Stalin Note

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The Stalin Note (German: Stalin-Noten; French: Note de Staline; Russian: Нота Сталина, romanized: Nota Stalina), also known as the March Note or Peace Note (мирная нота, mirnaya nota), was a diplomatic note delivered to the representatives of the Western Allies (the United Kingdom, France, and the United States) from the Soviet Union in separated Germany including the two countries in West and East on 10 March 1952. Soviet general secretary and premier Joseph Stalin put forth a proposal for a German reunification and neutralisation with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. Conservative CDU/CSU West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the Western Allies characterized Stalin's offer of reintegration as an aggressive action that attempted to stall the reintegration of West Germany. The readmission of 18.5 million eastern German citizens in the GDR to the voter rolls would have pulled West Germany's 51 million citizens leftward politically. There was debate on whether a legitimate chance for reunification had been missed; six years after the exchange, two West German ministers, Thomas Dehler and Gustav Heinemann, blamed Adenauer for not having explored the chance of reunification. There is ongoing debate over the sincerity of the note, though declassified documents from the former Soviet archives indicate that there was an intention to incorporate the German Democratic Republic into the Eastern bloc and to blame the division of Germany on the Western occupying powers.