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Cold War Threats 63
Some European players could be criticized for a number of the other frustrating
behaviors associated with France, as well. Italy was seen as regularly interested in
bartering its support for EDC, with respect to Trieste developments among other
things. And the Germans were viewed as guilty of this and more. For all of Dwight
Eisenhower’s ultimate interest in securing the right kind of German rearmament,
for example, he sometimes grew angry at the “blackmail” tendencies of an Adenauer
government bent more on speeding up a return to sovereignty and status.
John McCloy, for his part, could also express dismay in this respect. The Germans
could be “almost hysterical” when they thought “discrimination” against them was
in the air, for instance, and this certainly slowed overall progress. They just did not
seem to adequately “understand that other countries still distrusted them and at
times feel towards them a resistance not far short of revulsion.” 40
But American concerns with European behavior went far beyond the specific
difficulties connected with building EDC. The angry words that sometimes flew in
this connection were essentially only momentary sparks – notable, but primarily
because of the way they reveal the deeper, long-burning fires of American anxieties
regarding Europe. It was these deeper fires which helped fuel US policy in the early
1950s, augmenting the power simultaneously engendered by concerns about the
Soviet Union and Germany.
The fires had started burning long before the 1950s, of course, and the full span
of American anxieties about Europe is at the center of an old and largely familiar
tale. Full exposition would require attention to centuries of transatlantic history,
back to 17th and 18th century qualms about “mother” countries from which at least
some colonists had sought escape. For the purposes of this discussion, brief attention
to some facets of the story’s 19th and 20th century evolution will suffice –
because it is here that greatest relevance to EDC can be found.
What emerged over time, most notably, was the kind of ambivalence already
noted above, in connection with post-1945 attitudes toward Germany. Americans
consistently valued their transatlantic economic and cultural ties, that is, but also
found constantly troublesome problems in many elements of European behavior.
Militarism and imperialism, in particular, clashed with the values to which most
Americans paid at least some lip service. After 1914, the perils and costs of these
European tendencies came to be seen as horrendously high – for countries on both
sides of the Atlantic. And after 1939, the reform of Europe – in the interest of global
peace and prosperity – became a top priority for American policy makers. 41
One of the remedial techniques considered during World War II was more and
more regularly emphasized in its aftermath: integration. Faith in integration as a
40. Eisenhower is quoted in S. AMBROSE, Eisenhower, Volume I: Soldier, General of the Army, President
Elect, 1890-1952, New York 1983, 504; McCloy’s comments are from FRUS, 1952-1954, V, 15
and SCHWARTZ, America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany, 107.
41. The literature on these broad contours of transatlantic relations is vast. Particularly valuable studies
include: A. MAYER, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918, New Haven 1959, and
Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918-
1919, New York 1967; M. HOGAN, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction
of Western Europe, 1947-1952, Cambridge 1987 ; and HARPER, American Visions of Europe.