France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (22 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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Page 90
established in May 1947 to provide Germans some degree of control over their own political and economic life, and to create a second legislative body, an upper house to be known as the
Länderrat,
composed of members selected by their respective
Land
governments. The Executive Committee of the Council effectively took on the status of a cabinet, and it was to have a chairman, elected by the Economic Council and approved by the
Länderrat
. The commanders planned to strengthen the powers of the Council to raise taxes and prepare a budget, and they proposed the creation of a high court and a central bank. Quite obviously, the bizonal authorities were putting in place the foundations for a new German state.
56
Neither the French, nor the Russians for that matter, had been informed or asked to comment on the decisions. Nevertheless, the reforms were announced by Clay on January 8, 1948.
In Paris, a storm of protest broke over the issue, particularly because French officials in Berlin knew the American and British commanders were drawing up a plan and fully expected to be consulted on its contents. Indeed, General Koenig planned to meet with Clay and the British commander, General Brian Robertson, on January 9 to discuss zonal policy.
57
Instead, any consultation had apparently been denied the French. This went against the informal agreement Bidault thought he had secured with Marshall in December to work together on zonal issues, and Paris instructed Bonnet in Washington to make a formal protest over the actions of the zonal commanders. "Never have we found ourselves placed before such a
fait accompli
whose repercussions, both immediate and long-term, were so serious," the director of political affairs in the Foreign Ministry wrote. "We are stupefied by the radical character of these reforms."
58
In both London and Washington, French representatives protested. Massigli went to see Bevin, but curiously, Bevin claimed not to have been fully informed of the details of the plan. Massigli seems to have tried to calm the troubled waters by urging Paris not to react too wildly to a process that was inevitable and one that, from Massigli's perspective, France ought to support anyway. By contrast, Bonnet delivered a démarche to Marshall noting France's "great surprise" that, at a time when three-way talks were being planned, the French should be reading about bizonal reforms in the newspapers. In the view of his government, Bonnet said, the plan represented ''the creation of a veritable German government," to which France was strongly opposed.
59
Bidault in particular was obviously hurt and embarrassed. As he indicated in a circular to the major embassies, he had understood Marshall to
 
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accept a three-way conference on the whole range of German issues. "This is exactly the contrary of what has happened," he wrote. "France has been treated like the Soviet Union, invited like the latter through the press to join the newly reformed bizone if she should find it desirable." For Bidault, the behavior of the Anglo-Americans had shattered his hope that a fair deal could be struck over trizonal fusion; they seemed uninterested in French participation.
60
The affair reignited the discussion in the Quai on French zonal policy that had been smoldering since the end of the Moscow Conference in the spring of 1947. For Jacques-Camille Paris, the director of the European Office, the episode revealed that by abstaining from zonal fusion, France had only left the door open to the "deplorable maneuvers" of the Anglo-Americans; independence had in fact only increased France's isolation.
61
Pierre de Leusse, Paris's deputy in charge of the Central European division, nevertheless feared that a precipitous move toward zonal fusion would effectively establish a western German state, provoking the Soviets to create an eastern German state, thus dividing Europe. Furthermore, by establishing central agencies, the bizonal commanders had defeated the federalist principles that the French thought less provocative toward the USSR and more in line with their own vision of the German settlement.
62
Indeed, the centralist tendency of the bizonal plan proved the chief concern of the French policymakers. In particular, the
Länder
would, in the French view, lose much of their authority to set policy for the nation as a whole, unable once again to inhibit a central bureaucracy from establishing its own agenda. In a memorandum to missions in Washington, London, and Berlin, the Europe Office claimed that France sought a federal constitution that could ensure unity but also protect the sovereignty and autonomy of the
Länder
. Such a federal structure was important not simply because federalism made for internal equilibrium. "A strongly unified Germany," the memorandum continued, "would be too great a force not to attempt to break the [European] balance and to try to attain the hegemony towards which she has been pushed by certain tendencies natural to her temperament. By contrast a federal Germany would find very naturally the place and the role that it deserves in a Europe that is itself on the road to federalism."
63
There were obvious economic threats in the bizonal plan as well. The plan gave the Economic Council the power to administer railways, transport, and shipping, to issue patents and copyrights, to raise taxes, and, of greatest concern to French observers, to set policy on the "production,
 
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allocation, collection, and storage of goods, raw materials, gas, water, and electricity."
64
That such powers over coal production were now in German hands alarmed Koenig's staff. "This is a veritable nationalization on behalf of Germany," wrote the chief technical adviser, "the creation of an enormous German
Konzern,
whose control over our coal supplies  Allied property  will be all the greater, despite the assurances and good will of the American and British governments." Only through prompt action could the government forestall the loss of French economic influence in the Ruhr.
65
For all these concerns, however, the political adviser in Germany, Jacques Tarbé de Saint-Hardouin, and Ambassador Massigli believed that the government simply had to accept the bizonal plan as a fait accompli and endeavor to engage more fully in zonal decision making. Massigli even thought that, given the chaos that reigned in Germany and the slow rate of reconstruction, the bizonal authorities had been justified in initiating the reforms. France, he thought, ought to cooperate in this general effort. Saint-Hardouin, for his part, thought that if France worked constructively to build a European federation, Germany could be integrated into it, providing a stable basis for both economic growth and security.
66
Grudgingly, Bidault conceded this as well. In the cabinet, he stated the obvious lesson of the affair: that "if France expected to have a presence in the Ruhr under satisfactory terms, it will certainly be necessary to fuse the three zones, and the government must prepare itself to rally to this point of view."
67
Outmaneuvered and isolated, French officials in the government and abroad now understood that the interests of the nation could only be protected if France was willing to cooperate and compromise with the western powers.
This conclusion was reinforced by a changing French assessment of the international behavior of the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Moscow Conference, French officials had observed the growing hostility in Soviet pronouncements with regard to the German policy of the western powers. The French ambassador in Moscow, General Georges Catroux, placed some of the blame for this Soviet bellicosity on the ferocity of Truman's declaration of March 1947, which declared American support for any nation whose liberty was under threat from without or within, and on the more subtle economic campaign that informed the Marshall Plan. Yet he also noted a growing churlishness among his Soviet interlocutors. They sought, he wrote in August, to isolate themselves and all those countries under Soviet influence from the wider
 
Page 93
world, to block any four-power progress on Germany, and to assure the failure of the Marshall Plan.
68
By the winter of 1947, French observers became convinced that Russia's chief aim was to sabotage European reconstruction, and they brought forward evidence of Soviet direction of the French strikes of November and December to prove it.
69
The most alarming indication yet of the long reach of the Soviet Union came in late February 1948, when Czechoslovak Communist leader and prime minister Clement Gottwald forced President Edvard Benes* to accept a Communist-dominated government. This was the culmination of a struggle that had been going on since the end of the war, in which the Communists had made steady advances in consolidating their power within the state, the unions, and the army. Indeed, totalitarianism was installed in Czechoslovakia with the support of a large part of the population, as voter polls revealed. Nonetheless, in the minds of western observers, the Prague "coup" quickly became a sign of a new determination on the part of Stalin to consolidate his gains behind the iron curtain, and to punish any satellite that flirted with a mixed economy or a coalition government. The French representative there, Ambassador Maurice Dejean, claimed that the coup had been planned in Moscow during the previous December, and indeed the Soviet viceminister of foreign affairs, Valerian Zorin, was present in Prague throughout the affair.
70
Dejean called the coup "a model of its genre, a masterpiece of the Communist strategy." For François Seydoux, the coup recalled the
Anschluss
of 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria with the assistance of Austrian conspirators. Though few considered that France was next on Russia's list, or that the French Communists were in a position to carry out a similar stab in the back, the coup directly weakened France's position in the upcoming round of negotiations on Germany by demonstrating that Europe's real security threat came no longer from Germany but from the Soviet Union.
71
The Prague coup led Bidault to take up an offer from Ernest Bevin to forge a European security pact, based on the principle of mutual defense in the face of external aggression. In March, the Benelux countries joined Britain and France in signing the Treaty of Brussels, the first step toward an explicitly anti-Soviet alliance.
72
As the tripartite London Conference on Germany convened in February 1948, therefore, French officials expected to find their Anglo-American colleagues in no mood to delay the consolidation of the western zones into a viable western German state. The chief problems on the
 
Page 94
agenda were the future of the Ruhr, the relationship among the three zones and the possibility of fusion, and the political organization of the western zones. The Americans were more interested in the question of zonal fusion and in setting out a timetable for the creation of permanent German governmental organizations than they were in the Ruhr issue; France's priorities were just the reverse. René Massigli, the leader of France's delegation, restated his country's concern with the possibility that Germany might once again dominate Europe, if not militarily, then economically, and that only by carefully bringing Germany into a strong European framework could such an outcome be avoided. For the United States, the German problem had to be reconsidered in light of the radically changing European situation, for strict controls on Germany's economic and political future such as the French advocated might serve to alienate the population and push Germany toward the East.
73
The achievements of the French delegation at the London Conference were greater than France had a right to expect. If the French had to give up their plans for the actual separation of the Ruhr from Germany, they nevertheless were successful in securing Anglo-American agreement to the establishment of an international authority to control and monitor the distribution of coal and coke produced in the Ruhr. Massigli also received a loose commitment from Douglas that along with the Ruhr agreement would go continuing efforts to promote a regional security framework with American participation. Ambassador Douglas stressed that he thought the Americans would remain in Germany for some time, and that this should help allay French fears of a German military revival. The United States was even willing to institute as a component of the Ruhr deal a military security board that would monitor military activity in Germany. Given these still unofficial but crucial security commitments from Washington, Alphand, who was the French representative on the Ruhr working committee, believed France had obtained a good deal and urged the government to accept it. Bidault similarly felt the plan was a good one, and took it before his still skeptical cabinet colleagues.
74
The cabinet proved the chief obstacle to the compromise that Massigli's delegation worked out in London, chiefly because it feared that, in light of the growing East-West tensions in Berlin, the establishment of a government in western Germany, even if provisional, might provoke the Soviets into launching hostilities against a woefully unprepared western Europe. At the very least, the London agreements would commit the Socialist cabinet ministers to de facto division of Germany and Europe

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