Date of Award:

5-1954

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Political Science

Committee Chair(s)

Wendell B. Anderson

Committee

Wendell B. Anderson

Committee

L. J. Arrington

Committee

M. Judd Harmon

Abstract

In 1945 it was a common belief that World War II had just been fought to successful completion. The German and Japanese Empires were vanquished, with Germany destroyed more thoroughly than any of the countries she had occupied. The two large remaining powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, seemed to be working together for the common good of the whole world. They had even agreed to participate in the United Nations Organization, which, as a matter of fact, they had been prominently associated with since the earliest negotiations. Now universal peace, and maybe the Millennium, would be the order of the day.

But Europe was utterly exhausted, her population decimated, and her industries destroyed. The statesmen of Western Europe set themselves up to rebuild their countries, both physically and morally. Generously, the United States furnished money and supplies to start the reconstruction. U.N.R.R.A., loans, and Marshall aid were designed to accomplish this task.

On the political front the collaborators, Nazis and Quislings drew long prison sentences, and faced the firing squad. The hangman's noose was used extensively in the liberated Eastern Europe, which the Soviet Armes were occupying, or where Soviet troops were maintained to guard communication lines to Germany and Austria.

Europe returned to normalcy, but uneasiness prevailed. Reconstruction was slower than had been thought at first, and, more important, there were too many differences of opinion between the Western and the Soviet definitions of "democracy."

It became apparent that Western Europe, whose spiritual and physical qualities had been destroyed, lacked a major power and was just a vacuum, ready to be taken by whatever power felt strong enough, or by the powerful local Communist Parties.

Eastern Europe had been "liberated" by the Soviet Army, and "friendly" governments were established outright or by "revolution." Western Europe had been "liberated" by the British and American armies, and prewar governments took over the reins of control, and re-established democratic processes, after disfranchising all those who had collaborated with the Germans. And suddenly, with the blockading of Berlin by the Soviets in 1948, Europe realized that a wall, the Iron Curtain, separated it in two halves.

The economic task of reconstruction in Western Europe was tremendous. The United States maintained that Western Europe should effect some form of unification, as the various trade barriers between the nations were stifling reconstruction.

The idea of unification was a very old one. Many rulers and philosophers tried to achieve it or advocated it in the past. In the nineteen-twenties Count Coudenhove-Kalergi was the soul of the Pan-Europa movement which enlisted the support of such people as the Masarycks and Aristide Briand. Both in 1942 and in 1946 Mr. Churchill urged Europe to unite.

A "European Movement" was founded after the historic Congress of The Hague in 1948, which called for a European Parliament. The resolutions adopted by this Congress forced the European Governments to effect some move in the direction of European integration, and the Council of Europe was born in 1949. Symbolically, Strasbourg was chosen as its seat.

Relations between the Soviet Union and its satellites on the one hand, and the United States and Western Europe, on the other, worsened, and the West came to feel that the guarantees of collective security embodied in the Charter of the United Nations were not sufficient. Therefore twelve Western nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, its main provision being that should one of the signatories be attacked, the others would consider this as being an attack against them all.

Thus, in the late forties, there were two main forces at work in Europe. The one was fear of the Soviet Union, and it led to the North Atlantic Treaty, and the other was an urge to unite, with the hope that the result would be a Third Force strong enough to become a balance between the Soviet and American colossi.

The Korean War brought a shock to unarmed Western Europe. Overnight Marshall aid changed from an economic to a military character. Moreover it was feared that the German vacuum was an invitation to stage another Korea in Western Europe. This prompted the United States to advocate German rearmament, as German was the only country with a large untapped source of manpower.

The European urge to unite, which had been manifested a few months earlier by the advocacy of the Schuman Plan to pool Western Europe's coal and steel resources, and American insistence on German rearmament, were combined into one policy which became known as the Pleven Plan, forerunner of the European Defense Community: Germany was to be rearmed within the framework of a Western European organization, with supra-national powers in the field of defense.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the struggle for the European Defense Community. To do justice to the subject, it would be necessary to write a comprehensive post-war European history. This not being possible, the author has decided to include in his study only the smallest possible amount of outside material not directly necessary to the understanding of the E.D.C. The basic assumption in this thesis is that the reader is familiar with general developments of post-war history, with the names mentioned in the text, with the working of the Organizations which have a stake in the E.D.C. (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Council of Europe, European Coal and Steel Community).

The study is divided in three main parts: a political and military history of the E.D.C., an analysis of the Treaty, and a brief historical and political account of the fight for the E.D.C. in the six participating nations, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Only those facts deemed by the author to be the most important have been included. He has tried to show the political tug of war involved in the framing and subsequent fight for ratification of the E.D.C. Many different factors, people, factions, organizations, governments, have had a hand in the drafting of the Treaty. As many have fought it tooth and nail. Even where it has been ratified, there is a constant struggle to reverse the country's position. France and Italy have so far failed to ratify the E.D.C., but there are signs pointing to probable ratification by Italy, and possible ratification by France, in the near future. When this comes about, Europe will engage in one of the boldest experiments of modern times: the fusion, under supra-national control, of its armed forces, and the marshalling of its economic power to support its unified army.

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