The Allied Council of Foreign Ministers Conferences and the German Question, 1945-1947
Author(s)
Spevack, Edmund
Abstract
Between 1946 and 1947 the United States departed from its conciliatory approach toward the Soviet Union and aimed to stabilize Western Europe by securing the Ruhr and the West German industrial base. As Stalin declared that communism and capitalism were fundamentally antithetical to one another, thus denying the possibility for a stable international peace, Truman responded by bolstering Western Europe against the new communist threat. Truman opted to build up western Germany economically and to integrate it into a consolidated Western Europe. The German question now became an interplay between the wronged European powers (namely France) who wanted to see a punished, repentant state, and the geopolitical need to secure military and economic provisions in western Germany as a bulwark against expanding capitalism.
