France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (33 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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officials who believed the 850 billion franc figure to have been a firm French commitment. Because the French had "retreated" from their initial plan, the Americans felt justified in reconsidering their own offer of $ 200 million. The issue festered through the winter and spring of 195051, engendering serious resentment between the two sides and making impossible any realistic discussion of how France and Europe in general could achieve an aim that all agreed was desirable: the strengthening of European defense. In April 1951, the issue was temporarily resolved. After an impassioned telegram from Ambassador Bruce claiming that the issue could lead to "a very damaging crisis in French-American relations," Washington followed through with its initial $ 200 million offer, despite France's "failure" to carry through with its promises.
40
This kind of unproductive, even bitter, quibbling over relatively paltry sums lent strength to the growing French critique of the organizational shortcomings of NATO both in coordinating U.S.-European military aid programs and in preparing for the economic dislocation attendant upon rearmament. These complaints had emerged within the French administration soon after the outbreak of the Korean War: rearmament, some feared, might so marginalize the OEEC as to make NATO the sole inter-Allied organization for dealing with finance and defense issues, and justify Germany's claim for membership in the alliance. Further, a weakened OEEC would be ill-suited to settle the many outstanding nonmilitary issues, particularly trade liberalization and the settling of intra-European balance of payments, on which the stability and prosperity of Europe depended.
41
French officials were distressed to receive frequent reports from the Embassy in Washington that American foreign policy was chiefly concerned with the rapid consolidation of the NATO alliance and had lost interest in the OEEC's efforts to prepare for the adverse economic and social consequences of rearmament. This was an unfair interpretation of American policy; the United States sought to strengthen NATO precisely so that it could coordinate both military and financial policy in Europe. But these French worries grew more pronounced during the winter and spring of 195051. On February 26, 1951, Alphand remonstrated in the NAC that the continuing failure of NATO to develop a common program for the financing of defense programs threatened the political and social stability of Europe. By June, the French Embassy in Washington could comment, "it is no longer true that a priority has been given [by the United States] to economic recovery; the development of the defense effort has become the major preoccupation. "
42
The French government therefore welcomed the efforts made by
 
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Robert Marjolin, secretary-general of the OEEC, to reinvigorate the OEEC and to raise awareness within the member states and in the United States about the economic consequences of rearmament in Europe. In a long paper prepared in February 1951 entitled "Immediate Tasks of Economic Cooperation between the Members of the OEEC, the United States, and Canada," Marjolin clearly laid out the economic problems in Europe that rearmament had done much to exacerbate. Three closely related problems now faced western Europe: steep inflation, a shortage of raw materials, and regression of progress in trade liberalization. Marjolin saw inflation as perhaps the most menacing symptom of the uncoordinated lurch toward western rearmament. Since the outbreak of war in the summer of 1950, a worldwide scramble for raw materials had led to increases in prices of wool, cotton, mercury, tungsten, tin, paper, pulp, and leather goods by as much as 30 to 50 percent. Imports had thus become more expensive, and the terms of trade of European countries had begun to deteriorate rapidly. Moreover, inflation jeopardized social stability by increasing upward pressure on wages. Worse still, in Marjolin's analysis, this inflation would be further aggravated once the massive defense expenditures now appropriated by NATO governments were actually spent. A serious falloff in coal production in 1950 appeared to be increasing inflationary pressures. Coal production was the key to steel manufactures, and a steel shortage would certainly hinder the expansion of European production. Yet production, of both raw materials and consumer goods, was the best way to dampen inflation. Finally, any national effort to increase production and control inflation had to be done in coordination with the progressive reduction of tariff barriers the OEEC had begun in mid-1950 but that had not been fully realized. Marjolin's report showed that in its earliest stages, rearmament had already had very serious consequences for Europe's economic stability, and the picture would only worsen as national military programs went forward.
43
Marjolin's efforts to promote an active role for the OEEC in the post-ERP period reflected his belief, shared widely in continental European governments, that to prosper, or simply to weather times of crisis, the nations of the region must be ever more closely integrated politically, economically, and militarily. Marjolin saw more than simply an economic imperative in working toward integration. He believed that unless European political evolution were encouraged, the public  already swinging against the "militarization" of Europe by the United States  would grow increasingly disillusioned and bitter, and vent its frustration at the polls against the moderate, pro-American governing coalitions
 
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that dominated the European political landscape. In short, militarization must not, in Marjolin's view, diminish the positive political meaning of European unity. Without a renewed public demonstration by the Western Alliance of its commitment to productivity, modernization, prosperity, and social justice  to the long-lasting, peaceful stabilization of postwar Europe  the public would never consent to the sacrifices demanded of it to provide for its military security. Marjolin's efforts led to the promulgation in August 1951 of a ''European Manifesto" calling for a greater attention on the part of OEEC governments to the economic impact of rearmament on their peoples, and setting out new targets for production of consumer goods and housing, as well as coal, steel, power, and agriculture.
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Yet the very need for such a manifesto suggested that the principles that lay at the heart of the Marshall Plan and the OEEC had been largely bypassed by the priorities of rearmament.
Not only did rearmament threaten financial stability and slow the momentum on European integration, but the French negotiators working on the details of the Schuman Plan noted a much stiffened German position since the outbreak of war in Asia. The German government supported the Schuman Plan chiefly because it provided at least one European institution in which Germany could act as an equal partner. However, the prospect of ten German divisions in NATO gave Bonn understandable pause: perhaps the painful economic compromises of the Schuman Plan might not be necessary after all for Germany to be granted equal status within the Western Alliance. Such speculation was idle, of course, and the French had expressly insisted that the Schuman Plan be signed before rearmament went forward precisely to avoid such German maneuvers. Nonetheless, the negotiations on the Schuman Plan were long and difficult. Only through heavy pressure from the United States and particularly High Commissioner McCloy did the Germans finally agree to the provisions in the plan that broke the hold of the coal and steel trusts over production in the Ruhr. By the time the delegates initialed the Schuman Plan on March 19, 1951, the air of brotherly love Schuman had fostered a year earlier when he first proposed the coal-steel pool had long since been dispelled.
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The burden of rearmament lay heavy on France's overall European strategy.
The Birth of the European Defense Community
The Brussels Conference of December 1950, it will be recalled, had set up two parallel sets of talks on the question of German rearmament. Chancellor Adenauer had balked at the Spofford plan for integrating
 
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German troops into the Western Alliance because of its provisions against German sovereignty in military affairs. He thus sought discussions on a more equitable way of bringing troops into the integrated force, and these began in January 1951 at the Allied High Commission headquarters on the Petersberg in Bonn. At the same time, the French, with lukewarm American support, called a conference in Paris to discuss their ideas on a European army that would include a German component. These two sets of negotiations were patently at odds with one another. In Bonn, the Germans endeavored to attain the greatest degree of independence and influence for their own forces within the integrated force of NATO. In Paris, the French proposed, through the means of a European army, to restrict German influence while appeasing American demands for the enrollment of German troops in western defense.
The deputy high commissioners  the American, General George P. Hays; the Briton, Sir Christopher Steel; and France's Armand Bérard  led the Petersberg talks and evaluated the German suggestions for rearmament.
46
The French were prepared for an aggressive opening gambit from the Germans, for by offering to hold talks on a German contribution to western defense, the Allies had immeasurably strengthened Bonn's bargaining position. The Germans could resist inclusion until they had enough evidence to show that they would be treated on a basis of full equality by their future comrades-in-arms. Germany would reluctantly agree to defend western Europe  for rearmament was not popular in the Federal Republic  but must first be treated as an ally and peer of the states alongside which the young nation was to fight.
47
Indeed, the German representatives to the Bonn talks  Theodor Blank, future defense minister, and two former
Wehrmacht
generals, Hans Speidel and Adolf Heusinger  set forward demands for a German armed force that exceeded even the numbers the Pentagon had put forward in September 1950. Rejecting the Spofford plan's proposal for combat teams of 5,000 to 6,000 men as unworkable, they sought instead a twelve-division German army, each division containing 15,000 to 18,000 troops. The Germans also asked for air and naval forces, as well as a German supreme commander and Ministry of Defense  all of which they had long been denied. Further, Blank stated that before Germany would undertake any rearmament program, the Allies must transform the Occupation Statute into "contractual agreements" that reflected Germany's equal political status.
Naturally, as German demands increased, the possibility of compromise with the French diminished. The French had no intention of agree-
 
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ing to a plan along these lines, but as the talks were only exploratory and not binding, the French High Commission appeared perfectly willing to let the Germans make demands that could never be met, thereby slowing down still further any workable settlement of the issue. "The situation," argued a memorandum from the Office of Political Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, "is now at its most favorable for us, in that it is the Germans who, by their present attitude, are responsible for the delays in their own rearmament." The Quai thought that further delay on the part of the Germans, confounding not only rearmament talks but discussions on the evolution of the Occupation Statute as well, would probably lead the United States to pressure the Germans and demand the prompt integration of Germany into the western bloc. At this point, France would be able to promote its own plan  the European army  as the best means to effect this integration,
48
When the report of the Petersberg talks emerged, containing the excessive demands of the Germans, the French government simply stated in the final communiqué that it "continues to believe that German participation in the common defense must be obtained through the means of a European army."
49
Alphand made this point to McCloy at the conclusion of the talks. ''The creation of a European army," he said, "would in large measure facilitate the problem [of German rearmament] because we must be assured that no German army or general staff will be reconstituted."
50
In political terms, a European army also made sense, because it could provide the Germans with their chief demand  equality of treatment within the alliance  while meeting French desires for continued control over German military independence.
The failure of the Petersberg talks to bring about any workable plan for the use of German troops shifted attention to the Paris discussions on a European army. These had not started well. The European nations present, including Britain, the Benelux countries, and Italy, were at best lukewarm toward a plan so obviously designed to inhibit a real German role in western defense and that would impinge on the military sovereignty of each member. The British especially were unsympathetic. When the Pleven Plan was first announced in October 1950, Prime Minister Clement Attlee called it "unworkable and unsound." Bevin was still more antagonistic, claiming that "one of the ideas underlying the French plan is, undoubtedly, that of a Continental bloc, under French leadership, which while linked with the Atlantic Community would constitute in world politics a force with some measure of independence"  just the line the cabinet had taken against the Schuman Plan. Such a bloc

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