Statute (10 April 1949), which reserved supreme
power to the US, France and Great Britain, acting
through their high commissioners. The Federal
Republic was not truly sovereign in September
1949, but was on probation.
Adenauer made concessions and obtained
some in return. He realised that he must win the
total trust of the Western Allies as a precondition
for regaining complete sovereignty. For all his
rhetoric about German unity, he did not seriously
believe it possible that the Soviet Union would
withdraw and grant genuine freedom of choice to
the German people living in the Soviet zone.
After twelve years of Nazi totalitarian rule, the
German people in the Federal Republic would
have to learn and experience the blessings of
democracy and civil liberty for some years and
resist any temptation to compromise with the
Soviet Union or to enter partnership with com-
munists as the price of unity. In the world of
the 1950s, Adenauer saw a choice that had
to be unequivocally made: between falling into
the grip of the communist-dominated East and
forming the closest possible association with the
Western states prepared to defend their freedom.
There was no neutral road. Moreover, Adenauer
reflected in his memoirs, ‘It was my conviction
that the only way for our country and people to
regain their freedom lay in close agreement and
co-operation with the high commissioners.’ But
the Germans were not necessarily prostrate, nor
completely dependent on Allied goodwill. With
Cold War tensions reaching a climax, the US was
not about to leave West Europe, as it had
intended to do in 1944 and 1945; Adenauer
understood that in such conditions it was in
America’s own vital interests to create a strong
Western Europe, and for this, as he wrote in his
memoirs, Germany was indispensable: ‘A country
in shackles is not a real, full partner. I therefore
thought that our fetters would gradually fall
away.’ He recognised that ‘the most important
prerequisite for partnership is trust’.
With tenacity and skill Adenauer exploited his
country’s position. He had to work simultane-
ously on many fronts: to assure the Americans of
his anti-communist commitment, to point out to
the three Western Allies that the dismantling of
German industry must stop and that growing
German prosperity was essential to their own
well-being; to stress that they, especially the
French, need never fear a revival of German
nationalism and aggression; and to demonstrate
that Germany would contribute to Western
European unity and defence and would work for
the common good. At the same time the German
people would have to be convinced of the bene-
fits, above all the material ones, that would be
conferred by these policies. Adenauer needed to
be flexible, adroit, sometimes tough, sometimes
ready to agree to disadvantageous bargains, able
to assess correctly the feelings of his neigh-
bours, while proceeding step by step to fulfil his
major objectives. Meanwhile from the opposition
benches he was assailed by Schumacher – sound-
ing a strident nationalist note and rejecting con-
ciliation with France – as the ‘chancellor of the
Allies’. But Adenauer could show results. In 1950
West Germany became a member of the Council
of Europe; the dismantling of German industry
was first slowed down, then halted. Then in May
1950 the chancellor responded with warmth to
the French proposals known as the Schuman Plan
to place the French and German production of
coal and steel under a joint high authority and to
invite other states to join. Jean Monnet had put
forward the idea as a practical means to bring
Western Europe into a federation of states and to
remove forever French and German fears of
aggression since neither country could build up
armaments against the other without national
control of its heavy industries. The problem
of the Ruhr as a source of French anxiety was
thereby imaginatively solved. Italy, Belgium, the
Netherlands and Luxembourg participated in the
Paris negotiations. These were completed in April
1951 and Adenauer paid his first visit to Paris to
sign the momentous European Coal and Steel
Community Treaty; it was the first step towards
the formation in 1958 of the European Economic
Community of the six. In Paris, Adenauer was the
first official representative of the new German
state to be received as a friend. He had moved
steadily forward despite hostile French moves in
1950 designed to ensure that the Saar would
become French. Patience was rewarded: the508 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s