This obstructionism, together with the suffering and hopelessness prevalent in Europe and Germany, impelled the American Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, to restate U.S. objectives and policies at Stuttgart, Germany, on September 6, 1946. Mr. Byrnes said U.S. policy had been consistent with the following guide lines: to defeat Nazi Germany and obtain its surrender; to assure that Germany would not misconstrue the causes and consequences of aggressive war and would not again launch such a war; to encourage revival in Germany of those elements which would be the best guaranty that Germany would become democratic and follow moderate policies; and to unite the German people into one nation under their own leaders.
Secretary Byrnes said:
While we shall insist that Germany observe the principles of peace, good-neighborliness, and humanity, we do not want Germany to become the satellite of any power or powers or to live under a dictatorship, foreign or domestic. The American people hope to see peaceful, democratic Germans become and remain free and independent.
The Council of Foreign Ministers, meeting at London from November 25 to December 15, 1947, failed to reach agreement on the problems of reunification of Germany and establishment of a central government with which a peace treaty could be negotiated. Basic to failure of the Council of Foreign Ministers was the clear-cut, fundamental issue between the Soviets and the West: postwar economic recovery in Europe and Germany. With the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), the United States frankly advocated rehabilitation of the European community into healthy nations strong in government and guarantors of true freedom for the individual against the terror of tyranny. Although aid was offered to Europe as a whole, not just Western Europe, the U.S.S.R. was hostile to economic recovery, obviously preferring continuation of the political and economic vacuum in Europe caused by the havoc of World War II. Consequently, the U.S.S.R. refused to participate itself in the European Recovery Program and kept other European countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, from participating. Instead, it decided to push on with its plans for dividing and weakening Germany. Abolition of the Allied position in Berlin and isolation of the people of West Berlin became the first objectives in the offensive.
The Soviets walked out of the Allied Control Council for Germany on March 20, 1948, and imposed rail and road restrictions on Allied traffic to Berlin from the Western zones on April 1, 1948. The Allies inaugurated a “little airlift” which was expanded to a full airlift on June 26, 1948, two days after the Soviets imposed a total blockade. On June 16, 1948, the Soviets walked out of the Kommandatura (the Allied governing body for Berlin), and on July 1, 1948, the Soviet chief of staff of the U.S.S.R. delegation to the Kommandatura told his British, French, and American colleagues that four-power administration of Berlin no longer existed. The attitude of the Western powers was that an organization established by four-power agreement could not be dissolved unilaterally. In spite of his withdrawal from the Allied Control Council, Marshal Sokolovsky, the Soviet representative on the Council, expressed a curiously similar attitude on June 29, 1948, in a letter to General Clay, the U.S. Commander in Germany. Referring to the informal London conference of June 7, 1948, between representatives of the three Western powers and the Benelux nations on German problems, Marshal Sokolovsky said:
Therefore, any decisions regarding Germany, concluded by one or several of the occupying Powers in Germany without the participation of the Soviet Union, are illegal and without moral authority.
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