What Did West Germany Hope to Achieve from European Integration in the 1950s?

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What did West Germany hope to achieve from European integration in the 1950s? The need for West Germany to integrate itself in Europe was apparent immediately after its creation in 1949. With its primary agricultural areas on the eastern side of the division it needed to strengthen its trading relationships to the west. With relations between east and west steadily worsening with the emergence of the Cold War, it was vital for the Federal Republic of Germany to cement ties with Western Europe. The following years saw Western European integration take ‘place against the background of important developments in Europe and the wider world: the cold war, the division of Germany and Europe and the formation of the political, military and economic blocs in Eastern and Western Europe. After the upheaval of the war and the austerity of the early post-war years, the Western European economies entered a period of sustained economic growth at the end of the 1940s.’ (Western Europe and Germany – Clemens Wurm). In 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany joined the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. The OEEC’s objectives were to ‘organise the effective use of US economic aid, to ease trade restrictions and to operate as a clearing bank in processing payments between member states’. When looking at the motives behind West Germany’s desire to integrate itself with Europe it is clear that political motivations were of primary importance. As a result of the past two world wars Germany desperately needed to establish its integrity and dependability on an international political stage. It is this that explains the German willingness to accept the principles of the Schuman Plan. They wished to ease the Franco-German tensions and the appeal of becoming an equal negotiating power within the European Coal and Steel Community was very strong. ‘Sector integration seemed
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