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the March Note, was a Soviet diplomatic note dated March 10, 1952 and delivered to representatives of Britain, France, and the United States (the other Great Powers with occupation zones in Germany), which included an offer of Superpower disengagement from Germany if the West would agree that a new, unified Germany would also be neutral and disarmed. This led to "The Battle of the Notes" between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union at a time when the West was developing the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, initiated in 1949) and was negotiating the 1952 Bonn Agreement with the embryonic West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany, or FRG) as part of Western Cold War strategy. The West's rejection, including the U.S. rejection, of the 1952 Soviet offer to unify Germany created a controversial political and academic debate and established a post-WWII "stab-in-the-back" theory to parallel the post-WWI "stab-in-the-back" theory of German political history and international relations. Timeline
Pre-1952May 8, 1945 - Victory in Europe Day 1946 - Mutual deliveries of supplies between Eastern and Western sectors stop 1948-1949 - Berlin Blockade April 4, 1949 - North Atlantic Treaty 1949 - Western Trizone becomes FRG October 7, 1949 - GDR forms June 25, 1950 - North Korea invades South Korea 1950 - Pleven and Spofford plans for European armed forces
1952February 25, 1952 - Lisbon Agreement March 10, 1952 - Stalin Note begins Battle of the Notes April 1, 1952 - Stalin orders GDR "to create a people's army--quietly." May 26, 1952 - Bonn Agreement June 1, 1952 - Soviets seal FRG-GDR border September 23, 1952 - Battle of the Notes ends
Post-1952May 5, 1955 - FRG "full" sovereignty May 15, 1955 - Austrian State Treaty October 27, 1955 - Saarland plebiscite January 1, 1957 - Saarland incorporated into FRG December 21, 1972 - FRG and GDR sign Basic Treaty October 3, 1990 - German reunification
Political ContextThe Stalin Note advanced terms similar to those later adopted for Austria (see Austrian State Treaty). It called for the creation of a neutral Germany with an eastern border on the Oder-Neisse line and all allied troops removed within the year. The West German government under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer favoured closer integration with Western Europe and asked that the reunification be negotiated with the provision that there be internationally monitored elections throughout Germany. This condition was rejected by the Soviets. Stalin's proposal was subsequently rejected by Adenauer as a propaganda ploy, although some speculate that Adenauer feared what amounted to the Finlandization of Germany under the Soviet reunification plan. The proposal came while the European Defence Community was being discussed, which would have resulted in a rearmed West Germany tightly integrated in the Western bloc.
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