France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (36 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 167
the integrity of the organization and their opposition to any power that threatened it from within or without. "We seemed to have broken through a long series of obstacles," remembered Acheson later, "and to be fairly started toward a more united and stronger Europe and an integrated Atlantic defense system. The world that lay before us shone with hope."
74
A sudden onslaught of Soviet diplomatic overtures, however, placed these accomplishments in jeopardy. In what most observers considered a bid to block the realization of the EDC, the Soviet Union on March 10, 1952, made a number of dramatic proposals concerning the future of Germany. They proposed the withdrawal of foreign troops from Germany; a guarantee of democratic political freedoms; a prohibition of German membership in alliances that were directed against any wartime power; and, most striking, the creation of a German national army, subject to certain limits defined by the occupation powers. An additional note of April 9 proposed free elections in a unified Germany. These notes threw French policy into a brief panic, for they played on anti-EDC sentiment in France by holding out the prospect of an East-West détente  which would make the EDC unnecessary. The Quai d'Orsay had no doubt that the Soviet aim was to derail the EDC, but leading diplomats felt that France could not simply reject the proposals. Too many citizens both in Germany and France still believed a solution on a unified and neutral Germany could be reached. France, like the other western powers, did not want to be perceived as dividing Germany against the will of its people. Thus, a cautious game of public messages ensued, in which the western powers tried to counter the Soviet proposals with offers the Soviets would have to refuse, insisting, for example, that a unified Germany be allowed, if it chose, to join the Western Alliance. Though the Soviet notes did not lead to serious negotiation on the subject  the West was far too committed to the status quo to retreat now  they did manifestly damage the prospects of the EDC by allowing opponents of the treaty to claim that the integrated army scheme would make a general European peace settlement impossible to achieve.
75
While the diplomats engaged in this high-stakes exchange, the western powers moved toward the final signing of the EDC treaty and the General Agreement that would replace the Occupation Statute. In a late effort to enhance the EDC's prospects for ratification, Schuman once again tried to secure British membership. Eden explained that his country could not join, but would extend a commitment to defend the EDC as long as Britain was a member of NATO. Finally, the United States and
 
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Britain both gave an explicit commitment to regard any threat to "the integrity or unity" of the EDC  wording designed to protect the French against German secession from the EDC in a bid to establish a national army  as "a threat to their own security." This at last persuaded a reluctant French cabinet to authorize Schuman to sign the contractual agreement on May 26 in Bonn, and the EDC treaty the following day in Paris.
76
To what extent did these two treaties represent a victory for French diplomacy? The EDC derived from a French belief that a European defense organization could strengthen Europe, limit German independence, and enhance French political leadership. For Schuman, the Paris and Bonn treaties were the capstone of his European policy, one that had started cautiously in 1948 and picked up steam as the Cold War intensified and made Franco-German rapprochement appear to be a question of national survival. In his view, France's efforts would ensure that the war-torn continent could make a fresh start, even as old antagonisms were carefully monitored by a series of international controls and carefully calibrated alliances. The planning consensus that infused the Schuman Plan, it was hoped, could work in the military arena as well. By employing the concepts of integration and cooperation in his search for balance with Germany, Schuman believed that he had steadily enhanced French security and diplomatic influence since his arrival at the Quai in the summer of 1948.
Such an evaluation would not have been offered by Schuman's growing number of political opponents in the National Assembly, and there were signs even within the Foreign Ministry that opinion was shifting against the venerable minister. The EDC contained a great many objectionable features, but nothing rankled its critics more than the brutal fact that lay at its heart: while France lost its army, Germany gained one. No matter how cleverly this truth was cloaked in European language, it could not be hidden from view. In Bonn, the acute French observer of German politics, Armand Bérard, sounded a note of caution. "Germany has recovered its self-confidence," he wrote in his diary at the start of 1952. "It is declared [here] with pride that Germany has become practically a member of the Atlantic Alliance." The diplomats of the oncedefeated nation had maneuvered so well that, "for the first time in forty years, Germany stands alongside the victors."
77
This sobering realization sat ill with many French citizens, as the subsequent fate of the EDC treaty would show.
 
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Chapter 6 
The European Defense Community and French National Strategy
On August 30, 1954, after two years of debate, prevarication, and delay, the French parliament voted against the ratification of the treaties of Paris and Bonn  the agreements instituting the European Defense Community and returning to Germany its full sovereignty. The debate, it was often said, rivaled the Dreyfus Affair, so great were the divisions within French society over the issue of German rearmament. The members of the Atlantic Alliance, too, engaged in polemics and harangues to secure ratification, ultimately without success. Yet despite the central role of France in these interallied arguments over the EDC, historical accounts of the debate have not given sustained analysis to the French position. American historians tend to see the entire affair as indicative of French weakness and indecision, as well as confirmation of the petulant character of France's postwar leadership. These accounts depict the Eisenhower administration as engaged in a well-meaning and constructive effort to encourage Franco-German rapprochement, a policy in which they were ably supported by Chancellor Adenauer and stymied by a Germanophobic French parliament.
1
Few historians have examined the EDC debate within the context of France's overall national strategy of postwar recovery.
2
Materials from the French Foreign Ministry archives provide a much fuller picture of French official thinking about the EDC issue. The EDC encapsulated many of the painful dilemmas that had bedeviled French planners since the end of the war. What price was France willing to pay to achieve a stable and balanced relationship with Germany? How could supranational institutions be used to advance the national interest? Did integration diminish France's stature in Europe or bolster it? Despite the twists and turns of the EDC story, French objectives remained consistent throughout: policymakers sought to limit German influence and sovereignty while at the same time bringing Germany into the Western
 
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Alliance on terms favorable to France. During the two-year period under consideration here, French governments grew increasingly doubtful that the EDC furthered these goals. Under intense American and Alliance pressure to accept the scheme, French officials instead tried to tinker with it, improve it, or avoid it. In late summer of 1954, under the unusually decisive leadership of Pierre Mendès France, the French government submitted the treaty to a vote it knew would fail, and then offered a solution that was far more consistent with French national strategy. The agreement that finally brought Germany into NATO maintained, at French insistence, many restrictions on German military structures and capacities, while freeing France from what most policymakers considered objectionable constraints on French political and military sovereignty. The EDC debate revealed that European integration was never for France an end in itself: its value could only be measured by the degree of national advantage it offered in constructing a favorable postwar settlement.
The Sagging Fortunes of the EDC
The EDC Treaty, signed on May 27, 1952, comprised 132 articles and 12 associated protocols. The sheer length of the treaty, and its staggering array of complex legal and technical points, all but ensured that few participants in the heated public debate that was about to unfold would ever read it. The first 18 articles dealt with the principles on which the treaty was based: supranationality, common institutions, integrated defense, and financing. The most basic feature of the EDC was that it joined the national forces of the member states into a common army; no member state could recruit or maintain national armed forces unless given specific leave to do so by the organization. Although this concept reflected the French intention to use integration to contain German military might, Article 6 of the treaty incorporated the German demand that there be no discrimination among member states within the EDC. Thus, the EDC's restrictions would apply to all its members equally. The EDC was to be made up of the following institutions, as spelled out in Articles 19 through 67: the Board of Commissioners, the executive and supervisory body made up of nine members appointed by member states; the Assembly of Delegates that, under Article 38, was charged with examining some form of integrated political authority for European unity that would ultimately link the ECSC and the EDC with other European bodies; the Council, an intergovernmental body made
 
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up of representatives from member states and charged with liaising between the Commission and the member governments; and a Court of Justice, which was to be the same court as established by the ECSC. The rest of the treaty outlined the military, financial, and economic provisions of the EDC. Because the member states knew that ratification of this massive document would take some time to achieve, and that much gathering of information and refining of the treaty's provisions remained to be done, they set up an Interim Committee, made up of the delegations at the Paris Conference, to pursue the work of the integrated army until the EDC came into force.
3
Following the signing of the treaty, the signatory countries turned to the task of gaining parliamentary ratification. Few observers believed that it would come quickly in France. On the contrary, despite the best efforts of Robert Schuman to do what he thought best both for French national interests and the Atlantic Alliance, the accords had little support in the National Assembly, and even the American Embassy thought ratification unlikely without amendments.
4
Why did support for the EDC  never strong, but firm enough to secure a favorable vote in February  evaporate so quickly?
The answer is complex. Rather than reflecting opposition to European integration as a whole, hostility to the EDC was present in many quarters and derived from various sources: a belief in the sanctity of the French army; a reluctance to see Germany rearmed under any circumstances; fear of German preponderance within the EDC, especially in light of France's Indochina war and other colonial commitments; the absence of British membership; a vague hope for a general East-West settlement that would make German rearmament unnecessary; and a tendency (which infuriated Americans) to see the EDC as an American idea, foisted upon France by a zealous U.S. government. Over the course of a two-year debate on the subject, opponents of the EDC presented such a diverse array of objections that it seemed increasingly difficult for those in favor of the plan to muster an equally forceful rebuttal. The rallying cry ''
Wehrmacht
or EDC" cut little ice among political parties that believed France should concede neither.
In particular, the political realignment underway in France since the middle of 1951 served to undercut parliamentary support. Since the arrival of a large group of Gaullist deputies into the National Assembly, the RPF had refrained from voting for the investiture of any premier, on the principle that by making the formation of governments impossible, the party would contribute to the failure of the regime and trigger the
 
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collapse of the Fourth Republic  an avowed aim of General de Gaulle. In March 1952, however, a group of twenty-seven RPF deputies broke away from the party and voted for the investiture of Antoine Pinay, a former member of Marshall Pétain's Vichy-era cabinet. Pinay, with Gaullist support, promptly formed the most right-wing government since the liberation. Because his presence in power depended on the rebel RPF deputies, he had little intention of pressing forward on the EDC. As long as the RPF remained hostile to the EDC, ratification looked unlikely.
5
Other parties soon announced their opposition. At the Radical Party congress in Bordeaux in October 1952, veteran leaders Edouard Daladier and Edouard Herriot denounced the treaty in uncompromising terms. Daladier objected to the mechanism by which voting weight in the EDC Council was linked to the size of a nation's financial and military contribution, for France, with overseas commitments, might not be able to maintain as many troops as Germany within the EDC. Similarly, he objected to the requirement that France secure a two-thirds majority vote from the Council before withdrawing troops for overseas use  an unacceptable constraint on France's colonial policy. And he condemned the absence of British participation on the grounds that France and the other smaller members could not effectively offset German weight in the Council. Herriot, the president of the National Assembly and a venerable Third Republic Radical, argued that the plan was unconstitutional, as it deprived the legislature of its right to fix the military budget, and he too decried the absence of Great Britain. Alongside the criticisms raised by the powerful and fiercely anti-German Socialists Jules Moch and Vincent Auriol, this opposition legitimized and strengthened the Gaullist hostility to the plan.
6
The press echoed this party opposition. Journals such as
Combat, l'Express,
and
France-Observateur
part of the left-leaning establishment that opposed European rearmament and confrontation with the Soviets  kept up a steady drumbeat against the EDC.
Le Monde,
the very influential center-left paper, though not opposed to European integration, took the position that the EDC would strengthen German strategic influence on the continent and perhaps pull France into a war to "liberate" eastern Germany. For the paper's founder and editor, Hubert Beuve-Méry, as well as for his colleagues André Fontaine and Maurice Duverger, the EDC was "the bitter fruit of the Atlantic Alliance," an "infernal machine," and a ''camouflaged
Wehrmacht
."
7
There remained, of course, strong proponents:
cédistes,
as they were

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