Saturday, 19 November

In the afternoon, I went with Chengzhi and Zhongxiong to Sartrouville handing over the house to the new owners.

[Private matter concerning Kitty, one paragraph not available online]

Molotov made a statement on East Germany, saying the unification of East Germany and West Germany should be negotiated between themselves. That the Soviet Union had such an attitude is certainly expected. It is because in the meetings of the four foreign ministers in Geneva, the American side hoped that West Germany could merge with East Germany, and that after that it could join the Western group. Such thought was naïve as the strength of the Soviet Union had never diminished. Also, as the Soviet Union felt that the strength of its group was increasingly stable, it wanted to scale down the tone of a cold war. Nevertheless, the American side thought that the reason the Soviet Union gave in was because of internal instability, which is just laughable. The Soviet side wanted Germany to form a united government, which could be completely neutralized. Among Germans, many are sympathetic with such a policy; even among people in Western Europe those numbers who support unification are quite substantial. As a matter of fact, after this war, the power of destructive weapons is increasing, and the budget for armaments is unaffordable to medium and small countries. Even for a united and rejuvenated Germany, its economic power is absolutely unable to maintain armaments which could be comparable with the United States and the Soviet Union. Therefore, for the calculation of Germany itself, it was certainly good not to arm itself and focus the power of the whole nation on reconstruction and to maintain prosperity at this period. (Now, West Germany has no need to shoulder the cost of armaments, and the escapees from East Germany have increased its manpower, therefore in the past few years its industrial development has exceeded all the victorious powers.) I feel concern that for Western Germany it may have to directly negotiate with Eastern Germany and gradually distance itself from the United States and Western Europe.