France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (77 page)

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Authors: William I. Hitchcock

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BOOK: France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954
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Page 247
162
.
For Francois-Poncet's reading of Adenauer's visit to Paris  he thought Adenauer very happy to have been received as an equal of the Big Three  see his telegram to Paris, November 27, 1951, MAE, EU 194955, Généralités, vol. 96. For the American records of these talks, see
FRUS, 1951,
3: 1597609, and Acheson's summary to Truman, November 23, 1951, ibid., 1609II.
63. Pickles gives perhaps the clearest account of the election, in
French Politics,
13748; seealso Rioux,
The Fourth Republic,
16369, and Giles,
The Locust Years,
14549. American officials were worried, and mystified, by the persistently large Communist vote. As a result of these elections, two secret programs for undermining Communist support in both France and Italy, called cloven and demagnetize, were launched, to be directed by the Psychological Strategy Board. See the report to the PSB's director of May 8, 1952, Truman Library, Papers of Harry S. Truman, Records of the Psychological Strategy Board, box 23, and the documentation in boxes 3 and 11.
64. Auriol,
Journal du Septennat,
5: 5069. There is ample evidence in Auriol's journal of his strident views toward Germany. Throughout the fall, he urged the cabinet to take up his ideas for a renewed four-power initiative on Germany; he criticized the Quai for its lack of audacity; he frequently vented his spleen about German
revanchisme
toward Poland; and often raised objections to Schuman's policies in the cabinet (ibid., 527, 535, 545, 547, 558, 561, 567). Fortunately for Schuman, Auriol had no authority to set policy. There was, however, no shortage of flagrant signs of neo-Nazi and nationalist sentiment in Germany to increase Auriol's suspicions. See Bérard,
Un ambassadeur se souvient,
37779, and Large,
Germans to the Front,
12729.
65. Executive Commission, meetings of September 6 and November 15, 1951, MRP papers, AN, 350 AP, box 49. Among Schumann and Bidault's chief critics were two prominent MRP members, Léo Hamon and André Colin.
66. Eden,
Full Circle,
34.
67. Minutes of the Anglo-French talks in Auriol,
Journal du Septennat,
5: 598603; communique in Eden,
Full Circle,
35.
68. Acheson to Bruce, January 2, 1952,
FRUS, 195254,
5: 57172; Auriol,
Journal du Septennat,
6: 24; Dockrill,
Britain's Policy for West German Rearmament,
89.
69. François-Poncet to Paris, January 19, 1952, and Bonnet to Paris, January 23, 1952, MAE, EU 104955, Généralités, vol. 22.
70. Schuman's letter to Acheson of January 30, 1952, is in MAE, EU 194955, Généralités, vol. 97, and in
FRUS, 195254,
5: 711, dated January 29, 1952. Schuman was under heavy pressure in the cabinet to take a stronger stand on the contractual negotiations. The Pleven government had fallen on January 7, and Auriol, when canvassing the parliamentary leaders on their opinions about a successor, found that opposition to the EDC was running very high because it seemed to give too much without adequate guarantees. Auriol told Pleven that the EDC plan, "as presently constituted, has no chance for a majority in the National Assembly." When Edgar Faure formed a new government on January 20, Auriol told him to tell Schuman to inform the Americans of the growing
 
Page 248
objections to the Franco-German negotiations (Auriol,
Journal du Septennat,
6: 52, 100).
71. Eden,
Full Circle,
40.
72.
L'année politique, 1952,
30712; and for Schuman's speech of February 11, ibid., 47782; Clesse,
Le projet de CED,
11520.
73. On the outcome of London, see Massigli to Paris, February 18, 1952, and
Note
from Central Europe Office, February 23, 1952, MAE, EU 194955, Généralités, vol. 97; Eden,
Full Circle,
3841; Schwartz,
America's Germany,
25556; Acheson,
Present at the Creation,
61521; Dockrill,
Britain's Policy,
9398; and see the record of these meetings in
FRUS, 155254,
5: 3686.
74. Acheson,
Present at the Creation,
626. The United States and France signed a memorandum d'accord on February 25, 1952, for the aid. This agreement began a new means of financing European arms production, to be called "offshore procurement." Of the $ 600 million, $ 130 was designated for Indochina, $ 170 for economic aid, and $ 200 million would be used by the Americans to buy in France arms and equipment that would then be transferred to the French forces in Europe or Indochina. The final $ 100 million would be used to pay for American troops stationed in France. As the Service de Cooperation Economique of the Quai pointed out, "the off-shore formula is seductive, as it allows our own arms industry to continue functioning," and indeed profiting from American aid (
Note pour M. Charpentier
[the director of economic affairs in the Quai], March 8, 1952, MAE, DE/CE, vol. 469). Offshore procurement also opened up a new chapter in Franco-American financial controversy, as Irwin Wall has shown in
The United States and the Making of Postwar France,
21832. On the German contribution to NATO, see Acheson to Truman, February 21, 1952,
FRUS, 195254,
5: 8086; and Acheson to McCloy, February 26, 1952, ibid., 26162.
75. Soutou, "La France et les notes sovietiques de 1952 sur l'Allemagne"; Wettig, "Stalin and German Reunification"; Large,
Germans to the Front,
14549 (and n. 54 for the historiographical debate over this "missed opportunity"). The Soviet notes and the western responses are reproduced in
L'année politique, 1952,
49293, 49697, 5089, 51014.
76. Tripartite Declaration, draft of May 16, 1952,
FRUS, 195254,
5: 66062; final version, ibid., 68688; on Schuman's troubles in the cabinet, see Dunn to State, May 20, 1952, ibid., 663, and Acheson to Bruce, May 24, 1952, ibid., 67980; Eden,
Full Circle,
46467; Acheson,
Present at the Creation,
64350.
77. Bérard,
Un ambassadeur se souvient,
39092.
Chapter Six
1. McGeehan,
The German Rearmament Question,
though he takes the story only to 1952, concludes that French rejection of the EDC "was
not
clearly explicable" (235). Fursdon,
The European Defense Community,
focuses less on diplomacy than on the treaty itself. Schwartz,
America's Germany,
chap. 10, examines the case from the perspective of German-American relations. Three excellent articles provide insight into Dulles's policy: Steininger, "John Foster Dulles, the European Defense Community, and the German Question"; Hershberg,

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