Read France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 Online

Authors: William I. Hitchcock

Tags: #History, #Europe, #France, #Western, #Modern, #20th Century, #Political Science, #Security (National & International), #test

France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954

 
title
:
France Restored : Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 New Cold War History
author
:
Hitchcock, William I.
publisher
:
University of North Carolina Press
isbn10 | asin
:
0807824283
print isbn13
:
9780807824283
ebook isbn13
:
9780807866801
language
:
English
subject
 
France--Foreign relations--1945- , France--Foreign relations--Germany, Germany--Foreign relations--France, Reconstruction (1939-1951)--France, Political leadership--France, World politics--1945-1955, Peaceful change (International relations)
publication date
:
1998
lcc
:
DC404.H53 1998eb
ddc
:
327.44
subject
:
France--Foreign relations--1945- , France--Foreign relations--Germany, Germany--Foreign relations--France, Reconstruction (1939-1951)--France, Political leadership--France, World politics--1945-1955, Peaceful change (International relations)
Page i
France Restored
 
Page ii
THE NEW COLD WAR HISTORY
John Lewis Gaddis, editor
 
Page iii
France Restored
Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 19441954
William I. Hitchcock
Foreword by John Lewis Gaddis
 
Page iv
© 1998 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Janson type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hitchcock, William I.
France restored : Cold War diplomacy and the quest
for leadership in Europe, 19441954 / by William I.
Hitchcock.
p. cm.  (The new Cold War history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8078-2428-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8078-4747-x (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. FranceForeign relations1945-    2. FranceForeign
relationsGermany. 3. GermanyForeign
relationsFrance. 4. Reconstruction (19391951)
France. 5. Political leadershipFrance. 6. World
politics19451955. 7. Peaceful change
(International relations)
I. Title. II. Series.
DC404.H53    1998                              97-51123
327.44dc21                                    CIP
A portion of this work appeared earlier, in somewhat
different form, as "France, the Western Alliance,
and the Origins of the Schuman Plan, 19481950,"
Diplomatic History
21, no. 4 (Fall 1997): 60330, and
is reprinted here with permission of Blackwell
Publishers.
02  01  00  99  98     5  4  3  2  1
 
Page v
FOR DAVID AND LEE HITCHCOCK
 
Page vii
Contents
Foreword by John Lewis Gaddis
ix
Acknowledgments
xi
Abbreviations
xiii
Introduction
1
Chapter 1
The Founding of the Fourth Republic and the Conditions for French Recovery
12
Chapter 2
The Limits of Independence, 19441947
41
Chapter 3
No Longer a Great Power
72
Chapter 4
The Hard Road to Franco-German Rapprochement, 19481950
99
Chapter 5
Sound and Fury: The Debate Over German Rearmament
133
Chapter 6
The European Defense Community and French National Strategy
169
Conclusion
203
Notes
211
Bibliography
259
Index
281
 
Page viii
Tables & Map
Tables
1. France's Balance of Payments, 19441949
65
2. Franc Zone Deficits with Dollar Zone, 19451949
66
3. Average Annual Growth in Gross Domestic Product, 19491970
206
4. American Aid to France, 19451952
207
Map
Germany under Occupation
47
 
Page ix
Foreword
In the writing of history, much depends upon angles of vision. The Cold War as seen from Washington and London has long been a familiar story, and with the availability of new materials we are getting some sense of how it looked from Moscow and Beijing as well. The view from Paris, though, has always been indistinct. To the extent that historians have dealt with it at all, they have done so in such a way as to portray the French as passive and unsure of themselves, buffeted by geopolitical forces beyond their control. Feeble, irresolute, and shortsighted, the Fourth Republic, we have been led to believe, was not a great power but a power vacuum. Few inside or outside France regretted its demise when General Charles de Gaulle killed it off in 1958; even fewer historians have seen it as playing any significant role in the early history of the Cold War.
William Hitchcock's
France Restored
vigorously challenges this conventional wisdom. Writing from French sources and from a French perspective, he shows how the much-derided Fourth Republic, despite the humiliating weakness from which it initially operated, seized the initiative and reshaped the course of postWorld War II European history. Having reconciled themselves to the principle that West Germany would recover and reintegrate itself into Western Europe, the French skillfully manipulated that processparticularly through their proposals for a European Coal and Steel Community and a European Defense Communityin ways neither the Americans, nor the British, nor the Germans had anticipated. They thereby largely determined the pace and method of German reintegration, ensuring that it complemented their own interests.
Hitchcock's argument suggests several ways in which we need to reconsider the early history of the Cold War in Europe. He shows that military and economic power did not always determine what happened: the French compensated for the absence of such capabilities with careful planning and crafty diplomacy. American hegemony, Hitchcock emphasizes, allowed remarkable autonomy on the part of American allies, and it is probably fair to say that the United States responded to French initiatives during the years 194955 as frequently as Paris responded to those emanating from Washington. Hitchcock provides a new explanation for why European integration took off as rapidly as it did: the French saw it as a way of "containing" Germany without appearing to do
 
Page x
so; the Germans under Adenauer were sophisticated enough not to seem to notice. And by documenting the linkage between France's planning for internal economic recovery and its foreign policy, Hitchcock demonstrates how artificial the distinction between domestic and diplomatic history can sometimes be. Good international history involves crossing the "borders" that exist within states as well as among them.
France Restored,
therefore, not only documents French restoration; it is part of a trend within the postCold War historiography of the Cold War to restore the Europeans to the central role they played in the origins and escalation of that conflict. It shows that if there was an American "empire by invitation" in postWorld War II Europe, this was one in which the subjects
instructed
as well as invited the emperor. Hitchcock hence complicates Cold War historyand that is what The New Cold War History is all about.
JOHN LEWIS GADDIS

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