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Notice Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview. RESTRICTIONS Opened October, 1981
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Oral History Interview with
June 13, 1970 by Theodore A. Wilson WILSON: A sort of general question to begin would be to ask you about your service in Moscow, to ask you about Russian reaction to the UNRRA business. You were in Moscow in 1946? REINHARDT: Yes, I went back to Moscow in the summer of '46. WILSON: How much of a furor was there about the UNRRA question and the demands of the American Congress for publicity about UNRRA operations in the Ukraine? Do you recall anything about that? REINHARDT: Very vaguely. I don't think that we got involved in that so much in Moscow probably as people did at the other end. This is often the case. Moscow, you know, can be a very quiet place even when things are boiling in some other area with Russian involvement. Moscow does not have a society in the sense that Western countries do where people go to cocktail parties and dinners frequently, and eat and talk and discuss these things. Normally you only get reactions from issues in the form of official, stereotyped ones in the press, or what you get when you go and talk to an official. But to speak of public opinion, in a Western sense, is, of course, short of the mark. WILSON: Maybe another way of getting at this would be -- when did you as an individual say, if you ever said, "Here's where the cold war began." REINHARDT: Of course, I never thought it had stopped. From my point of view a cold war is inherent in the Soviet approach to foreign relations, and it just gets dampened off at one time, and then heated up at another. I think most people whose experience in Russia, like mine, had started before the war, never had any illusions about that. I think it's fair enough to say, though, that the official declaration of the cold war, or the resumption of the cold war, was that famous speech of Stalin's, in January '46. WILSON: Yes. You placed no stock in the interpretation that for a time during the war the Russians, as well as Roosevelt and the Americans, believed that there could be reasonable cooperation? REINHARDT: I didn't find this believable; I think Mr. Roosevelt did. But a person's beliefs are related to his philosophy. Mr. Roosevelt had a philosophy that called for the nations of the world to live in peace together, but that's not inherent in the Leninist-Stalinist philosophy. WILSON: Looking at the events of 1947, from Moscow, what was the American view of Russia's policy at that time? The people I've interviewed here, as well as most people I've interviewed in the United States, state, bluntly, that the decision of the Russians not to cooperate in this conference called by [Ernest] Bevin and [Georges] Bidault in June of 1947 after Secretary Marshall's speech was utter stupidity. They say that this offer of all-European cooperation had been put forth by Secretary [George C.] Marshall in good faith, even though he was concerned about what the Russians might do. And if the Russians had come in they could have messed up the entire thing, and yet they didn't. Was this Stalin's paranoia; was it that it would possibly lose them control over the satellite countries? REINHARDT: I think that second point is the one that occurred to me; that he was afraid if large Western resources were put into the reconstruction of the economies of the countries he had just taken over, it would be much harder for him to integrate them into his economy, and to lead them the way he did in the years that followed. WILSON: Was there a Soviet psychosis about contact with the West? REINHARDT: Most certainly, and there always has been. I think it's older than Soviet; I think it's Russian psychosis, because many writings dealing with certain periods well before the Bolsheviks show a similar psychosis. I suppose the best known writings were the letters of the Marquis de Custine* that were published in 1843; full pages of them, describing the activities of Russian imperial bureaucrats, could be transliterated into modern times and not just the Bolshevik era. So there was a national psychosis, at least an official national psychosis. I don't think that the individual Russian cared so much, but those in responsibility * "La Russie en 1839" by Le Marquis de Custine, first published in 1843. in Russia have always felt that way. WILSON: With regard to Russian control of the satellites, what was the view then of Russian intentions and of the extent of control? Once Czechoslovakia fell, it was as if the Red Army was doing everything, at least from the point of view of the United States Congress. Was that the view from Moscow in 1947 and '48? REINHARDT: As a matter of fact, I left Moscow before Czechoslovakia was fully incorporated; the process was under way. Oh, I think that most people shared the view that Russia was out to create a frontier with the Western World, as far west as possible, and that the practicalities were that that frontier would more or less reflect the positions of the armies at the end of the war. Of course, that's what really happened. It's true that you got a little variation in Czechoslovakia because the American Army went in as far as Pilsen, but elsewhere the line between the West and East, 25 years in the past, had been pretty much the line that marked the cessation of hostilities. WILSON: You came back before the coup in Czechoslovakia in '48? REINHARDT: I returned to Washington in the summer of 1948. WILSON: And then you were going to be chief of the REINHARDT: Eastern European Division. WILSON: Was it one of your responsibilities to deal with the question of potential trade with the Eastern bloc countries? REINHARDT: Yes. WILSON: Might I ask for you to comment about this? I've got the suggestion that the State Department was rather more reluctant to clamp off -- to cut off trade entirely, than perhaps Commerce and some other departments were, and was there conflict about this? REINHARDT: I think there was a difference of view. I recall being involved in one of the first papers that was written on this whole question of trade control. In fact, we sent from Moscow, in '47, a couple of reports recommending that Washington establish some sort of trade control. But it became apparent after awhile, after the idea was accepted and implemented, that it went much further than we had had in mind, those of us who were developing the idea. What we had sought was truly strategic control, not control that affected the totality of trade, but affected highly strategic items, and which was sufficiently flexible so that if the Soviet Union developed its own source of something that had been previously in short supply, and had become self sufficient in it, you'd take off the control, serving no purpose. Instead, as you know, what happened, sort of an "Encyclopaedia Britannica" control was built up over the years, everybody getting in everything he wanted. I think it's probably fair to say that the State Department view throughout was one of more restraint than the view of Commerce, and particularly in the Defense Department, which I think frowned at almost any product with some defense meaning. WILSON: What was the kind of reaction you were getting from the Eastern bloc countries about this? Did it seem that this matter was crucial to them, or did they just use it as propaganda? REINHARDT: I don't think it was crucial; they didn't have that many items to trade in during that early period. Really the issues that used to come to my attention, of course, were when the strategic controls began to restrict the export of specific items that they were interested in -- maybe locomotives for Czechoslovakia, or something else for Poland, something for which they had a critical need. Then, of course, their unhappiness was quite apparent. WILSON: What was the view o£ the purpose and the motives of the Commerce and Defense Departments? Perhaps those of Defense are fairly simple to understand, but how about Commerce and Agriculture? Were you aware that there was considerable public pressure for not trading with the enemy, as the Eastern bloc could be viewed? REINHARDT: I don't think so. I don't think that in those years there was that much pressure. I think it probably developed in time, but I think it's fair to say that in the early postwar period the concept that the Soviet Empire represented a hostile dangerous factor only came gradually to be accepted by the public in the United States, because they had gone through this period of war where they were fighting a common enemy, and it just didn't seem very logical to people. WILSON: What happened, or what was the reaction when Yugoslavia made the break? REINHARDT: Let me say, let me interrupt you, and say Yugoslavia didn't make any break. WILSON: Okay. REINHARDT: Yugoslavia was thrown out. Yugoslavia tried to maintain a certain measure of independence and didn't get away with it. As I would interpret it, she was expelled from the Cominform by Stalin as a means of developing pressure, to bring Yugoslavia back into line. But it didn't work. WILSON: With that correction, there was gradual growth of the belief that the split, however it occurred, was going to be semi-permanent? And then we offered some aid to Yugoslavia. REINHARDT: I think there was a good deal of skepticism at first. In fact, there was a great deal of skepticism in the United States that this separation of Yugoslavia from the Moscow group was genuine. I think some people went so far as to say it was a trick. But officially, I think it was recognized for what it really was; and, as you know, we very soon began giving them grain and other food aid because their trade had been so long oriented toward Moscow that when Russia cut it off, they were in a very difficult .position. And I am sure that the maintenance of their independent position owed a great deal to the fact that we did move in rather quickly, with supplies. WILSON: If I could switch. One of the subjects that's come up most often, has been the matter of rivalry, competition, difficulties between the Department of State and all of the other agencies which had developed some interest in these sorts of activities, mostly through economic affairs, Treasury, the ECA [Economic Cooperation Administration] of course, and all of this. I came to Europe thining, "Well, this must have caused great confusion." But from what people have told me here, that was not so; that because of personal relationships they were able to sort out things rather well. Did the same situation exist in Washington? Were personal relationships established between you and the people in ECA in Washington? REINHARDT: Oh, certainly. I think it's very hard to get an accurate view of what these so-called interagency conflicts really amounted to, because certainly 90 percent of the business goes on normally, and then maybe a few key items get held up because of divergences of view. But I think probably the press representations of interagency conflicts always have been overdramatized. Certainly the Marshall plan functioned, and functioned well, and there must have been divergences of view, and problems and all, but the program went ahead. WILSON: Did you, being in Washington at a rather critical time for the Department when it was under attack from Congress and from the press and public, on various grounds -- were you personally affected by what's been called a "morale crisis, in the years from 1948 to '51? Were you disturbed by the attacks? REINHARDT: I was certainly disturbed by it. I was lucky enough that it didn't affect me personally. It did affect a lot of my friends, though, and people in whom I had a ,good deal of confidence; it obviously had a bad affect. But there again I think one can overstate it; the business of government was carried on. Of course, dealing as I did at that time with the Soviet Union, unless somebody had some very horrendous evidence, you were in a sense vulnerable to this sort of thing, because you were working with a problem that people were worried about. WILSON: Yes. REINHARDT: And usually knew more about it than many of these critics did. WILSON: Were you called often to Congress to testify? REINHARDT: No, I personally, not often; I wasn't senior enough. They usually wanted somebody at least on an Assistant Secretary of State level. WILSON: So you did the briefings for the person who REINHARDT: I did that. I was called to testify later on -- in 1951, I think it was, just before I left for Europe, on the McCarran Act. Apart from that, my appearances on the Hill usually had to do with budgetary questions. WILSON: Were you involved at all with the matter of the enforcement of the Battle Act before you left? REINHARDT: No, I was not involved with that. What was the date of the Battle Act? WILSON: 1951; there had been a Kim amendment question before. The Battle Act was something of a compromise, a measure some of the people I talked to, the Swedes in particular, were most disturbed about. REINHARDT: I don't think it would have affected any of the areas I was dealing with, which was with Iron Curtain countries. WILSON: Yes, that's right. You came back in '51 then to NATO. REINHARDT: In '51 I went to NATO -- first to the Defense College for a year, and then out to SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe]. WILSON: I've gotten the impression that by that time, American interests in the OEEC, as a vehicle for integration, had waned, and that the United States, perhaps because of the Korean war, perhaps because of another phenomenon, had shifted its thrust from the OEEC to NATO as a means of achieving integration. REINHARDT: I don't know whether one should say it shifted its thrust, but instead of having one institution to focus on, we had two. Of course, in between there was a question of the European Army that we were very much interested in. I think it's fair to say that the U.S. Government was generally disappointed when it didn't work, that France pulled the rug out from under it. I think, though, speaking of European integration, U.S. policy has been pretty consistent from the beginning in supporting European integration, and that certainly it's been more intense in one period than in another. And I think with the passing of time there has been a growing awareness that one can overdo it too; that if Washington presses too hard on these things, it can produce unwanted results. I think the important thing is that it be known that the United States Government supports the idea of European -- maybe integration is too strong a word; I often used to think that it was a badly chosen word, because it implies a measure of mixing that perhaps the European countries weren't ready for, and demonstrated that they weren't ready for it. Perhaps one could find a word that wasn't quite as far reaching as integration, that would be psychologically better. You haven't seen any evidence to the contrary have you? WILSON: No. Some of the Europeans that I've talked with have stated that they were often confused about how far the United States was pushing. Particularly, they cite American support of the British, this idea of the "special relationship." Someone stated that they believed at the time that because of this special relationship, the British could do about anything, in the end, that they wished, and that the United States would sacrifice integration for this special relationship. I'm not sure that that's a continental view. REINHARDT: Yes. WILSON: I haven't found that in the documents. I think we've been able to make use of some collections of papers, particularly Governor Harriman's papers. They demonstrate that there was this inconsistency, REINHARDT: I think that you can make a logical case by saying there was an inconsistency between our desire to see Europe move together and our special relationship with England. But I think from the American point of view that we didn't think of this as an inconsistency. In fact, we were very disappointed that England didn't get into the act. WILSON: It has been suggested that one of the difficulties with NATO was that military aid was not organized in the multilateral way; it was not organized multilaterally as had been the Marshall plan aid, and this caused some considerable confusion. People blamed the Defense Department in a way, because of its control. Is that fair at al1? REINHARDT: I don't think it's too fair. In the first place, as soon as NATO planning really had gotten underway, and so-called military requirements were established for the various members of NATO, U.S. military aid was pretty well tailored to meet the NATO planning. Of course, it's true that the United States played a leading role in the staff activity of SHAPE, but that also was because we had more competent people to put in. But everybody else was in the act. I would have felt that that criticism should have evaporated at such time as the military planning had become related to NATO force goals and requirements, and so forth. It's true that our military aid started before that stage was reached, and it was a bilateral formula. But, I would have thought it would have been extremely difficult until one had set up an international staff, such as the one that was set up in NATO, to do the sort of thing that one did in OEEC. WILSON: I think partly, this criticism is the result of another sort of criticism. Implicitly, some of these people have indicated that they were rather less happy with the interventionist approach of the MSA [Mutual Security Agency] missions, the bilateral missions, than they had been with, of course, the ECA country missions. They believed that the MSA people, mostly military people and military minded, were rather less diplomatic about saying, "Okay, you've got to adjust your taxation policies," or you've got to do this, or you've got to do that, in order to produce so many divisions. What do you think about that? REINHARDT: Oh, I think that's probably a fair statement. I think that in general probably that the members of the military were less politic in their approach to these issues, as compared to the people in the ECA mission. That's a rather personal problem; I'm sure that some of them were highly politic. I can think of some military officers who were probably more skilled than most diplomats. WILSON: Was it one of your functions to teach diplomatic techniques? REINHARDT: No, I didn't have anything to do with that sort of thing. After I left the Defense College, I worked as a special assistant to the Supreme Commander -- first General [Matthew B.] Ridgway and then General [Alfred M.] Gruenther -- really as a source of political information for him as to what was going on in the various NATO countries, in dealing with problems that had a political-military character. But, you see, our military mission as such came under the military headquarters, the American military headquarters or MAG [Military Advisory Group] mission. It came under the headquarters which in those days was up in Frankfort -- UCOM; it had another name, it was called CINCEUR [Commander in Chief, Europe]. WILSON: If you can recall, what countries were most critical? REINHARDT: In what sense; you mean in building up the military establishment? WILSON: Yes, I suppose. REINHARDT: I guess they all were in those days. Really when you stop to think of it, when the war ended, none of these other countries had military establishments other than the units that had been fighting either with the British or our forces. So they were faced with the problem really of developing a new military establishment. Virtually all of them were, with the exception of Britain. WILSON: It's difficult to think about NATO, particularly in the form of this study, as the views of NATO existed then. In retrospect, there were all of these discussions about what NATO was intended to do and what it was not intended to do. What was your view at the time, if you can recall? REINHARDT: I think we looked upon NATO as rather a "crash" operation, and I think it's very important to remember that the European countries had gotten together first, and had set up their own organization [Brussels pact]. And they were starting to do what they could to build up some military base to defend themselves against the pressure from the East. But it soon became apparent that it was going to be inadequate; thus, we got into the act. WILSON: So that all of the theories that were developed afterwards, the dumbbell theory and so forth, were, in a way, retrospective thinking about this crash emergency? REINHARDT: That's right. I suppose that if in 1951 you had asked somebody how long are American troops going to stay in Europe, well, the answer might be, "Until the European countries build up adequate establishments of their own." I think at that time one expected that the countries of Western Europe would, in a reasonable period of time, develop military establishments adequate to meet the need. It hasn't worked that way. WILSON: From the documents and from what some people have said, there seems to have been some sort of "war neurosis." People were continually making projections about Soviet intentions, which said there will not be war within the next four months, but we can't say anything about the period thereafter. Was there this kind of deep seated concern that within some short time the Russians were going to come barging across the borders? REINHARDT: Some people really felt it because of the facts of the situation. The Russians had maintained their army pretty much on a war footing; it would have been easy for them to move West. And their whole expressed philosophy of international relations opened the door to that feeling. I think these short-term forecasts, which were probably military forecasts, were based on troop disposition, with no time lag required to put together formations to move West. It was a warning period. WILSON: Did this influence strongly, or less strongly, what was done then? REINHARDT: I think that certainly there was a great sense of urgency in NATO in its early days. I don't think one has to interpret this simply in terms of whether the Russians would or would not move West. It just happened to be a political fact that if you had a very powerful, political entity with the capability of doing something like that, that's bound to produce a distortion on its neighbors, whether or not they would actually pull the lanyards, so to speak. Europe had to be strengthened sufficiently to have a sense of security if it were to recover, either economically or politically. WILSON: The psychological factor. REINHARDT: Psychologically. And the psychological sense of security would have to be based on some reality. I suppose that the role of NATO in the economic recovery of Europe is something worth thinking about. WILSON: Very good. The last question, and one I've been detailed to ask you by the Director of the Truman Library, is whether you have made any decisions about the disposition of your papers. REINHARDT: I don't have any papers. Now that may sound funny to you, but I was in the [Foreign] Service for over thirty years and I was a very strict constructionist on official documents. I just never kept any of them. WILSON: You're one of the few. REINHARDT: May be. WILSON: This business of official and personal is... REINHARDT: I know it's a very vague line to many people, but I never kept a diary, and I just never kept any papers. WILSON: Okay, that answers that. REINHARDT: And I've had to give this same answer to several libraries. WILSON: I can imagine you have. 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Cold war, beginnngs of, 3 East West trade 8-10 Great Britain and "special relatonship" with U.S., 18-19 Marshall plan, and Soviet reaction to, 4 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): Soviet Union:
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