Journey to Stuttgart

The dead dictator's luxurious train rolled from Berlin across the old, beaten land. In Hitler's bed slept James F. Byrnes, of Charleston, S.C. His advisor, Benjamin V. Cohen of Muncie, Ind., slept in Göring's bed, restlessly. The train rolled into Stuttgart's bomb-wrecked station and Byrnes got off to ride behind an escort of screeching U.S. Army jeeps to the Staatstheater. There, watched by U.S. generals and diplomats, German functionaries and civilians, Russian and other newspapermen, Byrnes delivered the speech which Europe and Asia recognized as America's boldest move yet towards leadership of the world.

Tired looking and jaunty as ever, he read in a slow, clear voice which even Germans with an imperfect command of his tongue could understand. Despite the language of diplomacy, Russians would also understand.

The U.S. had moved from the Paris Peace Conference, its stale yammering, its endless skirmishes around the periphery of political war, into Germany. Byrnes's journey to Stuttgart was a move into the heartland. Germany, in the end, would be the great strategic battlefield. There the U.S. now stood, inviting Germans to stand on Western democracy's side.

No Withdrawal. Byrnes offered Germans a chance to reform a nation, an opportunity denied them—"for the time being"—by the Potsdam agreement of 1945. But now the time had come: Germans should be given "under proper safeguards . . . primary responsibility for the running of their own affairs."

He outlined the technique of forming a democratic state. First step: a provisional government should draft a federal constitution under the eyes of the Allied Control Council. He promised again: German industry would be restored. (Buried forever was the Morgenthau plan to reduce Germany to pastoral impotency.) War industries would be removed and eliminated, but Germany would be allowed to maintain "average European living standards."

Along with these proposed changes in the German economy went specific proposals for territorial changes. Königsberg and adjacent areas must go to Russia, as already agreed. Silesia and other eastern German regions, however, would not necessarily go to the Soviet-dominated government of the Poles, although now administered by Poland. The Saar would go to France. The Ruhr and the Rhineland, however, would remain German.

And until these terms were carried out—essentially the terms laid down at Potsdam—until the U.S. was satisfied that Germany had become a responsible democracy, the U.S. would remain, with its military power.

That was the nub of Jimmy Byrnes's speech, and he said it so that no one could misunderstand: "We intend to continue our interest in the affairs of Europe and of the world. ... I want no misunderstanding. We will not shirk our duty. We are not withdrawing. As long as an occupation force is required in Germany the Army of the United States will be a part of that occupation force."

He sat down amidst mild applause.