Final Conference of the Council of Foreign Ministers

The final conference of the „Council of Foreign Ministers“ ends on 20 June 1949 in Paris. The major victor powers of the Second World War created the body to consult regularly on the treatment of Germany. This conference failed due to differences between East and West which had become irreconcilable.

© Truman library Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Paris 1949 (left to right): Dean Acheson (USA), Andrej Vyshinsky (USSR), Robert Schumann (France), Ernst Bevin (Great Britain)

Whereas the Soviet Union demanded reactivation of the Allied Control Council in Berlin, the Western Powers of the USA, Great Britain and France, suggested that the states of the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) should come under the scope of the recently adopted Basic Law. By the end of the conference, the foreign ministers are able to agree only on a joint declaration which ends the Berlin Blockade and re-establishes free-flowing commerce and traffic in Germany.