France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (25 page)

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Authors: William I. Hitchcock

Tags: #History, #Europe, #France, #Western, #Modern, #20th Century, #Political Science, #Security (National & International), #test

BOOK: France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954
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plaint did succeed in stirring the Anglo-American commanders to produce a memorandum to the Parliamentary Council, clarifying the constitutional principles to which the Germans were obliged to adhere.
13
By the time this document reached the Parliamentary Council, however, France had received a shocking confirmation of its fears that Britain and the United States were ready to loosen the most important restrictions on German industrial life in order to promote economic activity. On November 10, the bizonal commanders, without consulting Koenig, issued a plan for the reorganization of the German coal, iron, and steel industries that was based on the assumption, stated in the preamble of the plan, that the military government would allow the future German government to determine the eventual ownership of the Ruhr mines.
14
The question of future ownership was central to France's position on the Ruhr. France wanted to secure the international ownership of the mines, but the Anglo-Americans believed that, even if some controls on the Ruhr industries were put in place, outright ownership should be determined by the Germans themselves. The question had been left open at London, and thus this ordinance, known as Law 75, was a direct affront to the French National Assembly, which in ratifying the London accords had expressly requested that the question of future ownership be taken up at the governmental level. More galling, Law 75 came literally on the eve of the tripartite conference that had been called to establish the specific competence and powers of the Ruhr Authority. Despite Clay's subsequent claim that the French had been fully informed since the summer of the Anglo-American position on the impossibility of international ownership of the Ruhr, Law 75 appeared to the French as a blatant fait accompli, designed to preempt French demands to reopen the ownership question.
15
The State Department, which supported the general objective of increasing Ruhr productivity and limiting the interference of a restrictive international bureaucracy in the Ruhr, backed Clay, but the issue predictably dominated the Ruhr conference and became an immense headache for the delegations from each of the occupying countries.
The promulgation of Law 75 placed Ambassador Lewis Douglas, the leader of the American delegation to the Ruhr talks in London, in a very difficult position. For the announcement that the Anglo-American authorities had on their own competence decided to close the question of international ownership so angered the French government that the Assembly, the cabinet, and the public quickly rallied around Schuman and insisted that the Clay-Robertson plan be repealed. Schuman was
 
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thus given a direct mandate to come away from the Ruhr talks with an agreement that explicitly protected French interests.
16
If he did not, the credibility of the government would be damaged, perhaps irreparably. Douglas was therefore obliged, to protect the stability of the French government, to concede to France a number of important points. Britain and the United States allowed France to join the bizonal coal and steel boards that monitored production and distribution in the bizone without requiring full zonal fusion first. As the talks proceeded, Douglas suggested that the Ruhr Authority as outlined at London be marginally strengthened by ensuring that once the occupation ended, it maintain wide powers to restrict any concentration of the industries in private or public hands, to prohibit former Nazis from holding important positions in the Ruhr industries, and to supervise management, investment, and production policies throughout the Ruhr.
17
Though these concessions did not amount to repealing Law 75  and indeed, the question of ownership was not settled  Douglas had gone some way to meet the French demands that the Ruhr Authority be granted enough power to protect French interests after the occupation had ended.
18
The Limits of European Cooperation
Though the French could take comfort from the outcome of the Ruhr talks, few inside the Quai believed that the IAR alone would suffice to reintegrate the German economy into the West and provide the kind of political oversight that France desired. Instead, French officials placed considerable hope in the mechanisms that the Marshall Plan had called into being. When, in April 1948, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was established as the international planning agency charged with dividing up Marshall aid and developing a long-term recovery plan for western Europe, French planners sought to endow it with wide-ranging powers. Not only might the OEEC assist French economic recovery by promoting intra-European trade, upon which France depended, it might also act as an arbiter for the gradual reintegration of Germany into Europe  at a less aggressive pace than that set by General Clay. In a bold statement of this policy, Hervé Alphand's Office of Economic and Financial Affairs in the Foreign Ministry expressed the hope that the OEEC would provide a "framework of limits and controls" to contain "the inevitable recovery of the German economy." The OEEC would help ensure "that the recovery of Germany not gain a step upon our own." Failure to develop strong interna-
 
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tional controls "would confront us with a German recovery which would have priority [in Europe]  this would be a danger more grave than any other for our economic future and for peace." A constructive policy of economic cooperation lent legitimacy to France's long-standing effort to place German economic recovery under international control.
19
Such, in any case, were French hopes. In practice, the OEEC never emerged as a strong institution capable of brokering a balance of power between France and Germany, and for three reasons. First, the OEEC was hampered from the outset by the exclusive focus of its members on dividing up, and then receiving, dollar aid. The larger objectives concerning integration and cooperation were quickly forgotten. The OEEC had no power to compel member states to develop coordinated recovery programs, and most states were uninterested in this kind of planning anyway. French planners, no more noble than their European counterparts, had trouble shifting from the national planning objectives that the Monnet Plan had outlined to the kind of international coordination of recovery plans that the Americans insisted the OEEC produce.
20
Second, France's own economic weaknesses damaged the prospects of the OEEC. For how could this body engage in an ambitious policy of regional economic management when its chief advocate could scarcely meet its own pressing internal problems, especially its crippling rate of inflation?
21
But the third and greatest obstacle to a powerful OEEC was the British government. By the beginning of 1949, the British cabinet had clearly set out the limits of its willingness to engage in economic integration with continental Europe. Though Britain was ready to support the OEEC in its efforts to reduce intra-European trade barriers and to share technical information, British Treasury officials agreed that "on merits, there is no attraction for us in long-term economic cooperation with Europe. At best, it will be a drain on our resources. At worst, it can seriously damage our economy." In the British view, real economic cooperation, built around a customs union, specialization of production, and coordination of investment, could only be achieved through political federation, and this Britain was dead-set against. Federation would weaken Britain's Commonwealth and American ties while restricting its sovereignty in economic policy.
22
The failure to realize the bold promise of European economic cooperation came as a blow to many French officials who had hoped that the OEEC would boost French influence in Europe and provide a constructive means of monitoring German recovery. "We went into 1949," recalled Robert Marjolin, the secretary-general of the OEEC, "seeming
 
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to navigate in a fog, having the vague feeling that we were making progress but unable to glimpse or even imagine journey's end." In 1949, "there was no such thing as Europe, at least in the sense of a European economy in which national policies were harmonized, investment coordinated and national plans  where these existed  merged into an overall plan."
23
The framework that France believed necessary to ensure the stable reintegration of Germany into the European political and economic community had yet to emerge.
Toward a New German Policy
Increasingly, there were signs in the Quai d'Orsay that French planners had come to understand that the absence of an enduring, constructive settlement in Germany endangered French national interests. In a lengthy review of France's German policy undertaken in mid-December 1948, the Direction d'Europe concluded that France needed a bold new approach to Germany that the rest of Europe  Britain excluded  could support. French diplomacy, the memo argued, had been based on the negative premise that German economic recovery was a threat to France because France itself could not compete on an economic plane with Germany. But French fears had done nothing concrete to inhibit German recovery, and as a consequence, France still faced "a West Germany which might become, things being as they are, economically stronger than we in a few years." Negative tactics had failed; France must propose a positive policy. "It is in a European framework," the memo continued, "in which we can still try to settle the German problem. It is no longer a question, to take a specific example, of limiting Germany's production of steel, but of creating with Germany a European steel pool, in which French and Germans would operate equally and exercise a common control over the production of European steel." The Direction d'Europe understood that public opinion might not be ready for such a "daring and risky" policy: the French public still expected ''simple solutions," such as strict controls on German production. But France's dilatory tactics had won no ground in the past, and time was working against French interests in Germany. France must make a direct appeal to Germany to form some kind of economic and political partnership. This was not simply a prescription for the usual OEEC-type cooperation. For, as the memorandum continued, British opposition had limited the diplomatic utility of such schemes, raising the question of "narrowing our focus to a purely Franco-German frame-
 
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work. Such a tête-â-tête will be still more daring and risky. But we must try it. We are still the stronger, and we can still offer a solution of this type, of which we can take the leadership. But in waiting, we run the risk of seeing the balance of forces shift against us." The memorandum concluded, "we can try to maintain our traditional policy which is essentially negative. But it no longer has any chance of success: our Allies, who are stronger than we, do not want it; the Germans, backed by the Allies, know how to resist our policies. Now, by reversing the traditional direction of our German policy, we can try to associate ourselves with our former enemy through contractual links which would bind them as well as us, but which would assure us at least of a community of interests."
24
This was a declaration in favor of a new French policy toward Germany, one that saw German recovery not as a threat but as an opportunity to advance France's own economic and political goals in western Europe.
Such a reversal of policy would not be easy to effect. There still persisted evidence that the Germans were abusing the trust the Allies had placed in them by exploiting their newfound autonomy. In February 1949, Schuman received a disturbing report from General Koenig pointing out the tendency of the Bonn Parliamentary Council to favor a centralist constitution. Koenig, a Gaullist in his attitudes toward Germany, believed that the "federalist décor" of the draft constitution hid a carefully laid plan for the recovery of complete sovereignty by the Germans, a plan "which, under the guise of patriotism, in fact exploits the sentiment for unity and takes great pride in thwarting the objectives of the occupiers." Koenig recalled the legacy of the German "will to power," and urged Schuman not to lose sight of a growing nationalist sentiment that "has upset even the most unbiased observers.''
25
The tendency of the Parliamentary Council to challenge the occupation authorities disturbed Schuman. But the foreign minister, as he told Koenig, would not obstruct the path toward gradual German self-determination. Rather, Schuman now appeared ready to embrace the strategy that his subordinates had outlined. He was ready to take a gamble that striking some kind of deal that would give the Germans more control over their own political and economic affairs might better protect French interests by laying the groundwork for Franco-German trust and understanding.
26
Schuman inclined even further toward compromise when, in March 1949, it became apparent that Stalin was willing to end the Berlin blockade in exchange for the convocation of a new CFM to discuss the reunification of Germany.
27
Quite in contrast to 1947, when French offi-
 
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cials welcomed Soviet participation  and obstructionism  in the ACC, the Quai d'Orsay now believed that four-power control in Germany would work directly against French interests by promoting German unity and by providing Germany with the opportunity to play the East against the West in a search for the middle position in Europe: the dreaded Bismarckian policy that had threatened France for so many decades. Pierre de Leusse, perhaps aware that George Kennan in the U.S. State Department was promoting a general plan to slow down the implementation of the London accords, worried that the Americans, in searching for détente with Stalin, might accept a reunification of a neutralized Germany, with a capital at Berlin. In this scenario, France would be faced with an American-British-Soviet agreement on a centralized Germany, one that would tear away the carefully crafted fabric of controls designed to limit Germany's freedom to maneuver.
28
De Leusse's concerns proved alarmist, however, as neither the new American secretary of state, Dean Acheson, nor his British counterpart, Ernest Bevin, had any intention of agreeing to German reunification. Indeed, as the inter-Allied discussions proceeded on how to prepare for a convocation of the CFM demanded by the Russians, it became evident that all three western powers had a vested interest in the division of Europe.
29
The prospect of Soviet participation in the control mechanism in the Ruhr, or Soviet influence in the creation of an all-German, centralized constitution, prompted Schuman to move quickly to find a broad, generous settlement with the portion of Germany that remained under western control. Schuman, like Acheson and Bevin, believed that if agreement on a West German government could be reached before the CFM met, the Soviet gambit would fail: German unification would have to proceed on western terms, if at all. Before discussions were opened, the principles of federalism, and of a demilitarized, democratic, and liberal Germany, so crucial to France's security, would be securely in place.
30
It was ironic that Schuman, a Frenchman, now became an advocate for the swift establishment of a West German government.
31
Schuman concluded, like Bidault at the London Conference in June 1948, that French interests would best be served by a peaceful rather than a punitive settlement of the German question. In doing so, he ensured the solidarity of the West before the Soviet Union and made it possible for the Allies to thwart Stalin's efforts to block the integration of West Germany into western Europe. When the three foreign ministers gathered in Washington in April 1949 to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, they set aside two days for talks on Germany. In record time, Acheson,

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