Professor Harold James, Professor of European History at Princeton University.

The EDC was born at a moment of great geopolitical instability – of an intensity that would not be matched again until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Stalin was at his most aggressive and unpredictable. In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb, and there was a real threat of nuclear war. Uncertainties multiplied. It was of course not possible to predict who would win an atomic war, if it were to be fought. General Omar Bradley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Security Council that if war did occur, “we might be in danger of losing it.”  And war might break out over a wide range of problems and causes: in Berlin, in Yugoslavia (whose relations with the USSR were unclear, and which was claiming Trieste and threatening Italy), in Greece or Turkey, or Iran, or Korea. In turned out that war came in Korea, and the war was extremely costly but non-atomic. As it was engaged in the Korean conflict, the United States feared that a Third World War might develop as a global multi-front war, like the Second, and that Europe could be vulnerable. So it urged the Europeans to do more to defend themselves. Germany, which after the catastrophe of the Nazi dictatorship had no army, was especially enthusiastic and pushed the need for a German military presence in the defence of Europe. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told the US High Commissioner in Germany: “I am convinced that Stalin has the same plan for Europe as for Korea. What is happening there is a dress rehearsal for what is in store for us here.” 

The French army was substantially engaged in Indo-China, and British soldiers were fighting a communist-backed insurgency in Malaysia. In Europe, there appeared to be a substantial military imbalance, with only 14 western divisions facing 180 Eastern bloc divisions. There was however substantial resistance, notably in France, to rearming Germany: Adenauer however pressed for greater western integration, and wanted to see a new but democratized German military as a key part of the western defense. 

The European Defence Community emerged in a plan drawn up by the French Defence Minister (and subsequent Prime Minister) René Pleven, with a notable contribution of Jean Monnet. It provided for a supranational authority, like that of the contemporaneous European Coal and Steel Community, to supervise European troops, including Germans. In Pleven’s initial concept, there would be an army of 100 000 men, with battalions combined from various European countries, including Germany, and the military effort would be sustained through a common budget. In this sense, the plan would have meant the end of the traditional idea of the sovereignty of the nation-state. Pleven spoke of “a European army linked to the political institutions of a Unified Europe.” He explained the proposal as the logical outcome of the recommendations adopted by the Council of Europe on August 11, 1950, calling for the immediate creation of a European army.  

The most important aspects of the plan as it developed included democratic or parliamentary control. If citizens are to be called to risk their lives for a community, they need to provide an active assent. A European Assembly, modeled on that developed simultaneously for the European Coal and Steel Community, would have control over the political and strategic decisions of the defense community, while the day-to-day military command would remain in the hands of a high commander appointed by the member states. Article 38 of the Treaty thus included a plan for a federal structure to oversee and democratically control the planned European army. 

The army envisaged was considerably larger than that originally envisaged by Pleven. There would be 43 national groups, equivalent to a division, of which 14 would be supplied by France and 12 each by Italy and Germany. National units would wear a new and common uniform, and be dependent on “supranational echelons,” with Army Corps formed with units of different nationalities. Military schools would promote knowledge of other languages, and an auxiliary language (English) would be used for communications. The only military units outside the common European establishment would by for the defence of France overseas (ie Indochina and North and West Africa).   

The treaty was signed on May 27, 1952 in Paris. The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, attended, and signed with Robert Schuman and US Secretary of State Dean Acheson a Three Power Declaration, declaring their “abiding interest” in the maintenance of the EDC: “the establishment and development of these institutions of the European Community correspond to their own basic interests.” 

There was however quite some skepticism, even in 1952, with prominent voices in Britain and the United States raising notes of dissent. US Secretary of Defense, George Marshall, called it a “miasmic cloud”, and Winston Churchill a “sludgy amalgam”. Much of the French army was hostile. In the French National Assembly the prewar prime minister Paul Daladier explained how the European army was a “project perilous for France and for peace,” which could not stop the Soviets, and that the US was “playing into the hands of Germany.”

Nevertheless the key elements of the plan, supranational existence, the possibility of adding new members (with an association of the United Kingdom), democratic control, and a link to NATO at the moment of an intense and threatening security challenge, remain inspirational.