Word: bonn
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Some Western observers feared that the promise of "One Reich" would lure West German politicians away from the Western camp. But State's Robert Murphy, for one, did not share this fear. Just back from Germany, where he had helped smooth the way for adoption of the Bonn constitution, he said: "I don't think we are going to have a bit of trouble with the Western Germans. They are going to go right ahead...
Four years to the day after the Third Reich surrendered the bloody remnants of its arrogance and power to the Allies, German delegates at Bonn last week adopted a democratic constitution for the 46 million people of Western Germany...
...future administrations of Germany by German must be restricted to domestic affairs. There will be no German army, no foreign policy, no control of heavy industry. At the May 23 conference, the western representatives must be prepared to junk the constitution for Western Germany recently drawn up at Bonn. If we are able to agree with the USSR on a federal plan for all of Germany, we can satisfy the German desire for unity. This desire is now the subject of vigorous Russian politicking among German in both halves of the nation. If Germany remains split, and the eastern Soviet...
Everything seemed to be going wrong at Bonn. The Social Democratic Party bitterly fought the Western Powers' "interference" in the work of the constitutional convention because it tended to impose too many limitations upon German sovereignty. The Western Allies, cried the Socialists, were trying to create a federal republic with such a weak central government that it could never properly govern. The Socialists were equally mad at their fellow Germans in the Christian Democratic Union, which was stringing along with the plans for a weaker government. At a Socialist meeting in Hannover last week, gaunt, one-armed, one-legged...
Then things began to happen. With Russian pressure for a new four-power conference and abandonment of the proposed West German state (see above), the West could not afford to have the Bonn talks collapse now. First, the West offered important concessions strengthening the proposed central government's legislative and fiscal powers; this was designed to pacify the Socialists. The wires buzzed between Washington and U.S. officials in Germany. Next, the State Department's old Germany hand, Robert Murphy, left his desk at half a day's notice, flew to Germany. After days of conferences, Schumacher...