Europe's 1950S

2 Europe’s 1950s: reconstruction and reconciliation; confrontation and oppression If … the European Defence Community should not become effective; if France and Germany remain apart … That would compel an agonising reappraisal of basic United States policy. (John Foster Dulles)1 Summary Reconstruction in Western Europe, completed by the early 1950s, led to unbounded optimism about future economic growth and to a strong desire for closer integration. Following the creation of the Council of Europe in 1949 among ten West European countries, six went further in 1951 by founding the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). After attempts to set up a European Defence Community and a European Political Community failed in 1954, negotiations between the ‘Six’ (belonging to the overall successful ECSC) in 1957 led to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC). However, West European integration projects and Central and East- ern European adaptation to Soviet communism were overshadowed (and intensified) by pronounced East–West tensions, as expressed in the 1950–53 Korean War, the formal division of Germany into two states with a divided Berlin deep in East German territory, and the Soviet Union’s rise to nuclear power status together with the United States. Ideology took over from (dormant) nationalism as the prominent geopolitical force, even though tensions were reduced in the mid-1950s following Stalin’s death. There was an agreement on Austrian independence and neutrality in 1955, and ‘de-Stalinisation’ began in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev. Neither the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule nor the Suez crisis the same year could tempt the Soviet Union and the United States into open confrontation or the abandonment of a slowly achieved, bipolar stability, which guaranteed them both a dominant influence over events in their respective ‘spheres of interest’. Major Western European countries Kjell M. Torbiörn - 9781526137319 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 10/01/2021 07:05:39PM via free access MUP_Torbion_02_Ch2 13 22/9/03, 12:32 pm 14 Destination Europe such as West Germany, France and the United Kingdom also saw certain advantages in the situation. Europe between the superpowers By the early 1950s, post-war reconstruction in Western Europe was virtually complete. In the Soviet-controlled part it would take much longer due to the poor economic performance of the centrally planned economies, but also due to their being cut off from Marshall aid and deprived of their traditional trading partners on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Regions such as the Ruhr area in West Germany, which lost much of their industrial machinery as war reparations, found themselves with a head start over the UK and France, thanks to Marshall Aid allowing them to rebuild with the latest equipment. The port of Rotterdam, for example, heavily bombed during the war, owed its new prominence as a gateway to Europe to the fact that it could expand on adjacent waste land and invest in the latest cargo-handling facilities. The Soviet Union, which exacted more war reparations on its occupation zone in Germany (as from 1949 the German Democratic Republic) and Austria than the Western victorious powers, by contrast found itself in possession of older industrial plant. Reconciliation in Western Europe – as opposed to the sub-surface hostility and suspicion that prevailed in Central and Eastern Europe between the ‘Soviet satellites’ and the Soviet Union itself – was greatly helped by the success of reconstruction. Similarly, reconciliation between former enemies, especially France and West Germany, made possible further reconstruction and economic development.2 Italy and West Germany had become democratic and were eager to join a European family of democracies – in Germany’s case even more so to counteract a perceived Soviet threat and to compensate for the virtually complete loss of markets in the East (including East Germany). A ‘virtuous circle’ had begun. Conversely, the geopolitical forces that propelled Western European countries to varying degrees of political co-operation or even integration also turned Europe into a focal point for US–Soviet super- power rivalry. From August 1949 the US–Soviet confrontation became dramatically more worrisome for Europe when the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability was revealed and the Chinese civil war ended in victory for the com- munist side two months later. Tension rose to new heights in June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea, leading to US military Kjell M. Torbiörn - 9781526137319 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 10/01/2021 07:05:39PM via free access MUP_Torbion_02_Ch2 14 22/9/03, 12:32 pm 1950s: reconstruction and reconciliation 15 intervention under United Nations (UN) authority and to an even more confrontational US stance vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.3 Any military conflict between the two blocs had the potential to escalate to a nuclear conflict, with Europe likely to serve as the nuclear battlefield. ‘Better dead than red?’ or ‘Better red than dead?’ was the agonising potential choice for Europeans. The fear promoted the quest for political and economic integration in Western Europe. The post-war era was focused on ideology rather than nationalism – almost the very opposite of today – and it was one of great fear for the survival of European (and world) civilisation, even though the full, long- term health effects of nuclear weapons were largely unknown and nuclear tests were conducted with disregard for the risks to soldiers and civilians alike. Nationalism was not dead, but dormant, as Western Europe grouped together to escape communism and Soviet domination, and as the latter suppressed nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe in the name of a ‘new age of mankind’. European colonial powers at this time also began to grow tired of their overseas possessions. The United Kingdom granted India independence in 1947, and the following decades would see the near dismantling of European imperialism. The reasons were not only a growing realisa- tion that it was ‘immoral’ to refuse independence to peoples far from Europe’s shores, and of the sheer economic and political costs of main- taining colonies, but also an increasing national consciousness among colonised peoples whose nationhood often preceded those of European nations, leading, for instance, to French defeat in Indo-China in 1954. There was also the shift in the world economy away from raw materials as a source of wealth for industrialised countries, and towards an emphasis on ‘value-added’ – finished products of greater and greater sophistication. In other words, the brain was becoming a more import- ant lever of the world economy than the arm (and eventually the hand), a process that has accelerated ever since.4 Especially in a world of freer and freer world trade in raw materials under GATT, the ‘mother countries’ no longer had to hold on to colonies at ever greater cost. To grasp this fact the European colonial powers only had to look at West Germany, which had no colonies but which surged ahead past much of the rest of Europe during the 1950s; or at Portugal, which refused to see the writing on the wall and paid for its stubborn clinging to Angola and Mozambique well into the 1970s with a painfully slow rate of economic growth. If we add all the factors together, it is not surprising that the 1950s became the decade of integrative will in Western Europe: ideology Kjell M. Torbiörn - 9781526137319 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 10/01/2021 07:05:39PM via free access MUP_Torbion_02_Ch2 15 22/9/03, 12:32 pm 16 Destination Europe replacing nationalism, relentless political and military pressure from the East, optimism about a joint economic future fuelled by annual growth rates that today seem unreachable, the still vivid memories of the war – and fears of a coming one. Co-operation: how far? Europe would not, however, be Europe if all these things were felt with the same intensity everywhere. The European Movement was able to unite some 750 prominent Europeans around its call for the nations of Europe to create a political and economic European Union – a ‘United States of Europe’. But by the time this led to an international treaty in 1949 it had been watered down considerably by the governments con- cerned. The Congress of Europe held at The Hague in May 1948 was a grand rally of ‘Europeans’ attended by leading statesmen, including Winston Churchill, who in a famous speech in Zurich in 1946 had even called (uncharacteristically for a Briton) for a ‘United States of Europe’. However, Churchill had taken the lead in this movement in part to ensure that it would lead not to unbridled supranationalism, but rather to a structure where countries, including the United Kingdom, would maintain their individual identity.5 The Congress adopted a resolution that called for the giving up of some national sovereignty prior to the accomplishment of economic and political union in Europe. Subsequently a proposal was put forward, with the support of the Belgian and French governments, calling for a ‘United Europe’ and the creation of a European parliamentary assembly in which resolutions would be passed by majority vote. This was, of course, contrary to the unanimity rule, which was then characteristic of international organisations. A Committee of Ministers of a Council of Europe was to prepare and implement these resolutions. Needless to say, the United Kingdom was opposed to this form of supranationalism and in the end the British view largely prevailed. The Committee of Ministers, which is the executive organ of the Council of Europe, alone has the power of decision and generally decisions are taken on the unanimity principle. The Consultative Assembly (today called the Parliamentary Assembly) is a forum for debate, pressure and influence on the European public, and not a legislature.

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