A second vital link between European integration and the Cold War becomes apparent once the motives behind West Germany’s participation in the integration process are examined. The Federal Republic favoured European unity primarily for political reasons. Economically, West Germany could have prospered under the status quo. The ECSC after all was partially intended to prevent Germany’s steel industry from becoming too dominant, while German participation in the EEC was opposed by Ludwig Erhard, the main architect of the German postwar economic miracle. Under the leadership of Adenauer, however, Bonn pressed ahead with both schemes largely as a result of the belief that integration would further the political rehabilitation of the country and stabilise its international position.
At the heart of Adenauer’s strategy lay the notion of Westbindung - of using institutional links such as the ECSC or EEC to tie the Federal Republic securely to the Western bloc. This would help ensure that neither the chancellor’s successors, nor his international allies, would be able to undo Bonn’s Western alignment and pursue the goal of a reunified but neutral Germany, floating between East and West. Instead, the Federal Republic would be firmly bound into a process ofintensive economic and political co-operation with its Western partners and would be able to accept reunification only when such a process could occur on its terms and without compromising the country’s Western ties. Integration would also, from Adenauer’s point of view, enable the Federal Republic to rebuild its economic and political strength without alarming his fellow Western European statesmen unduly. Rehabilitating Germany was very much the policy priority for the first postwar chancellor, but he was acutely aware of the need to do this without reawakening the fears of the French in particular. Renewed Franco-German hostility would, after all, be disastrous in a
Cold War context since it would weaken the solidarity of the whole Western bloc. Accepting French ideas for European integration, by contrast, would create a framework within which West Germany’s gradual re-emergence would benefit, rather than harm, its still anxious neighbours.
European unity could also offer an insurance policy should US support for Germany’s exposed Cold War position falter. This belief almost certainly lay behind Adenauer’s attempts during his last years in power to establish a strong link with the French leader, Charles de Gaulle - a process which would culminate in the signature of the Elysee Treaty between France and Germany in January 1963. Close ties to France strongly appealed to the German leader at a time when US Cold War policy seemed to have become much less dependable than it had been in the era of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Dulles. A European political structure, grounded on a strong Franco-German pairing, could act as a vital second guarantor of Germany’s security.
Participation in the integration process could be further used by German leaders to demonstrate their ongoing Western alignment even when a degree of engagement with the Eastern bloc became possible. Willy Brandt, German chancellor from 1969 to 1974, would thus repeatedly stress that his efforts to forge a radical new Ostpolitik - or Eastern policy - were conceivable solely because of the success of Bonn’s earlier Westpolitik. Only a Federal Republic safely anchored within the Western bloc could launch a far-reaching overhaul of its relations with the Eastern bloc. Brandt’s activism in a European Community context, moreover, should almost certainly be seen partly as an attempt to reassure his Western partners that his government’s new strategy towards the East did not imply any weakening of older allegiances. The multiple treaties which the German leader would sign normalising the Federal Republic’s relations with the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany were thus flanked by energetic - if largely unsuccessful - efforts to push forward Western Europe’s quest for monetary integration and greater foreign-policy co-ordination. This tactic foreshadowed Helmut Kohl’s attempt to use an energetic commitment to European unity to reassure those alarmed by the haste with which he seized the opportunity to reunify Germany. As Kohl put it, 'German unity can only be achieved if the unification of the old continent proceeds. Policy on Germany and on Europe are but two sides of one coin.’258 The Federal Republic’s ongoing commitment to European integration was thus an essential element in minimising the international alarm provoked by Germany’s Eastern policies and by its eventual reunification in 1990.
World History
