Chapter 165 - The European Union
The European Union
The new Prime Minister France, Jacques Soustelle, backed up by the putchists, openly mourned the death of Charles de Gaulle in the "tragic accident" that claimed his life. Although Soustelle argued that he would be "accelerating Gaullism", he immediately repudiated the Tehran Accords that had already been signed by the Soviet Union and Republic of China, most of Europe immediately cheered the new French government, unpopular at home it was. Most delighted were the West Germans.
Along with Italy, West Germany was the second largest economy in Europe not involved in the grotesquely destructive Three Years War, bringing with it a massive economic boom as West Germany exported machinery to power the war machines of the rest of Western Europe. Unlike the largest economy, Italy, West Germany was admitted as an EEC member in good standing, giving it easy export markets in the rest of Western Europe. Although the West German economy had been somewhat disappointing in the 1949-1956 period due to greatly strained Franco-German relations, the economy quickly recovered at a rapid pace under the National Front government. However, this was unable to erase the deep unpopularity of the West German government. The left loathed Achenbach, especially after his connections to ex-Nazis and involvement in the Holocaust was revealed shortly after he began his tenure (he refused to resign). The right wasn't enamored, especially after Achenbach had allowed the Saar Republic to leave without a fight (Achenbach had the sense to realize that a fight with France wasn't really winnable). Interestingly, his belief that the Saar was nowhere as economically important as the French believed was generally proven correct -as the West German economy continued to soar even without the Saarland. In the process, Achenbach more or less created a precedent of outsourcing almost all major military decisions to the Bundestag itself, which was allowed to establish military-to-military relations with other European armies without civilian oversight. Although with...some sympathies to the past regime (West German textbooks were infamously whitewashed in those five years), Achenbach otherwise governed as a very typical Europeanist right-wing liberal. Going in the 1962 elections, Achenbach was deeply unpopular - a fact that boomeranged on him when to the shock of Europe, the "Coalition" (the term quickly given in West Germany to the nearly permanent alliance between the National Front, CDU, and CSU) lost their majority, plummeting from 60% of the popular vote and 74% of seats - to 41% of the popular vote and 48% of the seats.
The Social Democrats notably had 50% of the popular vote and 46% of the seats, which caused the party to push its leader, Willi Birkelbach, to be nominated Chancellor. The SPD had notably grown much more radical in the last few years, as former Chancellor Wehner was even made persona non grata after he sided with SPD members who called for "reform capitalism" instead of nationalizations. Ironically, most Wehner acolytes were unceremoniously expelled from the SPD - forced to form the incredibly minor Democratic Worker's Party, which more or less stood for those principles. [1] With 9% of the popular vote and 6% of the seats, they hilariously held the balance of power...essentially having a strong reason to hate both sides. Another constitutional crisis brewed in West Germany as the Coalition demanded that the largest party (which they claimed was the Coalition, even though they were a coalition of several parties) was entitled the Chancellor's Office by virtue of German parliamentary precedent - while the SPD-DAP claimed they had over 50% seats. However, they hadn't actually worked out a coalition - since the DAP[2] only agreed to support the SPD for supply purposes. Notably, the King of Germany, Albrecht I, refused to take sides in the dispute. He was normally inclined to side with the right-wing coalition due to being personally right-of-center - but the last time he officially signaled support for a right-wing cause (he had signaled passive assent to the 1957 coup) directly led to the Bonn Massacre, which greatly distressed the King and caused him to swear off working with "crypto-Nazi American-funded militarists", as he disparagingly referred to them in a then-confidential diary. Another stand-off reminded Germans of the bloody days in 1957, especially after Supreme Commander of NATO Hans Speidel hinting that a military intervention could be found. The military notably drafted plans to also arrest the King of Germany, fearing that he would side with the SPD, though the plans would not have to be used. To break the logjam, Achenbach simply quit his position and turnedit over to his colleague Erich Mende, who although also a right-wing liberal nationalist - did not have any explicit Nazi ties and was thus far less tainted. Then, the government immediately declared they would be moving for new elections. The leftist parties protested, but under threat of another military invention, the DAP folded and agreed to new elections. In the new elections, the Coalition tied the SPD in the popular vote, roughly 44%-45%, carrying roughly 52% of the seats in the West German parliament. They would have another 5 years.
De Gaulle had resisted full economic integration of France and West Germany, largely viewing this as a West German ploy to "steal" the Saar away, something he viewed as a great prize, even as he was generally favorable to European integration. However, by 1963, it was clear that the Saar was not exactly the economic boom De Gaullle had believed. Many West German leftists moved to the Saarland in the wake of the 1957 coup...but the Saar was even less democratic! Although the legislature was elected, the executive was essentially appointed by the Council of Ministers of the Western European Union - the more or less not-super relevant successor of the Western Union (which became rather irrelevant after the creation of NATO). As a result, the Commissioner of the Saar Republic was consistently a right-wing hawk, even as the Saar constantly elected left-wing parliaments. Soustelle was both much more pragmatic than De Gaulle in some ways...and much more ambitious, realizing that he didn't have much time to make an impact. The West Germans, eager for even more European integration, signed onto Soustelle's proposal to unify the EEC with the Western European Union to create a "European Union", that would essentially be both a political entity (insofar that it would control the Saar) as well as an economic entity (it would be a customs union, continuing the EEC's rules). Soustelle, realizing that he wasn't popular at home and that the actual French parliament might unelect him if he actually asked them to vote on things, decided that the best way to make his mark in the world and restore government popularity was through bold foreign policy moves. In the European Union - he found one.
His proposal immediately gained the support of West Germany, Spain, Portugal, West Austria, Sweden-Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium (which drew increasingly close to France due to shared colonial chaos). Portugal, the Netherlands, and Belgium decided to weld their colonial projects onto the French - while West Austria, West Germany, Spain, and Sweden-Finland all joined in what they believed would be a united European anti-Communist project. For Spain and Portugal, the idea was a further way to "mainstream" their regimes, which had always sat a bit outside of the European norm, especially Spain. Luxembourg was neutral, but was forced to go along due to its small size. The only nation genuinely opposed was the Labour government of the United Kingdom under Prime Minister George Brown, which saw the new EU as a ploy to crowdfund non-British colonial empires, In contrast, Brown believed that it was necessary to slowly draw down the British Empire, a moderate move that drew ire from both the Tory ultra-right and Lib Dem left. . Brown actually went on a very drunken but surprisingly cogent tirade against the European Union that was commented upon very negatively by witnesses and spun by the Europhilic media as another example of the "deranged, drunkard Brown." Uninterested in meeting their demands, the rest of the EEC and Western Union moved on without the United Kingdom. Norway and Denmark were sympathetic, but did not immediately join. In contrast, the European Union was lambasted by the left-wing government in Italy, though many in Italy, especially centrists and right-wingers, were deeply angered that Europe seemed to be "moving on" without Italy.
The most important decision was to finally accelerate the EEC's goal of freedom of movement - by actually implementing it for the member nations. In particular, with an eye towards encouraging European control of their colonies, the remaining Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia and South America, the remaining French colonies across the world (including Equatorial Africa, Djibouti, French Guyana, and parts of the Caribbean and Pacific), the remnants of the Portuguese Empire (Angola, Macau, Mozambique, Guinea, and East Timor), and the remnants of the Spanish Empire (Spanish Guinea and Western Sahara) were all included as integral territories of their relevant nations.[3] Rwanda and Burundi were not included due to being protectorates and the Congo's ascension was delayed due to the current war - in exchange, the other powers vowed economic and military assistance to the Belgians in the Congo. Amusingly, the biggest beneficiaries of this were West Timor and East Timor (under Dutch and Portuguese control respectively) - the institution of freedom of movement and free trade between the two sides of Timor was an immediate boon to locals. The results in the rest of the colonies...were far less positive.
In general, at least to the voters of most European countries, the new European Union was widely popular, especially in a continent that had remembered World War I, World War II, and the Three Years War and viewed the EU as the symbol of future European unity and peace. Of course, the inter-European peace of the proposed EU was based inherently on violence in other continents, but that aside, in many ways, it rescued the political fortunes of both Soustelle's Neo-Gaullists and the West German "Koalition." Soustelle wasn't actually popular, but being labeled the father of the European Union at least made him hated much less, allowing him to actually run a semi-functional government before the expected 1964 elections. Anti-war activists in Belgian were thoroughly weakened as the population now rallied behind a war in the Congo that they believed they could win, especially as the chaos in the British Empire scared continental Europeans into the opposite direction. Once again, the biggest European beneficiary might have been Sweden, which swiftly began to recover due to a variety of preferential rules meant to help the devastated nation.
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[1] More or less analogous to the OTL Godesberg Program.
[2] Unfortunate acronym, but unintentional
[3] In previous updates I bleieve, the Spanish gave up Morocco, the Dutch most, but not all, of Indonesia, and the Portuguese Goa. The French let most of West Africa go, but retained Equatorial Africa.
