February 13, 1951
MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
General Marshall telephoned Secretary Acheson this morning and asked the Secretary to repeat the question which he had asked Secretary Marshall as he was leaving the Secretary's house last night.
Mr. Acheson said he had been wondering whether there was any usefulness in going back to the proposal which Mr. Byrnes had made in 1946, and which Mr. Acheson thought had been discussed by Secretary Marshall in 1947. In 1946 Secretary Byrnes had proposed to the Russians that the British, French, and we have 300,000 troops in Germany and that the Russians have 200,000. The Russians would not agree to that, but Mr. Acheson thought had said they would consider 100,000 for the British, 100,000 for the French and 50,000 for the Americans to 200,000 for the Russians. Mr. Byrnes did not take that up. Mr. Acheson said he had a dim recollection that General Marshall had discussed it in one of the CFM's he had attended.
Secretary Marshall said it was discussed in Moscow. When he left Moscow he had had a two-hour talk with General Clay at the airport on the way home. The question was how far General Clay thought he could go in reducing the number of troops in West Germany, having in mind solely the security in West Germany in light of the Germans, rather than the Soviets. General Clay was agreeable to a reduction to 50,000, provided they would be in garrisons rather than scattered around as police. Secretary Marshall said his recollection was that the Soviets wanted a larger number of troops than we would agree to and the matter ended on that snag.
Secretary Acheson wondered if there was any point in reviving such a proposal or whether the whole thing belonged to a past era. Secretary Marshall said he thought that it did belong to a past era, but he would talk it over and see whether it might be useful to pursue the matter. Secretary Acheson said that, while accepting a limitation of this sort might make Eisenhower's task more difficult, if there were some natural limitation - such as the Germans' not raising more than 150,000 to 200,000 troops, we might be willing to take some modifications.
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General Marshall then said he had another question he wanted to raise for Mr. Acheson to think over. General Marshall had been wondering whether there was any merit in trying to revive and amend the Lodge Bill which had proposed enlisting 25,000 aliens. He thought the bill might be amended to provide for enlisting 50,000 aliens who would have to indicate that they wanted to become American citizens. He said probably we would want not more than 25% of this number.
Mr. Acheson said he had always been in favor of the Lodge Bill and he thought Secretary Marshall's idea was well worth looking into. He thought, inevitably, there would be some undesirable people planted in this number, but he did not think that would be too serious.