France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (24 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 101
that economic dependence and military weakness had placed on French diplomacy. The pieces of the puzzle for which the French had been searching during the London Conference  the tactics by which France could defeat dependence and still influence the European settlement  now seemed to be falling into place.
The Fallout from London
These ambitions were far from being realized in the summer of 1948, however, as the French considered the implications of the London accords. The three western occupying powers agreed to establish an International Authority for the Ruhr (IAR) to monitor and control the distribution of coal, coke, and steel between internal uses and export; the
Länder
were authorized to call a Constituent Assembly to establish a constitution, but the constitution was to have a strongly federal, not centralized, character; the occupiers reaffirmed their determination to continue the military occupation "until the peace of Europe is secured," and they agreed to set up a military security board to monitor Germany's continued disarmament and demilitarization. Though, as we have seen, these concessions to German state-building had been difficult to get through the National Assembly, Bidault argued that because the economic and political recovery of Germany was inevitable, France must seek to influence this process through a policy of active engagement rather than one of rigid inflexibility that could lead to France's isolation on the German question.
In fact, as many in France had feared, the London accords proved the thin end of the wedge of demands for the prompt political and economic rehabilitation of Germany. Throughout the fall of 1948, the French government found itself in a running battle with both an increasingly restive provisional German government and a bizonal administration that sought to advance German political development to the detriment of France's economic and security concerns. These new assaults on the positions only barely defended at London constituted France's greatest test of the postwar period. French officials had to keep the modest retreat that the London accords represented from turning into a rout.
The first sign of trouble came from the Germans themselves. In early June, the chief political parties in Germany  the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Konrad Adenauer and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher  bitterly denounced the London accords as constituting a tacit acceptance of the division of
 
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Germany, over which neither party wanted to preside.
2
These leaders drew comparisons to the diktat settlement of Versailles, imposed upon an unwilling and disenfranchised German people.
3
Such accusations were unfair, as the accords opened the way for German participation in the creation of a new political framework for the western zones. On July 1, the minister-presidents of the eleven western German
Länder
were authorized to create a Constituent Assembly to draw up a constitution for the new German state. In the meantime, the occupation powers would draft an Occupation Statute to define their authority over the emerging state. Yet German political leaders, though glad to participate in the constitutional process, feared being perceived by their eastern compatriots as complicit in the division of their nation. As a consequence, they quickly demanded that the nomenclature "Constituent Assembly" and "constitution" be dropped in favor of language that emphasized the provisional nature of the political framework under consideration. To this the occupiers did not strenuously object, and they agreed to refer to a "Parliamentary Council" and "Basic Law.'' Publicly committed as they were to the principle of German unification, the western powers could hardly neglect German sensitivities on this issue.
4
The convening of the Parliamentary Council on September 1, 1948, signaled a new departure not only for Germany, but for the occupation authorities as well. For France in particular, whose German policy had relied for so long on coercion, these new German political institutions called for subtle tactics to assert French interests while not fanning the incipient flames of German nationalism. As Jacques Tarbé de Saint-Hardouin, France's political adviser in Germany, shrewdly observed, "we can no longer think of dictating our views with the certitude of always being obeyed." He continued: "It will be necessary above all to influence, to bend, to direct, to exert pressure, in sum, to caution rather than to forbid. Political action now becomes the most effective means of control. It is in presenting ourselves as desirous of laying down the basis for a free European community that we can orient and dam up German nationalism, which is trying to profit from the Soviet-American rivalry to erase the greatest consequences of the defeat. The affirmation of the European character of French policy, which yesterday was but a possibility, today has become a pressing necessity, if we want to continue to assure, in this new phase of the occupation, the defense of our fundamental interests."
5
If Germany could be encouraged to turn to Europe on its own terms, then the dual specters of nationalism and neutralism could be defeated. For Saint-Hardouin, the policy of constructive en-
 
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gagement that Bidault had inaugurated had to be continued, regardless of the possibilities this would offer for Germany's own freedom of movement on the international scene.
The dangers of this policy were apparent from the first meeting of the Council, when Carlo Schmid of the SPD introduced a resolution to seat five Berlin delegates in an advisory role. (The commanders in chief had earlier denied the participation of Berlin representatives in the Council in a voting capacity.) The CDU welcomed this demonstration of solidarity with the eastern zone, and the resolution was met with loud applause in the chamber. Clay and Murphy did not object to this proposal, though Koening felt that this maneuver took the Council well beyond its brief to frame a constitution, and allowed it to pose as a "champion not just of German unity, but of German nationalism." The Berlin case was galling to France, for the blockade had already turned Berlin into an international cause célèbre, a symbol of western resistance to Soviet expansion; now Berlin might capture the imagination of the West Germans as well, and act (as Alsace-Lorraine once did for the French) as a galvanizing force in favor of unity and centralization. From Koenig's perspective, the seating of the Berlin delegates directly threatened the French effort to promote a strongly federal, and docile, German government.
6
Still more worrisome to French observers was what they perceived to be the persistently lenient policy of Generals Clay and Robertson toward German political and economic development. The bizonal commanders seemed reluctant to interfere with the Parliamentary Council, even when this body manifestly overstepped its bounds. The Council had express instructions to draw up a federal constitution, yet it worked to assert control in areas reserved to the occupation authorities, such as police forces and financial policy, especially taxation. As if in league with those in the Council who favored stronger central powers, the bizonal commanders clashed with French authorities in discussions over the draft Occupation Statute, suggesting that a great deal of power promptly be turned over to the Germans.
7
On the Ruhr question, little since London had been achieved, and though talks on instituting the Ruhr Authority were scheduled for November, the French were aware that the bizonal commanders in any case favored leaving the determination of future
ownership
of the Ruhr mines to the new German government. Nor were the bizonal authorities encouraging close cooperation with the French in the absence of complete zonal fusion; this left French representatives outside the important bizonal coal board, which, until the IAR officially came into being, monitored coal production and dis-
 
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tribution.
8
In addition to the remarkable spur the currency reform and economic liberalization of June had given to the western German economy, these were troublesome portents for French designs in Germany.
Thus, despite the hope that the London accords might strengthen France's ability to influence Allied diplomacy, the French now suddenly faced what one Quai official called "the collapse of our positions in Germany." As the Central Europe Office observed, "we are participating, under American direction, in the rapid reconstruction of this country [Germany]. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that all that is happening across the Rhine proves that the reconstruction of Germany has become the chief American preoccupation." The fear of a German-American tête-à-tête, designed to promote German recovery regardless of the political consequences, gripped the Quai d'Orsay. "Whatever the justifications  to prevent western Germany from falling under Communist influence, or to make out of western Germany an anti-Soviet bulwark  this [Anglo-American] policy poses a threat to France all the more grave in that, given our internal situation, it is difficult for us to compete at equal strength with Germany on the economic plane. She already produces nearly as much steel as we do, and soon she will produce more." The author concluded on a somber note: "We must, by all means possible, try to dam up this flood which threatens to carry everything away.''
9
Unsettling as these economic and political trends were, however, nothing rankled the Quai so much as the specter of renewed nationalism in Germany. For this reason, the Berlin blockade especially unnerved the French. Starting in June 1948, the Russians blocked all ground traffic into Berlin from the western zones, forcing a determined General Clay to mobilize air transports of food, fuel, and clothing into the beleaguered city. Heroic as this enterprise was, in French eyes the blockade offered Germans a golden opportunity to express openly their discredited nationalist sentiments and to demonstrate their opposition to the division of their country by rallying to the cause of the former capital. As Saint-Hardouin noted, "Berlin naturally draws western Germany toward the Slavic world, and reminds her of her bellicose, Prussian traditions."
10
The fight for Berlin might easily become in German minds a fight for the unity of the nation.
Foreign Minister Robert Schuman shared this concern, and at the end of October, instructed General Koenig to take up with Clay and Robertson the entire range of problems in Germany. "It is clear, in fact," Schuman wrote, "that the positions which we have defended since the
 
Page 105
end of the war have weakened," especially in the face of Anglo-American pressures for a swift resurrection of the German state. The activities of the Parliamentary Council and the constant bickering between the United States and France over occupation policy worried Schuman; but above all it was Berlin that preoccupied him. "The only advantage of the present situation in Germany [i.e., division of the country] was the isolation of Berlin," he believed. Schuman wanted Koenig to point out to the bizonal commanders that the
loss
of Berlin might actually strengthen the prospects of the western German state by minimizing the "nationalist and militarist traditions of which Berlin has always been the center and the symbol." Schuman thought it ''very regrettable that the inhabitants of Berlin are represented as heroes in a fight for liberty, and that the ancient capital of Imperial and Hitlerian Germany should be considered as the avant-garde of democracy." Schuman opposed the idea of turning Berlin into a twelfth
Land,
incorporated into West Germany. More generally, he feared that the American determination to hang on to Berlin reflected a reordering of priorities by the United States in Europe. From Schuman's perspective, the United States appeared willing to place German recovery, so important for containing Soviet expansion, ahead of the long-term, balanced recovery of the whole region. As a consequence, French influence had lapsed. "Whether it is a question of the ownership of the Ruhr mines, the protection of Allied interests in Germany, the determination of restricted or limited industries, or reparations," he asserted, "decisions are being taken without our participation, and sometimes against us." The Berlin crisis clearly upset the careful calculations Bidault had made at London that flexibility on the German question would increase French influence; for now, having given consent to the creation of a German government, France risked being marginalized as Germany itself grew in stature and importance in Anglo-American strategic and economic thinking.
11
General Koenig, who had opposed Bidault's conciliatory policy during the London talks, relished the opportunity to voice Schuman's concern in a meeting of the three zonal commanders in Frankfurt on November 4. Recapitulating the concerns Schuman had outlined to him, Koening spoke of a change in "climate" in Germany that troubled France. The blockade, and the nationalist feeling it had unleashed, forced France to be even more diligent in securing strict application of the federal principles for the German constitution agreed to at London. Koenig stated that he would oppose any draft that did not ensure a decentralized government.
12
Although Clay responded in his usual prickly fashion, the French com-

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