The 1945 plan https://www.fdrlibrary.org/address-text was radical: full employment, housing, health, education and welfare - and FDR might have achieved it.
America had a thriving economy, and the President had a
fresh electoral validation plus huge personal political capital built up over
twelve years of strong and popular leadership. Had he not died in April, he might
eventually have pushed the program through Congress despite the ‘Conservative
coalition’, who didn’t like it.
Nor did they like Britain’s new Labour government, which had
a similar agenda. The difference was that Britain needed money, and Washington
had the chance to put a spanner in our socialist works. The termination of Lend-Lease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
in September left us facing bankruptcy, but when Keynes went to America to ask
for a grant or gift to keep us going, the answer was no; and it could have
remained ‘no’ had it not been for growing awareness of the Soviet menace. Sir
Christopher Meyers explains:
After $5 billion in bailout loans from the USA and Canada to the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-American_loan came the 1948 ‘Marshall Plan’ for Western Europe https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/legislative-highlights/economic-cooperation-act-1948-marshall-plan-april-3-1948 . Again, this was not merely for charity’s sake but to foster ‘the maintenance of conditions abroad in which free institutions may survive.’ The financial assistance was even offered to the Soviets, who refused it https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviet-union-rejects-marshall-plan-assistance , largely because they had their own highly paternalistic take on ‘democracy’… not entirely unlike the EU’s.
Relations between Roosevelt and
Stalin had begun to sour in FDR’s last days. When the Wehrmacht transferred divisions
from the Western front to face the oncoming Red Army, Stalin accused the
President (3 April 1945) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stalins-War-History-Second-World-ebook/dp/B08FXYWSKK/ref=sr_1_1
of concluding a separate peace with the Germans, allowing Allied forces to
advance eastwards in return for the prospect of better peace terms. Roosevelt
exploded, writing of his ‘bitter resentment toward your informers’. Also, according
to FDR’s adviser Charles Bohlen https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/12/archives/foreign-affairs-if-roosevelt-had-lived.html
, Roosevelt ‘was profoundly disturbed by the evidences of the Russian violation
of the agreement on Poland and the agreement covering the Balkan countries.’ His
successor had met FDR only twice as Vice-President, and there was a fateful delay
in Truman’s getting up to speed on international developments after being sworn-in
on 12 April.
Influential in the formulation of American policy towards
Europe and the Soviet Union, and in the drafting of the Marshall Plan, was a US
State Department official named George Kennan. He felt his warnings about the
Soviets were being ignored by Truman’s advisers, and when asked by the State
Department to explain recent Soviet behaviour he replied (22 February 1946) with
a ‘Long Telegram’ https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.pdf
on the Russian character and outlook and what needed to be done. According to
Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (https://www.amazon.co.uk/American-Figures-Communicate-Through-Memoirs/dp/3643912951/ref=sr_1_1
, p.98):
‘Kennan believed that a
federation needed to be established in Western Europe to counter Soviet
influence in the region and to compete against the Soviet stronghold in Eastern
Europe… In 1949, he suggested a plan for the reunification of Germany, stating
the partition of Germany was unsustainable in the long run.’
Here we are, then, with what Churchill called for in 1946 https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/united-states-of-europe/
: a United States of Europe with a Franco-German core and cooperative ties to
the USA and Russia, plus a Great Britain with its (still re-forming) connections
to the Commonwealth.
Yet it is both more and less than Monnet’s dream. His
purpose was peace; the use of the Community as a passive-aggressive bulwark
against Communist Russia tended in the opposite direction. Even after the fall of
the Soviet Union, there have been (unscrupulous and dangerous, in this writer’s
opinion) ‘voices prophesying war’.
In a later piece, I hope to discuss other cross-currents in
the EU’s goals.
1 comment:
Interesting that the Basques went the route of mass murder, while the Catalans chose a different path.
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