France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (34 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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would be, he thought, "a sort of cancer in the Atlantic body," and he stated that "we must nip it in the bud." Following Bevin's resignation due to ill health in March 1951, Herbert Morrison, the new foreign secretary, adopted a somewhat more positive view toward the European army, a turnaround that in part reflected Washington's changing perception of the scheme.
51
The Americans, frustrated by lack of progress at the Petersberg, were forced to acknowledge that the French plan for a European army had much merit, at least politically. McCloy, Ambassador Bruce, and even Jean Monnet were instrumental in bringing both General Eisenhower, the new Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), and the State Department to see that only if France and Germany cooperated fully could NATO work effectively. By the middle of July, Eisenhower had come to believe "that the time has come when we must all press for the earliest possible implementation of the European Army concept." With Eisenhower's reputation behind the program, military objections to the plan withered. At the end of July, Acheson secured the approval of the National Security Council for giving full American support to what became known as the European Defense Community (EDC). The U.S. government, Acheson recalled, concluded that "an effective defense of Europe, ending the occupation in Germany, and integration in Western Europe were all interrelated and all waited upon a solution of the Allied military problem acceptable to France and Germany. The only one in sight seemed to be the European Army." The EDC could give the French security from and parity with Germany, while winning French agreement to the political evolution of the occupation that the Germans demanded.
52
Although the new U.S. commitment to the EDC, expressed in a document from the National Security Council, NSC 115, marked an American turnaround in favor of the French concept, Acheson informed Schuman that the United States still expected French consent to bringing the EDC under NATO command and giving Germany NATO membership. He wanted to move forward, on an interim basis, in raising and recruiting a German army before the European force had actually been created, and he wanted to see Germany treated as "a partner who is freely contributing to our mutual defense." For this reason, he hoped France would support the United States in returning to the Germans the "full power to conduct their own affairs."
53
The French cabinet, however, was not prepared to alter its cautious pace. President Auriol, himself hostile to the EDC idea, fumed in a letter
 
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to Pleven about Acheson's presumptuous tone and thought the United States was blindly "giving Germany her power and independence with the hope, alas, that Germany will place this independence and power at the service of the Allies."
54
In a more moderate response to Acheson's letter, Robert Schuman made the point that France could not agree to any change in Germany's occupied status until the treaty for the European army had not only been signed but ratified by the member parliaments. He also opposed recruiting troops during the interim period before the army was in place, on the grounds that this would constitute, even if only briefly, a German army. He thought it "indispensable" that "the first man recruited in Germany be able to put on a European uniform." And as for Acheson's hope of seeing Germany enter NATO, Schuman remained unalterably opposed. "Our entire European policy," he stated, "and especially the integration of German forces, would be compromised by the prospect of direct German accession to the Atlantic Community.''
55
From Schuman's point of view, Germany must prove itself a good European before taking a place on the Atlantic stage, a forum still expressly reserved for the United States, Britain, and France. Clearly, Acheson's hope that an American expression of support for the European army might be enough to trigger a host of French political concessions to Germany proved ill founded.
Schuman traveled to Washington in mid-September to take up with the Americans and British a serious examination of the German demands for replacing the occupation with a "contractual" framework more befitting relations between allies. In the opening days of the conference, Acheson firmly stated American policy in favor of the EDC, to Schuman's great pleasure. This policy was recognized as a concession to France on which, according to Acheson, "there would be no turning back and no doubts."
56
The British agreed if not to join the EDC at least not to oppose it; they could see its obvious advantages in settling the Franco-German dispute.
57
With these positions clear, the Allies turned to the difficult task of determining how much sovereignty they could restore to Germany without endangering their own security and national interests in Europe. Discussions on this problem had been underway in the AHC since the Brussels conference, and there had been a considerable amount of agreement on the general principles to be contained in the new contractual treaty. The Allies agreed that to protect their interests in Germany they must maintain intact the principle of their own supreme authority there. From this basis they could defend those rights most important to western security. These included the
 
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right to draw up the final peace treaty, the right to maintain and defend their military forces in the FRG, the right to intervene in Germany in the event of a serious threat to Allied security, and the right to take part in the occupation of Berlin. These basic rights left a great deal unspecified, however, particularly about what constituted a "threat." Although the foreign ministers did not settle the issue at Washington, they did establish the principle, reflecting French demands made in the AHC, that a threat to the liberal democratic order in place in Germany would warrant Allied intervention. Such a sweeping ruling would be hard to square with German public opinion, but for American officials, as well as for French, the defense of democratic liberties in Germany had been at the basis of the entire occupation experience, and their continued defense must be incorporated into the new contractual agreements. There were other issues that remained to be worked out. The French, for example, wanted to continue controls in the areas of demilitarization, scientific research, industry, and aviation  all the areas overseen by the MSB. These technical issues were deferred by the foreign ministers, to be taken up in further negotiations between the AHC and the German government.
58
Although the Washington Conference produced no major agreement on Germany, and tough negotiations lay ahead, the three Allies made an important connection there. From now on, the framework for a German defense contribution would move forward alongside German political evolution, a linkage designed to emphasize that German sovereignty would be returned only after a new military and legal status for the defeated nation had been put in place. For these reasons, Ambassador Bonnet could claim with some justification that the conference proved "a considerable success for the French positions"; on the EDC, "we have made no concessions," and on the question of the occupation, "the English and American ideas have largely evolved in a direction favorable to our own. The guarantees which we want to maintain in the areas of security, arms production, and the special rights of the Allies . . . remain assured.'' Foreign Minister Schuman was equally ebullient, particularly about the French proposal for the European army. "We have the satisfaction to state," he cabled his ambassadors, "that the incessant efforts we have made since September 1950, having received the support of General Eisenhower, and of the U.S. government, have at last rallied Great Britain to our point of view. The plan of the Paris conference for the creation of a European Army has been recognized . . . as an important contribution to an effective defense of Europe, including Germany."
59
 
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The French delegation registered another important success in Washington when the Americans finally agreed to the establishment of an executive body with a mandate to review the defense programs of NATO countries and square them with each nation's financial capacities. This had come after lengthy pleading by the Europeans that some kind of coordination had to be brought to NATO defense expenditures. Following a statement to the conferees by British chancellor of the exchequer Hugh Gaitskell, describing Britain's worsened balance of payments problems since the middle of 1950, René Mayer, the French finance minister, outlined France's grim financial picture. Reconstruction was not yet complete, the population was already working from 45 to 52 hours per week, Marshall aid had dried up, the nation was experiencing acute coal and steel shortages, and its balance-of-trade position was deteriorating. France's dollar gap would grow to $ 500 to $ 600 million by the end of 1952. Mayer was not asking that these problems be rectified immediately, but he did urge the creation of a committee of "wise men," officially to be named the Temporary Council Committee (TCC), designed to set more manageable defense targets in common with other NATO allies. The North Atlantic Council agreed to the scheme at its meeting in Ottawa, immediately following the Washington talks. To be sure, the "wise men" group was far from a common budget, but it did represent a considerable victory for French thinking. At last, a global review of the alliance's capabilities could be made and the principles that operated within the OEEC be carried over into NATO planning. It was, Defense Minister Georges Bidault told the cabinet, "a success for our policies."
60
Though the French were uplifted by the success of the Washington and Ottawa conferences, they still had to face wearisome and difficult negotiations in November, during which the AHC worked with Chancellor Adenauer on a General Agreement, designed to replace the Occupation Statute. The two issues that had been most prominent in Washington continued to occupy the Allied and German negotiators: Could Germany claim to have established equality with the Allies if the former occupying powers maintained "supreme authority" over German affairs? And what specifically would constitute a state of emergency, justifying Allied intervention in Germany? Over the course of nine meetings, the high commissioners and Adenauer endeavored to find language suitable to parliamentary opinion in the four nations concerned, a difficult task in Germany especially. "The Chancellor is under heavy and continuing pressure," the commissioners informed their gov-
 
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ernments, "both from the SPD and from certain elements within his own coalition to insist on even greater concessions by the Allies in return for German participation in Western Defense." Consequently, Adenauer worked to reduce the powers left to the Allies in the new contractual relationship. Yet the Allies had limits beyond which they could not go. They were quite willing to give West Germany "full authority over its domestic and internal affairs" and to end the occupation in name and form. Yet they insisted on maintaining the right to protect their troops in Germany (especially in Berlin) from internal and external threat, and this privilege assumed the authority both to determine when an emergency obtained and to respond to it. Clearly, the Allies were not ready to give Germany full sovereignty. The stakes in central Europe were too high to allow Germany to regain its complete freedom of action and perhaps to play a middle position between East and West in the future. Adenauer understood this, but needed to present to the Bundestag a treaty that downplayed the persistence of Allied power in Germany. The Allies therefore conceded to Adenauer looser language in the General Agreement. Excluding reference to the Allies' supreme authority in Germany, the three powers would "retain the rights heretofore exercised or held by them" in the areas of greatest concern: security of Allied troops, whether threatened by an attack on the ERG or from a subversion of the "liberal-democratic basic order"; Berlin; and a final peace treaty. To assuage the Bundestag, a clause was inserted into the Agreement allowing Germany to appeal to the NATO council for arbitration if the state of emergency had not been terminated by the Allies within thirty days of a German request that this be done.
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Despite some concessions, the sweeping powers long enjoyed by the occupiers would, in principle, be maintained in the postoccupation era.
The opening of the sixth General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris in November provided the three Allied foreign ministers an opportunity to invite Adenauer to meet them and approve the General Agreement. Most of the hard work had already been done by the high commissioners, and little came of the meeting. Symbolically, though, Adenauer's meeting with Schuman, Acheson, and the new British foreign minister Anthony Eden signaled Germany's arrival as an equal member of the western community of nations. The Agreement itself recognized this: it had been born of a need to acknowledge, on the one hand, Allied demands for safeguards against independent German action and, on the other, German demands for recognition of equality and sovereignty. It was more a statement of principles than one of specific rights and obliga-
 
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tions, but it did represent the first crucial step in bringing balance to the Franco-German relationship. Moreover, the integrative institutions  ECSC and EDC  that France had sponsored, and that the United States now fully supported, had been the crucial prerequisites. Ambassador Bonnet exclaimed from Washington that "one cannot too often repeat that the plans brought forward by French initiative have become the keystone of American policy toward Europe"  a rousing affirmation of the belief that Europe might yet be made the French way.
62
Just as the Foreign Ministry was registering real progress toward Franco-German compromise, however, French political support for a policy of rapprochement began to waver. In the same way that Adenauer had to worry about the Bundestag taking offense at any concession to Allied demands, so too did Schuman face growing resentment over his concessions to German political and, worse, military restoration. The national elections of June 1951 marked the first national test of the Gaullist RPF, and the party's success was staggering. With 21.7 percent of the vote, they won 106 seats to become the largest bloc in the Assembly. Sharing with the 95 Communist deputies an abiding hatred for the institutions of the Fourth Republic, these Gaullists could now wreak havoc on the agenda of the centrist governments. At the same time, the right-wing Radicals and Independents improved their standing, placing themselves at the heart of any future governing coalition. Schuman's own party, the MRP, met disaster in the elections, losing nearly half its seats, mostly to the Gaullists. The Third Force coalitions of the center and left that had held France together since 1947 could no longer be cobbled together, as the Socialists would not participate in governments that included the far-right Independents. After 1951, governments were drawn from the center and right, and though they could govern without RPF support, their majorities would be slim and more difficult than ever to hold together. Unpopular policies like German rearmament were in for stiff criticism.
63
Schuman's position was not helped at all by Soviet machinations. The Russians had been making ever louder noises about reopening four-way discussions on the unification and disarmament of Germany, a ruse that consistently attracted a large portion of left-leaning public opinion in France. Many Socialists, for example, wanted to explore fully the possibility of containing a weakened Germany through four-power agreement rather than linking a rearmed West Germany, still vulnerable to fits of nationalist sentiment, to a European community that itself seemed rather feeble, especially in the absence of British membership. Others wondered

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