A French agreement with the Saar, confirming the region's autonomy and its economic union with France, created consternation in West Germany and led Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to demand (May 30) that the Saar be allowed freely to choose between France and Germany.
A three-power conference in New York agreed on a more liberal policy toward Western Germany. The Western powers announced that they would consider any attack against the Federal Republic or against Berlin as an attack on themselves, and that they would strengthen their military forces in Germany. At the same time, they agreed to revise the Occupation Statute, to relax economic controls, lift the limit on steel production, and permit the Bonn government to establish diplomatic relations with foreign countries. A special security police force was authorized to meet the threat of the much larger Soviet-sponsored People's Police of Eastern Germany. The Western Allies also began considering the possibility of German participation in a Western army under the North Atlantic Treaty. This announcement signaled the start of the rapid process during the 1950s in which West Germany's status changed from that of former enemy to future ally, largely as a result of the Korean War.
