German rearmament after the World War II

Stability was the key concept that defined the relations in the Cold War era. As long as stability was maintained, no parties would seem as a real threat to each other. However, there was the German factor. The basic question had to do with how much power Germany was to have--whether Germany would reemerge as a truly independent power or whether Germany would be dependent on her allies and thus forced to live with the status quo.  If the West developed a political system which kept Germany from becoming too strong and independent, this was something the Soviets could accept. How Europe and the US could control the military power was of great controversion. The eruption of Korean War was a breakthrough in all European minds and US doctrine since it revealed the vulnerability of Europe to Communist aggression and made US to put pressure on Europe to agree German rearmament. There had to be a strong counterweight to Soviet power in Europe, that counterweight had to rest largely on American power. The American presence in Europe was obviously essential and an American combat force would have to be the heart of an effective NATO defense system. But there needed to be some counterweight to American power within the Atlantic alliance. That counterweight had to be built on a real understanding between France and Germany. Faced with US demands for German rearmament following the outbreak of the Korean War, French Prime minister Pleven announced in October 1950 a plan for German remilitarization under the aegis of a European Defence Community. The German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer quickly agreed to join the EDC because he saw membership as likely to increase his country's sovereignty. The treaties establishing the EDC were signed in May 1952 in Bonn by the Western Allies and the FRG. Although the Bundestag ratified the treaties, the EDC was ultimately blocked by France's parliament, the National Assembly, because it opposed putting French troops under foreign command. The French veto meant that a new formula was needed to allay French fears of a strong Germany. In fact, German rearmament, for the French in particular, solved at one blow the two great problems they had to contend with in the postwar period:  the Russian problem and the German problem.  The NATO alliance, a system built on American power, would keep the Soviet threat at bay, and at the same time any possible German threat to the peace would be contained in a structure dominated by American power. It was paradoxical that the EDC failed in France, where the original initiative had been taken in 1950 and the treaty had been signed in 1952. The reason lied in national sovereignty. France did not want foreign hands in her national military force.

The demise of the hopes concerning an allied Europe in security issues meant that the US and NATO assumed full leadership in matters of military security. Furthermore, the failure of the EDC revealed that supranationality was still not feasible to the European nation-state. NATO became a necessary condition for stable and peaceful relations among the European nations. Yet it could not be a sufficient one because the demise of supra-nationality left the doors open again for rivalry and conflict among the European nation-states; doors which could not be closed easily by the American hegemon. Instead, unwillingly or not, the United States contributed to the conflicts which came to afflict the alliance and the relations between France and Great Britain in particular. First of all, US continued to cultivate specific realtionships with Great Britain in nuclear matters. Second, America's behaviour towards its NATO partner France was humiliating. General Norstad refused to inform President de Gaulle, for instance, about the deployment of nuclear weapons in France. This difficult relationship culminated in France's withdrawal from the North Atlantic Alliance and the request for all troops to leave French soil, in 1966. In other words: In the back of the NATO alliance an Anglo-Saxon special relationship and a German-French axis were nurtured. Franco-German unity was to become the core of further European integration and of the domestication of the 'German problem', which, in the perception especially of France, had become more acute.

It is interesting to see that dynamics of external and internal relations made Europe to accept the rearmament of Germany, which caused great fear and destruction all over the continent. It seemed to the European countries, especially to France, that without a German contribution a European force against the Soviet threat was not viable. The US pressure on this issue accelerated the rearmament of Germany, so it can be claimed that European integration is the fruit of US efforts, however, superseded the anticipations of the superpower and became a Union, which poses a great challenge to US hegemony. The German-French conciliation is a step further to integration, which was before the great obstacle in front of a European compromise on particular issues. Nevertheless, integration does not mean to all the countries to lose their full sovereignty, especially on issues of security and military. European countries still want their own hands on sensitive issues and are reluctant to sacrifice the nation-state for the sake of supranationalism. The failure of EDC and EPC in the past showed the weakness of supranational essence of integration and how the nation-state is still powerful in the continent.