France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (42 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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public mulled over the implications of the London and Paris accords and the rearmament of Germany that lay at their center. Many of those on the left who had supported Mendès France's bid for power in June because he seemed less pro-American and more neutral in the Cold War debate  the newspaper
Le Monde,
for example  now withdrew their support and opposed his plan, which, they believed, cut off any real prospect of a peaceful European settlement. At the same time, to the MRP's hostility to Mendès France could be added the growing Gaullist dissatisfaction toward his colonial policies in North Africa. By the time the vote on the WEU project came up in the Assembly at the end of December, Mendès France did not enjoy the commanding authority he had possessed in the wake of the Geneva conference.
79
Nonetheless, Mendès France was now fighting for a package in which he deeply believed and for which he was willing to sacrifice his government. This became eminently clear when the debate opened on December 22. Over two days, Mendès France spoke eloquently and decisively in favor of the accords. He developed his arguments along three lines. First, he made the point, so familiar to many of his predecessors, that unless France acted now to support the Western Alliance, its influence within that body would evaporate and France would never again have a real role to play in the international system. By passing the plan, France would be better positioned to guide the direction of Alliance affairs. Second, Mendès France countered the criticism, especially of the Socialists, that the accords would make East-West détente impossible. The premier pointed out that whenever the Russians saw France about to move toward reconciliation with Germany, they proposed a four-power conference, yet then proved inflexible in negotiation. To secure Soviet action, France must first demonstrate its willingness to integrate Germany politically and militarily into the Western Alliance. From this position of strength, real negotiations on Germany's future could begin. As long as the Western Alliance remained divided on Germany's future, the Soviet Union profited. Third, in response to the MRP, Mendès France claimed that the WEU continued many of the same logistical and military restrictions on Germany that the EDC had envisaged, and improved upon them by adding an agency to coordinate and control European arms production. Thus, the WEU would promote the European unity that Robert Schuman had so ably championed while constraining Germany's military independence. These arguments echoed those that Schuman made in 1952 in defense of his own policy of rapprochement with Germany; Mendès France sought to assure the Christian Democrats that his plan adhered closely to Schuman's principles.
80
 
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The MRP, however, would not be swayed. Mendès France, they believed, had stolen Bidault's peace in Geneva and destroyed Schuman's EDC project. There was too much bad blood for them to come to the premier's aid now. Late on the night of December 23, the MRP parliamentary leader, Francois de Menthon, declared that his party would oppose the reconstitution of a German army as envisaged in the accords. The parliament had three bills to pass judgment on. The first concerned the transformation of the Brussels Treaty into the WEU and the entry of Germany into NATO, the second dealt with the ending of the occupation, and the third with the Saar statute. Despite a last appeal by Mendès France, the first of three votes went against him by a vote of 280 to 259. The Communists and the MRP were the largest opposition bloc, and a small group of Socialists joined them. The premier's own Radicals were divided, while some twenty-five former Gaullists joined the opposidon. Mendès France had lost a hundred deputies since the vote of confidence he had posed on the London accords in October. It was time to put his government on the line again. After a break for Christmas, on December 29 he called for a vote of confidence on the remaining two bills. This tactic succeeded, gaining him an additional thirty votes: eleven MRP, seven Independent Republicans, five Gaullists, three Socialists, with the balance coming from the Peasant Party. The following day, the Assembly also supported, on a vote of confidence, the first bill on German entry into WEU and NATO. The final tally was 287 to 260.
In rejecting the EDC and accepting the looser structure of the WEU and NATO framework, France finally hit on a solution to the nearly insoluble problem of German rearmament. Many contemporaries derided the seeming capriciousness of French policy during the four years of this debate. French governments had initially championed the Pleven Plan and its successor, the EDC treaty, only to disown their progeny later. Yet as this chapter has shown, the contradictions in French thinking on this subject were more apparent than real. Mendès France acted out of precisely the same motives that had inspired Bidault and Schuman. He sought to ensure long-term equilibrium between France and Germany, to maintain French influence within the Western Alliance, and to use integrative mechanisms such as the WEU as tools in this endeavor. To be sure, in his antipathy to the EDC he diverged from his noted predecessor Robert Schuman, whose own reputation was so closely bound up with the scheme. Yet these were differences about means, not ends. In promoting the NATO alternative, Mendès France defended French military sovereignty and gained in return international
 
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recognition of the principle that the fragile German republic must remain under western tutelage. In effect, Mendès France solved the German rearmament question as neatly as Schuman had solved the coal and steel problem. In doing so, he advanced the national interest while promoting regional stability and cooperation. For this reason, he earned the support of both the French parliament and his European partners, fashioning the compromise that had for so long eluded his predecessors. By 1955, France and Germany had placed the thorny rearmament problem behind them, and stood ready to build upon the achievements of the first postwar decade.
 
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Conclusion
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow,
out of this stony rubbish?
 T. S. Eliot,
The Waste Land,
I, 1920
On May 5, 1955, the western occupying powers formally recognized the Federal Republic of Germany as a sovereign state and brought the new nation into the NATO alliance. In just ten years, Germany had traveled the road from international pariah to trusted ally. The Cold War and the division of Europe made this solution possible. Yet as this book has shown, France in its own way contributed to the process of western consolidation and strongly shaped the final settlement in Europe, despite significant political and institutional weaknesses. Indeed, what is so remarkable about French history in the ten years following the war is that despite so many obstacles to recovery, both internal and external, France in 1955 stood with more real influence on the continent of Europe than it had enjoyed since 1919, and perhaps since 1870. Since the end of the war, French diplomacy had been crucial in shaping the use of Marshall aid in Europe; had certainly moderated German economic recovery, strengthened the federalist aspects of the German constitution, and obstructed American attempts to rearm the FRG; had recast Franco-German economic relations through the Schuman Plan, and so helped create a common fund of political good will and mutual interest between the two former adversaries; strongly advocated regional planning mechanisms to ease the burdens of rearmament; and finally assured France of a leading role in the Western Alliance while mitigating the political implications of German entry into NATO. It is no small irony that Charles de Gaulle, the man who consistently belittled the Fourth Republic and who finally brought it to its knees in 1958, profited most from these accomplishments. The policy of independence and
grandeur
that he so triumphantly pursued in the 1960s would have been impossible without the work of his ill-loved predecessors.
This book has tried to accomplish a number of objectives. First, it seeks to restore France to the narrative of the early Cold War, from
 
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which it has long been absent. In this regard, the book argues that France influenced 'the outcome of the major diplomatic and security debates between 1944 and 1954, especially concerning the occupation of Germany, the Marshall Plan, and the shaping of the NATO alliance. The French role in these debates suggests that the United States, though the dominant or "ascendant" power within the Western Alliance, did not always succeed in getting its way, but found itself constantly obliged to compromise with a much weaker, even dependent, France. The book thus offers a more nuanced picture of U.S.-European relations than that usually offered by American diplomatic historians.
Second, it portrays France's policy toward "Europe"  that is, French encouragement of the movement toward European economic integration  as a function of an overall national strategy that sought to enhance the nation's influence within Europe and the Atlantic Alliance. In the early 1950s, the major states of Europe crafted economic agreements that reduced state sovereignty and deployed the force of international institutions to moderate economic and political conflict. France played the leading role in this process, though not simply out of a sense of altruism or civic internationalism. Rather, French officials calculated that European integration would serve the national interest by enhancing economic recovery, containing Germany, and strengthening French influence in world affairs.
Finally, and in light of the successes in these two areas, the book contends that the legacy of the Fourth Republic must be somewhat revised. Here, a counterargument might easily be made. If France was so successful in achieving its objectives in this decade, why did the Fourth Republic collapse in 1958, under the dual strains of colonial war and political instability? This important question requires a brief digression. To my mind, the answer lies in the weaknesses of the constitutional settlement of 1946. The Fourth Republic was a transitional regime, a stopover point between the Assembly-dominated Third Republic and the Gaullist constitution of the Fifth Republic that gave large powers to the executive office. Fourth Republic presidents, though more powerful than their predecessors in the previous regime, were never able to rein in the excesses of the parliamentary parties, nor assert their own leadership. The Fourth Republic inhibited the political fortunes of those few genuinely popular national political figures of the period, such as Antoine Pinay and Pierre Mendès France, and so never earned the confidence of the people it tried to govern.
Without public support or decisive leadership, the regime could not
 
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handle the strains created by a decade of colonial war. The army, defeated in Indochina, sought to restore its image by vanquishing the Algerian rebels. After the army won the Battle of Algiers  at terrible cost in moral and material terms  the civilian leaders appeared ready to sue for peace instead of pressing on in search of the long-sought victory at arms for which the French military had searched in vain since 1918. The affront was too much, the army snapped, and cunning General de Gaulle, sidelined for a dozen years of anguished inactivity, exploited the crisis masterfully. On June 1, 1958, de Gaulle became the last premier of the Fourth Republic, which he promptly dissolved.
Perhaps one reason for the ease with which de Gaulle assumed power, and the massive popular support that greeted his return, is that the French people at the end of the 1950S wanted a government that was worthy of the astonishing economic and diplomatic successes achieved since the end of the war. Or to put it another way, the rejection of the Fourth Republic was made possible by its very success. The economy, still subject to inflation and budget deficits, nonetheless was humming along at an impressive rate. Was it not time for the French to enjoy political stability alongside economic well-being? The crisis of reconstruction and decolonization over, France was ready, as Jean-Pierre Rioux has said, "to be governed strongly and well."
1
The economic success of the Republic must not be underestimated. During the thirty-odd years that the French came to call "les trentes glorieuses," the French economy expanded at unprecedented rates (see Table 3). Between 1949 and 1959, French gross domestic product grew at 4.5 percent per year (while Britain averaged just 2.4 percent over the same period). The Fifth Republic continued to enjoy similar rates of growth. From 1959 to 1970, French GDP grew at the astonishing rate of 5.8 percent per year. During the decade of the 1960s, French growth rates were exceeded only by Japanese among industrialized countries. Thirty years after World War II, France was the world's third largest exporter, behind only the United States and Germany.
2
De Gaulle's Republic has garnered the lion's share of praise for these impressive results, but the reality is that the successes of the Fifth Republic would not have been so great without the foundations laid in the 1950s. The reasons for French growth are difficult to pin down precisely, but economic historians agree that the transformation of
mentalités
that occurred in the crucible of war and reconstruction was a vital precondition. The planning process outlined in 1946 gave the government the leading role in the modernization of the economy, and the administra-

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