| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Question of Balance: How France and the United States Created Cold War Europe. By Michael Creswell. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. xviii, 238 pp. $49.95, ISBN 978-0-674-02297-3.)

The transformation of the Franco-German relationship from enmity to alliance has been the subject of many books, and Michael Creswell's monograph on the 1950–1954 period covers familiar ground. Immediately after 1945, France sought to stop or delay German economic and military recovery. In 1948, French leaders grudgingly agreed to allow the emergent West German state some degree of political autonomy and economic recovery. By 1950, French policy took a more creative path: French leaders hit upon the supremely clever scheme of creating a coal and steel pool with Germany that would effectively tie France to German recovery—the Schuman Plan. But France still refused to accept a rearmed West Germany. To fend off pressing American demands to bolster the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by enrolling Germany, French leaders put forward a plan in 1950 to envelop German soldiers into European military units, thus using German manpower but restricting German military independence. Even that elaborate plan, which blatantly discriminated against Germany, failed to find sufficient support in the French National Assembly, and France managed to delay German rearmament for another five years. By 1955, however, France was willing to accept that a divided and weaker Germany—one that was also democratic, pro-Western, and bound to France via the Schuman Plan—could become a NATO partner.

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