France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (39 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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then insisted that China should be included. It was not until late November that the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union agreed on a January meeting in Berlin to resume discussions on the German problem.
36
Meanwhile, progress on the EDC negotiations had slowed to a crawl. In April, Bidault secured the agreement of the other member states to the additional protocols, though Adenauer refused to sign them, perhaps fearing adverse electoral consequences.
37
Bidault also engaged in inconclusive negotiations on the Saar, designed to get German agreement on a treaty giving France special economic rights in the region after the Saar had been granted political autonomy within the still-unborn European community. Though the French National Assembly ratified a new Franco-Saar convention in November, Adenauer remained hostile to French policy there. Because the French had made it clear that the EDC could not go forward without German recognition of the "European" political status of the Saar, this conflict continued to block progress on the treaty.
38
And finally, in late November, a debate in the Assembly on the Laniel government's European policy revealed that opposition to the EDC had, if anything, grown, and that the treaty stood less chance than ever of being ratified.
39
At the end of this disappointing year, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and France met in Bermuda to take stock of the Alliance and to plan for their common approach to the Soviets in the upcoming four-power meeting. The Bermuda Conference of December 4 to 8, 1953, was the first meeting at the head-of-state level since the end of the war, though Prime Minister Laniel fell ill immediately on his arrival and Bidault took his place. In the end, Bidault might have wished Laniel had not been absent, particularly when Winston Churchill launched into an emotional denunciation of France's policy toward Germany and the rearmament problem. Churchill opened his broadside by stating that the previous "three years had been completely wasted in getting what was absolutely necessary, a good strong German army." Churchill stated that if the EDC failed, "we ought to establish an arrangement under NATO that would give us at once 12 German divisions." President Eisenhower, in an effort to soften the impact of Churchill's remarks, pointed out that "the Germans, under their present leaders, do not want a German army," and that "to resort to a national army was a second choice so far behind EDC that there could be no comparison." Nonetheless, the pressure on Bidault was intense. Two of the most powerful and prominent men in the western world were telling him that without prompt
 
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French action, the entire Alliance structure that they had all worked so hard to build would fall to pieces.
40
Of course, none of this was new to Bidault. Yet he knew that the parliamentary situation was totally unfavorable to the project, a point that Eisenhower and Churchill seemed to forget. Bidault thus went on to discuss the need for a Saar settlement in a lengthy statement that seemed defeatist and petty to Eisenhower and Churchill, and prompted the appeal from the British leader "not to let a few fields in the Saar valley" destroy the Western Alliance. Bidault asked for an Anglo-American commitment to leave troops on the continent as long as the EDC existed. At the root of Bidault's request lay the nagging concern that the EDC represented a step down in the international pecking order, placing France beneath the United States and Britain. "While France wishes to build Europe," Bidault said, "it does not wish to be engulfed by it." The EDC must not be allowed to weaken the position of France as one of the Big Three by leading to the withdrawal of American and British troops from the continent. Only if such conditions were met would the French public be willing to accept the "sacrifice" of French membership in the EDC. In response to Bidault, Dulles carefully stated that the EDC would do nothing to harm French prestige and that only a rejection of the treaty would do that. Churchill, meanwhile, continued his vituperative attack and grumbled, ''thank God [the British] still had the Channel" to rely on, implying that as things stood, the continentals would be little use in repelling a Russian invasion. In light of the unpleasant experience of the Bermuda Conference, the public remarks by John Foster Dulles to the North Atlantic Council one week later stating that the failure of the EDC would "compel an agonizing reappraisal of basic United States policy" toward Europe came as little surprise in Paris.
41
Slouching toward Geneva
Despite the barrage of threats from Dulles and Churchill, however, the EDC gained little momentum. The long-awaited four-power conference in Berlin opened on January 23, 1954, further stalling any French action on the treaty. Churchill had called for this meeting almost a year earlier. Now, no one in Washington, London, or Paris believed it would really lead to the reunification of Germany. However, it did give Bidault an opportunity to mend fences with his western allies.
42
Soviet foreign minister Molotov's intention, obvious to all, was to destroy the EDC and tempt France away from the West by offering to sponsor an
 
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all-European security treaty, incorporating a reunited and disarmed Germany but without U.S. membership. The proposal prompted peals of laughter from the western delegations and went absolutely nowhere. In the meantime, Bidault stood firmly with Eden and Dulles, showing no willingness to "trade" the EDC for a neutralisation of Germany or a settlement in Indochina, at which Molotov hinted. "Bidault is really emerging as quite a hero," noted C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower's special assistant. "He has consistently shown a lot of guts and by now has come out so squarely for EDC and so boldly for German elections and freedom that he will never be able to crawl back on that limb.'' Bidault's solidarity with his Anglo-Saxon colleagues left Molotov isolated, and the Berlin Conference sputtered to an end after more than three weeks of inconclusive and sterile debate.
43
The most significant development at the Berlin Conference did not concern Europe at all but Indochina. In light of the steadily worsening military position of French troops there, and the growing pressure within France  ably manufactured by Pierre Mendès France among others  to end the Asian war, Bidault prevailed upon Dulles to agree to a five-power conference, including China, to discuss Korea and Indochina. Dulles, totally hostile to dealing with the as yet unrecognized Chinese Communist government, demurred, but finally reversed his position on the understanding that Bidault would secure a vote on the EDC before the five-power talks, scheduled for Geneva in late April, began. Dulles went so far as to provide the French government with a timetable for moving forward with the ratification debate. Upon returning to Paris, Bidault told Dulles that he "prayed to God" that such an American-authored calendar never leaked to the public. He would do what he could, but he asked Dulles not to press too hard. In the end, however, Dulles's demands were, yet again, not met, as events both in Europe and Asia served to delay any action on the EDC.
44
Before the EDC debate could be started, Bidault insisted that France receive satisfaction on three outstanding issues: the Saar, the signing of the protocols, and an Anglo-American assurance about the presence of troops on the continent. On the Saar, the U.S. government believed that the most successful course was to pressure Adenauer to abandon his objections to the "Europeanization" of the Saar. Unfortunately, despite heavy American pressure, Adenauer could only go so far on the Saar issue. His FDP coalition partners, further to his right, demanded that France allow German economic interests access to the region and that the ownership of mines and industries be returned to German firms.
45
 
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Another flap arose about the signing of the protocols. France demanded that these additions to the treaty be signed by the heads of the member states to give them the same legal force as the treaty itself. This would require the German federal president Theodor Heuss to sign the protocols or at least gain Bundestag permission to delegate this privilege to Adenauer. France's demand on the issue served as an excellent prerequisite for further delay of the ratification debate, and thoroughly annoyed Washington.
46
And finally, the French renewed their effort to secure an Anglo-American guarantee that British and American troops would remain on the continent for the duration of the EDC treaty, and that they would not withdraw from NATO after that twenty-year treaty expired. Upon hearing these new requests, an exasperated President Eisenhower asked his subordinates in the National Security Council if the United States must "go on forever coddling the French." Yet he then went on to rebut forcefully a proposal put forward by Deputy Defense Secretary Keyes that the United States threaten to withdraw its troops from Europe unless France ratified the EDC. Ike answered his own rhetorical question in the affirmative. The American government, determined to do what it could to strengthen Bidault's hand, agreed to make a general statement to the effect that it would "consider sympathetically" proposals for extending the American commitment to NATO.
47
These debates set back the EDC timetable that Dulles had urged on Bidault at Berlin. Yet it was the situation in Indochina that served to divert attention away from the EDC and toward the looming five-power Geneva conference on Asia. On March 13, the Vietminh launched a major assault on the large French garrison at Dien Bien Phu situated on the Laotian-Vietnamese border in northern Indochina. Within fortyeight hours, the Vietminh had captured three remote outposts and rendered useless the airfield, vital for the resupply of the French troops. Worse, unbeknownst to French military intelligence, the 50,000 Vietminh soldiers positioned in the hills surrounding the French positions were armed with heavy artillery, mortars, and anti-aircraft guns. The 15,000 Frenchmen had dug in well, anticipating the attack, but without air supply and under heavy bombardment, they found themselves in very grave trouble.
The origins of the Dien Bien Phu crisis lay in the adoption by France, during the fall of 1953, of a more aggressive strategy in Indochina than it had previously pursued. The United States, whose funding of the war had increased markedly in 1953, criticized the French for an uninspired and lackluster war effort and insisted on a more dynamic approach in ex-
 
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change for further aid. Paris responded by naming General Henri Navarre to take over military operations in Indochina. He believed that the only way to inflict real damage on the Vietminh was to gather the dispersed French forces into powerful mobile battalions that, with air support, could engage the Vietminh in large conventional battles. Such engagements, it was believed, would play to France's strength in organization and firepower. American observers in Indochina supported Navarre's approach, informing Washington that Navarre "should assure the wresting and retaining of the military initiative from the Vietminh."
48
Following a significant French success in mid-October 1953 in the Tonkin Delta that again drew praise from American advisers, Navarre decided to create a "jungle Verdun" in the northern Thai country at the crossroads of Dien Bien Phu, which would block Vietminh supply routes into Laos and China, pull the Vietminh into a major engagement, and thus restore some measure of French control in northern Indochina.
49
Navarre's more aggressive approach to the war may have earned some praise in Washington, but it did not persuade leading French officials that a military victory in Indochina was likely. In January and February 1954, Defense Minister René Pleven and senior French military figures toured Indochina, including the garrison at Dien Bien Phu, and concluded that despite the forces at Navarre's disposal, only a negotiated settlement to the war could preserve any degree of French influence in the region. The Vietminh control of the north was simply too widespread and the nationalist Bao Dai regime had developed little following among the people. With the Geneva conference looming on the horizon, the French believed that the best that could be hoped for was a consolidation and perhaps strengthening of the military position before negotiations began. Of course, the Vietminh had precisely the same objectives, and thus willingly accepted the challenge laid down by the French at Dien Bien Phu.
50
The French hoped that in the process of laying siege to the garrison, the Vietminh would make themselves vulnerable to air and artillery attack and that the costs of the onslaught would slow the consolidation of Vietminh control of the north. But the French commanders badly miscalculated the power of the Vietminh army, its available weaponry, and the advantage of its position in the high hills surrounding Dien Bien Phu. The siege turned into a cruel, murderous strangulation of the trapped French, with every lost inch translating into a strengthened Vietminh bargaining position in Geneva. Only massive American air intervention, the French believed, could save the soldiers, but the Eisen-

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