Appendix Six (Chapter Eight, note 205)
The U.S. Assessment of German Nuclear Aspirations

During the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy periods, U.S. officials generally did not believe that the German government wanted to acquire a nuclear force of its own. The Germans, it was assumed, might eventually want to move in this direction, but for the time being this was not a major issue. Ambassador Bruce, for example, thought in 1958 that Adenauer was not interested in a German nuclear capability, and that whatever might happen in the long run, for the time being German nuclear ambitions were limited to a "handful of men headed by Strauss."(1) The CIA in 1960 evidently did not think the Adenauer government intended to develop a nuclear force under its own control, although the agency did note that the Germans might want "a continental military system with its own capability." On the whole, the official estimate was quite conservative; even the State Department's dissent (not shared by Secretary Herter) only warned that a "trend toward nationalistic independence on the part of the West Germans" might develop in the future.(2)

Similarly, in the early Kennedy period, the assumption was that while this was a problem of great potential importance, for the time being the Adenauer government had no real desire to develop a German nuclear capability.(3) It was only toward the end of 1961 that top American policy makers began to see how serious German nuclear aspirations actually were. "It was clear," Rusk told the British foreign secretary in December, "that the Germans were moving steadily towards a national nuclear capability." This was a great source of concern, he said, because if the Germans went nuclear, it "would be a shooting issue for the Russians."(4) But this view was not universally shared within the U.S. government. Even as late as June 1962, the American ambassador in Bonn, Dowling--Adenauer always pronounced his name as "Dooling," a German word for fool--was still flatly denying that the Germans had any "present intention of developing [an] independent nuclear capability."(5)

This interpretation had not taken shape by accident. Even in the late 1950s, the Germans, for a whole series of reasons, played down their nuclear aspirations.(6) Whatever Eisenhower's attitude, it seemed clear enough that the State Department was against the idea of a German nuclear force. Why should the Germans antagonize the American government by showing their hand too openly? In 1958, Strauss went so far as to lie to the Americans about the meaning of the FIG agreements: these arrangements had nothing to do, he said, with nuclear warheads. The Americans were under no illusions about Strauss. But Adenauer was mistakenly viewed as a great opponent of the policy identified with the defense minister, a view he evidently encouraged, in order to get the Americans to loosen their control over NATO's nuclear capabilities. He had to be helped, he said, in his struggle against the more "nationalistic" elements in Germany; there had to be some movement away from absolute American nuclear hegemony in order to head off these dangerous attempts at full nuclear independence. Adenauer, in other words, still knew that there were gains to be made by telling the Americans what they wanted to hear, and especially by telling them things that would put him personally in a good light.(7)

By 1962, even after the fog of misconception had begun to clear, the American government still sought to play down the seriousness of the issue. By this point, top U.S. leaders were convinced of how real German nuclear ambitions in fact were.(8) But when dealing with people outside the government the issue was played down and treated as essentially hypothetical. The development of a German nuclear force, Rusk, for example, told the Senate Foreign Relations committee (in executive session) would be an extremely serious development and might well lead to a "very great crisis" with the Soviet Union. But this was just something that might happen five, ten or fifteen years down the road. The pressure to move in this direction would develop sooner or later if the Germans felt they had nothing in the nuclear area, and that was why the U.S. government wanted to head off this problem before it developed by pressing for the creation of a NATO multilateral force.(9) It was not as though the Adenauer government had already adopted a particular policy which the Americans were determined to oppose. But one could just see the pressures that were bound to develop if the attempt to create a multinational force failed, or if the U.S. government helped the French build a nuclear force of their own. Thus Bundy wrote Raymond Aron that in the short run an American decision to aid France "would not produce irresistible pressures from Germany," but over time, after Adenauer was gone, he was much less sure. The Germans, he said, insisted on "equal treatment in all fields." Wasn't it likely that sooner or later they would apply this principle to the nuclear area as well?(10)

Top U.S. officials were thus deliberately playing down the issue. The aim presumably was to avoid too direct a confrontation with the Adenauer government, and to express American opposition in a way that the Germans would find least unpalatable and easiest to adjust to. The tactic probably also had something to do with the talks with Russia on the Berlin cisis: a non-nuclear status for Germany might be part of the deal to settle the crisis, and if the impression took hold that the Germans had never seriously wanted to get their own nuclear force, it would be hard to say that this amounted to much of a concession. The charge that America was appeasing the Russians or selling out German interests would thus be blunted. And finally if the view could be propagated that a German nuclear force was practically inconceivable, the easier it would be to make sure that such a development remained out of the question: it never happened; it never could happen; therefore it never will happen.


The idea that the German government was never seriously interested in developing a nuclear force of its own then became the official line, not just in America but for different reasons in Germany as well: the Germans had no interest in stressing the fact that their non-nuclear status was imposed on them from the outside, and indeed following a struggle in which Adenauer was defeated. The consensus interpretation soon spilled over into the scholarly literature: for many years the prevailing assumption was that German nuclear aspirations in the late 1950s and early 1960s did not go very far.(11) It was only in 1991, with the publication of the second volume of Schwarz's biography of Adenauer, that this interpretation collapsed, at least among specialists in the field: the evidence that Schwarz presented was so compelling that the earlier view was simply no longer tenable.


NOTES

1. Bruce to Dulles, February 28, 1958, 762A.5611/2-2858, RG 59, USNA. Note also Norstad's reaction, after Strauss approached him to ask that IRBMs be stationed in Germany. Strauss told him that Adenauer had approved the request, but Norstad could scarcely believe that the chancellor was really behind that policy. Macmillan-Norstad meeting, November 26, 1958, Prem 11/3701, PRO.

2. NSC meeting, April 1, 1960, FRUS 1958-60, 9:680. Note also NIE 4-3-61, "Nuclear Weapons and Delivery Capabilities of Free World countries other than the US and UK," September 21, 1961, paras. 39-43, FRUS 1961-63, vols. 7-9, mic. supp., no. 243, for similar conservative views on this subject.

3. See especially Acheson's remarks in a meeting with British leaders, April 5, 1961 (second meeting), Cab 133/244, PRO. Note also the unequivocal statement in a State Department briefing paper for Adenauer's visit to Washington in early 1961. The judgment here was unequivocal: the Chancellor was "fundamentally opposed to the spread of independent national nuclear weapons capabilities, and he is especially concerned that pressures will sooner or later develop for a German national program." Fessenden briefing paper, "NATO, Including Results Acheson Review," April 5, 1961, Acheson Papers, box 85, HSTL.

4. Rusk-Home meeting, December 10, 1961, p. 4, FO 371/160567, PRO.

5. Dowling to Rusk, June 5, 1962, 762A.5611/6-562, RG 59, USNA.

6. For a list of twelve German statements from the 1959-62 period denying any intention to go nuclear, see D1053/9, FO 371/171150, PRO.

7. Rusk-Adenauer meeting, June 22, 1962; Bruce to State Department, June 26, 1962; and Bohlen paper, July 2, 1962; in FRUS 1961-63, 13:422-424, 428. Macmillan-McNamara meeting, April 29, 1962, p. 28, Prem 11/3783, PRO. See also Appendix Four above.

8. Rusk testimony, August 28, 1963, Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series), vol. 15, pp. 520-521.

9. Bundy to Aron, May 24, 1962, NSF/71a/France. General/JFKL.

10. The standard account for many years was Catherine Kelleher's Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975). The Kelleher study, which was based mainly on interviews, was the main source for Bundy's account in Danger and Survival, pp. 487-488; note especially the passages from Kelleher he quotes there, and also his claim on p. 498 that no one expected Germany would build a bomb, and that those who were worried that she would had made an "error about Germany." For another standard judgment in this vein, see Jeffrey Boutwell, The German Nuclear Dilemma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 37. Referring to the FIG agreements, Boutwell says that "there was no question here of the FRG seeking a surreptitious route to acquiring its own nuclear weapons; the domestic and external constraints were just too formidable." This view was commonly held in Germany as well. See, for example, Dieter Mahncke, Nukleare Mitwirkung: Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der atlantischen Allianz 1954-1970 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972), p. 47.