Geneva Summit Conference (1955)

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The Geneva summit conference of France , Great Britain , the USSR and the USA took place from July 18 to 23, 1955 and was the first meeting of the heads of state and government of the four victorious powers of the Second World War , since France was not represented at the Potsdam conference in 1945 was. The heads of government agreed on a subsequent meeting of their foreign ministers, the first Geneva conference of foreign ministers .

Attendees

Eisenhower and Dulles attended for the United States , Bulganin , Khrushchev and Molotov for the Soviet Union, Prime Minister Eden with Foreign Minister Macmillan for Great Britain and Prime Minister Faure with Foreign Minister Antoine Pinay for France . Delegations from both German states were allowed to act as observers.

Result

The heads of government were unable to make any progress with regard to the reunification of Germany and are postponing further discussions on this issue to a foreign ministers' meeting planned for October. The conference concluded with the Geneva Directive , which included the reunification of Germany on the basis of free elections as a prerequisite for detente in Europe.

Since the end of the conference, the Soviet Union - regardless of the views of the Western powers - assumed the existence of two German states ( two-state theory ). On November 5, the GDR's delegation of observers also issued a declaration that all-German elections would only be possible if the Federal Republic had previously been “democratized and demilitarized”.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Central and Eastern European Online Library : UMSCHAU: The Conference of Foreign Ministers in Geneva , October 22, 2008

literature

  • Günter Bischof: Cold was respite. The Geneva Summit of 1955. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 2000.
  • Carola Christina Schmidt: Between the status quo and reorganization. The Western Powers and the Geneva Conferences 1955. Dissertation at the Free University of Berlin, 1994 (1995).
  • Mechtild Lindemann: The German question at the Geneva Four Power Conference 1955. Dissertation at the University of Bonn, 1991 (1994).