France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (11 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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pletely and utterly destroyed, possibly dismembered, and reparations in kind would be forthcoming to those nations that had suffered most at the hands of the Germans. Reflecting the sense of empowerment that the promise of a zone of occupation provided, the director of the Economic Office at the Quai d'Orsay, Hervé Alphand, believed that France would now be able to advance its own interests in Germany while overseeing, in collaboration with the other occupying powers, a gradual and moderate German recovery. "The problem [of French policy in Germany]," he wrote, "will therefore be to reconcile the obligations of international control with the necessity for France to conserve her freedom of action and sufficient autonomy in the sectors where our security is most clearly involved."
8
American planners might not have taken a positive view of this statement, but they bore some responsibility for the boldness of French objectives in Germany. Indeed, French expectations of their future influence in Germany were so high precisely because the United States had failed to inform France of the gradual evolution of its own policies there. The Morgenthau Plan for the deindustrialization of Germany, a kind of economic castration, though discredited within the Roosevelt administration, remained the official American policy, and was not superseded by the relatively more moderate JCS 1067 directive until April 1945.
9
Further, this clarification of American policy was not made public until October of that year, leaving the French in the dark about overall American objectives, and thinking that the Americans might be inclined to go so far in reducing German economic strength as to encourage a complete social breakdown.
10
If the French were unsure of Allied support for their German policy, as yet they had no evidence that their ideas would be opposed outright.
11
Yet putting these ideas into practice presented a serious challenge for French officials. In the eyes of the Big Three, France remained a dim and distant star in the international constellation. For example, despite France's urgent appeals to the Allies for a central organization to distribute coal, the Big Three did not conclude an agreement on a European Coal Organization until May 1945, and then, largely due to Soviet resistance, it was given only advisory status and ambiguous powers.
12
France's coal shortage went unaddressed. More galling, France was excluded  again at Soviet insistence  from the Reparations Commission established at Yalta. Although soon after Yalta the Americans and British sought to bring France in, the Soviets would only agree if Poland and Yugoslavia were included as well  an indication of Stalin's assessment of French status. This was unacceptable to the others, and conse-
 
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quently, France possessed no representation on the committee that the government judged of supreme importance to French interests. Armand Bérard, French chargé in Washington, told his interlocutors at the State Department that Paris would read this exclusion as evidence "of a continued refusal to grant France her proper place as a major power in the shaping of the European settlement," for he knew that there were those in the cabinet who were urging France to "abandon any attempts to participate in Allied deliberations and carry out her own policies on a unilateral basis." Averell Harriman, the American ambassador in Moscow, where the Commission was based, came to the same conclusion, seeing French exclusion as likely to encourage ''unilateral action of [an] awkward nature by French authorities," making a unified reparations policy difficult indeed to enforce.
13
These were prescient remarks, for with the continued delay in reparations policy, and in light of severe coal shortages in France, French policymakers began to consider such moves in the regions of Germany that France occupied in the spring of 1945. At a gathering of the CEI on May 31, 1945, ministers expressed alarm at the worsening coal situation and anger at Eisenhower's command, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), for failing to distribute German coal to needy nations. Robert Lacoste, minister of industrial production, enumerated the consequences of the coal shortage for the recovery of French industry: a retardation of recovery in steel, textile, and mechanical industries; the lowering of national production; and increased domestic dissatisfaction with the government. The French ambassador to Britain, René Massigli, was working to secure French representation on the Reparations Commission, while Monnet was working vainly in Washington to have coal deliveries expedited.
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"It appears in these circumstances," a memorandum from the Foreign Ministry argued, "in the absence of any decision on an interallied plan to organize restitutions and payments, that it is necessary to draw roll advantage from the occupation by our troops of certain German territories" and organize the transport to France of coal and industrial equipment.
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The Ministry of Finance concurred: due to dilatory Allied execution of reparations policy, the First Army ought to begin "appropriations" of German goods, "without waiting for the result of diplomatic negotiations."
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The CEI resolved to issue a forceful memorandum to the Allies asking for French inclusion in the distribution process of Ruhr coal.
17
When the final boundaries of the French zone of occupation were agreed upon, in June, General Pierre Koenig, newly installed as commander in chief there,
 
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Germany under Occupation
stepped up seizures of machine tools, industrial equipment, and goods, acting legitimately within the powers of the zonal commander but quite against the spirit of Allied unity on German policy.
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Confusion in overall Allied planning for Germany had given the French, hungry for prestige and influence, an opportunity for action that they were ready and willing to take.
Reports about the coal situation in the Ruhr only stiffened French
 
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resolve. Coal production there was abnormally low, coming to about 1.6 million tons for the month of July, of which France would receive only 100,000 tons. But Paris knew that the main obstacles to increased coal exports from Germany lay not in the destruction of the mines themselves. Rather, an acute labor shortage, combined with ruined transport and communication systems, inhibited production and distribution. Thus, a recovery of coal production in the Ruhr without attendant reconstruction of rail links between France and Germany might allow German coal to remain in Germany, to be used to restart German industry instead of French.
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Meanwhile, France would continue to rely on expensive American coal, thus reinforcing an already glaringly dependent relationship. With reports reaching Paris of the frantic dismantling by Soviet troops of industrial equipment in the eastern portion of Germany, the cabinet called for a policy that took advantage of the presence of French troops on German soil to begin the reparations process unilaterally.
20
This aggressive attitude on the part of French officials responsible for German policy revealed France's determination to pursue two objectives: security through "economic disarmament" of Germany, and the use of German industrial capacity for the reconstruction of western Europe. French planners, in contrast to their American counterparts, did not view these objectives as contradictory. They believed it necessary to detach economically important areas like the Ruhr, the Saar, and Silesia from Germany, yet allow Germany enough industrial activity to enable it to pay reparations. The secretary-general of the CEI put it bluntly: "France must use the part of these reparations that she recovers to weaken Germany, and by consequence, considerably augment her own power. But this weakening must not exceed the limit beyond which an anarchy prejudicial to the proper execution of reparations would develop. . . . German economic potential must be reduced, not annihilated."
21
This plan justified dismantling, disarmament, control of key industries, internationalization of the Ruhr, and control by France of the economy of the Saar. Through "effective action in the organizations which will establish coal and steel production programs," and by an occupation "of long duration" along the left bank of the Rhine, France could ensure control of German resources and channel them toward its own national recovery.
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It was a bold plan that conformed to the national priority of restoring economic prosperity and international prestige. But it was developed without the consultation of the other occupation powers. The results of the Tripartite Conference of Berlin, held in
 
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the Berlin suburb of Potsdam between July 17 and August 2, 1945, clearly demonstrated that French views had not been taken into account.
France had not been included in the Potsdam Conference, and the fact that the agreements reached there by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union so clearly countered French views on Germany added insult to injury. True, France would hereafter be included in the new CFM and would be admitted into the Reparations Commission. Certainly, France welcomed the Potsdam protocol's statements on demilitarization and disarmament of Germany, though these principles had been put forward, if less specifically, at Yalta. These advances aside, decisions on two subjects had been made without France's participation: the question of German administrative structures, and reparations. The Big Three had agreed to establish "certain essential German administrative departments," staffed by Germans, under the control of the ACC, to deal with the areas of transport, finance, communications, and foreign trade. These departments were required to establish in all zones uniformity of treatment, for, as the protocol spelled out in no uncertain terms, "during the period of the occupation, Germany shall be treated as a single economic unit." The principle of dismemberment or separation from Germany of the Ruhr and Rhineland had apparently been rejected. Furthermore, reparations policy would hereafter be based on the principle that any payment thereof "should leave enough resources to enable the German people to subsist without external assistance." This seemed to suggest that German internal needs determined the amount of reparations that might be taken by the victorious Allied powers, thus prejudging the work of the Reparations Commission to which France now belonged.
23
The French Foreign Ministry lost no time in responding to the Potsdam agreements. Although welcoming the opportunity to join the Reparations Commission and the CFM, the government "reserved the right" to dissent from the principles of economic unity to which the other powers had agreed. It also rejected what it saw as the intention of the Allies to reconstitute "a central government in Germany," for the French thought central administrative institutions a long step in that direction. Thus, France rejected the basic principles that the Big Three agreed ought to guide the occupation of Germany, even though France was now a full member, with veto power, of the ACC, the purpose of which was to enforce and implement these very decisions. The Big Three had clearly not anticipated this paradox, and it was a monumental oversight. French authorities very soon made it clear that they would use
 
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their newly granted powers to block implementation of the accords until France could have the fair hearing of its views that had been denied at Potsdam.
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When General de Gaulle went to Washington in the third week of August to meet President Truman, Bidault accompanied him and took up with the new secretary of state, James Byrnes, the two issues that most irked France about Potsdam: reparations and the Rhineland. Bidault made it clear that the policy on reparations outlined at Potsdam was unacceptable to France because it required the zonal occupation authorities to pay for imports into Germany out of the proceeds earned from exports, especially of coal. In effect, this meant that France would have to pay Germany in scarce dollars for coal that France believed was its due as reparations, so that Germany could then buy goods from the United States for its own recovery. This was for France an absurd situation, but Byrnes was steadfast. The United States did not wish to repeat the mistakes of the interwar years and subsidize the payment of Germany's reparations to other countries. Bidault felt, with some justification, that the United States was using a double standard: the Soviet Union was being allowed perhaps as much as 50 percent of the reparations to be drawn from Germany, whereas France, it seemed, would "obtain no reparation except what she might have been able to seize on the spot." Byrnes rather lamely pointed out that the amount of reparations the Soviets were to receive had not been determined, and that France ought to take up the matter with the Reparations Commission. Byrnes was equally dismissive of French concerns when the conversation turned to the Rhineland. Bidault then introduced the idea that Germany, though not now a military power, might soon be drawn into the Soviet orbit. A Russo-German combination was France's greatest fear, and Bidault said this possibility justified the amputation of some part of Germany's industrial regions in the west, and made the elimination of central governing institutions imperative. To ensure French security, Germany had to be kept weak economically and politically. In rejecting this logic, Byrnes invoked the power of the United Nations as France's best security guarantee, and the conversation came to a close without any kind of agreement. There could remain no doubt in the minds of French policymakers that France's positions on the Rhineland and on reparations were in grave danger.
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The first gathering of the CFM, in London from September 11 to October 2, 1945, only underscored the degree to which the Big Three did not share French preoccupations. Despite Bidault's protests, German

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