Bonn Declaration 4: Sweet Charity, by Sackerson

The 1945 plan https://www.fdrlibrary.org/address-textwas 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-Leasein 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_loancame 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_1of 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.pdfon 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.