France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (18 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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industry. His concern, he claimed, was "that the French economy not be destroyed by the German economy."
70
Bidault was willing to negotiate some kind of international control of the Ruhr, though in his view the ownership of the Ruhr industries should be placed in the hands of the occupying powers and the actual management of the mines should likewise not be left to the Germans. He believed that French access to the Ruhr and Rhineland was all the more essential because of France's weakened financial position, and because German recovery, favored by the Anglo-American zonal merger, showed signs of progress.
71
The French were aware that the United States and Britain, at Clay and Bevin's urging, were hoping to revise the level-of-industry agreement, so painstakingly worked out in the ACC but now shattered by the zonal merger, to allow Germany an annual steel production of at least 10 million tons, instead of the previously agreed 7.5 million.
72
This worried André Philip at the Ministry of National Economy, who feared that more steel production would soak up the increases in coal supplies from which France had hoped to profit. Thus Philip argued vociferously that France should oppose any Anglo-American revision of the level of industry until France had been assured of its desired monthly deliveries of 1 million tons of coal.
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Bidault seems to have accepted Philip's arguments rather than Teitgen's. During the Moscow Conference of March 10 to April 24, 1947, Bidault refused to agree to any proposals on economic unity, level of industry, or reparations without assurances that France would receive a specific percentage of German coal on a permanent basis from an internationalized Ruhr. Bidault again pressed upon the occupying powers his views in favor of a demilitarized and detached Rhineland, a separated and internationalized Ruhr, the economic union of the Saar with France, limits on industrial production, reparations from current production, and a strongly federal political organization of the future German state. As at previous meetings, these views were not accepted in their entirety by the other powers. Although the Americans and British had shown support for an internationalized Ruhr, they and the French privately feared Soviet participation in such an organization, and so made fourpower control conditional on Soviet fulfillment of economic unity as outlined at Potsdam. Angered by the anti-Soviet alliance on this issue, Molotov rejected French claims on the Saar. By contrast, the Russians had supported the French claims to reparations from current production, for this was their own position, but here France was opposed by the United States and particularly by Britain. Ultimately, Bidault could get
 
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complete support on none of the issues he felt needed to be resolved if France were to succeed in implementing its German policy, and by extension its own policies of domestic reconstruction.
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Despite these failures, however, there is no evidence that the French positions were defeated at Moscow, or that Bidault departed on a new course in his foreign policy in return for coal guarantees. On the contrary, the one issue on which Bidault made progress  German coal exports  came without any concession from France. A "sliding scale" was worked out, whereby the amount of German coal slated for export would increase in proportion with a general rise in German coal production, a settlement that eased the fears that Philip had raised in the CEI before Bidault's departure. Bidault was quite pleased with the arrangement and predicted that, once French control of the Saar was completely in place, France could reach the mark of 1 million tons per month of coal imports that Philip and Monnet believed essential to the French recovery plan.
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This agreement had not been bought in return for French promises of conciliatory behavior in Germany. Rather, the coal plan grew from American concerns for the stability of the French government. Secretary of State Marshall had heard French pleas when meeting with Auriol and Teitgen before the Moscow conference, and received Bidault's requests for help with real concern. Marshall also needed to provide France with assurances of German coal so that it could better absorb the coming blow of a new upward revision of the bizone's level of industry, to which Marshall and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin agreed in the waning moments of the conference.
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Upon his return to Paris, therefore, Bidault could say to his MRP colleagues with a mixture of bitterness and pride that "Moscow was a failure, even if all the French positions had been maintained." Indeed, Bidault felt that the coal deal was a good one, and had been gained "without any political concessions." In what, then, did the failure consist? The Moscow Conference revealed that without Anglo-American support, French objectives in Germany could never be attained. Bidault was quite candid in his autobiography that up until Moscow, he had fought for de Gaulle's German policy. He profited from the Franco-Soviet
mariage de convenance
to allay Anglo-American schemes for the recovery of Germany. But in Moscow, Bidault realized that the Soviet counterpart for complicity in French aims was participation in exploiting the assets of the Ruhr. The prospect of a "Russian presence on the Rhine" was completely unacceptable to all three western occupying powers. For Bidault had begun to realize just how divergent French and
 
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Soviet aims and values really were. He was appalled by his stodgy, unimaginative, and inflexible Russian interlocutors in Moscow. Their country, he thought, was in "paralysis," they were "set in their attitudes" and showed a great "ignorance of other countries"; their huge bureaucracy, Stalin's "cult of personality comparable to Tsarism,'' and their inability to understand other countries and their needs had inhibited any meaningful negotiation.
77
In light of his experiences at the Moscow Conference, and all too aware of France's acute economic needs, Bidault knew that France stood at a crossroads. As he told the cabinet upon his return to Paris, "we find ourselves in the presence of men who say, 'Are you with us or against us?'"
78
France could now give a clear and unequivocal answer to this question.
 
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Chapter 3 
No Longer a Great Power
Shortly before the Moscow Conference, Georges Bidault quietly confessed to the American ambassador to France, Jefferson Caffery, that the policies of
grandeur
that he had so doggedly pursued since de Gaulle's resignation had not been fulfilled. "I am only too well aware that France is a defeated country," he sighed, "and our dream of restoring her power and glory at this juncture seems far from reality."
1
In May, Bidault bravely declared to his MRP colleagues that France had stood firm at Moscow during the debate about Germany, though firmness had not advanced French national interests. Bidault failed to secure Allied agreement to the separation of the Rhineland from Germany or the internationalization of the Ruhr. Worse, as Europe entered its third spring since the end of the war, France's economy remained stalled. Industrial and agricultural production, despite signs of activity, had not surpassed prewar levels and were restrained by a lack of coal. A critical shortage of gold and dollar holdings, as well as continued disruptions in the transport and shipping network, impeded imports. The economy began to suffer from serious inflation that undermined wages and sparked working-class discontent. Citizens continued to struggle just to meet daily needs: the bread ration, fixed at 250 grams per day in May 1947, actually fell to 200 grams in August, less than during the German occupation.
Domestic political life, too, remained as unstable as ever. No sooner had Bidault returned from Moscow than the gravest political crisis of the fledgling Republic erupted within the governing coalition. Following months of struggle with the Communist ministers in the governing coalition, the Socialist prime minister Paul Ramadier revoked their portfolios on May 4, 1947. Ever since de Gaulle's resignation and the emergence of tripartite coalitions, the PCF had tried to pose as both a party of government and a party of opposition. Yet too many issues placed the
 
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Communists at odds with the rest of the government. For example, in showing his opposition to the government's colonial policy, the Communist minister of national defense, François Billoux, refused to stand in the National Assembly during a tribute to French forces in Indochina, provoking an outcry from the right. In April, the PCF excoriated the government for its colonial policy, this time in Madagascar. Choosing carefully the ground on which to confront the PCF  policy over wages and salaries  Ramadier forced a vote of confidence in the Assembly. The Communist ministers voted against their own government, and Ramadier, breaking with precedent that would have had him resign, instead demanded their resignation. The fragile fabric of tripartism that had tied together opposing ideologies during the tumultuous period of liberation and political reconstruction had been irrevocably rent.
2
Although the absence of the PCF from the governing coalition made the formation of policy somewhat easier, the French faced an array of domestic and international problems that would have taxed even the most cohesive and dynamic government. Following the announcement by Secretary of State George Marshall of a massive American aid program, the French mobilized to take full advantage of the generous offer. Though gratified by the prospect of such support, the Foreign Ministry also feared that such foreign aid might compromise French independence, especially France's efforts to secure guarantees against Germany. French leaders thus fought tooth and nail to keep their positions intact against a growing Anglo-American determination to loosen economic controls on Germany. At the same time, domestic political and economic crises raged during the latter half of 1947, undermining French bargaining power, while the increasing bellicosity of the Russians and in particular the fallout from the Prague coup in February 1948 forced the French to downgrade the German threat in favor of the more immediate Soviet one.
All of these forces worked against the German policy that Bidault favored before and during the Moscow Conference. By the close of the tripartite London Conference on Germany in June 1948 (the United States, Britain, and France excluded the Russians), France had made major changes to its positions on Germany, seeking only a portion of its earlier desiderata in exchange for the fusion of the French zone with the Anglo-American bizone. In the course of this crucial transitional period, French officials came to understand that in an increasingly divided world in which the French position was indisputably weak, France must readjust to changing circumstances if it were to attain any of its objectives in
 
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postwar Europe. Indeed, by the middle of 1948, the French government stood ready to join its Anglo-American partners in establishing an independent West German government. However, although the Quai d'Orsay had to concede that its tactics heretofore had failed to produce a favorable settlement, the shift from confrontation to cooperation did not imply any weakening of French determination to contain Germany and bolster French influence. Rather, French leaders emerged from this period more aware than ever of the subtle tactics they would have to employ to attain these goals.
France and the Advent of the Marshall Plan
The origins of the Marshall Plan  the American-funded program for European recovery proposed by Secretary of State George Marshall in the wake of the Moscow Conference  have received extended treatment from historians of American foreign relations.
3
The French response to the plan, however, is not as well understood. Marshall's proposal, made on June 5, 1947, at the commencement of Harvard University, aroused both excitement and concern in Paris. Instinctively suspicious, Georges Bidault wondered what ulterior motives lay beneath the hopeful rhetoric of Marshall's remarks. Did the plan seek to limit French influence in Germany? Was France being lured into a program for German recovery under the guise of international cooperation? Initially, French attitudes toward the Marshall Plan were cast strictly in terms of the diplomatic confrontation over Germany, and Bidault would make certain to show that France, though grateful for American economic aid, was not ready to modify its demands in Germany.
4
Still, Bidault knew that France needed American economic assistance desperately, and he, like British foreign minister Ernest Bevin, was determined to see the American initiative come to fruition. Within three weeks of Marshall's speech, Bidault and Bevin gathered in Paris to hold talks with Soviet foreign minister Molotov to outline a joint European response to Marshall's proposal. From the outset Molotov suspected a western plot to undermine the Soviet presence in Germany, and he strongly objected to any economic recovery plan that violated national sovereignty by spelling out conditions on how American aid would be used. Bidault was cautious toward the Soviets, believing they would more likely try to sabotage the plan than profit from it. Indeed, he learned from French intelligence that the Soviet delegation was unlikely to agree to a joint recovery program at any cost, and so made only a half-

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