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

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Ronald W. Pruessen
achieve the former, preferences regarding specific mechanisms and timing were of
mind-boggling variety. The fall of 1950 alone, for example, saw Byzantine debates
concerning Washington’s “one package” proposal, the “Pleven Plan,” and the
“Spofford Proposals.” This inaugurated a pattern that held all through the next
eighteen months. So complicated did negotiations become – and so densely packed
the trade-offs required to assuage competing sensitivities – that the EDC treaty
finally signed in May 1952 contained 132 articles and various protocols – in comparison
to NATO’s 14 articles. 36 Nor did the potency of competition over gameplans
diminish after the signing of the treaty. France, of course – although it was
not alone in this respect – regularly sought modifications of agreed-upon terms.
Pierre Mendès-France’s final efforts along these lines resulted in the failure of the
August l954 Brussels conference and paved the way for the debacle of the French
Assembly’s vote on August 30.
It was France, certainly, that most frequently spurred angry words in Washington.
There was a “pathological Gallic fear” of Germany which often went beyond
the bounds of good sense, it was said, leaving Paris “stubborn and vengeful.” From
his base in Bonn, John McCloy could lose patience with references to the “delicacy”
of French public opinion: “I think the time has come to tell these people,” he
advised the secretary of state, that “US opinion is getting damned delicate itself.”
Nor did David Bruce’s Paris posting automatically yield greater sympathy. The
ambassador could grumble darkly about the way in which a “26 percent popular
commie vote” was a “cancer in [the French] body politic,” for example, and would
have understood the bitterness of department colleagues fed up with France’s use
of “a species of blackmail” to garner US aid in exchange for EDC promises. 37
But virtually every other European player also sparked US anger during the
long EDC struggle. “Our estimable, if stubborn Dutch friends” played the role of
“villain” at some points, as Acheson put it, when their doubts about the pace and
scope of continental integration caused delays. 38 So could the United Kingdom, for
that matter, and for similar reasons. Both the Labour and the Conservative governments
in power during the years EDC was being considered were disinclined to
make the kind of continental commitments which Washington thought suitable for
soothing allies afraid of being left alone with Germany. Churchill sometimes made
matters particularly difficult by criticizing the specific EDC mechanism that was
finally devised: he developed a fondness for saying that a European army should be
like a strongly bound clutch of firelogs, not “a bucket of wood pulp.” 39
36. This interesting indication of the special complexity of the EDC treaty is commented on in DOCK-
RILL, Britain’s Policy For West German Rearmament, 1950-1955, 105.
37. FRUS, 1950, III, 817; FRUS, 1952-1954, V, 693-696; SCHWARTZ, America’s Germany: John J.
McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany, 138-139.
38. Acheson’s use of the word “villain” can be found in FRUS, 1952-1954, V, 680-2. Another example
of concern regarding the Benelux countries is on 597.
39. See, for example, FRUS, 1950, III, 617-622. Churchill is quoted in D. CARLTON, Anthony Eden,
London 1981, 312.