How do you reappear Germany without making France worry, and so that the purposes of rearmament are aligned with the interests of the United States and Great Britain? And who pays the bill? The great debate grafted by the roboant proclamations of Ursula von der leyen After all, it revolves around questions that shake European integration from its dawn after the second post -war period, including the slight thrill that crosses public opinions when dealing with these issues. Historically, in fact, to speak of “German rearmament” authorizes some retropensiero especially in France, where 1870, 1914 and 1939-40 did not leave excellent memories. For this reason, since 1950, when the Korea war requires an international intervention of 19 American -led countries, the West has posed the problem of how to face the possibility of institutionally and militarily, not impossible, of a troops of east German troops in a completely unguarded west Germany for obvious reasons. And this is where the problems begin: «At a conference of the three western foreign ministers from 12 to 14 September in New York (…) Schuman He pronounced himself against the German rearmament: in France the resistances were even greater than those in the Federal Republic, “he writes Pier Luigi Ballini his The European Defense Community (CED)published by Rubbettino. «Germany does not have an army and cannot have one; He has no armaments and will not have it “, he marks in that year the same” founding father “of Europe, then foreign minister.
«But the same Adenauer He feared a German army on the field », he explains to Truth Professor Piero Gragliaan ordinary of the history of international relations at the Milan Statale, where he presides over the didactic college of the course in International Sciences and European institutions. “In 1950”, he continued, “there was an urgent need to make Germany” defendable “, since the only operating forces were 15,000 US soldiers”.
Starting from this situation, objectively comparable to the current one, in September 1950 the US proposed to the newborn Atlantic Council, to arm the Germans with 150,000 men against the Soviet risk. And immediately the French no arrives: “They did not fear the army itself, but the rebirth of the German staff”, he explains Gracethat is, an armed force in the heart of Europe that would respond only to the German government. The first stall is moved by the French alternative proposal, the so-called “Piano Pleven” (from the name of the Parisian Prime Minister René, 1901-1993): the central idea is to “dilute” the German presence in a European army commanded by French or Italians. This time it is the Americans who oppose peremptory terms, knowing well that the request is indigestible for the western Germans.
It can therefore be said that the European Coal and Steel Community so much (not surprisingly, even “war” materials) and the aborted European defense community are born exactly in order to harness the rebirth of Germany’s army, which had expressed the persistent temptation to prevaricate the borders. That in these days we speak with emphasis on the possibility of German rearmament led by the EU is simultaneously an ancient and Nemese problem, given that just yesterday in Berlin the hypothesis of common purchases of weapons was said to be with emphasis: and it is easy to imagine who any orders managed by the Von der Leyen Commission and by the barbells dominated by Teutonic bureaucracies are.
Let’s go back to 1950-51: it will be up to the very celebrated Jean Monnet Start the path of mediation between French and American on the German role. To make it very short, Paris gives in the autonomous units and the USA are committed to consider French fears. In the meantime, the aforementioned CED is developed: modeled on the Czech, it is a only military organism controlled by a multinational staff integrated in NATO. “Will be Alcide De Gasperi», He explains again Grace«To understand among the former the need for a crucial element, the political one: for this reason proposes to Spaak And Adenauer to create a political “head” precisely, without which no army can ever work. Thus advances the idea of creating a community that absorbed Czech and CED, asking to include article 38 in the CED treatise, which provided for a parliamentary assembly in order to develop the statute of the political community. Without which an authority that guided the army could not exist. After all, the problem, today, is still all there: who commands ».
The story continues with the end of the project, complicated by the French defeat in Indochina, from the death of the same De Gasperi And, ultimately, from the refusal of Paris to ratify the ced despite Germany – as the countries of the Benelux – had taken a step away that is anything but obvious: “For us, let me say what I think, the European community is the end of France”, marks the old man Édouard Herriot In 1954, when the Assembly prevented continuing the CED’s work.
Curiously, the real knot at the basis of any attempt at military integration, namely the political one (who commands, what the geopolitical purpose of the army or weapons is, etc.) which in the 1950s was “the” theme, and which in essence determined its bankruptcy, today it is substantially obliterated under the threat of the Russians at the gates, or reduced to pure technical-financial function.
Speaking of politics: in 1954 a booklet was released by the National Committee of the partisans of peace entitled: Topics for Europe: against CED and German rearmament. As he explains Ballinithe “movement of the partisans of peace placed itself in a transversal way to different party components – from the communists it went to the socialists and a part of the Catholic world – and which had deployed against the CED and against German rearmament”. This, today, seems the only problem passed.
