France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (19 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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hearted effort to secure Russian participation. The days of a tacit Franco-Soviet alliance on German policy were over.
5
Bidault's firmness with Molotov, which gained him plaudits in western capitals, did not imply a shift in favor of the Anglo-American position on Germany.
6
Marshall's initiative still had no substantial form, and Bidault wanted to make clear that although France was in desperate need of economic aid, it could not accept a deal that entailed as a price for such aid a withdrawal from its positions on Germany. On July 9, Bidault buttonholed the peripatetic American undersecretary of state for economic affairs, William Clayton, who was in Paris to begin coordinating a European response to Marshall's speech. Bidault revealed a strong suspicion that the United States sought, with Britain's support, to use the recovery plan as a way to skirt French objections to German economic recovery. Bidault therefore insisted on securing an agreement on the Ruhr, especially on coal production and ownership of the mines, before participating in an elaborate conference on economic cooperation. Laying his trump card on the table  a card already worn with use  Bidault told Clayton that the Communists would have a field day with the Marshall Plan if they could portray it as an American attempt to buy out French demands in Germany. Above all, Bidault was adamant that any plan on the use of German resources for German or European recovery be formulated with French participation, and not be the preserve of the bizonal authorities.
7
Bidault received some supportive advice along these lines from Jean Monnet. In a flurry of letters to Bidault in the third week of July, Monnet spelled out the meaning of the Marshall Plan for French national strategy. Although he understood that to accept American economic aid on so vast a scale would imply tacit approval of the larger American objectives of maintaining a non-Communist and pro-American Europe, Monnet also understood that France was "at the point where we have a maximum of power because without us, 'European cooperation' is impossible." Monnet understood that the large and ambitious American vision of a European settlement that underpinned the Marshall Plan could only be achieved with French approval. "For we French," he wrote, '''European cooperation' means that before any other problem is discussed, the position of Germany in this European cooperation is defined." This would mean trying yet again to get concessions out of the occupying powers with regard to the Ruhr. "I know," he went on, "the position taken by the English, Americans, and Russians on internationalization. But the moment has come to lead the English and Ameri-
 
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cans to revise their positions." This would probably entail French concessions with regard to the Anglo-American policy in Germany, but a closer integration of zonal policy among the three western powers would serve French interests. "If the Americans and the English in their own zones act on their own authority to increase the level of industry, we cannot stop them. . . . But it is not possible for this increase to be integrated into a European plan for which we are responsible." That is, by supporting a coordinated recovery plan, French influence would be far greater than if France tried to pursue its own, now outdated obstructionist policy. The American plan for Europe, in Monnet's view, gave France an unequaled opportunity to influence the future of Germany.
8
These fond hopes about the advantages of Marshall aid were not promptly realized. The Conference on European Reconstruction gathered in Paris on July 12, 1947. It met at the insistence of the Americans, who asked the sixteen conferees to evaluate the European economy and outline a program of recovery to which the United States could give financial support. The conference started off quickly, creating the Committee on European Economic Cooperation (CEEC), establishing a five-member Executive Committee, and setting up four technical committees, for food and agriculture, fuel and power, iron and steel, and transport, each of which was to compile information on the state of the European economy. Later, committees for timber, manpower, and balance of payments were added. The CEEC as a whole, taking into account information provided by these subcommittees, was charged with estimating the size of Europe's balance-of-payments deficit with North America over the coming four years. The United States would use these figures to draw up an estimate of the sums required for European recovery. The CEEC was also asked to detail production objectives of the participating countries and explain how they would use dollar aid.
9
Yet progress on writing the report soon stalled for a variety of reasons. First, the Europeans did not know precisely what the Americans expected of them, and so were inclined simply to secure as large a chunk of dollar aid as possible, without concerning themselves with the principles of joint planning on which the United States placed so much emphasis. Indeed, the two host countries, Britain and France, themselves disagreed about their own roles in the planning process.
10
Second, uncertainty about the future of Germany made planning an integrated recovery program extremely difficult. France was reluctant to make any calculations on European coal production when the level of German industry was still in dispute. Other CEEC countries knew that German
 
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industry had to be reactivated, but were sensitive to criticism that such a policy would contribute to the division of Europe.
11
Third, differences arose among particular countries in the committee. For example, Benelux (which acted as a single unit in the CEEC) showed itself very concerned about the French production targets in the Monnet Plan, for the French projected increases of certain items that Belgium produced and for which France had been the normal market. The Dutch crossed swords with France as well, for they, heavily dependent on trade with Germany, sought swift German reconstruction and higher production levels.
12
These conflicts underscored the fact that during the conference, each nation was more concerned with advancing its own interests, and securing dollar aid, than in planning a joint recovery program. To be sure, some nations, like France and Italy, showed themselves very interested in establishing regional customs unions designed to drop tariffs and restrictions on trade and labor. The British, though, ever mindful of their imperial connections, were not keen on the idea, and Benelux was unwilling to join a customs union that excluded Britain and Germany, for fear of economic domination by France. In short, the CEEC revealed how different each of the nations of Europe was from one another, and showed that the American hope for a Europe-wide recovery plan, designed in detail by Europeans themselves, was premature. By the middle of August, American observers in Paris were convinced that the conflicting interests of the CEEC nations made the creation of any workable report impossible. As a consequence of the European failure to function effectively as a unit, the Americans altered their strategy. Instead of insisting on a detailed and integrated plan of action, the Americans treated the CEEC report as provisional, and asked that it focus on the
principles
of cooperation and mutual assistance. In the meantime, the United States set out its own timetable for delivering interim aid and for securing congressional approval of an American-sponsored aid program. From now on the Marshall Plan was to be designed and implemented by Washington.
13
For all the American disappointment with it, the CEEC report that emerged on September 22 was not without significance for Europe. To claim, as a Dutch delegate to the conference did, that it "formed the indispensable basis for the shape of the western world in the years to come" might be hyperbolic.
14
Still, it did lay out some very important principles about the political and economic behavior of the European states, much in the way the Americans hoped it would. The 690-page report reflected the lessons Europe had learned about itself during the
 
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1930s and the war: that its economic system was highly developed and integrated and depended for its well-being on the smooth working of international trade and the uninterrupted flow of goods and services between Europe and the world. The war had destroyed this complex system, and the only way to rebuild it was to approach the task from a European, rather than a national, perspective. The CEEC set out European production goals for the coming four years in seven crucial areas: agriculture (particularly grains and cereals, sugar, potatoes, oils and fats), coal, crude steel, electricity, oil refining, inland transport, and merchant shipping. It then committed the signatories to work toward monetary and financial stability by balancing budgets and controlling inflation; once these goals were achieved, the nations pledged to make their currencies convertible in accordance with the IMF agreement, and to set up a European clearinghouse to settle outstanding trade and payment imbalances. And it stressed the need for relaxation of import restrictions and tariffs to free up multilateral trade. To this end, the report encouraged both worldwide reductions of tariffs and regional reductions (through customs unions). Finally, the CEEC agreed to create a permanent organization to oversee this international cooperation. These four principles reflected the basic objectives of the American recovery program, and they now formed a common set of goals for the European nations themselves.
15
Debating the Future of the German Economy
The CEEC report aired many noble sentiments, but to judge from the continued Franco-American wrangling over German economic recovery in the summer of 1947, they had not yet been incorporated into French policymaking. For running parallel to the CEEC, French and American officials engaged in a very tense debate over revising the level of industrial production that the ACC allowed Germany, a debate that renewed French fears that the Marshall Plan really did imply the rapid economic restoration of Germany at France's expense. Just as the CEEC convened in Paris, Bidault's worst fears were confirmed. On July 16, René Massigli, in London, informed Bidault that the talks between the American and British zonal commanders on raising the level of industry in the jointly governed bizone had been concluded. Although the United States and Britain voiced their differences, Massigli reported, "the goal that the two governments are now pursuing is assuredly the same: to put the German economy in a position, first to give life to western Germany,
 
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second to contribute to the reconstruction of western Europe." The United States now took the view, as Massigli learned from the American ambassador to Britain, Lewis Douglas, that an increase in the German level of industry above the rate agreed to in the March 1946 agreement in the ACC was not a threat to Europe but, on the contrary, its salvation. This view flew in the face of three years of French diplomacy, and indeed seemed to undercut the authority of the CEEC delegations gathered in Paris to determine the rate of European recovery on their own terms.
16
On July 17, the Quai d'Orsay was officially informed that the bizonal authorities, by increasing production in mechanical engineering, agriculture, transportation, electricity, and chemicals, and nearly doubling the annual level of steel production, would allow the bizone to return to the industrial activity levels of 1936.
17
There is no question that the timing of the American initiative was poor. The United States had encouraged Europe to take responsibility for setting out a European recovery plan, and the conference in Paris was doing just that. Yet the United States and Britain now proposed to continue the reconstruction of Germany on their own timetable without the participation of Europe.
18
Henri Bonnet, the French ambassador in Washington, rushed to point out that such action would cause a political crisis in France, undermine French support for the Marshall Plan, and derail the Paris discussions. Bidault threatened to resign if the Americans did not back down.
19
The whole affair was all the more regrettable because Bidault had begun to show signs of willingness to modify France's position on the question of German production. On July 16, he told Caffery that he thought it "perfectly clear that we must accomplish the fusion of zones, that the Germans must be permitted to produce, and that the categorical positions that we had defended will have to be modified." Bidault only resisted being faced with a fait accompli.
20
The French reaction upon being informed of the proposed bizone plan was "immediate and violent," according to H. Freeman Matthews of the European Office in the State Department. Bonnet met with Deputy Secretary Robert Lovett and Matthews to ask that the announcement be postponed until the French could make their objections to the plan known. If this courtesy were denied France, Bonnet warned, the French government would be undermined and the CEEC placed in great jeopardy. Under these circumstances, Marshall, after letting Bonnet know that the United States was serious about getting German industry going again, agreed to postpone the announcement until September 1.
21
Marshall's new determination with regard to German recovery was

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