56
Also, politics after 1945 focused significantly on practical issues such as building up infrastructures, housing, traffic systems, etc. In Germany there was a strong debate on national shame and guilt, which significantly damaged not only the image of the Germans but also the national paradigm as such. For many, the national idea as such had been proved to be wrong. The German Chancellor Adenauer never spoke about the past, only about the future, and he attacked the lack of human and civil rights in the GDR. This, together with rapidly recovering industry, especially with the third federal election, made him a prominent figure in Germany. Also in France, nationalist sentiments cooled down, the talk about national greatness was proved to be absurd for many: the result of the wars in Europe and elsewhere was blood, destroyed cities, nonsense talking generals who survived because people died for them and before them. In the following chapter, the relations between West Germany and France after WW II will be discussed.
This discussion will then be linked to what happened in Indochina and Europe in the 1950s.
57
task would reduce the costs of occupation. Although there was no discussion and acceptance from the SU, the SU policies towards post-war Germany were not always clear. It is absolutely right to state that, for Europe, 1945 was a remarkable year in defining European and global political structure. More precisely, 1945 was the formal end of the war in Europe. From then on a process of polarization occurred, which in 1946 and 1947 continuously polarized the “West” and the
“East”. During this process, theories about the situation also emerged, e.g., Containment, Domino, Two-Camp Theory (Zwei-Lager Theorie) by Zhdanov.
Given this context, one of the most crucial points of these policies was to demarcate the border lines between European states. In 1946, the world powers were preparing to sign peace treaties with Finland, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Italy. At last, these treaties were signed in Paris in February 1947. The Potsdam Conference delegates agreed to regulate provisional solutions to the problem of Germany. The SU would directly control the Eastern part of Germany including the swamp areas such as Petsamo and East Karelia as well as the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Litvia and Latvia; the northern part of East Prussia;
the Eastern part of Poland, etc. Czechoslovakia, Italy and Yugoslavia and other pre-war border lines were also originally restored.
In the Western part of Europe, the Saar area was established as an autonomous zone in 1947 in economic union with France.93 As a result of different occupational policies between the U.S. and its allies in the Western part of Germany, and the SU in the Eastern part of Germany, the two states of Germany were founded.94 The FRG was founded in May 1949 and the GDR was then established too in October 1949. The main driving force behind the statehood
93 Saarland: present-day the smallest state of the Federal Republic returned to being a West German state since 1 January 1957 due to a plebiscite followed by an agreement between France and West Germany (The Saar Treaty) in October 1956. According to the Versailles Treaty, the Saargebiet was occupied by Britain and France.
94 It is known as “The Inner German border” (innerdeutsche Grenze or deutsch–deutsche Grenze;
initially also Zonengrenze). See also: Buchholz Hanns, The Inner-German Border, in: (ed.), Carl Grundy-Warr, Eurasia: World Boundaries Volume 3. World Boundaries (ed. Blake, Gerald H.), London: Routledge, 1994, p. 56.
58
of the FRG was the Americans. They were by far the most active force in German policies after 1945 compared with the Britons and the French. The city of Berlin was also divided into West and East Berlin. West Berlin then became a “free city”
of the Federal Republic.95
The policy of the allies in post-war period was also to create newly-ordered political structures for European countries. In most of the freshly liberated countries, new governments were formed with a combination of Communist Party, Socialist Party, Christian Democratic Party or Agrarian Party. In most of the Western European countries, including France and some other Eastern European countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, these governments were formed through free elections.96 New governments indeed successfully conducted crucial reforms such as land redistribution, industry nationalization or social welfare programs. However, these reforms were significantly distinct from country to country.
The Cold War emerged in 1946 with the appearance of an “iron curtain”
between the two blocs dividing Europe into separated areas.97 The two blocs acted differently in forming their own political structure and carrying out socio-economic programs. They aimed to achieve their own sphere of influence.
Military alliance within each bloc was seen as the most crucial task to guarantee security. Consequently, NATO was established in April 1949 with its first members, i.e., the U.S., Canada, France, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Italy and Portugal. Then came Turkey and Greece in 1952, and the FRG became a member in 1955. Also, in May 1955 the Warsaw Pact was signed as a counterpoise in the Eastern part of Europe with
95 The free city of Berlin lasted from 1945 until 1961 with its border becoming increasingly difficult to cross. In fact, West Berlin was never a fully integrated part of the FRG until 1990. Up until then, central rights were still held by the Three Power Control.
96 The first free election was held too in the Western part of Germany in August 1949.
97 The term of “iron curtain” is used to refer to the boundary that separated the Warsaw Pact countries from the NATO countries from about 1946 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
59
its first members: the SU, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and the GDR.
After WW II, the European economy was completely devastated. Besides this, Europe had recently experienced human suffering on a disastrous scale. In 1947, the U.S. launched a program called European Recovery Program (ERP), commonly known as the Marshall Plan. It was not difficult to see that the goals of this four-year program were to rebuild or restore Europe’s economy (but mostly for Western Europe as the SU and its allies refused to join or they were forced to refuse to join this program).98 In retrospect, the European economy had to be put under American control because the Americans were trying not to repeat the mistakes of 1919.99 With a well - planned solution on the German problem, it would help to lessen the country’s influence in the context of post-war Europe.
Together with the new-born Cold War, this program aimed to protect Europe from a potential Soviet expansion into Western Europe.100 Also, the emphasis of the Marshall Plan was to stabilize the European economy not only for economics itself but also for political and social-political reasons. The SU and its satellites also set up their own economic union called the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) in 1949. This union’s economic programs were driven by this organization until the year of 1991.
Evidently, the systematic formation of a new European order in the mid- 20th century would create new relations among nations in the continent as well as among Europe, Asia and Africa. During the 1950s and 1960s under the influence of WW II, the process of European decolonization spread out from Asia and then hit Africa. The turning point of the decolonization process was the breakdown of
98 Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War - Very Short Introductions, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 30.
99 The Versailles Treaty signed in 1919 caused many controversial issues such as the stipulation that Germany had to accept responsibility for causing the war and it was forced to disarm, make territorial concessions and pay very heavy reparations to the victors. This treaty was then blamed as one of the main factors leading to WW II.
100 Desmond Dinan (ed.), Origins and Evolution of the European Union, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 38.
60
British control over India, and the defeat of the French army in the first Indochina War in 1954 marked a further step in this process afterwards. Former colonized territories regained their independence from colonizers either by violence or peaceful means and joined the UN as equal members. From this point forward, Asia has been playing an important role in international political stage. Under these circumstances, the polarization between the West and the East as well as the decolonization problem created a new situation with which the Europeans had to deal with. It forced the European countries to unite and develop politically and economically. Some organizations were founded like the ECSC in 1952, the Western European Union (WEU) in 1954, and the EEC and EURATOM in 1957.
However, the economic recovery of European countries, especially West Germany with the economic miracle, seemed to end after labor productivity peaked up to a higher level than ever before in the early 1960s.
It is widely accepted that though West European countries built a strong economy, they did not integrate completely. For Germany, long division and occupational status prevented it from returning to its former position. Nationalism in France pursued by Charles de Gaulle during the years from 1958 to 1969 more or less weakened the EEC. The security plan of EDC demonstrated the uneasy consensus between France and Germany. Additionally, there was the fact that during the 1960s the influence of the U.S. and the SU on this continent was getting more evident and then it was increasingly strengthened through the arms race between the two superpowers. Europe was, in essence, no longer as powerful as it had been prior to 1939. In addition, another powerful force that could not be ignored was the PRC in Asia, established in 1949. Its creation was intended to bring a balance of power between the West and the East. Soon after the birth of Red China, the country constantly sought its own sphere of influence in which Indochina played a crucial role as its geographical and ideological ally.
Subsequently, there were three complex adaptation crises amalgamated between 1949 and 1957 before they finally defined both the new European and the new transatlantic architecture: “firstly, the Cold War and Soviet expansionism – followed by the wars in Korea and Indochina as well as the Suez Crises that
61
made France and Britain painfully realized the limits of their global role – facilitated the American guarantee for Europe’s security; secondly, functional European integration through the ECSC turned out to be the highly successful way of matching a host of conflicting integration ideas and national interests of rebuilding Western Europe as a society of affluence and freedom, based on a law-based Single Market; thirdly, NATO as the strategic and military insurance policy for rebuilding Western Europe, the Council of Europe as a loose community of European values and the EEC as the first step to political integration in Europe mutually reinforced a new and sustainable European peace order.”101