European Integration During the Post-War Period (1945-1949)
18.4.1 Europe in 1945
Hitler was ultimately not defeated by the heart of Europe, but by the two new superpowers lying east and west of it: Russia and the United States, which met to discuss the new international order to be established after the end of World War
II.
Europe was once again universally ravaged by war: those regimes which had been conquered by the Third Reich, those which had collaborated with it, and those which struggled to resist it, particularly the United Kingdom, which had tenaciously defended itself. In any case, by 1945 Europe was the great loser, left bankrupt and buried in the devastation of the conflict (Judt 2007, 13-40)—literally, as much of Europe’s cities had been reduced to rubble by massive bombing raids. The most disturbing example in England was Coventry, while in Germany it was the city of Dresden, totally destroyed by four consecutive bombing runs carried out between February 13 and 15, 1945, which left over 30,000 dead.[1184]For the formerly all-powerful Europeans the problem was now survival. Italy, which had become a republic, was completely impoverished, and the maps of Germany and Austria were mangled. France had been laid waste, and the United Kingdom, no longer a great power, began to dismantle its empire with the foundation of the “Commonwealth”, a community by virtue of which its former colonies became independent states while maintaining a symbolic allegiance to the British Crown[1185]—a fact which may explain why in 1946, Churchill supported the creation of a United States of Europe in his aforementioned speech at the University of Zurich.[1186]
18.4.1.1 The Dollar Gap
The top priority was reconstruction. This is why the first thing the Americans did after the end of World War II was to provide Europe with material and financial aid.
The funds provided, however, quickly evaporated given the dire needs of the devastated Continent. In 1947, the exorbitant amount of 11.5 billion dollars practically disappeared, in what is known as the era of the “dollar gap” (Erhard 2006, 181-182).18.4.1.2 The Marshall Plan (1947)
President Truman’s advisors soon came to the conclusion that a change in strategy was needed. The United States was willing to facilitate Europe’s overall reconstruction, but not that of each state individually (Jackson 1979, 1043-1068). This was the gist of a speech given by Secretary of State George Marshall on June 5, 1947, at Harvard University, in which he stated that:
It is already evident that, before the United States Government can proceed much further in its efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever action might be undertaken by this Government. It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so. The program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all European nations.[1187]
To channel this aid, two organizations were created: the European Recovery Program (ERP) and the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), the former an American agency, and the latter European. Marshall’s efforts did not constitute full integration, and by no means did they endorse “supranational” institutions. However, thanks to the OEEC (today’s OECD) ministers from different countries ceased to deal with their national problems as something confidential that did not impact their neighboring nations, and progressed in the establishment of priorities through negotiations, as the intention was for aid to be used by the European countries in a coordinated way rather than be allocated individually to specific countries for particular purposes (Milward 2013, 56).
The implementation of the Marshall Plan also had the institutional result of creating the “European Payments Union” which imposed a common monetary policy (Bozyk 2006, 154). The most important shift, however, was that public opinion and the positions of the governments of the various European states began to move towards the idea of European cooperation and alliances (Geiger 1999, 23-41).[1188]Another pivotal consequence of the Marshall Plan was that, because it was utterly rejected and opposed by Stalin, it was instrumental in cutting off Eastern Europe, occupied by Soviet troops, from Western Europe.
18.4.1.3 Eastern Europe Splits Off
The Allies originally thought that military cooperation had softened Stalin’s communism. Soviet Russia took advantage of the West’s naivete in this regard to extend its tentacles across Eastern Europe, which Stalin was determined to seize for Russia. Truly paradoxical is the fact that Stalinism continued to enjoy good press and favor in European public opinion, a striking circumstance which allowed the communists to enjoy significant electoral success throughout postwar Western Europe. In France the 1945 legislative elections were won by the communists, who obtained 25 % of the votes; in Italy, after the proclamation of the Republic, Christian Democrat Alcide De Gasperi governed in coalition with communists and socialists; in Germany, the first political party authorized by the Allied occupation forces was the Communist Party (KPD); Churchill was defeated by the Labour Party, led by Clement Attlee; and the Communist Party of Great Britain had two members of Parliament. The triumph of leftist parties in post-war Europe seemed certain[1189] until George Marshall appeared and announced that he had a plan to rebuild Europe.
Stalin, however, thoroughly opposed the plan (Grogin 2001, 117) while Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and, one by one, the countries of Eastern Europe fell behind the “Iron Curtain”.
Russia administrated all of them after the replacement of Lenin’s old Comintern with the Cominform, an association of various national communist parties led by the CPSU, founded by Stalin in June of 1947. The lone exception was Yugoslavia, where partisan leader and communist Marshall Tito managed for his Balkan Federation, based on the independence and equality of its peoples (“within the framework of the principles stated in the Charter of the United Nations”) to evade Soviet domination thanks to the unanimous support of Yugoslavia’s Communists (Belgrade Conference).[1190]18.4.1.4 Germany Splits and Spurs European Integration
The quintessential symbol of Europe’s prostration to foreign powers after the end of World War II was undoubtedly Germany, a defeated and decimated nation divided (at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences) by the Allies into four zones, controlled by the Russians, Americans, British, and French. This division became twofold when the German territory controlled by the Soviets was transformed into a “popular democracy” to differentiate it from the other three areas controlled by the western Allies, which fully benefitted from the Marshall Plan (Parish 1997, 268-290). Thus, the western Allies decided to merge the three zones—American, English, and French—into one. On June 20, 1948 the Allies, as we know, approved the revaluation of the Deutschmark that replaced the worthless Reichsmark and launched the German Economic Miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) (Loedel 1999, 2).[1191]
In response, Stalin imposed an “Eastern Deutschmark” throughout Berlin and a blockade of the areas of the capital controlled by western forces. The Allies responded, beginning on June 26, 1948, by organizing the famous “Berlin Airlift” to provision western Berlin (Miller 2000). The Soviet blockade would not cease until May 21, 1949. The border between the two areas would be relatively permeable until the construction of the Berlin Wall which, beginning on August 13, 1961, became the ultimate symbol of the new state of things (Landsman 2005, 173-207) one that would stand for nearly 30 years.[1192]
The dismantling of Germany by the Allies after the end of the war resulted in the country’s total economic collapse.
The Germans struggled just to survive in their wasted land, wallowing amidst the ruins. Epidemics ravaged the population. In 1947 the number of TB patients far surpassed the number of available hospital beds.[1193] Under these dire circumstances the Allies faced a dilemma. On the one hand it was unacceptable to abandon Germany to its fate, but, on the other, they had to do their utmost to prevent the resurgence of German nationalism (Lewkowicz 2010, 15-36). The only solution was for Germany to be brought into a process of European integration. The question of German resurgence thus became the main engine and spur for a European alliance.18.4.2 A First, Unsuccessful Attempt at Integration: The Congress of The Hague (1948), and the Failure to Form a Federal Europe
As a preliminary step it was necessary to decide the path to be followed to achieve integration.[1194] A portion of the European public opinion, the federalists, wished to move directly towards a federal political union, similar to that of the United States of America.[1195] Another camp, the statists, preferred a model based on intergovernmental cooperation in which states would retain their independence and autonomy, and decisions would be made by way of negotiations between them.[1196]
A European “Congress” met on May 8, 1948 in The Hague (Netherlands). The European federalists, to insure reconciliation and reconstruction, called for the creation of an economic and political union (Moschonas 1996, 15). The problem was that the European Congress was not attended by representatives of Europe’s states, but rather a host of members of various federalist movements from all different corners of European society: political (the German delegation was headed by Konrad Adenauer, and were also present notorious figures as Churchill, Schuman or Spaak), social, economic, cultural, intellectual and artistic (Reinfeld 2009, 287-298).
None of the 800 participants, however, had the power to actually commit their states to any agreements. It was, essentially, a gathering of representatives from different political parties and other European democratic groups interested in the reemergence of the Old Continent on the international scene (Samaniego Boneu 2009, 52).[1197]Churchill underscored the euphoria of the “atmosphere” which imbued “this historic gathering” and the participants’ enthusiasm led to some gushing overstatements by those who defined the Congress as a new “Tennis Court Oath” or the “Saint Bartholomew’s Day for national sovereignty” (Larres 2002,144-145). In reality the Congress of The Hague was a loud yet fruitless forum in which two postures clashed: the federalists wanted to choose a “representative assembly” to establish a federal European state, while the statists, led by the British delegation, were only willing to endorse an assembly of fundamentally autonomous states, such as the framework of the United States of America under the Articles of Confederation (1777-1787) government.[1198]
The attendees sought to reach a compromise. The federalists got their Representative Assembly, while the statists got a Council of Ministers, the embryo of a European executive power. Together the institutions formed the Council of Europe, a body established on May 5, 1949, a year after the opening of the Congress of The Hague (Dedman 2010, 14-29).
An Assembly of 87 deputies was elected, in which large states had more representatives, with seating in alphabetical order. The Assembly, however, was invariably overpowered by the Council of Ministers, which exercised all power because of Britain’s emphatic opposition to the Council of Europe serving as anything more than a meeting of representatives from states seeking intergovernmental cooperation.[1199]
By early 1950, the federal formula had failed to achieve the objective of European integration. The Council of Europe, however, did not disappear, and ended up establishing itself as a Human Rights Tribunal after the signing of the European Convention for the Protection of Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Rome on November 4, 1950. This agreement would come into force in 1953, since which time states may be legally reported to the Tribunal of the Council of Europe based in Strasbourg for human rights violations. Its rulings constituted since the beginning a moral reference point in the defense of fundamental freedoms and the consolidation of democracy, and are binding since December 1, 2009. In any case, they have progressively informed the acquis communautaire and laws of the member states.[1200]
Another result of The Hague Congress was the foundation of the College of Europe, in Bruges (Belgium), an institution dedicated to educating “European elites” which continues to fulfill this mission today.[1201]
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