Towards Normality 1951-1955

By Sir Frank Roberts

I returned to the Foreign Office in 1951 as Deputy Under Secretary dealing with Germany, having already been closely involved in Anglo-German relations between 1947 and 1949 as Private Secretary to Ernest Bevin and more especially as his personal representative negotiating with Stalin in 1948 on the Berlin Blockade and Air Lift. I was fortunate again to be involved, in 1951 to 1954, in the major developments ending with German membership of NATO and of WEU. This period, marked by close cooperation between Adenauer, Churchill and Eden, was one of the happiest and most productive in post-war Anglo-German relations.

But we had to wait until 1955 for the formal opening of the German Embassy in Belgrave Square, although there was already a German diplomatic representation in London under Dr. Schlange-Schöningen. The Embassy would have opened in 1952, after the signing of the Bonn Agreements, restoring sovereignty (with a few Allied reservations relating to Berlin and all-German affairs) to Adenauer's Federal Republic. The cause of the delay was the Korean War, requiring the return of American troops to Europe, with a consequent American demand that the Germans should be re-armed in their own defence. This was then only acceptable to the French under their proposed European Defence Community and they made it a condition that the Bonn Agreements should await agreement on the Defence Community. This never had French majority support but was not rejected by the French Parliament until 1954.

German opinion had also to be satisfied that the door was not being closed on the prospect of German reunification. The delay enabled Germany's Western allies to show in an exchange of notes with the Russians in 1952, in Churchill's unsuccessful attempt to find "new" Russian leaders in 1953 after Stalin's death, and above all in the Berlin Conference with Molotov in 1954 that reunification on acceptable terms was not then a practical possibility.

In the autumn of 1954 Eden rescued Europe from the collapse of the EDC with his alternative plan of German membership of NATO and of WEU which was made acceptable to the French by the then revolutionary commitment to maintain important British military forces on the Continent. These arrangements, agreed in London, were completed in Paris in 1955. This enabled the Bonn Agreements of 1952 to take effect. "Johnny" von Herwarth opened in May the German Embassy in Belgrave Square which rapidly became and has since remained one of the most hospitable and successful diplomatic missions in London.