Richard Nixon

Yesterday in Bonn and today in Berlin I saw the German people by the thousands, and I felt, as I saw them, as I heard them, that I was at home among my own people.

This brief visit that I have made to your country has been valuable in several respects.

And while we know that this country, as its productivity increases, is now producing approximately $70 billion in gross national product per year, we also realize that the 300 million people who live in Western Europe produce a total of…

I indicated, as you pointed out, in my Inaugural Address, that we were entering a new era of negotiation rather than confrontation.

This visit also will be memorable to me because it provided my first opportunity to speak before a legislative body at the highest level, and I am proud to have been received as the first foreign visitor to appear before the Bundestag.

That fifth power to which I have referred, the power which is represented by the determination of free men to remain free, is stronger than any other power.

I should like to respond to your remarks in both personal terms and then also in the broader terms that you have used in describing the relationship between our two nations.

Welcome. We stand with you. We stand for peace. We stand for freedom.

Mr. Chancellor, you and I, as political leaders, know that it is essential that the leaders at the top, with executive power, and the legislators who work with them must have an understanding and communication if two nations and two…

It is true that the United States in the free world is the strongest of the free nations.

I come here to seek your advice and I am sure I will leave with that, and yet, with something more because we know that great lessons can be learned from people for whom humanity and tolerance are, in truth, a way of life.

All that we want is the right for others that we have for ourselves--the right to be free, the right to choose our own leaders, the right to disagree, and the right to settle our disagreements in a peaceful way.

It would also be appropriate on an occasion like this for an American President to refer, as I do refer now, to the great debt we owe to this nation and to this people for the history that we feel in this room in which we now meet.

We are different people with different languages and different backgrounds, but in a sense we are one people--one people in our dedication to peace and in our dedication to freedom.

As I speak to you today, I add one other thought: You are here, it is true, in a land far away from home, but you are also here in a land and in a city which welcomes you and wants you.

But I do not speak today primarily of those usual gracious terms and references that are always appropriate, of our common ties in blood, insofar as our national heritage is concerned, of our history and our culture.

Mr. President, I am most grateful for the generous remarks that you have expressed in welcoming me and the members of my party to your country.

I know now that we have established in this brief visit the basis for that consultation and cooperation which will be so valuable and constructive in seeking our common purposes in the years ahead.

The first is to maintain the strength of the NATO Alliance; the second is to work toward greater unity, not only in military but in other ways for Europe; and, third, we recognize that in this era in which we are now entering, it will be…

Our talks will extend throughout the structure of our alliance and deal with the great problems of the world.

What this trip that I have taken only 6 weeks after being inaugurated as President of the United States means is that we are also entering a new era of full consultation with our allies on all of the matters that may affect the peace of…

And so, Mr. President, I ask all of your guests tonight to rise and raise their glasses with me, not only to Italian-American friendship, but to the Western civilization which we share together and to the good health of the President of…

That is why I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to visit your country at this time, to have the wise counsel of your leaders, and to reaffirm our steadfast friendship and to seek together ways of achieving our high purpose.

You are not here because the United States of America has designs on any other nation or any other territory.

We seek no territory. We seek no concessions.