Anglo-American grand designs against Europe

help another, but it cannot identify itself with another. That is why, although remaining faithful to our alliance, I cannot accept France’s integration into NATO.3

As Washington turned a deaf ear to France’s proposals, de Gaulle initiated an independent French nuclear force de frappe and announced it was withdrawing its Mediterranean naval fl eet from the NATO command. In 1960, France successfully tested its fi rst atomic bomb in the Sahara. De Gaulle was articulating a new independent voice for the emerging postwar Continental Europe.

One of the fi rst steps de Gaulle took after assuming the presidency of France in 1958 was to invite German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to meet with him at de Gaulle’s private retreat in Colombey-lesdeux-Eglises in September 1958. It was the beginning not only of an historic political rapprochement between the two former wartime antagonists, but also of a close personal friendship between the two seasoned statesmen. The process culminated some fi ve years later on January 22, 1963, when de Gaulle and Adenauer signed the ‘Treaty Between the French Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany,’ outlining a process of close heads-of-state cooperation, combined with various forms of economic and industrial policy coordination.

The de Gaulle–Adenauer accords sent alarm bells ringing in both Washington and London. Continental Europe, under the leadership of de Gaulle, Adenauer and Italy’s Aldo Moro, was becoming far too independent in every respect for the comfort of some. Nor did it pass unnoticed in London that the very day after the historic signing of the Franco-German treaty, France’s government announced she would veto British application to enter the European Common Market, a veto exercised by de Gaulle out of the years of deep distrust for British motives regarding a strong independent Continental Europe.

ANGLO-AMERICAN GRAND DESIGNS AGAINST EUROPE

Early in 1962, the policy circles influencing the Washington administration of John Kennedy had formulated their alternative to the assertion of European independence represented by the growing collaboration between Germany under Adenauer and France under Charles de Gaulle. A group of policy advisers, including the ever infl uential John J. McCloy, who had been Truman’s high commissioner for Germany from 1949 to 1952, White House National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Under

Secretary of State George Ball and the CIA’s Robert Bowie, formulated a counter to the Franco-German notion of a strong independent Europe with what they termed their ‘Atlanticist Grand Design.’

With effusive rhetoric supporting the Europe of Jean Monnet, the essence of the Washington policy was that the new Common Market open itself to American imports and be fi rmly locked into a NATO military alliance in which British and American voices dominated. Washington’s plan also demanded support for British membership of the six-nation Common Market, a move which, as noted, de Gaulle for very good reasons adamantly opposed.

By the time of the January 1963 de Gaulle–Adenauer meeting, Washington’s opposition policy was in full force, in coordination with that of Britain. Kennedy’s State Department made no secret of its extreme displeasure over the France–Germany accord. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn had been instructed to exert maximum pressure on select members of both the Christian Democrats of Adenauer, the liberal FDP of Erich Mende, and the opposition Social Democrats. Two days before the fi rst formal reading of the Franco-German Treaty in the German Bundestag, on April 24, 1963, Ludwig Erhard, a fi rm opponent of de Gaulle and an outspoken Atlanticist who favored British entry into the Common Market, was elected Adenauer’s successor. The culmination of Adenauer’s life’s work, ratifi cation of the Franco-German treaty, was stolen from him by Anglo-American interests at the last moment.

After this, the content of the Franco-German accord, though formally ratifi ed, amounted to a lifeless piece of paper. Chancellor Erhard presided ineffectively over a divided party. By July 1964, de Gaulle himself, when asked by press on the progress of the FrancoGerman accord, painted a grim picture of the state of German–French relations. ‘One could not say,’ declared de Gaulle with bitterness over his relations with Adenauer’s successor, ‘that Germany and France have yet agreed to make policy together, and one could not dispute that this results from the fact that Bonn has not believed, up to now, that this policy should be European and independent.’

For the moment, the infl uential London and Washington circles had blocked the danger of a powerful bloc of Continental European policy that was independent of Anglo-American Atlantic designs. The weakest European link, postwar ‘occupied’ Germany, had for the moment been broken. Britain’s basic nineteenth-century ‘balance-of-power’ strategy against Continental Europe had again been maintained, as in the years before 1914. This time, Britain had