THE ALLIED POWERS AND THE CREATION OF A NEW GERMAN ARMED FORCERS THE EUROPEAN DEFENSE COMMUNITY

Jonathan M. House

Reviving Germany: Th e Schuman Plan

Germany invaded France three times between 1870 and 1940. Twice, the Germans conquered, occupying northern France and extorting extensive reparations. Th e third time, during World War I, France won, but only with the help of major allies and at the ruinous cost of 5.4 mil- lion Frenchmen killed, wounded, and missing. In the wake of this Pyrrhic victory, the French discovered that without major allies they were too weak to prevent German resurgence. At the end of World War II, therefore, France sought security in the form of alliances against the perennial foe. Even though Germany was momentarily prostrate, no French offi cial expected that situation to endure. Despite his life-long opposition to communism, Charles de Gaulle had traveled to Moscow in December 1944 to sign a long-term anti-German alliance with Joseph Stalin. More practically, in March 1947, France and Britain concluded the Dunkirk Treaty, explicitly intended to establish “mutual assistance in the event of any renewal of German aggression.”1 One year later, London and Paris joined with the three low-country governments in the Brussels Treaty, which again provided for collective defense against Germany. To this end, the agree- ment established the Western Union (later the Western European Union or WEU) with the rudiments of an integrated command struc- ture to coordinate defense. During the later 1940s, growing friction with the Soviet Union, the Viet Minh in Indochina, and the French Communist Party at home forced the constantly changing governments of the Fourth Republic to recognize that Germany might not be the only threat to French secu- rity. As time passed, some French politicians also came to understand that Europe could not recover economically without German involve- ment. Even with France administering the vital mineral deposits of the

1 Quoted in Edward Fursdon, Th e European Defence Community: A History (London: Macmillan Press, 1980), 29.