19391940: European unification

1
1939-1940 European unification?

• Basic dilemmas of European cooperation are set
  way before World War II
• The preeminence of the nation-state, and the lack
  of confidence or of a vision of mutual interests
  strong enough to force cooperation
• Europe not yet bashed hard enough?
• The geographical and intellectual limits are
  unclear
• The ambiguity between a European utopia and the
  realities of economic and political tensions
• 1939-1940 Invasion of Poland, battle fo France
• In the chaos of 1940, a surprising integration
  project between France and Britain
• June 10th, 1940 French government leaves Paris.
  Jean Monnet is at the head of the Franco-British
  supply committee in London. He proposed (13-14)
  to Churchill, who endorsed it, a project of
  Franco-British union.
• The project is forgotten when France is occupied
• An ad hoc project, linked with the circumstances
  of the war

2
. 1940-1942 Germany dominant . An improvised
project mixing intense economic exploitation,
political submission, and propaganda in favor of
a German-led unified Europe. A project directed
at the populations of occupied regions of
Europe . Hopes in Vichy France that France could
find a place in this New Order Montoire,
October 1940 1942 Vichy France occupied
3
Europeist projects in the Resistance

• The European resistance to fascism as a
  background to 1945-1949
• The spirit of the Resistance in France
• The fight against authoritarian regimes as a
  common ground between heterogeneous movements
• Christian-democrats, socialists, communists,
  liberals, conservatives
• Different things were emphasized
• A crisis of capitalism, liberal democracy, and
  the nation?
• Ideas for the peace federalist projects,
  economic planification and rationalization,
  neo-corporatism
• Themes
• Unify Europe
• Transcend the nation-states
• Gather the European peoples that united in
  resistance to autocracy
• The after-war seen as a window of opportunity
• The communist resistance movements remain outside
  this intellectual production
• The influence of the USSR

4
Symbolic texts

• Antiero Spinelli and the Ventotene Manifesto
  (1941)
• A non-communist socialist jailed by Mussolini in
  1928, then again in 1941 on the Ventotene island
• A blueprint for a federal, unified Europe
  Towards a free and united Europe - a draft
  manifesto

• The Manifesto of the European resistance, Geneva,
  20th May 1944
• Federal Europe as a guarantee for peace
• A léchelle humaine, Léon Blum, 1941/1945
• Socialist leader, non-communist Left
• Universal project, not specifically European
• Lettres dun Européen, Maurice Druon, 1943/1945
• After the war, will these thoughts matter?
• No

5
Challenges in 1944-1945

• . Economic challenges
• . Political challenges
• The Cold War, Germany
• On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, while at
  Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, gave his
  speech "The Sinews of Peace," declaring that an
  iron curtain" had descended across Europe
• France as a battlefield for these new tensions

6
France in 1944-1945

• June-September 1944 Landing in Normandy, the
  liberation of Paris. November, Allied troops in
  Strasbourg
• France a field of ruins
• War, occupation, poverty
• Trade, finances disrupted
• 1949 Britain, France and other European
  countries were forced to devaluate their
  currencies by 20-25
• Around 600 000 deaths (on 40-60 m deaths)
• The political, social, ideological divisions
  World War II as a civil war in France?
• French foreign policy in disarray
• What is France after 1945?
• Maurice Vaisse Power or influence?
• What is Frances German policy? Russian policy?
  Policy towards Britain? Policy towards the United
  States?
• The colonies?
• Setif massacres in 1945

7
Domestic problems

• The difficult reconstitution of a domestic
  political scene
• Conservative right and non-communist left
  discredited
• Weakness in front of Hitler Weakness in front
  of the extreme right Attraction towards the
  USSR
• The right especially discredited by the contacts
  of many of its leaders with the Pétain regime
• The conservative Right in purgatory, 1945-1955
• The emergence of a Christian-Democrat party to
  babysit rightist voters the Mouvement
  Républicain Populaire
• A misunderstanding conservative voters, liberal,
  europeist elite
• Le parti des fusillés a towering, strong
  Communist Party balancing between Revolution,
  loyalty to the USSR, and participation
• Gaullisme an ideological melting pot, kept
  together by the memories of the Resistance and
  the attachment to the personality of de Gaulle
• Mika Waltari, 1948 (Lähdin Istanbuliin) I felt
  like France was about to be crushed between two
  masses
• Gaullism and the Communists
• The threat of civil unrest, cleansing after the
  occupation, tensions fuelled by restrictions

8
The Gaullist narrative, 1944-1948

• Charles de Gaulle
• and Free France, 1940-1944
• A creed in 1945
• France as an Allied nation
• France did not lose the war
• Germany needs to be divided
• A multipolar world
• Semi-planified economy and a defiance towards
• the intrigues of Parliamentarism
• Nations and states
• A personality and a party
• The towering figure of French politics
• The party of loyalty to de Gaulle the
  Rassemblement du Peuple Francais, April 1947
• A narrative on France and the French
• The resistant France
• France and its rank
• A denial of reality?

9
Constitutional reorganization

• France disorganized in 1945
• A provisional government under de Gaulle
• De Gaulle eases the transition by imposing the
  narrative of resistant France
• The Communists, after a few hesitations in
  June-December 1944, opt out of revolution
• The USSR wants to concentrate on the race to
  Berlin
• Continue with the Third Republic?
• For de Gaulle, an unconditional no
• The spirit of the Resistance breaks up very
  quickly, political forces reappear and with them
  a will to reorganize the system through familiar
  methods
• 1945 a referendum is organized
• No to the Third Republic
• Yes to a Consultative Assembly to draft a new
  regime
• A first referendum in May 1946, the project is
  rejected
• October 13th 1946, a compromise constitution is
  adopted through referendum
• Strong Parliament, weak president, strong Prime
  Minister
• Inacceptable for de Gaulle, who resigned already
  in January 1946

10
1946-1950, Tripartisme and Third Force

• After the departure of de Gaulle, and until his
  return in 1958, the Fourth Republic
• 1946-1950, political instability, then
  stabilization
• From tripartisme (Communists, Christian-democrats,
  Socialists, 1946-1947) to the Third Force (after
  1947 Socialists, Christian-Democrats, liberals)
  against both Gaullism and the Communists
• Examples of Prime Ministers
• Paul Ramadier, Robert Schuman, Georges Bidault,
  René Pleven, Pierre Pflimlin
• All names associated with the idea of a unified
  Europe

11
European unity?

• At the head of the state, the Prime Ministers and
  the Parliament parties
• Christian-Democrats, Socialists
• A vision of the world and Europe
• Influence of Resistance ideology and federalist
  ideals
• Yet a strongly traditional view of the European
  situation
• Not only have the (europeist) networks been
  unable to silence national realities, they have
  also been unable to mobilize the peoples into
  endorsing their objectives (Max Gallo, 1989)?
• One could add they very quickly readapted to
  national realities
• Three things are emphasized intergovernmental
  cooperation in Europe (not federation) the
  curbing of Germany (how? To what extent?) the
  alliance with Great-Britain
• The alliance as the basic policy of France,
  defended especially in the Foreign Ministry by an
  old guard of diplomats, René Massigli for
  example, who will oppose the turn in 1950 to the
  Community method
• First diplomatic contacts with the British
  nanny in 1945-1946

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• This also corresponds with a general European
  feeling
• When the Allies win the war, none of the winners
  intend to reorganize Europe along the lines drawn
  by the resistance
• Winston Churchill seems to be the only one
  interested in Europeist projects, out of
  anti-communism mostly
• A confederation, under British leadership, able
  to defend itself against communism
• Churchill voted out of power in July 1945
• He will defend European projects in private
  circles
• 19 September 1946, the Zurich Speech
• Over wide areas a vast quivering mass of
  tormented, hungry, care-worn and bewildered human
  beings gape at the ruins of their cities and
  their homes, and scan the dark horizons for the
  approach of some new peril, tyranny or terror
  That is all that Europeans, grouped in so many
  ancient states and nations have got by tearing
  each other to pieces and spreading havoc far and
  wide. Yet all the while there is a remedyIt is
  to recreate the European family, or as much of it
  as we can, and to provide it with a structure
  under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and
  in freedom. We must build a kind of United States
  of Europe.

13
1947, initiative in Washington

• 1947
• Eastern Europe is under the yoke, tensions rise
  with the Soviet Union, strikes and unrest
  threatens in Western Europe as well
• France the Renault strike, May 1947
• European situation appears as bad as in 1945,
  despite American help in loans and goods
• The Americans had thought that Great-Britain and
  France would rebuild Europe
• Beginning of the year 1947, William Clayton,
  assistant secretary of state for economic
  affairs, reported to Washington that "millions of
  people are slowly starving" in Germany
• Worries increase also among the American military
• March 1947, the conference of Moscow fails to
  deal with the status of Germany, and the
  divisions appear clearly
• Early 1947, Great-Britain withdraws from Greece
  it will not act as a stabilizer in Europe
• March 12th 1947 President Harry Truman speaks to
  the Congress of a policy of containment
• We must take immediate and resolute action in
  Greece and Turkey

14
Marshall speech, June 5th, 1947

• The US shift from world-wide plans to European
  reconstruction. Emphasis on European projects
• A strong Western Germany involved in Europe-wide
  cooperations
• Already outlined in a speech by the Secretary of
  state William Byrnes in Stuttgart, September 6th
  1946 to give back to Germany its place among
  free nations
• June 5th 1947, informal speech by secretary of
  state George Marshall, at the university of
  Harvard
• Experience of the conference in Moscow no hope
  for cooperation with the Soviets
• Help economically European countries to recover
• A political plan the arm of containment
• An economic plan Get rid of surpluses, create
  markets, break protectionism and barriers to
  trade (Intra-European trade and payments
  recovery was seen in Washington as the means of
  achieving the long-term strategic goal of
  worldwide trade liberalization and
  convertibility, Wendy Asbeek Brusse)

15

• France and Great-Britain had been informed
  beforehand
• Ernest Bevin, British PM June 13th, reacts to
  the speech and says a new organization should be
  built on a Franco-British axis
• Reactions in France
• Communists immediately against
• George Bidault, French PM, Christian-democrat,
  and Socialist governments follow Great-Britain in
  the hope of getting support for a division and
  occupation of Germany
• Treaty of Dunkirk with Great-Britain in March
  1947 traditional alliance treaty
• American proposal as something new
• Bidault is not a Europeist at heart, but he
  accepts Marshalls proposal
• The Americans want to rebuild Germany, Bidault
  wants to control that
• France would have a strong role in a European
  organization and would be able to support its
  German policy
• France needs the economic help

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17
The European Recovery Program and the OEEC

• Bidault and Bevin meet in Paris and decide to
  accept the US proposal
• The USSR denounces the plan, Eastern Europe
  withdraws
• French Communist Party in fierce opposition to
  European schemes
• 16 countries meet in Paris on July 1st-3rd 1947
• A series of committees to report to the US on
  European situation
• The report is ready in September
• April 16th 1948 second conference in Paris,
  creation of the Organization for European
  Economic Cooperation 17 countries, including the
  Allied zones of Germany
• January 1949 the COMECON is created as a
  response
• OEEC the first Western European organization
• The planification and concerted implementation
  of a plan of European recovery with the US aid
• An agenda at odds with the protectionism and
  Malthusianism of European economics before the
  war economic growth, development of capacity of
  production, monetary stabilization, employment,
  etc
• A agenda that will only partially be carried out
  opposition