Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  Dulles, who eight months earlier had warned that defeat of the EDC would force an “agonizing reappraisal” of American commitments, now called the situation “a crisis of almost terrifying proportions.” Eisenhower, who considered German rearmament crucial to his strategic design, dispatched Dulles to London in October to talk to the NATO representatives and find a way to break the deadlock. It was Britain’s new prime minister, Anthony Eden, who picked up the pieces and resolved the differences, though Conant was convinced Dulles’s “threatening attitude had a good deal to do with Eden’s putting forward the plan.” The French finally agreed to restore West German sovereignty after nearly a decade of occupation and authorize the creation of a German army, permitting the Federal Republic to play a role in the defense of Europe. In return, Adenauer assured France that Germany would limit its military contribution to NATO to twelve divisions and 1,300 aircraft, forgo missiles and naval vessels, and renounce its right to manufacture atomic, biological, and chemical weapons. At the end of a long, hard week spent hammering out the details, Conant headed back to Bonn. Though it seemed almost miraculous, they had at last reached an agreement on German rearmament.

  The day before Christmas, Conant was listening to the morning news on Armed Forces Radio when he heard the French National Assembly had again voted to reject the accords. Weary and disheartened, he was in no mood to attend the holiday party that evening at the French High Commission. Trying to put a good face on it, he and Patty sipped champagne through gritted teeth and attempted polite small talk. No mention was made of that morning’s stunning setback. When a high-ranking French general turned to Conant and commented in excellent English, “Oh, you are the high commissioner for Germany. The Germans are a most difficult people,” Conant could not help himself and indulged in a rare outburst of temper, snapping, “To us Americans, all Europeans seem difficult people!”

  To his immense relief, two days before the New Year, the French National Assembly voted 287 to 260 for the agreements. It had taken months of “incredibly torturous” negotiations to get France to bow to the inevitable. The three new accords were signed in Paris on March 27, 1955, securing the future of Western Europe. In his journal that Sunday, Conant dashed off one line: “So it seems that at long last the Paris treaties are ratified.” The announcement of the new independent Germany was not accompanied by any noisy celebrations or parades. Conant and Adenauer handled it quietly, aware of the strong opposition east of the Elbe River, where the eighteen million Germans who lived outside the borders of the Federal Republic viewed it as the last nail in the coffin of reunification.

  On May 5 the Allied occupation would come to an official end. The ceremony for the formal exchange of ambassadors of the new sovereign nation was scheduled for noon. Each of the high commissioners had been instructed to arrive at the reception rooms in full evening attire, accompanied by five members of staff, likewise in white tie and tails. Two days before the historic occasion, a cable came from Washington: the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had not yet approved Conant’s appointment as ambassador of the Federal Republic. His wrath “boiled over”: because of bureaucratic incompetence, he would be left “diplomatically naked” at the stroke of twelve.

  The holdup, as he soon learned, was due to a last-minute appeal from a former chief justice of the Allied High Commission Court of Appeals in West Germany, William Clark, who harbored a grudge against Conant for having amended the law of the occupation tribunal in a way that circumvented his authority and, he believed, led to his being dismissed from the bench.I In the end, a red-faced Conant explained his predicament to German officials and attended the grand celebratory dinner, though he lacked the proper credentials. Nine days later, he became ambassador to Germany after being approved unanimously by the Senate committee, a thumping endorsement that, under the circumstances, the New York Times called “tantamount to a tribute to Conant’s role as a diplomat.”

  Following the Geneva Summit in July, there was a slight thaw in East-West relations. The new Soviet leadership agreed to sign the Austrian Peace Treaty, making that country independent but neutral, on the Swiss model, with its own defense forces. Eisenhower was delighted, hailing it as another small crack in the Iron Curtain. While little progress had been made on the key issues of disarmament, European security, and German reunification, the Soviets had shown a willingness to negotiate, which made for a refreshing change.

  In an effort to reduce tensions and minimize the danger of a surprise nuclear attack, Eisenhower had unveiled at the summit his “open skies” proposal to open the airspace above the United States and the Soviet Union to inspection flights by each country. His plan called on each side “to give each other a complete blueprint of our military establishments, from beginning to end, from one end of our countries to the other.” The Russians were not interested. Nikita Khrushchev, the new secretary of the Communist Party, was convinced it was an espionage plot. But Eisenhower continued to promote the “spirit of Geneva,” telling congressional leaders that after ten years of relentless, hostile cold war rhetoric, both nations had taken a step back from the arms race and horrifying prospect of nuclear Armageddon. Conant, who saw no sign the Russians were serious about disarmament, thought the summit was a “fraud, from beginning to end,” and dismissed the whole exercise as political theatrics. His suspicions were confirmed when two weeks after the conference, the Russians embarked on a series of H-bomb tests.

  * * *

  By his fourth year in Germany, Conant had become a popular figure, often fondly referred to in the press as “Professor Atom,” his scientific learning commanding more respect than his statesmanship. He had rapidly improved on his chemist’s German and spoke the language fluently, with a freewheeling approach to grammar and a flat Boston accent that endeared him to the local citizenry. He was conscientious about performing what he called his “goodwill tours,” visiting every large and medium-size city in the country, stopping by refugee camps, Red Cross centers, and orphans’ homes, attending bull sessions with editors and beer evenings with local politicians, lecturing at schools and listening to the concerns of teachers and their pupils. He was particularly proud of the new Free University of Berlin, which had started in a warehouse a handful of years earlier and now occupied a resplendent modern campus paid for with Ford Foundation money. In his frequent addresses to college students, he tried to “accentuate the positive,” talking about the way Germans had repudiated Hitler and rebounded under enormously trying circumstances, calling them the “commandos of the Cold War.”

  On the subject of Nazism, however, he became vehement, insisting it was an “abomination,” a “monstrous aberration,” a terrible crime not only against Europe but also against the best and lasting traditions of the German people themselves. Some neo-Nazism still existed on the fringes, and there was a certain cynicism about party politics that, if it became too pervasive, could degenerate into nihilism, but he did not believe in the lazy truism that history was doomed to repeat itself. “The spirit of free Germany is the spirit of people who have turned their back on the Nazi past,” he declared, hailing the Nuremberg trials and their tragic record of Nazi war crimes as a guidepost to a future ruled by law, not force. Once again resolutely turning his hopes to education, he argued that any educated society, “given half a chance,” would choose freedom over tyranny, and self-government under law. He attributed his optimism to his conversations with the younger generation, whom he credited with an amazing resilience and a real eagerness to move beyond the rubble of yesterday to a better tomorrow.

  Now that the Federal Republic had been ushered into the Atlantic fraternity, and the country was “on its way,” Conant felt his mission had been accomplished, and he began looking forward to returning home and resuming his career as an educator. Only weeks after the new independent Germany was born, he began planning his next act. John W. Gardner, the new president of the Carnegie Corporation, had written to him, stating that he was just the sort of compelling commu
nicator and “effective crystallizer” they were looking for to tackle some aspect of the problems facing American education. He could do anything that interested him, and Gardner would underwrite it with a “blank check.” Conant leapt at the offer and immediately began making notes for an ambitious study of American high schools. “He was absolutely clear in his mind what he wanted,” recalled Gardner, who met him for lunch that spring during one of the ambassador’s flying visits to Washington, and told him the offer stood and there was no need to make a hurried decision. But Conant had made up his mind, confiding that he would in all likelihood resign his post at the end of Eisenhower’s term, following the 1956 presidential election. “He had thought it through,” marveled Gardner, who happily closed the deal then and there. “I might have known he never goes off half-cocked.”

  Conant’s impatience to wind up his diplomatic career stemmed from his dissatisfaction with the job and his growing dislike of Dulles. Though Conant had a grudging respect for his nerve and negotiating skills, the Wall Street lawyer was reluctant to delegate power and tended to treat his envoys like the lowly office boys in his old firm. The secretary of state was a polarizing figure. Like Conant, none of the ambassadors who came through Bonn were “very favorably inclined towards him.” His personal feelings aside, however, it was Dulles who was the prime mover of American foreign policy, and his position was only strengthened after Eisenhower’s heart attack in September 1955. For months afterward, he was the reigning figure in the administration, guaranteeing there would be no change in his extremely hands-on approach to diplomacy.

  No doubt Conant also sensed that he had fallen out of favor with Dulles, who took a dim view of his independent forays into cold war diplomacy. Once the treaties had been ratified, and the Soviets saw there was no longer any chance to divide the Western Allies, the tensions over Berlin increased dramatically, as did the friction between Conant and his boss. The trouble started when the Soviets’ puppet regime in East Germany arbitrarily imposed exorbitant tariffs on the autobahn in and out of West Berlin and then announced its intention to halt all barge traffic, which Conant considered “tantamount to blackmail.” When he told Dulles and Adenauer that the lifelines into free Berlin were being threatened, they brushed aside his concerns, recommending it be left in “German hands.” Instead, Conant took matters into his own hands, lodging official protests and pushing back against the Soviets’ blatant attempts to gain control of the city.

  Things came to a head with the nuisance arrest of two US congressmen, Representatives Edward P. Boland of Massachusetts and Harold C. Ostertag of New York, on November 27, 1955. The two American VIPs had been on a sightseeing trip in the Soviet zone of Berlin and on their return were detained at gunpoint at the border crossing by East German police on the grounds they had used their car’s radio telephone in violation of GDR laws. When the Soviet Berlin commander refused to accept a United States protest of the incident because East Berlin was part of the GDR and no longer subject to occupation rule, Conant decided he could not allow the “grossly discourteous and threatening conduct” to go unchallenged. He hopped on his private train to Berlin and then defiantly drove deep into the Soviet sector in his official car with the Stars and Stripes flying as a symbol of American determination not to abandon the divided city. At a crowded news conference later that afternoon, he explained that his impromptu road trip was intended to provide “visible proof” the United States would remain in Berlin.

  The US ambassador’s dramatic stunt made headlines back home: “Conant Defies Reds,” reported the December 3 New York Herald Tribune, including a photo of him grinning broadly beneath his homburg. Editorial writers commended Conant’s refusal to be bullied by the Soviets, and several congressmen wrote to express their appreciation. Dulles, however, was not pleased with his heroics. Several days later, Conant received a patronizing reprimand from one of the assistant secretaries, reminding him “decisions could only be made in Washington.” Unrepentant, Conant felt no reply was necessary.

  Distrust had dogged the Conant-Adenauer relationship from the start, and it grew considerably worse over the next year. Proposals calling for a substantial reduction in US Army manpower had rekindled the aged chancellor’s nightmares of an American withdrawal from Europe. The so-called Radford Plan (named for its advocate, Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was part of the administration’s New Look Doctrine, which approved the use of nuclear weapons in limited war situations, thus reducing the need for maintaining large conventional forces. This deliberate shift to nuclear deterrence over local defense forces was, in Dulles’s words, the modern way to get “maximum protection at a bearable cost.”

  Now that West Germany had won the right to rearm, Dulles wanted the Federal Republic to move ahead quickly with its plan to build its own half-million-man army and impose a mandatory two-year conscription, in order to relieve the United States of the expense of keeping reserve troops. Frustrated by Adenauer’s leisurely pace, Conant was under orders to expedite the military buildup. The whole plan was almost derailed when the German press reported that NATO’s secret Carte Blanche exercise, designed to simulate its response to a Soviet attack, culminated in a mock nuclear battle with 335 enemy devices exploded on West German soil and five million casualties. Needless to say, this frightening preview of Dulles’s strategy of “massive retaliation” as a means of defense against Communist aggression did not go over well, and, along with the anticipated cutbacks in American land troops, was exploited by Adenauer’s political opponents.

  The chancellor was doubly angry because he believed he had been deliberately left in the dark regarding the impending troop reductions, and Conant could not blame him: “Somebody in Bonn really smelled what the real situation was.” Almost from the beginning, US officials had planned to rearm Germany and pull out the American troops, but if “any hint of such a thing” had got back to the country’s leadership, they never would have cooperated. Although uncomfortable with diplomatic subterfuge, Conant went along with it: “We were dealing with a very, very delicate situation in which hypocrisy verging on straight prevarication was about the only thing that could be used.” Despite Conant’s determined efforts to assuage the chancellor’s fury, Adenauer retaliated by refusing to honor his agreement with the Americans to put through a two-year draft; instead, he cut the size of the German army down to 350,000 and reduced the duration of the conscription period to twelve months. As a result, rearmament proceeded even more slowly. “What irony,” Conant scribbled in his diary. “First we were afraid the Germans would rearm, and now we are afraid they won’t!”

  Dulles tried to soothe the chancellor, but by then their friendship had foundered. Rather than blame himself, Dulles blamed Conant and decided what was needed was a new face in Bonn. For months, he had been fielding complaints that the Harvard scientist was too “textbook” in his approach to foreign relations. Dulles tended to agree, regarding the brisk, businesslike Conant as too reserved and, while lofty in argument, lacking in “political touch.” He had nothing of the courtier about him and had failed to forge the desired bond of intimacy with Adenauer that would strengthen US-German ties.

  When Dulles had first suggested to the president that perhaps a change might be in order, back when the German High Commission was abolished in the spring of 1955, Eisenhower had rebuffed him, replying by memo, “I prefer to appoint Conant.” Now Dulles changed tacks. On July 16, 1956, he approached Eisenhower about possibly transferring Conant to Rome, a post currently occupied by the flamboyant Clare Boothe Luce, who was known for her lavish entertaining. Earlier in the day, Dulles had joked with his aides about whether the notoriously tightfisted Yankee could afford Italy, remarking that he “probably would not operate on the extravagant style of Mrs. Luce.” Eisenhower had his doubts. After reviewing the available ambassadorships, Dulles then suggested India, and Ike readily approved the plum assignment.

  Conant, who was spending his annual summer leave at his rusti
c cottage in Randolph, New Hampshire, was surprised to receive a message from the tiny North Country Inn, located a mile away, that the secretary of state was trying to reach him. (Since they were there for barely a month and did not want to be disturbed, he had not bothered to have the phone connected.) Filled with visions of the “major catastrophe” that would require his urgent attention, he jumped in the car and sped down the road. He braced himself for the news from Washington, picking up the hotel phone just off the lobby, a far-from-private spot. Without any introduction, Dulles said: “The president and I would like to have you go to India as the United States ambassador.” Conant gasped, mostly in horror—India held no attraction, nor did the prospect of another four years under Dulles. When the secretary insisted he give it serious consideration, Conant politely agreed.

  As he “tramped the mountain trails” over the next few days, he took stock of his situation. It was obvious he was being “pushed out” of his German post. He was not sure who was behind the intrigue or to what degree the president was even aware of it, “but it didn’t matter.” By then, he had come to realize that it was not that he had been unsuccessful in the job as much as unnecessary. Dulles had never wanted a strong, opinionated ambassador and preferred to lock horns with Adenauer himself, one old bull to another. A few days later, Conant called the White House and said no. Dulles told him to take another week, he was just tired, and asked him to come to Washington to talk it over with the president. Conant was flattered by the invitation but begged off. What the telephone call had made clear was that whether Eisenhower was reelected in November or not, his days in the diplomatic corps were coming to an end.