On 3 January 1952, David Bruce, US Ambassador to Paris, sends a telegram to the US Department of State in Washington outlining the progress of European negotiations on the establishment of a common army.
‘The repairs aren’t as easy as all that.’ On 12 December 1951, the German cartoonist, Beuth, illustrates the difficulties which the Six, under the watchful eye of Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister, will have to overcome if they are to establish a European army. The German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer Konrad (on the left) and the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman (on the right) try with little hope to start the vehicle.
On 26 July 1951, the French daily newspaper Le Figaro announces that, after four months of discussions, European negotiators have at last found common ground on the issue of a European army.
On 24 August 1951, the French daily newspaper Le Figaro publishes an address given by General Marie-Émile Béthouart in which he argues in favour of the integration of French forces into a European army.
Circular from Baron Hervé de Gruben, Secretary-General in the Belgian Foreign Ministry, setting out the stance taken by Belgium on the French plan for a European army.
In this confidential note addressed to Paul van Zeeland, Belgian Foreign Minister, Robert Silvercruys, Belgian Ambassador in Washington, describes the impatience of US senior officials at the delay in implementing the French plan for a European army.
In the early 1950s, as debates are held on the creation of a European army, the French anti-communist movement ‘Peace and Liberty’ deplores the scale of military expenditure by the communist regimes in the Eastern bloc and speculates on the threat represented for Western Europe by the military apparatus of the Soviet bloc.
