France, Germany and the German Occupation

As the Second World War drew to a close, French leaders realized that in this postwar era their historical status as a great power would not keep them among the world’s great nations. The only way to remain influential in world politics was to raise their production and economic level to that of other leading nations through industrialization and modernization. Unfortunately, the war had left the economy of France in ruins. The French, under the Vichy government, had been forced to pay for the German occupation in francs, which were then returned to their economy in exchange for goods and services. This created a situation of financial chaos that resulted in a lack of production and inflated currency. In order to rebuild France and to refuel French industry, the French demanded a steady supply of aid from the Americans. Among the list of priority goods required by France to keep their economy afloat during this transitional postwar period was imported coal. By 1946, France’s coal production was back to prewar levels; however, France had always relied heavily on imported coal and these imports were lagging, and could only be replenished by United States and German coal supplies. This need for imported coal was central to France’s postwar demands regarding the fate of the defeated German territory. President Charles de Gaulle believed that the only way for France to return to grandeur by regaining their power and influence in Europe, and restoring national pride after the humiliation of the German occupation was to play a prominent role in the postwar settlement of Germany.

France relied heavily on a favorable postwar settlement in Germany to aid in their domestic recovery. They wanted to ensure that German industrial resources would be used to initiate western European, and particularly their own, recovery efforts. To aggressively press their claims in Germany, France publicly demonstrated their own independence in ways that often put them at odds with their Anglo-American Allies. Amidst rising tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union about the fate of postwar Germany, the French government signed a security pact with Stalin raising suspicion that they had reached an agreement with the Russians on the dismemberment of Germany. They also tussled with General Eisenhower over the withdrawal of French troops from Strasbourg and the American occupation of Stuttgart, and took their exclusion from the Yalta Conference as a sign that the Americans were attempting to prevent their restoration to a powerful European nation. Further clashes with the United States and Britain over territory and influence in Italy and Syria also caused their relations with the Allies to suffer.

The “essential” prerequisite of France’s agreement on any document or treaty that would be produced at the Yalta Conference was the separation of Germany from the Ruhr and the left bank of the Rhine. If the Allies maintained control of the Ruhr basin they would eliminate German wartime industry, allowing them to redirect German industrial power to the reconstruction of western Europe. The French sought to place permanent limits on German industrial activity and to annex the coal producing Saarland region. Further the French envisioned themselves as playing a large role in the occupation and administration of the southwest portion of the conquered territory. While France was not invited to participate in the Yalta Conference, they were conceded a zone of occupation in Germany and membership with veto power in the Allied Control Council (ACC), giving the French hope that they would be given a large role to play in the administration of postwar Germany and ensuring that German military power would be destroyed.
This hope was short-lived as the proceeding talks in Potsdam excluded the French and glaringly ignored their primary objectives of gaining security through German economic disarmament and using German industrial capacity for France’s reconstruction. The participants at Potsdam had agreed to establish German-staffed administrative departments under the unified control of the ACC, as well as limiting monetary reparations made by Germany to the affected countries in order to leave the German people with enough resources for self-subsistence. The Potsdam participants rejected France’s demand for separation of the Ruhr and Rhineland from Germany. The divergence of France’s views on Germany from the rest of the Allies in the ACC lead them to threaten to block the progress of the ACC in other matters (particularly the creation of centralized administrative agencies in Germany to deal with transportation and labor unions) until the German question had been resolved. To appease the French, bilateral talks between the French and individual entities of the Big Three ensued.

Again the French demanded that the Rhino-Westfalian industry and resources must be denied to Germany and that it could not come under the control of any central German administrative agency, but they conceded that territorial annexation of this area may be unacceptable. They demanded that the Rhineland be placed under permanent military occupation and that the Saar be economically joined to France. They argued that these were the steps required to secure France and to prevent remilitarization of Germany, such as had not been done after the First World War. However, France was in no position politically or economically to push their political agenda without the backing of the Anglo-American constituent of the ACC and they refused to adopt the constructive language favored by the United States that would allow them to gain American support. This led to France’s failure to further their objectives, while prolonging the state of political and economic unrest in Europe.
de Gaulle’s agenda hindered France’s goal of becoming a political and economic power in the new Europe by alienating their war allies, and leading to their exclusion from many of the peace talks. This failure to forward their postwar objectives began to generate unrest on the home front as well. Much of the coal and monetary support required for France’s reconstruction were supplied by the United States, and many French worried that France’s obstinate actions toward Anglo-Americans was hindering their ability to achieve their own domestic goals. For instance, de Gaulle’s refusal to meet with Roosevelt in Algiers following the Yalta conference was highly unpopular. While the Gaullist agenda was appealing to the French from the viewpoint of restoring national pride, the dire economic situation in France eventually led to the reassessment of their postwar demands as well as their overall European policy.

Works Cited
DePorte, Anton W. De Gaulle’s Foreign Policy, 1944-1946. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968.
Hitchcock, William I. France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Young, John W. France, the Cold War, and the Western Alliance, 1944-1949. Leicester. U.K.: Leicester University Press, 1990.
Wall, Irwin M. The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945-1954. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.