journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

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Ronald W. Pruessen
mountainous war debt.” 7 The Joint Chiefs of Staff, alternatively, focused on strategic
implications. An April 1947 study surveying troubled global horizons took as
its premise that the Soviet Union had become a “new eastern menace” whose “ultimate
aim is world conquest (...).” Under such circumstances, “the entire area of
western Europe is in first place as an area of strategic importance to the United
States (...).” It was difficult to imagine, for example, “how Canada or the United
States could live safely if France and/or Great Britain were under Soviet domination
either by reason of military conquest or for the reason that communists had
taken over control of their governments.” 8
There was a second early Cold War calculation which also paved the way to
eventual US interest in EDC: If a troubled and threatened Europe was of fundamental
significance to the United States, then a troubled and threatened Germany
was of fundamental significance to Europe. “Whoever deals with Germany deals
with the central problem of Europe,” John Foster Dulles declared in early 1947,
shortly before serving as one of George Marshall’s advisers at the Moscow session
of the Council of Foreign Ministers. 9 General agreement with this proposition led
policy makers to the conclusion that harshly punitive treatment of the defeated
enemy should give way to rehabilitation and reintegration. “Are we going to try to
keep Germany a running boil with the pus exuding over the rest of Europe,” Secretary
of the Navy James Forrestal asked in March 1947, “or are you going to try to
bring it back into inner society?” “We can keep Germany in these economic
chains,” agreed former president Herbert Hoover, “but it will also keep Europe in
rags.” 10 The Joint Chiefs of Staff, as early as April 1947, added an emphasis on the
military significance of German revival:
“Without German aid the remaining countries of western Europe could scarcely be
expected to withstand the armies of our ideological opponents until the United States
could mobilize (...) Further, the complete resurgence of German industry (...) is
essential for the economic recovery of France – whose security is essential for the
combined security of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.” 11
An analysis emphasizing dramatic needs and perils generated dramatic policy
initiatives, of course. Was a weakened Europe endangered by either direct Soviet
expansionism or communist subversion? Then strengthen Europe with the Marshall
Plan’s economic transfusions and the psychological reassurances of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. Would German rehabilitation and security speed up
the overall process of continental recovery? Then modify the harshness of initial
occupation procedures, work toward the efficiency of integration among at least
three of the occupation zones, and arrange for a meaty share of European Recovery
7. J. DOBNEY, ed., Selected Papers of Will Clayton, Baltimore 1971, 198-201.
8. FRUS, 1947, I, 740-741.
9. J. F. DULLES, “A New Year’s Resolve,” January 17, 1947 address, John Foster Dulles Papers, Princeton
University. (The John Foster Dulles Papers will hereafter be identified as DP.)
10. Quoted in T. G. PATERSON, Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins
of the Cold War, Baltimore 1973, 234, 244.
11. FRUS, 1947: I, 740.