
German rearmament: resurrecting the un-reconstructed?
For many in the Labour Party, the policies of the Adenauer government stirred
memories of German militarism and extreme nationalism. This led to fears that a
future German government, bent on reversing the losses suffered in 1945, would once
again embark upon a war. In 1951, commenting on West German rearmament, the
Daily Worker declared ‘that in Britain … more and more people are protesting against
the formation of a new Nazi army.’8 This feeling did not dissipate significantly over
time. In 1963 the left-wing MP Harold Davies wrote that the FRG was bent on
eastward expansion and the destruction of the Soviet bloc. For Davies, this was
evidenced by post-1949 attitudes towards the refugees, nuclear weapons, the
prominence of ex-Nazis in the FRG, the ‘illegal’ claim that Berlin was the capital of a
unitary Germany and the absolute refusal to recognise the Oder-Neiße line.9
On 31 January 1951, when the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) met to discuss
foreign policy, (Labour) Prime Minister Clement Attlee was forced to defend German
rearmament against a succession of fierce attacks by MPs.10 Attlee insisted that,
whilst continuing to strive for an understanding with the USSR, Korea had
demonstrated the need to consolidate Western defence.11 So as to placate the party,
the Attlee government supported West German re-armament only after ensuring the
application of very stringent conditions. These included a call for negotiation in EastWest matters, an insistence that West Germany be nuclear-free, and a refusal to
countenance any changes in the post-war boundaries of Europe. The issue of West
German rearmament was an essential one as far as the Labour Party leadership was
concerned.
Labour’s International Sub-committee of the National Executive
Committee (NEC) recognised that Germany had to be re-armed within the Western
bloc. After all, ‘Germany is the only European country with a national interest in war
4
with Russia and with a national interest in alliance with Russia … Russia’s ability to
buy German cooperation by returning the Eastern provinces is one of her strongest
cards for the future.’12 This, however, did not solve the problem of the West German
refusal to recognise the status quo.
At a meeting at the Foreign Office in April 1951, Hugh Dalton, the minister with
special responsibility for the British Control Commission in Germany and,
admittedly, strongly anti-German by inclination, raised certain questions about
German rearmament.
These reservations, highlighted by the International Sub-
Committee of the NEC, included concerns that the status of the German eastern
territories meant that any West German contingent, full of ex-Nazis and expellees,
would have an interest in launching an attack on the East. This would then regain the
German territories lost at Potsdam. Given the realisation of this scenario, the rest of
the Western allies ‘would be bound to support’ West Germany, in what Dalton
referred to as ‘the danger of a German General MacArthur’. 13 Unsurprisingly, in the
face of such opposition, Prime Minister Clement Attlee only gained support for
German rearmament at the 1951 Labour Party Conference after ‘enormous pressure’
on certain small unions.14 Of course, such tentative support could evaporate at the
slightest hint of an end to West German passivity.
The Labour Party leadership, recognising the potential of German power, concluded
that there was no possibility of keeping Germany from becoming a great power in its
own right. Consequently, as the International Sub-Committee of the NEC noted, ‘The
only question still relevant is how to ensure that a powerful Germany works with the
West rather than with Russia or for national self-aggrandizement.’15 The Labour MP
Denis Healey, the party’s leading defence and security specialist, argued that ‘the very
real nature of Soviet expansionism’, and its military strength, meant that the West had
to court Germany. For ‘If the West is not prepared to defend Germany, Germany is
likely to throw her lot in with Russia.’16 The issue of how to harness Germany for
Western, rather than Soviet, ends was one that exercised all Western policy makers
and in this Labour was no exception.
The danger of a renewed Russo-German link, however remote a possibility, made the
accession of West Germany to the Western bloc a priority. Thus, in order to win
5
support within the Party the NEC made a statement proposing that the accession of
West Germany to any defence community be conditional on new elections in the
Federal Republic. Furthermore, it stipulated that ‘the rearmament of the members of
N.A.T.O. must precede that of Germany.’17 This was because ‘Western Germany
differs from every other West European country in that she has no interest in
the…status quo. Her first interest is to recover national unity, which means for all
Germans not only unity with the present Soviet zone but also the recovery of the
Eastern provinces lost to Poland.’18
Hugh Dalton was essentially correct in his
assertion that the goals of any future West German eastern policy would, in
comparison to those of a Western alliance, be beyond those of collective selfdefence.19 In April 1952 a Labour Party delegation was shocked by their German
Social Democratic Party (SPD) counterparts apparent attachment to Germany’s 1937
borders20 and – worse – the belief that the Sudetenland should, at least, allow the
return of its German inhabitants.21 Later that year Labour noted, with concern, the
1952 ‘Action Programme’ of the SPD made participation in collective defence
conditional on maintaining the goal of the reunification of Germany in its 1937
boundaries with Berlin as its capital.22
The following year, the Labour Party
Conference passed a motion expressing its concern ‘at the resurgence of German
reactionary nationalism’ and stating should be no German rearmament before further
efforts have been made to secure the peaceful reunification of Germany.’ 23 The
Labour leadership remained committed to German rearmament within the European
Defence Community (EDC) in the face of increased opposition to this as the time for
implementation approached in 1954.
Opposition to German rearmament was
increasingly becoming synonymous with naked anti-German sentiment.
In 1954 a Tribune leaflet dismissed as ‘derisory’ the EDC safeguards on the German
divisions (these included the proviso that there be no separate German general staff).
Tribune argued that ‘The twelve divisions will be Nazi-led and Nazi-trained ... [the
EDC] is not an alternative to a German national army, but merely the first step
towards its creation.’24 It argued instead for an accommodation with the Soviet Union
that would recognise and address their justifiable fear of German revanchism.
Furthermore, the Attlee government’s failure to nationalise the Ruhr25 had allowed the
industrial ‘Barons’ to return (and co-operate with) ex-Nazis in the Federal
government. ‘All those forces are once again present, and rearmament will only
6
strengthen their grip on the Bonn government.’ The pamphlet concluded that it was
an illusion to regard the German army as capable of sustaining democratic
structures.26 As proof that the Western desire to add the resources of the Federal
Republic to NATO was allowing West Germany to prepare for revanchist adventures,
the pamphlet cited Adenauer himself: ‘Our chief reason for wanting to enter the
European Army is to be able to recover our Eastern territories.’27 The fear in the
Labour movement that West Germany sought NATO membership in order to give
substance to its refusal to recognise the status quo was a common one. The Labour
MP Ben Parkin wrote that Adenauer’s integrative Westpolitik was a platform for the
continuation of the German ‘Mission in the East’.28
Labour opposition to German rearmament intensified when the EDC ran into French
opposition in 1953 and 1954.29 Harold Wilson, the future Prime Minister, moved a
motion opposing German rearmament to the PLP in February 1954, which only lost
by 111 votes to 109 (even including the support of the Peers for the leadership).30
The dispute within the Labour Party now became increasingly identifiable with a
Right-Left split with Dalton in the lead against German ‘militarism’. Fears within the
Labour movement were hardly calmed by the rhetoric of the Adenauer government
after the Paris Agreements of September 1954 secured West German accession to
NATO. Adenauer afterwards declared that West German membership of the NATO
alliance meant that ‘We are now part of the strongest alliance in history. It will bring
us unification.’31 This was scarcely how many in the Labour Party saw things. In
November 1954 Aneurin Bevan asked in the Commons: ‘Does anybody think that the
people of this country will feel safer against the prospect of war if German armies
with Nazi officers have atom bombs?’32 Thus, if Attlee and his adherents were to
ensure that a majority of the Labour Party supported the Western alliance it would be
necessary to oppose the West German Politik der Stärke on the grounds that it
virtually ruled out the option of serious negotiations with the Soviets.
If there was to be West German rearmament, Labour meant to limit is scope and the
issue of opposing nuclear armament for West Germany was a view held across the
Party. Hugh Gaitskell, Attlee’s successor made this explicit repeatedly (as, indeed,
did Gaitskell’s successor, Harold Wilson).33 In adopting this position Gaitskell was
attempting to reconcile the opponents of West German rearmament to his overall
7
position.
For the ‘Gaitskellites’ any suggestion of West German nuclear status
undermined support for West German membership of NATO within the Labour
movement, added nothing to Western security and hampered negotiations with the
East.
Gaitskell: ‘neither a pacifist nor an extreme cold warrior’
Hugh
Gaitskell
backed
German
rearmament
from
the
very
beginning.34
Simultaneously, however, he was a particularly strong proponent of negotiation with
Moscow, believing that Khruschev was ‘perfectly reasonable and willing and ready to
talk seriously about...international issues.’35. Believing that Soviet foreign policy was
essentially aggressive, Gaitskell also saw that the German question was the main
source of East-West tension.36 Gaitskell, described by his biographer Philip Williams
as ‘neither a pacifist nor an extreme cold warrior’,37 had not supported West German
rearmament simply to perpetuate the Cold War via mechanisms such as Adenauer’s
Politik der Stärke.
The Labour leader was therefore an early proponent of
‘disengagement’ and, following the Hungarian Rising in 1956, called in the Commons
for a neutral area in Europe.38 While viewed by Gaitskell as essential (and popular
with the Labour rank-and-file), ‘disengagement’ was fundamentally at odds with
Adenauer’s policies.39 Bonn was adamant that any defence against a Soviet attack
should be conducted as far to the East as possible.40 In the German experience any
land occupied by the Communists was likely to remain occupied and, as the British
political adviser in Berlin from 1956 to 1961 later recalled, disengagement was a ‘red
rag to the German bull.’41 Despite this it was believed (mistakenly) that Adenauer
might be more amenable due to the ‘modifying influence’ of the 1957 West German
elections.42 Denis Healey, Shadow Defence Secretary, published a pamphlet in 1957
- A Neutral Belt in Europe – which envisaged the withdrawal of foreign troops from
Eastern Europe and the FRG ‘as the beginning of a process which would substitute
disarmament and co-operation on mutual security for an endless arms race and
military confrontation between East and West.’43 Recognising the nature of West
German policy, Healey lamented the manner in which strength had come to be an end
in itself.44
During his visit to the FRG in 1956 Gaitskell warned Adenauer that he must conduct
his foreign policy for the good of the alliance and not for internal political reasons.
8
The Labour leader recorded in his diary his basic disagreements with the West
German insistence on reunification preceding détente. The Englishman was adamant
that the USSR would never agree to German reunification until there was a reduction
in tension and armaments and, he mused, ‘psychologically it is quite clear that quite a
number of Germans feel that way.’ 45 At a lecture at the Free University of Berlin in
March 1957, Gaitskell spoke in support of the Rapacki Plan. He claimed that the
establishment of a neutral zone in Central Europe would involve a settlement of the
German-Polish frontier, and, if acceptance of the Oder-Neiße line was the price to pay
for reunification, the Germans should be willing to pay such a price. 46 The Labour
leader, it seemed, had taken it upon himself to highlight the weaknesses of the Politik
der Stärke.
As part of his Godkin lectures at Harvard in 1957, Gaitskell linked the German
question with a flaw in alliance policy. In effect, he questioned as to whether German
reunification was a priority for Germany’s allies - particularly those who had suffered
at its hands in the Second World War. Furthermore, the German public could see that
membership of NATO had not brought reunification any closer. In order to forestall
the danger of West Germany becoming detached from the West, it was essential that
the outstanding issues on Germany be addressed. Fundamental to this, the claim to
Germany’s 1937 borders was unsustainable: ‘It seems unlikely that any substantial
change can be made to the existing frontiers’. This being the case Gaitskell stated that
‘I hope the Germans ... would feel that the renunciation of claims to the pre-1945
territories would be a price worth paying for reunification and the freedom of the
satellite countries.47
Gaitskell was in fact proposing that the FRG make concessions to achieve détente with no certainty of subsequent events.
The ‘Gaitskell Plan’ of 1957 was
subsequently refined in the 1958 Scarborough Labour Party Conference statement on
‘Labour’s Foreign Policy’. This called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from
Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Subsequently, the Four Powers [the
wartime allies] would guarantee the ‘territorial integrity of countries in this area.’48
Suspicion of such schemes would hardly have been diminished in Bonn had it known
that Khruschev had written to Gaitskell advising that ‘there are signs of a certain
narrowing of the gap between the views of the Labour Party … and the [Communist
9
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)] on a number of important questions concerning
peace.’49 For the West German government, it was clear that Labour’s proposals for
Central Europe meant neutralisation and the recognition of the loss of the Oder-Neiße
territories by the back door.
Labour’s staunch opposition to West German acquisition of a nuclear capability
predictably met with Soviet approval. Gaitskell told the Commons in April 1958 that
the British people were totally opposed to any West German possession of nuclear
weapons.50 This was part and parcel of the Labour scheme for ‘disengagement’ and
was accompanied by a demand for a nuclear-free zone in central Europe.51 To Bonn,
this smacked of inequality of treatment and the downgrading of the commitment to
defend the FRG. Worse, the West German contention that reunification must precede
détente was also rejected by the Labour Party. An April 1958 statement called for the
postponement of German reunification until détente had been achieved: ‘Labour has
long urged the need for greater flexibility...Free elections in Germany will be
desirable and feasible after a wider disengagement has gone into operation, but they
cannot possibly be a first step.’52 The belief that ‘disengagement’ was a necessary
pre-requisite for free elections was allied to a call for the West German renunciation
of the eastern territories. In the Foreign Affairs debate of 19 September 1958, the
Opposition leader called for the Oder-Neiße to be recognised as the starting point for
a European settlement as ‘We have got to go to the conference table and see where we
get.’53 Such uncertainty, not least concerning the issue of German reunification, was
anathema to Bonn.
Trying to rein in the Federal Republic
Gaitkell’s great rival, the influential Shadow Foreign Secretary Aneurin Bevan, was
equally unsympathetic to Bonn’s position.
Subsequent to the actuality of West
German re-armament, opposition to West German policy seemed a great unifier in the
Labour Party - a body renowned for its factionalism. Bevan, having lost the battle
over German rearmament, now sought to ensure that the Federal Republic would, at
least, accept the main precepts of the status quo so as to ensure stability. At the
Warsaw Journalists’ Club in 1957 he remarked that acceptance of its present frontiers
seemed to him ‘a reasonable price for Germany to pay for reunification.’54 In the
10
Commons in 1958 he noted that ‘It is unrealistic to expect the Russians to agree to a
reunited and rearmed Germany joining the Western allies [in NATO].’ Bevan then
launched a frontal assault on Adenauer’s Politik der Stärke as the main obstacle to
progress on the questions of Berlin and Germany,
Having rearmed her, we have insoluble political problems on our
hands if Germany then insists that the Oder-Neisse line should be
reconsidered and Polish fears are aroused. That is where Adenauer
really leads with his diplomacy. Russia would have to [decide]
whether to let down one of her protégés and accept German
blackmail, or resist it and accept the possibility of conflict.55
This, Bevan claimed, was not preaching hostility against Germany.
Indeed, a
settlement was ‘in the best interests of the Germans themselves... [Although as] time
goes by, and Germany feels her strength, we shall find that we shall have much more
difficulty in persuading her.’56 A month later, following Bevan’s logic, and refuting
that of Adenauer, the NEC issued a press statement that specifically plumped for
‘negotiation’ rather than ‘strength’.57 This was the fundamental element in Labour
Party differences with Bonn. It was now obvious to Labour that Adenauer meant to
use strength to build a bastion of intransigence, rather than the basis for negotiation.
To Labour this was a dead-end; to Adenauer negotiation could only mean concessions
– over German boundaries, German unity and the existence of two German states.
Labour determined that West German intransigence should not go unchallenged. In
January 1959, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, no friend of Adenauer, noted in his
dairy that ‘Gaitskell and Bevan are pressing hard (and rather irresponsibly) for
disengagement and German neutrality.’58
Gaitskell publicly advocated the
withdrawal of foreign forces from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary in
a newspaper article in February 1959. Frontier guarantees for these countries by the
US, Britain, France and the USSR could even be accompanied by eventual West
German withdrawal from NATO.59
Such public postures were encouraged by
Labour’s belief that it could gain domestic political advantage if it could seem more
likely to achieve a détente than Macmillan.60
11
The desire for détente through West German concessions
The electoral considerations inherent in Labour Party policy were, at least in part,
combined with a genuine desire for a settlement.61 The existence of these two in
combination provided a great incentive for the Labour Party to pursue the German
question. Prior to a Commons debate in April 1959, the Foreign Affairs Group of the
PLP set out its basic positions on Germany. First, the Oder-Neiße line should not be
used as a bargaining chip. If West Germany wanted a settlement it would have ‘to
show that she can settle down with the present frontiers.’ Second, Polish fears of
Germany were genuine. (Healey stated in the subsequent Commons debate that
‘Soviet fears of a united Germany are shared by all Germany’s eastern neighbours,
particularly Poland…Western Germany must now abandon its claims to those parts of
Poland which were incorporated in the Polish state at the end of the Second World
War.’)62
Third, the [West German] SPDs recent progressive proposals (the
Deutschlandplan) were to be welcomed as they accepted that economic contacts
should be stimulated in recognition of the long-term nature of political reunification.
Fourth, it was asserted that the SPD shared Labour’s thinking on ‘disengagement’ and
progress was feasible in this area.
Fifth, there must not be any West German
possession of nuclear weapons. Sixth, progress towards reunification must be gradual
so as to guard against the Federal Republic coming to an agreement with the Soviet
Union.63 The stagnation of the East-West confrontation over Germany seemed to
present the Labour Party with an ideal opportunity to appear dynamic. The danger of
dynamism, via critiques of sterile Western policies, was in the manner that it could be
presented as giving succour to the Soviet bloc.
The ‘other Germany’: the GDR
A sizeable portion of the Labour Party, particularly on the left, believed that the GDR
was entitled to some form of recognition. The East Germans at every opportunity
naturally, trumpeted this. However, even allowing for the tendency of East German
propaganda to exaggerate, anti-West German sentiment was commonplace in the
Labour movement. In 1959 there had been a public exchange of antagonistic letters
between the SPD Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, and eight hard-left Labour
MPs regarding of ‘free’ West Berlin and its status (then under threat from
Khruschev).64
More mainstream Labour MPs were also at variance with West
12
German policy. In the annual Anglo-German Königswinter Conference in 1960 a
number of Labour MPs [annual Anglo-West German] Conference criticised Bonn’s
policies. The official GDR paper, Neues Deutschland, reported that:
Labour [MPs] demanded from Bonn and other NATO countries a
more realistic policy than hitherto … the existence of the DDR must
find the [sic] de jure recognition by Bonn and the other Western
Powers. Moreover, both German States should be admitted to the
UNO and the Oder-Neisse frontier recognized by Bonn as the final
Polish Western frontier.65
Criticising West German policy evidently gave comfort to the GDR. Aware of this,
an LPID memorandum expressed concern at the ‘mis-use’ of Labour members’
actions and statements by the GDR.66 Such actions, it was noted, were ruthlessly
exploited by the GDR through ‘Systematic efforts … to misuse the Labour Party’.
The memorandum concluded that the ‘ignorance and gullibility’ of those who were
‘taken in’ by the SED (Socialist Unity Party – GDR Communist party) had damaged
the FRG, the SPD and the Labour Party.67 This was taken seriously enough for the
National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party to issue a statement on 15
June 1960 stating unequivocally that visits by Labour Party members to the GDR
were non-official in nature.68
The SPD perceived significant anti-West German sentiment in the Labour Party and
repeatedly made clear its concerns to the Labour Party leadership. The prominent
SPD Bundestag deputy, Wenzel Jacksch, saw sinister under-tones in the unilateralist,
anti-NATO factions at the Labour Party Conference in Scarborough in 1960. Jacksch
stated that, while Gaitskell’s opponents were not simply ‘tools of Moscow’, there
were influences as work ‘whose origin lay beyond the thinking process of free
socialism.’ Jacksch saw that ‘Communist world strategy’ had long aimed at
subverting the Labour Party and ‘This is where “unilateralism”... is leading in fact if
not in appearance.’ The SPD delegation noted that a resolution condemned the
deployment of Bundeswehr personnel in Britain, West German access to nuclear
weapons and the preponderance of former Nazis in the Federal Republic. While the
leadership ensured the defeat of the motion, the enemies of the Labour Party in West
Germany had plenty of ammunition from Scarborough.69
The combative West
German Defence Minister, Franz Joseph Strauss, seized upon the resolution declaring
13
that if the vote were carried out as policy, West Berlin would disappear within days to
be followed by the Federal Republic soon after.70 This, of course, reflected the
danger in Labour dalliance (even if unofficial) with the GDR in that it could be
represented as ‘fellow travelling’. To the Labour leadership it was clear that the best
method of preventing this would be for West German policy to be sufficiently
modified so as to remove the pretext for Soviet bloc propaganda against the FRG.
Labour, Berlin and the Oder-Neiße line
West German foreign policy was perceived by the Labour Party as being unrealistic
and obstructive, particularly so in the case with regard to Bonn’s refusal to accept the
loss of its territories beyond the Oder-Neiße line. The refusal to recognise the line, on
whatever technicality, was perceived as de-stabilising in the extreme as it implied a
future possible revision of Europe’s post-1945 borders.71 The feeling in the Labour
movement persisted that one of the root causes of tension in Europe was the manner
in which the West had aided the Federal Republic in evading Potsdam, thus reawakening East European and Soviet fears of Germany. The Labour MP, Gordon
Schaffer, described the ‘Potsdam decision’ on expulsions as being motivated by the
desire ‘to remove the danger of Germany using the German-speaking populations to
ferment trouble.’72 This was a feeling shared by the vast majority of the Labour
Party. On 10 July 1957 the extreme left-wing MP Konnii Zilliacus asked the Foreign
Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, ‘Would it not contribute to peace…to recognise that [OderNeiße] frontier today? [Do we] really believe that we can still bargain about the
Polish territory to the east of the frontier which was settled by six million Poles with
our consent?’73 The issue of the Oder-Neiße was a perfect political weapon for the
Labour Party. Calling for its recognition was sensible and progressive, whilst the
mere mention of the subject was embarrassing to the Conservatives by virtue of the
fact that, publicly, the Macmillan government had to endorse the West German
policy, albeit in an increasingly minimal and formulaic manner.
It was thus unsurprising that Labour MPs raised the issue of the line in the Commons
on a regular basis. In April 1959 Denis Healey, for instance, highlighting de Gaulle’s
recent recognition of the Oder-Neiße line, asked was it not time that Britain did
likewise?74 The desire to embarrass the Macmillan government, by associating it with
14
West German policy, also led to Labour charges that London was conniving with
Bonn’s desire to quietly drop efforts to continue to pursue Nazi war criminals.75 To
many in the Labour movement, West German policy on its eastern borders was
accompanied by Bonn’s reluctance to proceed against prominent Nazis in its midst.76
Despite what seemed at times an anti-German consensus in the Labour Party, motives
for such outbursts differed considerably. While the Left of the Labour Party sought to
portray Bonn as hopelessly unreformed and intransigent, the Right was more
interested in ensuring that Bonn placed its foreign policy on a less strident footing.
This was necessary if the Labour leadership were to ensure that its rank-and-file back
West Germany against any threats from Soviet power.
Following Khruschev’s Berlin ultimatum of November 1958 (aimed at forcing the
West to, at best, end West Berlin’s status as a Western outpost in the Soviet bloc) the
Adenauer government regarded the Labour Party as openly defeatist.77 This was, as
so often with Adenauer’s view of the Left, rather an uncharitable view. Labour was
committed to the maintenance of West Berlin. Denis Healey stated that ‘We in the
West have a fundamental duty to maintain the safety and security of 2½ million in
West Berlin, because if we betray Berlin no-one will feel safe’.78 In reality it was
Adenauer’s stance that the Labour Party disliked.
The Federal chancellor was
regarded as an intransigent whilst West Berlin Mayor Brandt, it was noted, dealt in
realities rather than clinging to unsustainable rhetorical positions.79
Gaitskell was adamant that the West must remain in Berlin so as not to encourage
Soviet recklessness.
He warned the 1961 Labour Party Conference that
Chamberlain’s ‘far off country of which we know nothing’ speech had been the
prelude to World War.80 Significantly, however, Labour’s willingness to defend West
Berlin came with the proviso that the West German government make concessions on
their ‘revisionist’ foreign policy. Thus, Healey’s profession of solidarity with West
Berlin was linked to a call for Bonn to recognise the Oder-Neiße line ‘as a fact’.81
Following the construction of the Berlin Wall, Healey lamented that ‘The West
should have recognised the permanence of the Oder-Neisse frontier long ago.’82
Gaitskell, who saw little to be gained by demands for a show of force after the
construction of the Wall, shared this sentiment.
The Labour leader publicly
sympathised with Soviet anxieties about Germany and urged negotiations, though he
15
spoke with caution lest he be seen to be weakening the West’s bargaining position by
‘making Khruschev think he can do just what he likes’. The Labour leader therefore
advocated trading physical control of an access route in return for partial de facto
recognition of the GDR and the Oder-Neiße line with a view to achieving a ‘zone of
controlled disarmament’ in Central Europe.83
Gaitskell sought a ‘middle way’
between Soviet and West German intransigence believing that ‘It would be as absurd
for the Soviet Union to think that it could take over control of Berlin as it has been for
the Western powers in the past to argue that a reunited Germany should be free to join
NATO.’84
The construction of the Wall, while eliciting sympathy on the human level, was thus
seen by Labour as an opportunity to make the Adenauer government face realities.
Only three days after the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Labour MP Manny
Shinwell asked whether the Macmillan Government would recognise the GDR de
facto ‘as a contribution to the solution of the Berlin Wall’.85 The Labour Party
Conference of 1961 saw the adoption of a resolution on Berlin that set the seal on the
break with the Adenauer policy. The motion, moved by George Brown, called for
secure access rights to West Berlin. In return the West would ‘recognise the present
Eastern frontiers of Germany; should accept a measure of de facto recognition for the
regime in East Germany’.86
Gaitskell commended the resolution to Conference
stating that the current West German policy was an obstacle which, he believed, ‘that
this is something which the most reasonable Germans themselves understand.’87
Labour even mooted effectively helping Macmillan out by moving a parliamentary
motion to highlight ‘the danger’ of allowing Adenauer, who enjoyed the support of de
Gaulle, to ‘hold up negotiations.’88 In late October 1961, at a Socialist International
Conference, the Labour leader intensified pressure on Bonn:
Is [the recognition of the Oder-Neiße line] any great sacrifice? I
cannot see it. No one seeks to alter this frontier by force. The
German leaders themselves have time and again emphasised that …
I believe this would be a re-assurance welcome to many in Eastern
Europe who are as strongly anti-Communist as we are here.
It could only be hoped that the Adenauer government would soon come to share the
SPDs ‘positive attitude’ in this matter. In an attempt to ameliorate West German
alarm, it was stressed that the Labour Party favoured a de facto - not de jure 16
recognition of the GDR. Gaitskell further noted that, while it was true that Pankow
did not represent the German people, neither did the Communist governments of
Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Poland:
We recognise these Governments for practical reasons and not
because we approve of them … Only those who have illusions that a
policy of total non-recognition, no-negotiation, a policy of simply
relying on our defences and waiting, will produce reunification –
only people who believe this – can imagine that some degree of
recognition will mean the abandonment of hopes for reunification is
wildly untrue… [Reunification] can only be achieved by negotiation
and it will only be achieved by negotiation if the result is not
thought either by Russia or the West to disturb their security.89
In essence, while reunification could not precede détente, détente might bring
reunification. Events had made acceptance of this principle by Bonn more likely as
the Adenauer government suffered the hammer blows of the construction of the Berlin
Wall in August 1961 and the subsequent electoral set-back in the September 1961
Bundestag elections.90 Against this background Gaitskell and a sizeable delegation of
Labour MPs visited Berlin at the invitation of Willy Brandt in early 1962. Although
Gaitskell referred to the Berlin Wall as a ‘hideous and repulsive’ creation, he again
floated his proposal to link access with East German recognition. 91 In addition, the
Labour leader thought it prudent to discourage West German ‘intransigence’ publicly,
believing that Brandt privately agreed with him.92
In 1962 the Secretary of the Labour Party International Department, the MP David
Ennals, noted that West German renunciations of force over the boundary question
were somewhat negated in value by Bonn’s insistence on upholding the nonrecognition of the frontier and the principle of Recht auf Heimat. This was expressed
in the ‘semi-official endorsements’ of the expellee organisations and their rallies and
propaganda. In Düsseldorf on August 28 1960, for instance, Vice-Chancellor Erhard
had told a rally of Germans expelled from the eastern territories that ‘We are not left
alone in the world, we owe it to our policy that we today have a strong political and
military alliance with the free world.’
To Ennals, this seemed to imply ‘that
Germany’s NATO allies were in some way committed to the German position in
regard to these territories.’ The refusal of Bonn to ‘face facts’, and the official
association with the expellee groups simply fuelled East European fears and
17
Moscow’s propaganda machine. The recognition of the line would, in his view, allow
the Labour Party to support West Germany unreservedly by placing the onus on the
USSR to be conciliatory.93 Labour thought was centring on the idea that Adenauer’s
time was passing and that a new generation would have to make choices Western
Cold Warriors had avoided.
It was in such a spirit that Labour moved a debate on Berlin in the House of
Commons on 5 July 1962. Opening the debate Harold Wilson, the Shadow Foreign
Secretary, applauded recent proposals by France, Britain and the United States for
regular meetings of representatives of the Four Powers to discuss Berlin and
Germany. As a humanitarian dimension further measures were called for in order to
alleviate the division of families and the disarming of frontier guards either side of the
Wall. Commending Gaitskell’s plan for the establishment of a special UN agency in
Berlin, Wilson asserted that he sought to alleviate the Wall’s effects without
condoning it. Adenauer’s Politik der Stärke had been utterly discredited and, thus,
‘The lesson of the wall is not that co-existence is… impossible or undesirable, but that
it is all the more essential’. As part of this the West ‘should also show flexibility in
the matter of some measure of [de facto] recognition of the East German
administration’.94 In reality this required that Bonn compromise on fundamentals
such as the recognition of another German state and accept its eastern borders with
Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Wilson pointed out that while John Foster Dulles had backed Adenauer line ‘right or
wrong’, Kennedy seemed to favour negotiation with the Soviet bloc.
The
implications for Bonn of isolation within the alliance and estrangement from
Washington were clear as, despite Adenauer’s attempts at diplomatic sabotage, the
US government’s public refutation of his position, Wilson believed, ‘may have done
more to create East-West confidence than anything for many years past.’95 For
Wilson, the end of unconditional US support for West German policy meant that the
Adenauer government would have to accept the reality of the situation after the Berlin
Wall’s construction.
Neatly assessing the situation the cerebral Dick Crossman,
perhaps the fiercest anti-German member in the Shadow Cabinet, noted that ‘we
cannot destroy the wall without destroying the fragile basis of coexistence’. 96 The
Labour Party was thus attempting to utilise the new US attitude, and the realities of
18
German division, as the basis for moving forward in its desire for a modus vivendi in
Central Europe.
Some thirteen days after the Commons’ Berlin debate, the disarmament committee of
the Labour Party approved a response to the (recently revamped) Rapacki Plan by the
MP Fred Mulley. Mulley’s plan was in line with recent US thinking on reducing the
Western dependence upon nuclear weapons. It was recognised that West German
opposition to such proposals would be fierce (as had been the case when Macmillan
had referred to ‘areas of controlled disarmament’ in Moscow in 1959). However, it
was now believed that the Conservatives had abandoned such a scheme ‘in return for
genuine support for our application to join the Common Market.’97 But ‘There is no
reason… why Labour should not press hard for those policies to which we are
committed and which we think to be right.’ Labour, of course, was less encumbered
in this stance as it was opposed to EEC membership and therefore was less fearful of
offending German sensibilities. It was therefore suggested that US proposals (made
in March and May 1962) for an international control authority for Berlin could be
linked to such a ‘disengagement’ scheme.
The Joint Committee on Disarmament
concluded that, while remaining committed to eventual German reunification and ‘a
measure of de facto recognition for the regime in East Germany’, reunification was
not ‘an immediate political objective’. Rather the Committee saw disarmament as
being the priority as ‘an arms control agreement in Central Europe and a settlement of
the Berlin problem might create the improved conditions in which the two parts of
Germany could come together.’98
The Labour Party saw the signal defeat of Adenauer’s policies of intransigence
heralded by the Berlin Wall as something of an opportunity. Whilst stressing the need
to maintain the status of West Berlin, the Labour leadership believed that recognition
of the Oder-Neiße line would remove an anachronistic obstacle to détente from the
agenda. Furthermore, the opportunity for action on this issue was enhanced by the far
less indulgent attitude of the United States to the Adenauer government following
Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.99 And, even if nothing substantive was achieved,
the Labour Party could still use the linkage of Berlin and the Oder-Neiße as a useful
means of highlighting the association of the Macmillan government with the sterility
of Bonn’s position.
19
Wilson’s leadership
Following the sudden death of Gaitskell in January 1963, Harold Wilson succeeded to
the leadership of the Labour Party. The troubles within the Conservative government
at this time meant that Labour was giving much thought to the practicalities of
government. Despite historic anti-American feeling in the Labour Party, the new
shadow Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, recognised the fundamental
importance of the United States to British policy.100 However the increasing stature
of West Germany meant that London had to look to Bonn when framing its approach
to Washington. Thus, it was essential to prevent any German-American axis within
NATO, as this would be even more inimical to British interests than the FrancoGerman axis that dominated the EEC.101
The significance of such thinking lay in the priority now accorded to the Federal
Republic in Labour foreign policy. Gordon Walker asserted that respect would have
to be shown to the wishes of the Federal Republic and its foreign policy. This would
be more commensurate with the status and relative power of the Federal Republic.
Gordon Walker believed that, short of diplomatic relations there would have to be
contact with the GDR. This was tempered, however, by a rejection of any attempt to
finalise the Oder-Neiße line over the heads of the West German government: ‘We
accept that the Oder-Neisse frontier cannot be discussed except in a final German
treaty: but, as we have often said, we cannot conceive of such a treaty that does not
recognize this frontier.’102 This was a major departure in Labour Party thinking and
set the blueprint for future policy. At a general level Labour would support the
territorial status quo of post-war Europe. Specifically, the eastern boundaries of
Germany were a matter for a German peace treaty (as had been specified at Potsdam).
The West German government continued to insist that the Soviet drive for the
institutionalisation of the status quo ignored the real causes of tension in Europe namely the division of Berlin and Germany (the West German defence minister was
explicit on this point in an article of Foreign Affairs in 1964).103 Against this, the
Soviets continued to insist that the frontiers of Europe were sacrosanct so as to
guarantee against another war.104 Wilson hoped that he could reconcile these two
20
positions.
Wilson’s Private Secretary from 1966, Michael Palliser, recalled that Wilson felt an
affinity with the Russian people ‘that was notably absent in his feelings towards the
Germans.’105 Wilson had visited the Soviet Union frequently and hoped that he
would be able to establish a dialogue with them. During a visit to the USSR in the
Spring of 1963 Khruschev launched into the usual revanchist charges against the
Federal Republic, declaring that the reunification of Germany would never occur.
Wilson, rather incautiously replied that ‘We have no respect either for Adenauer or
for Ulbricht.’
This prompted McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s National Security
Adviser, to inform George Brown that ‘I must say I … think it strange to equate
Adenauer with Ulbricht in the way it was done.’106 Wilson had already caused a stir
when, in February 1963, he had called for the de facto recognition of the GDR and of
the Oder-Neiße line.107 On the return trip from Moscow, Wilson paid a visit to
Poland. At Warsaw airport on 16 June 1963, he declared himself in favour of the
Rapacki Plan, against nuclear arms for West Germany and noted that, on the OderNeiße line, ‘there is no difference in this matter between the attitude of the Polish
government and the Labour Party’.108 It seemed to Bonn that Wilson’s desire risked
alienating Bonn in order to try and curry favour with the Soviet Union and his own
party. Such attitudes were a prime example of the ideological differences between the
Labour Party and ruling centre-right coalition in Bonn. On matters of defence and
security, Adenauer had told Kennedy that while Gaitskell was sound, the Labour
Party had a large number of left-wing neutralists, hence its reluctance to support the
West during the Cuban Missile Crisis and to even adopt a position on Berlin.109
The British Ambassador in Bonn, Sir Frank Roberts, warned in June 1964 that the
Erhard government (Adenauer left office in October 1963) was wary in the extreme
about the prospect of a Labour government.
This was especially so given the
possibility ‘that the next British Government is likely to show a more zealous interest
than its other NATO allies in the whole range of issues that can be brought under the
heading “disengagement”’. This was reinforced by West German reservations about
Labour’s antipathy towards the EEC.110 In 1962 Gaitskell denounced the European
movement for being ‘anti-American, anti-Russian, [and] pro-Colonial’.111 In common
with the issues of ‘détente’ and ‘disengagement’ it seemed that an anti-EEC stance,
21
whilst good for Labour domestically, was detrimental in the extreme to its image in
the Federal Republic.
Indeed, contemporary Foreign Office reports clearly
demonstrate that even the SPD found Labour’s attitude on German matters alarming.
West German alarm at Labour policy remained most pronounced in the question of
the commitment to German reunification and the status of the GDR.112 These fears
had only been partly assuaged when Wilson spoke to the SPD in Hamburg in the
autumn of 1963, assuring them that he had no intention of recognising the GDR.113
After a Labour-SPD meeting in London in March 1964, the Foreign Office noted with
interest that differences were largely in the field of defence and European policies.114
Underlying this, there had been some suspicion of the SPD on the part of the Labour
Party since the former had adopted the Bad Godesberg Programme in 1959, re-casting
the SPD as a ‘bourgeois’ party.115 This reinforced earlier Labour misgivings about
Kurt Schumacher’s (leader of the SPD to 1952) nationalist stance on the German
question.116 However, the SPD believed that the attitude of the Labour Party had
evolved in a positive direction. The SPD Vice-chair, Fritz Erler, told the Americans
that the Labour Party was gradually ridding itself of anti-German sentiment (the
exception was Crossman - but his influence was discounted by Erler). Labour was
still provincial with regard to the EEC but it was getting better and, Erler asserted,
Wilson seemed a ‘capable man’.117 Such long-term optimism was well founded.
Despite West German fears of a Labour government, changing circumstances would
work in favour of the Wilson government after its accession in October 1964. Not
least of these was the pragmatic attitude of Harold Wilson to matters of policy, the
succession of Adenauer by the (less dogmatic) Erhard in October 1963 (and the
freeing up of the flexible foreign minister Gerhard Schröder from the heavy hand of
Adenauer). Despite high profile gaffes by Wilson (such as those in Moscow and
Warsaw) it was unlikely that so consummate a politician would risk a serious rupture
with Bonn. The pragmatism of Gordon Walker, who stated that the Oder-Neiße line
must await a peace treaty but would most likely be recognised, represented a new
‘quiet’ diplomacy. Such diplomacy is often associated with the responsibility of
power and stood in marked contrast to the earlier bombast of Gaitskell and Aneurin
Bevan.
Nevertheless, the timing of the Labour election victory was especially
fortuitous as the West German policy of 'little steps' (kleine schritte), adopted from
22
1964 onwards, brought London and Bonn more into line with each other on the
German Question.
Conclusion
In the years of opposition between 1951 and 1964 Labour remained committed to
German reunification (at least in theory) and the maintenance of a ‘free’ West Berlin.
However, the Labour Party’s chief priority was the lowering of tensions in Europe.
Labour would never share Adenauer’s belief in the unyielding perfidy of the Soviet
bloc, while it couldn’t fail to be aware of the contempt in which Adenauer held
socialism. In reality, Labour support for West German rearmament had been
conditional upon the West leaving no stone unturned in the search for a measures to
alleviate tension in Europe. The already strong suspicions of German rearmament
within the Labour Party were further reinforced once it became clear that the
Adenauer government was committed to a stance that refused to endorse the status
quo in Europe as a prerequisite to further negotiation.
The 1960 Labour Party
statement, Foreign Policy and Defence, noted that NATO ‘is not only a military
alliance but a basis from which peaceful coexistence must be negotiated’.118
Speeches by West German politicians articulating the principle of Recht auf Heimat
provided unlimited ammunition to those in the Labour Party who claimed that the
Bundeswehr (composed of a high proportion of former Wehrmacht personnel) was
preparing to march east.119 For Labour there was great difficulty trying to reconcile
the apparent contradiction in a democratic ally such as West Germany espousing
revisionist policies. Labour leaders were prone to ascribing the German failure to see
realities on matters related to the German question as being derived of an inability to
see what was good for them. That Gaitskell advocated the recognition of the OderNeiße line was a constituent part of his pursuit of international stability.
On the question of Berlin, Gaitskell and Wilson supported the freedom of West Berlin
while recognising the security concerns of the Eastern bloc and urging negotiations.
This proved an acceptable position for the Labour Party internally but, in Bonn, was
seen as yet another example of British weakness. Labour recognised the signal defeat
of Adenauer’s ‘Policy of Strength’ when the Wall had been built in August 1961. The
Commons debate of 1962 on Berlin thus saw the Labour front bench urging the West
23
Germans to face realities over Berlin and the division of Germany and modify their
policies accordingly.
Attlee and Gaitskell had sought to steer their party in a direction that favoured West
German rearmament within the Western bloc. Their opponents within the Labour
Party had received an enormous fillip to their campaign by virtue of the policies of the
Adenauer government. The Labour Party could not support any policy that even
implied revanche as West German policy did. Due to pressures within the Labour
Party, Gaitskell had to be seen to work for détente so as to justify nuclear weapons as
the ultimate guarantor of security rather than instruments of national policy. This lay
at the heart of the urging of West Germany to accept the Oder-Neiße line and to deal
with the GDR. To support West German policy on the eastern territories would have
tied Gaitskell’s policy on British nuclear status to a position that was perceived
amongst significant portions of the Labour movement as intransigent and revisionist.
To retain nuclear weapons without advocating negotiations and measures such as the
recognition of the Oder-Neiße line risked making the Labour leadership an
accomplice in the Politik der Stärke. In such a light one can see how the consistency
with which Labour policy on the West Germany was, thus, aimed internally as well as
externally between 1951 and 1964. Had Labour won the 1959 election the rupture in
Anglo-German relations might well have been serious, as the necessity of internal
Party unity would have placed a Labour government on a collision course with Bonn.
By 1964 this danger had passed and the Wilson and the Erhard governments, whilst
never particularly close were able to establish a tolerable working relationship. This
working relationship was evidence of a more sympathetic reading of West Germany’s
situation.
Labour attitudes towards West Germany between 1951 and 1964 tell us much about
the manner in which moderate Left-wing Western parties sought to retain as broad a
constituency as possible in their support of Western Cold War policy.
It was
imperative for men like Attlee, Gaitskell and Healey to ensure that the Left of the
Party was given as little excuse for anti-West German sentiment by avoiding
association with the kind of extreme anti-communism endemic in the early phases of
the Cold War. We must consequently make the distinction between anti-Adenauer
and anti-German policies within the Labour movement. At times, especially to Bonn,
24
the distinction may have seemed academic but the distinction was a vital one. It is
with such a perspective that Labour policy towards West Germany and the Cold War
must be viewed in the years 1951-64.
Notes
The author would like to thank Len Scott and Peter Jackson for their helpful comments on draft
versions of this article.
See, for instance, Jeremy Black, ‘‘The Bitterest Enemies of Communism’: Labour Revisionists,
Atlanticism and the Cold War’, Contemporary British History, Autumn 2001, Volume 15, Number 3,
pp. 26-62.
2
John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA (henceforward JFKL): National Security Files (henceforward
NSF) Box 170, David Bruce to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, no. 229, 17.7.61.
3
Klaus Larres, ‘Britain and the GDR: Political and Economic Relations, 1949-1989’ in Klaus Larres
with Elizabeth Meehan (eds.), Uneasy Allies: British-German Relations and European Integration
Since 1945, OUP 2000, p. 78. Wilson’s Private Secretaries after 1964 absolutely concurred with this
view. Interviews with author: Sir J. Oliver Wright, 29.6.00; Sir Michael Palliser, 25.7.00.
4
A small selection from 1960-1 includes: A letter from D.R. Lewis (Ystradgynlais & District Labour
Party) to Transport House protesting against FRG troops training locally after British government
permission, 15.3.60; Erdington Labour Party letter to Transport House proposing a resolution for
conference that Germany must never again be united, 11.10.61; Christian Socialist Movement letter to
Transport House calling for the recognition of the GDR and the Oder-Neiße line immediately,
20.11.61; Westminster Branch of the Clerical and Administrative Union letter protesting against
German troops in Britain, 4.6.61.
5
At Potsdam in 1945 the lands to the east of the Oder-Neiße River had been awarded ‘provisionally’ to
Poland (East Prussia had been divided between Poland and the USSR).
6
These ten million or so refugees, expelled from former parts of Germany and Eastern Europe, had
considerable influence and were extended patronage by all the major political parties in the FRG.
7
Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Volume 598, Cols. 33-4, 4.12.58.
8
Daily Worker, 25 January 1951.
9
Harold Davies, The Meaning of Berlin: A Reply to Lord Home’s Yellow Book, London: Gladiator,
1963. In a similar anti-West German vein see Basil Davidson, Who Wants Peace?, London: Union of
Democratic Control, 1960; Gordon Schaffer, Do You Want War over Berlin?, London: Gladiator, 1961;
Stephen Swingler, Warning to the West! or The Consequences of German Rearmament, London:
Gladiator, 1961.
10
Tony Benn, Years of Hope: Diaries 1940-1962, (ed. Ruth Winstone), London: Hutchison, 1994, pp.
135-7. Roy Jenkins recalled Attlee’s critics on this matter as being an alliance of the left, ‘Germanhaters’ and pacifists. Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre, London: Macmillan, 1991, p. 106.
11
Labour Party Archive, Manchester (henceforward LPA): National Executive Committee
(henceforward NEC) International Sub-Committee, ‘Foreign Policy Aims’, 1951.
12
LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, Memo on ‘Questions of International Policy’, 1951.
13
LPA: Meeting of Dalton, Healey and Morrison, Foreign Office, 12.4.51. MacArthur had tried to turn
the war in Korea into a crusade against Communist China.
14
Kenneth O. Morgan, Callaghan: A Life, OUP, 1997, pp. 110-1.
15
LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, Memo on ‘Problems of Foreign Policy’, 1951.
16
Denis Healey, Socialist Commentary, ‘Defence of Western Europe’, October 1951, Volume Fifteen,
p. 236.
17
LPA: NEC statement, 30.4.52.
18
LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, Memo on ‘Problems of Foreign Policy’, 1951.
19
LPA: Meeting of Dalton, Healey and Morrison, Foreign Office, 12.4.51.
20
Officially, the Potsdam Declaration held that Germany’s boundaries were provisional pending a final
peace settlement. This was the line of the Adenauer government and, in theory, of the wartime Allies
too. Consequently, in international law, Bonn could assert the legitimacy of Germany’s 1937
boundaries.
21
LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, Labour-SPD-SIFO meeting, Bonn, 27.4.52.
22
LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, S. Rose report on SPD Congress, Dortmund, 24-28.9.52.
1
25
23
LPA: Resolution on Foreign and Commonwealth Policy, Margate Conference, 1953. By contrast, the
International Sub-Committee of the NEC wondered what actually constituted ‘further efforts’. LPA:
NEC International Sub-Committee, ‘Negotiations with the Soviet Union on the German Problem’,
November 1953.
24
Aneurin Bevan, Barbara Castle, Tom Driberg, Ian Mikardo & Harold Wilson, It Need Not Happen,
London: Tribune, 1954, p. 13.
25
On this specifically see ‘Economy for Rearmament: Who Controls West German Industry?’, LRD
publications, March 1954.
26
Bevan, Castle, Driberg, Mikardo &, Wilson, pp. 21-2.
27
Adenauer speech in Hanover, December 1951. Bevan, Castle, Driberg, Mikardo &, Wilson, p. 11.
28
Ben Parkin, ‘Our Nazi Ally: What German Rearmament Means’, Union of Democratic Control,
1954, pp. 5-6.
29
James Callaghan, Time and Chance, London: Collins, 1987, pp. 82-3.
30
Philip Ziegler, Harold Wilson: The Authorised Life, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993, p. 101;
Jenkins, p. 106; Benn, pp. 177-8.
31
Adenauer statement of 11 May 1955. Quoted in Sabine Huth, Anglo-German Relations 1955-61,
PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 1993, p. 76.
32
Quoted in Swingler, p. 1.
33
See, for instance, Gaitkell’s statement in the Commons on 11.2.60. Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c,
Volume 617, cols. 775-80. See also Peter Catterall, ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Policy in
Opposition: the Labour Party’ in Wolfram Kaiser & Gillian Staerck (eds.), British Foreign Policy,
1955-64: Contracting Options, London: Macmillan, 2000, p. 101.
34
Jenkins, p. 106. Tony Benn says that Tony Crosland informed him on 11.4.51 that Gaitskell had
stated as early as 1947 that German rearmament would have to come. Benn, p. 148.
35
Gaitskell election broadcast of 1959. Party Political Broadcasts: the Greatest Hits, London:
Politico’s Publishing Limited, 1998 (video).
36
See, for instance, LPA: Labour Party International Department (henceforward LPID), Gaitskell
speech to Congress of the Socialist International, Rome, 27.10.61.
37
Philip Williams, Hugh Gaitskell: A Political Biography, London: Jonathan Cape, 1979, p. 686.
38
Hansard, HC Deb, Volume 562, Series 5c, cols. 1325-34, 19.12.56. On background to this proposal
see LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, minute of Gaitskell statement in the Commons debate on
Hungary. ‘Disengagement’ sought to lower East-West tension by agreed military withdrawals.
Gaitskell cited the danger of agitation in the Soviet Union’s satellite states such as had occurred in the
GDR in 1953 and Hungary in 1956. Letter to Richard Crossman, 28.5.58 from Hugh Gaitskell, The
Diary of Hugh Gaitskell 1945-1956, Philip M. Williams (ed.), London: Jonathan Cape, 1983, p. 628. It
should be noted that there had been a rising in the GDR in 1953.
39
Bonn rejected all proposals for ‘disengagement’ from both East and West. Beatrice Heuser, NATO,
Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949-2000, London:
Macmillan, 1997, p. 125.
40
G. Wyn Rees, Anglo-American Approaches to Security, 1955-60, London: Macmillan, 1996, p. 48.
41
Bernard Ledwidge in John P.S. Gearson, Witness Seminar, ‘British Policy and the Berlin Wall Crisis
1958-61’, Contemporary Record, Volume Six, Number one, p. 142.
42
LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, ‘Germany and a European Settlement’, February 1957.
43
Originally delivered as a Fabian lecture in October 1957. Denis Healey, The Time of My Life,
London: Michael Joseph, 1989, p. 178. Similar schemes were proposed by the Polish foreign minister,
Adam Rapacki, and George F. Kennan in his 1957 BBC Reith lectures.
44
See Denis Healey, ‘When Shrimps Learn to Whistle’ Thoughts after Geneva’, International Affairs,
Volume 33, Number 2, April 1957, pp. 1-10.
45
Diary entry for 23.9.56, Williams (ed.), pp. 610-1.
46
The Times, 19.3.57. The Conservative Party regarded Gaitskell’s intervention as being electorally
motivated (and even designed to aid the SPD in the 1957 West German elections) but noted that this
goal was undermined by the open divisions in the Labour Party regarding ‘both practicality and
timing.’ Bodleain: Conservative Overseas Branch (COB) 12 (3: Germany 1956-7), Conservative
Research Department Report on the Königswinter Conference, 4-10.4.57 written by Ursula Branston.
47
Gaitskell, 1957, p. 58.
48
LPA: Joint Committee on Disarmament, ‘Disengagement in Europe’, summary by David Ennals,
18.7.62.
49
Letter from Khruschev to Gaitskell, 11.10.57. Quoted in Brian Brivati, Hugh Gaitskell, London:
Richard Cohen Books, 1997, p. 316.
26
50
LPA: NEC International Sub-Committee, minute of Gaitskell statement in the Commons, 9.4.58.
See the Labour Party pamphlets, Foreign Policy and Defence (July 1960) and Policy for Peace
(February 1961).
52
LPA: Labour Party –TUC statement, 23.4.58. Emphasis in original.
53
Public Record Office, Kew (henceforward PRO): FO 371/ 177943, [RG 1081/ 1], ‘The Oder-Neisse
Frontier: Statements by United Kingdom Leaders and Others During and Since WW II.’ Research
Department Memorandum, LR 2/ 30, 29.7.59.
54
PRO: FO 371/ 177943, [RG 1081/ 1], ‘The Oder-Neisse Frontier: Statements by United Kingdom
Leaders and Others During and Since WW II.’ Research Department Memorandum, LR 2/ 30, 29.7.59.
55
Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Volume 598, Cols. 33-4, 4.12.58.
56
Hansard, Series 5c, Volume 598, Cols. 35, 4.12.58.
57
LPA: PS/97/NEC, press statement, 6.1.59.
58
Bodleian Library, Oxford: Harold MacMillan Diaries (henceforward HMD), 20.1.59. In October
1961, Macmillan noted that Denis Healey had made a ‘mischievous’ speech arguing in favour of a
‘unified, neutral Germany as part of “disengagement”…[which] as we know a most sensitive subject
with [the] WE[st] (sic) Germans wh[ich] needs the most careful handling.’ HMD, 19.10.61.
59
Sunday Pictorial, ‘There’s no danger of war – if we talk now’, 16.2.59.
60
LPA: LPID, ‘Germany and a Summit Conference – Labour’s view’, April 1959.
61
LPA: LPID, ‘Supplementary notes for Lord Henderson’, 28.4.59.
62
Hansard, Volume 604, HC Deb, Series 5c, col. 1014, 27.4.59. Healey stated that Adenauer and his
government were making ‘completely unrealistic’ demands on their allies through their policies.
63
LPA: Foreign Affairs Group of the PLP, points to be raised in foreign affairs debate in the
Commons, 27.4.59.
64
Zilliacus, S. Silverman, Swingler, J. Silverman, Warbey, Griffiths, Hughes & Watkins to Brandt,
23.4.59, as printed in the Democratic German Report, Volume VIII, Number 10, 6.5.59. Brandt
replied to Zilliacus on 28.4.59, LPA: LPID (SPD files). Additionally Brandt wrote to Gaitskell to
express his anger over the letter, LPA: LPID (SPD files), Brandt to Gaitskell, 28.4.59.
65
PRO: FO 371/ 160570, [CG 1072/ 1], Neues Deutschland, 14.3.60. Such reports, however overstated, simply heightened the suspicion that Adenauer harboured of the British and socialists in general.
In June 1959 he had been heard to remark that ‘I have only three enemies: the communists, the British
and my own foreign office.’ PRO: PREM 11/ 2706. Steel to FO, No, 658, 26.6.59.
66
These included the open letter to Brandt in April 1960 and the visit of seven MPs to the GDR. The
latter action prompted the West Berlin SPD to complain to Gaitskell about the meeting between the
seven MPs with GDR Premier Grotewohl in East Berlin. LPA: LPID (SPD files), Kurt Mattrick
(SPD) to Hugh Gaitskell, 15.6.60.
67
LPA: LPID memo ‘Mis-use of Delegation Visits by SED Propaganda’, c. July 1960. Domestically,
the Conservative Party, no less than Adenauer, seized opportunities to highlight Communist
sympathies in its democratic socialist opponents. In 1962, the Conservative MP Sir Tufton Beamish
asserted that a recent visit by Labour MPs to East Berlin meant the GDR would take advantage of
remarks made in a ‘political context’. Berlin (Situation) debate, Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Vol.
662, col. 787, 5.7.62.
68
LPA: NEC statement, 15.6.60. As early as 1948 Ernest Bevin had warned that visits to the Soviet
bloc were being manipulated for propaganda purposes. George Thomas, George Thomas, Mr Speaker:
the Memoirs of Viscount Tonypandy, London: Castle Books, 1985, p. 67.
69
LPA: LPID, SPD-Pressedienst [Press service] P/XV/232 ‘The German Question at Scarborough’,
Wenzel Jacksch MdB, 10.10.60.
70
LPA: LPID, SPD-Pressedienst P/XV/234, ‘Never Unilateral: Strauss and Scarborough’, Fritz Erler
MdB, 12.10.60. Erler expressed the absolute solidarity of the SPD with Gaitskell in his opposition to
the majority resolution adopted at Scarborough.
71
This was a propaganda gift to the GDR who constantly reminded peoples and governments on both
sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’ that they had recognised the Oder-Neiße by means of the GDR-Polish Treaty
of Görlitz, concluded in 1950. See, for instance, Frage und Antwort, Nr. 6: Warum ist die Oder-NeißeLinie eine Freidensgrenze? (SED Abteilung Massenorganisation, 1950). This publication was part of a
series designed by the ruling East German Communist party - the SED - which, according to its
editorial staff, would ‘convince the masses of the rightness of our policies, our methods and our aims.’
72
Schaffer, p. 7.
73
Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Volume 573, Col. 352. Although Konnii Zilliacus was an extreme leftwinger, often way out on a limb on policy issues, the language he used with regard to the Oder-Neiße
line was typical of Labour thinking.
51
27
74
Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Volume 603, col. 23, 7.4.59. For similar see Hugh Gaitskell (cols. 234), 7.4.59 and S. Silverman (col. 131), 9.4.59. See also K. Zilliacus and J. Hynd, Volume 613, col.
394, 11.11.59; W. Warbey, Volume 618, cols. 835-6, 29.2.60; S. Swingler, Volume 627, col. 245,
25.10.60.
75
Barbara Castle made this charge in the Commons on 29.2.60. Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Volume
618, col. 829. Labour noted that Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had sought to evade the issue so as
to avoid embarrassment to London or Bonn. LPA: Int/1959-69/12, ‘Germany-Former Nazis’, March
1960.
76
LPA: LPID,Ennals to Sam Watson (NEC), 23.3.60.
77
PRO: PREM 11/ 2706. Steel to FO, No., 658, 26.6.59.
78
LPA: LPID, Healey in Commons, 31.7.61 quoted by Gaitskell in letter to Parnell Kerr, 27.9.61. This
was re-affirmed by Gaitskell in West Berlin in January 1962. LPA: LPID, Gaitskell speech in Berlin,
5.1.62.
79
LPA: Summary of points made by Brandt to Gaitskell and Bevan, 21.4.59.
80
The Times, 15.9.61.
81
Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Volume 645, col. 979.
82
LPA: International Disarmament sub-committee meeting, 22.9.61.
83
Williams, 1979, p. 686.
84
LPA: LPID, Gaitskell letter to Parnell Kerr, 27.9.61.
85
PRO: FO 371/ 160570, [CG 1072/ 16], FO memo, 16.8.61.
86
LPA: Resolution on Berlin, 4.10.61. Labour had put down a vote of censure in the Commons in
October 1960 over the issue of the FRG and nuclear weapons, Manchester Guardian, 10.2.60.
87
LPA: Extract from Gaitkell’s speech to Conference, 4.10.61.
88
LPA: LPID, David Ennals to Lord Alexander, 16.10.61.
89
LPA: LPID, Gaitskell speech to Congress of the Socialist International, Rome, 27.10.61.
90
While Adenauer remained as Chancellor his position was significantly weakened. See PRO: CAB
129/ 107, C (61) 154, ‘Political Situation After the West German Elections’, memo by Lord Home,
6.10.61.
91
Daily Telegraph, 4.1.62.
92
Williams, 1979, pp. 686-7.
93
LPA: LPID, ‘Attitude of the Labour Party to the Oder-Neisse Line’, David Ennals, April 1962.
94
Harold Wilson, Purpose in Politics, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964, pp. 188-90.
95
Wilson, 1964, p. 191. Dr. Wilhelm Grewe, former FRG Ambassador to Washington, recalled that
rumours about Kennedy’s willingness to link Berlin to the recognition of the Oder-Neiße line caused
the West German government to strongly favour a Nixon victory. JFKL: Oral History Program.
Interview of Grewe by Joseph O’Connor, 2.11.66, Paris, France, p. 3.
96
Hansard, HC Deb, Series 5c, Vol. 662, cols. 796, 5.7.62. Berlin (Situation) Debate.
97
Macmillan did desist from alienating the Germans for this very reason. See, for instance, HMD,
16.4.62. As it was there was no formal deal and Adenauer was hardly unduly upset when de Gaulle
vetoed the British application to the EEC in January 1963.
98
LPA: Joint Committee on Disarmament, ‘Disengagement in Europe’, summary by David Ennals,
18.7.62.
99
On this see Frank A. Mayer, Adenauer and Kennedy: a Study in German-American Relations, 19611963, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996.
100
Patrick Gordon Walker, ‘The Labor Party’s Defense and Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, Volume
42, Number 3, April 1964, p. 391.
101
Robert Pearce (ed.), Patrick Gordon Walker: Political Diaries 1932-71, London: The Historians’
Press, 1991, ‘August 1964. Thoughts on Foreign Policy’, pp. 299-300. Kennedy had already told
Gordon Walker that he doubted the West Germans would accept continued ‘discrimination’ in
armaments, JFKL: NSF Box 171, MemCon, Kennedy-Gordon Walker, 29.5.63.
102
Gordon Walker, April 1964, p. 398.
103
Kai-Uwe von Hassel, ‘Détente through Firmness’, Foreign Affairs, Volume 42, Number 2, January
1964, pp. 184-94.
104
See, for instance, N. S. Khruschev, ‘A Call for a Treaty...renouncing the use of Force in the
Settlement of Territorial and Frontier Disputes’ message to governments of all countries, 31.12.63,
London: Soviet Booklet, Volume 2, Number 2, 1964.
105
Interview: Sir Michael Palliser, 25.7.00. Gromyko later recalled that Wilson was well disposed
towards the Russian people desired a good working relationship. Andrei Gromyko, Memories, (trans.
by Harold Shukman), London : Hutchinson, 1989, pp. 161-2.
28
106
Ziegler, pp. 149-50.
Larres, 2000, p. 87.
108
JFKL: NSF Box 171, William A. Buell (First Secretary) US Embassy, Bonn, 20.6.63.
109
JFKL: NSF Box 80, MemCon, Kennedy-Adenauer, 15.11.62.
110
PRO: FO 371/ 177903, [RG 1022/ 27], Sir Frank Roberts, Bonn to Foreign Secretary R. A. Butler,
23.3.64. The anti-European wing of the Labour Party, in the words of Sir Roy Denman, ‘saw the
European Community as a Catholic and capitalist conspiracy which, if Britain was foolish enough to
join, would stifle any attempt to create a Socialist Britain.’ Roy Denman, Missed Chances: Britain &
Europe in the Twentieth Century, London: Indigo, 1997, p. 227.
111
LPA: Gaitskell speech to Labour Party Conference, Brighton, 29.9.62. Brandt saw the
psychological barrier between Britain and Europe as being very debilitating for British policy. Willy
Brandt, My Life in Politics, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992, p. 418.
112
PRO: FO 371/ 182999, [RG 1015/ 13]. A. A. Stark (Head of Chancery), Bonn to R. B. J. Ledwidge
(Head of Western Department), 24.2.65 enclosing copy of Aubrey Halford-MacLoed dispatch on
Bavarian situation for the previous six months.
113
JFKL: NSF Box 171, Edward T. Lampson (First Secretary), US Embassy, London to Department of
State, 15.10.63.
114
PRO: FO 371/ 177927, [RG 1051/ 19]. R. G. Sheridan (Western Department) comments, 24.3.64
on A. A. Stark report to R. B. J. Ledwidge, 19.3.64 on Labour-SPD talks in London 1/2.3.64.
115
Walter F. Hahn, Between Westpolitik and Ostpolitik: Changing West German Security Views,
Foreign Policy Papers, Volume 1, Number 3, London: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1975, p. 7.
116
PRO: FO 371/ 183006, [RG 1022/ 18]. ‘The Federal Republic of Germany’s Position within the
Western Alliance’, Sir Frank Roberts to Mr. Stewart, 5.7.65.
117
JFKL: NSF Box 76, Coburn Kidd, Counsellor for US Embassy, Bonn, memo of lunch with Fritz
Erler, Vice Chairman SPD, German Embassy, Washington, 24.4.63.
118
Quoted in Catterall in Kaiser & Staerck (eds.), p. 94.
119
See, for instance, Bevan, Castle, Driberg, Mikardo & Wilson, p. 8; Parkin, p. 4; Swingler, p. 3.
107
29