France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (23 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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into two hostile blocs, a policy that their party had expressly opposed since the end of the war.
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Bidault marshaled effective arguments in the cabinet in favor of the agreements reached in London. He thought it "the maximum for which we could have hoped." Premier Schuman supported Bidault on this, suggesting that the Ruhr agreement provided France the access to this region that its national and economic security demanded. The MRP ministers stood fast in the face of criticism from Auriol and Interior Minister Jules Moch, who considered the American agenda provocative and reckless. Bidault consistently maintained that France, by abstaining from participating in the deal being offered in London, would not inhibit the United States and Britain from moving ahead with reforms in the bizone, but would simply sacrifice any influence over the future of western Germany.
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If Bidault was opposed by most of the cabinet, he appeared nevertheless to have strong support from within the Foreign Ministry. De Leusse's office put forth a paper on the clear benefits of the zonal agreement that the London negotiators had worked out, again placing the deal in terms of influence over Germany. The Joint Import-Export Agency, for example, would provide France with a capacity to monitor the whole of German commerce, which through the granting of import and export licenses allowed France to continue to manipulate German trade. De Leusse thought that "a purely zonal policy is, by contrast, sterile at the present time, and given the exigencies of the French zone, totally without any future." Similarly, the Office of Economic and Financial Affairs of the Quai, under Hervé Alphand's direction, believed that without some kind of Ruhr agreement, even a limited one, "the distribution of coke, coal, and steel will be left in the hands of Germany . . . and German industry will rapidly recover a margin of superiority with respect to its neighbors. In the place of an equitable division in the common interest will be substituted the caprice of German decisions." Above all, in Alphand's thinking, "the allied powers, without rights in the Ruhr, will be deprived of any effective means to observe German rearmament." Even General Koenig was able to lay aside his Gaullist proclivities and admit that the London accords constituted a reasonable compromise, "advancing 6065 percent of the French position.'' Koenig, moreover, did not think that the Russians would be willing to risk war over an agreement whose implications were chiefly economic rather than military, and he communicated these views to Auriol.
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Key officials, then, supported the compromises Bidault and Massigli made in London.
 
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However, persuading the National Assembly to support the accords was a far more difficult task. With de Gaulle and the PCF predictably hostile to the entire affair  de Gaulle because of the concessions to Germany, the Communists because of Bidault's support of the Anglo-American agenda  Bidault would have to count on the solid support of the Third Force parties. The debates in the cabinet had shown the depth of division between the Socialists and the MRP, and in fact the MRP itself was divided.
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Ambassador Caffery worked to line up crucial swing votes by prevailing on Paul Reynaud and Joseph Laniel, leaders of the conservative parties, to inform their followers that the agreement as it stood now was the best France would get and that if it were refused, France would lose any opportunity to influence the outcome of future debates on the new West German government.
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In a communiqué issued by the National Committee of the MRP, Bidault defended his position using similar logic:
The initial positions of the Anglo-Saxon powers were, at the beginning [of the conference], diametrically opposed to ours. Through tenacious diplomatic action, considerable concessions have been obtained, particularly on the Ruhr and on German federalism. France sees her positions as only half-realized. But she has the choice between accepting the results obtained as a basis from which to continue; or refusing completely, a reaction that will lead to her isolation. In 1919, France had one hundred divisions and she was not able to secure her objectives in the Ruhr. Today, a less powerful France has obtained a permanent presence in the Ruhr with considerable guarantees. We cannot direct a policy against the entire world. We must, on the contrary, be present to be able to act and to improve upon the positive gains already achieved. It is important to realize that the opposition, pure and simple, of France will not impede America and England from achieving their objectives in their zones which count 45 million inhabitants against 5 million in our zone. In order to impress upon our Allies the real and legitimate concerns of France, it is all the more important that our country does not separate itself either politically or economically from the camp of liberty.
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After almost a week of parliamentary debate, in which Bidault defended his policy from the criticisms of both left and right, Reynaud drew up a resolution that expressed the Assembly's reservations about certain aspects of the accord, but that allowed the passage of an "order of the day"
 
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supporting the foreign policy of the government by the razor-thin majority of eight votes: 297 to 289. France now stood ready to support the reconstitution of a German government.
From the middle of 1947 through June 1948, French diplomats faced a series of domestic and international crises that compelled them to alter the tactics they had previously employed in seeking to control German recovery. The Anglo-American position on the level of German industry and zonal fusion placed the French on the defensive, while domestic economic and social crises, combined with a worsening of East-West relations, brought the French leadership to moderate its positions and seek a policy of closer cooperation with Washington and London. The establishment of the ERP, too, implied a certain alignment with the postwar objectives of the United States. The fond hopes de Gaulle once nourished of making France an independent and powerful actor on the world stage appeared, for the moment, illusory. That said, however, the French did not fundamentally alter their overall strategic vision with regard to Germany or the postwar European order. This is quite evident when one assesses Bidault's own transition from a policy of obstruction to one of reconciliation. During de Gaulle's presidency, he had willingly pursued a harsh and inflexible policy toward Germany, and it is clear that even in 1948, he harbored serious reservations about returning sovereignty to the nation so associated with France's repeated humiliations. Nonetheless, Bidault also had come to understand, through personal experience, that French power was limited and could be exercised only within a framework of alliance and integration with the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. To be sure, the growing Soviet threat had led him to moderate his views toward Germany, but a broader conclusion about France's role in the world was at work here, one that Robert Schuman, Bidault's successor, supported. Germany remained the critical element in France's overall recovery strategy: only a settlement that controlled and pacified Germany could protect French interests. Confrontation had failed to secure it; cooperation now offered the best means to achieve a long-lasting balance of power with France's oldest enemy. Indeed, the growing Soviet threat only made a prompt and constructive resolution of the German problem more urgent, for as the western powers came to invest ever more strategic value in West Germany, so might they downgrade France's role as their principal continental ally. The arrival on the international scene of a new German state, even one as constrained as the Federal Republic of Germany, led French officials to redouble their efforts to create a viable European framework
 
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that could both contain Germany and bolster France's position in the postwar order. France's new understanding of its reduced diplomatic powers, and the albeit grudging willingness of French officials to adjust to the changed international circumstances of the post-1945 world, proved the prerequisite to the evolution in Paris of the policy of Franco-German rapprochement that the Foreign Ministry pursued after 1948.
 
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Chapter 4 
The Hard Road to Franco-German Rapprochement, 19481950
By the summer of 1948, the fluid international system of the immediate postwar period had hardened into the shape it would hold for the next forty years. The London accords of June secured tripartite agreement on the creation of a western German state. When the first step of this tripartite policy was introduced  currency reform in the three western zones  the Soviet Union responded by attempting to cut Berlin's supply lines to the West, isolating the former capital inside the Soviet zone. The heightened tensions created by this standoff justified British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin's appeals for a formal U.S.-European military pact; by July, exploratory talks on what would emerge as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were underway in Washington. Although still restrained by a lack of political support in the Congress, the Truman administration now seemed prepared to add a military dimension to the already expanding economic recovery program for western Europe.
Despite these promising signs of strategic convergence among the United States, Britain, and France, however, serious differences remained to be settled, most of which focused on Germany. In mid-July, Robert Schuman's government, weakened by the London accords, finally fell due to an MRP-Socialist dispute about the military budget and the timing of local elections. After a summer of political drift, the veteran Third Republic Radical Henri Queuille formed a government and installed Schuman at the Quai d'Orsay. Although Schuman's personal style  he was modest, cautious, introverted, and a devout Catholic  could not have been less like Bidault's, the two men shared a similar belief in the need to encourage closer Franco-German relations while ensuring that Germany remained subject to the controls that the occupation had put in place. In light of the Berlin crisis, however, the United States redoubled its efforts to persuade France that continued
 
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restrictions on German economic and political development would provoke antiwestern feeling, resentment toward the occupation powers, and skepticism about the possibility of European recovery. In American eyes, the French interest in retarding German development remained a serious obstacle to stability in western Europe, and might hinder the "containment" of the Soviet Union, a policy to which the State Department was now committed.
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To allay American impatience with the pace of German recovery, French officials had to provide a constructive alternative to what they perceived to be the reckless loosening of all restrictions on German development that the bizonal commanders appeared to favor. Rather than simply block German recovery, France had to provide its own vision of Germany's future economic and political roles. Only through active and constructive policies could France hope to preempt any more radical Anglo-American schemes for the complete liberation of Germany from the political and economic controls of the occupation. From this diplomatic-strategic requirement grew the French leadership's increasing emphasis on Franco-German cooperation, from late 1948 onward. Drawing upon the themes of planning, international control, and supranational oversight that characterized the language of American Marshall Plan administrators, French officials would propose the integration of German economic life with that of Europe in a controlled, politically balanced, and economically liberal environment. This vision, which echoed the domestic "planning consensus" favored by Monnet and his colleagues, could not help but appeal to American planners who sought to provide an economic, rather than a military, justification for western European cooperation.
If this strategy for economic cooperation with Germany served to smooth Franco-American relations, it proved antagonistic to British interests. Britain repeatedly rebuffed French appeals for a greater British role on the continent, and yet when France turned to Germany and other neighbors to develop continental union schemes, Britain expressed alarm, fearing that France sought to build a continental alternative to a British-led Atlantic community. French leaders, desperate to shore up an increasingly weak diplomatic position, were forced to develop a new approach to the German question, one that promised to augment France's regional leadership even if it risked alienating Britain. By embracing European integration in a way that Britain refused to do, France sought to establish itself as the de facto arbiter of European economic reconstruction, and thus offset the crippling disadvantages

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