18 - Grand Illusions: The United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the European Defense Community, 1950-1954

Summary

On May 27, 1952, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the foreign ministers of the five other member states of the prospective European Defense Community (EDC) assembled in the ornate Salon d'Horloge in the Quai d'Orsay to sign the EDC treaty. Present too were Anthony Eden and Dean Acheson, the project's “godparents.” The speeches accompanying the signing were as grand as the setting. Acheson declared that the ceremony was “the beginning of the realization of an ancient dream - the unity of the free peoples of Western Europe.” Adenauer characterized the EDC as a mighty step toward the unification of all Europe, east and west: “The EDC will pull toward it other European lands and thereby serve as a tool not only for the reunification of Germany, but the establishment of European unity.” These expostulations reflected the passion for a “united Europe” that had blossomed in the wake of World War II, which for many, especially in Europe, signaled the bankruptcy of nationalism. As we know, the EDC hardly lived up to the hopeful visions of its sponsors: Indeed, it did not live at all, since France, which had conceived the scheme in the first place, thwarted its realization by rejecting the EDC treaty in August 1954. For those who had chosen to believe in it, the EDC was therefore a “grand illusion,” one of the grandest of the postwar era.