Read France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 Online

Authors: William I. Hitchcock

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France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (44 page)

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Japan

11.1

United Kingdom

2.4

2.9

United States

3.3

3.9

Source:
Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse, eds.,
Histoire économique et sociale de la
France,
vol.4, part 3 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982), 1012.a

tion used its new powers to great effect. In particular, the government initiated high rates of public spending in key industrial sectors and pursued the liberalization of trade with its European neighbors. The "new" Europe translated into higher rates of exports to the intra-European market, with the countries of the European Economic Community plus Britain, Spain, and Switzerland taking fully half of French exports by 1962. Europe worked for France, a realization first made by the planners of the Fourth Republic.
³It might be countered that France had merely profited from international circumstances, and that French national strategy should not be granted much weight in explanations for French recovery after the war. To be sure, France benefited from the rising tide that was lifting all the European boats in the 1950S, but even compared to its European partners, French economic growth was impressive, doubling the annual growth rate of Britain and even outpacing Germany over the period 19591971.

Of course, France enjoyed massive American aid, first in the form of relief grants and emergency aid, then through the mechanism of the European Recovery Plan (see Table 4). Between 1948 and 1951, France received $ 2.6 billion in Marshall credits, allowing the administration to cover 69.5 percent of the balance-of-payments deficit and thereby keep up the high rate of investment so vital to French industrial recovery.
⁴

But what remains striking about French diplomacy in this decade is the degree of independence and initiative that France maintained in spite of such reliance on American support. Because of its crucial geographic and strategic position in Europe, France remained throughout this period at the very top of Washington's foreign policy concerns. The French used this fact to create leverage in international negotiations,

Page 207

Table 4.
American Aid to France, 19451952 (in millions of current dollars)

Aid Preceding ERP (before April 3, 1948)

Dec. 4, 1945

Export-Import Bank credit

550

May 28, 1946

U.S. government credit

720

July 16, 1946

Export-Import Bank credit

650