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

Cold War Threats 67
administration’s policies never wavered in this respect. NSC 160, “US Position
With Respect to Germany” – adopted midway through his first year as president –
identified EDC as a “vital” necessity because of the way it would “harmonize three
aims: (1) the securing of a German contribution to European defense; (2) the provision
of acceptable safeguards against revival of German militarism; and (3) the
cementing of Germany firmly to Europe and the West.” This was often Eisenhower’s
personal message as well. During the Bermuda discussions with Winston
Churchill and Georges Bidault, in December 1953, he strongly urged completion of
the drawn-out EDC drama. The supranational military structure would have enormous
value as “a federation” from which the Germans “could not break loose.
They must never be in a position where they could blackmail the other powers and
say ‘meet my demands or else.’” He was convinced that Adenauer’s government
was totally devoid of the “evil forces” that had generated Hitler, but why take
chances? 50
Eisenhower and Dulles saw EDC as a tool of “triple containment” as well – a
safe means of reintegrating a valuable Germany that was also a mechanism for taming
what were seen as the dangerous proclivities of Europeans in general. Dulles
had a near-lifetime of interest here. He had begun urging the virtues of functional
economic cooperation as early as the 1920s and had become an explicit advocate of
wide-ranging continental integration during World War II. In agreement with his
old friend Jean Monnet, he argued that “European federalism” could prevent reconstruction
of the “world’s worst firetrap.” 51 By the time he became secretary of state,
Dulles had become so well known for his interest in European integration that one
old department hand could quip about devotion to a “sole-cure patent remedy.” 52
Eisenhower was a later convert, but he quickly came up to Dulles’s speed. European
integration became what the president himself called his “pet” concern and he
took many opportunities to argue its merits. One early example was his eloquent
and widely-noted speech to the English Speaking Union in July 1951:
“Europe cannot attain the towering material status possible to its people’s skills and
spirit so long as it is divided by patchwork territorial fences. But with unity achieved,
Europe could build adequate security and, at the same time, continue the march of
human betterment that has characterized Western civilization.” 53
Both Eisenhower and Dulles channeled their overall enthusiasm for European
integration into EDC. There were few individual subjects which prompted more
regular comments from them between 1952 and 1954 – and fewer still which were
capable of producing the same level of intense anxiety or passionate determination.
Eisenhower could energetically press his case with Konrad Adenauer, for example,
by describing EDC as “the first step toward [the] process of European federation.
Hopes and expectations have been built up which should not be blasted by procras-
50. FRUS, 1952-1954, V, 799, 1782-1783.
51. PRUESSEN, John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power, Chapters 5, 12-13.
52. FRUS, 1952-1954, V, 1128.
53. AMBROSE, Eisenhower, Volume II: The President,, 507-509; the July 1951 is quoted in DOCK-
RILL, Britain’s Policy For West German Rearmament, 1950-1955, 70.