1950-The Fateful Year

Abstract

In terms of the history of European security, so inescapably bound to national and international political developments, 1950 can well be termed ‘The Fateful Year’. It saw major economic developments over coal and steel which had repercussions well beyond the confines of those two strategic materials and it saw the outbreak of the Korean War which was to throw into high relief the smouldering unresolved question of German rearmament. Europeans had to face the realities so starkly posed — they could not run away — but the complexities and emotions which these dramatic events aroused were to prove too much for them to accommodate so quickly: they could only define lines of possible action and even on these they were not unanimous. The central issue was Germany, and in 1950 the search began for an acceptable solution. It was a search which was to end in the failure of the European Defence Community nearly four years later, yet one which — paradoxically through that very failure — eventually found a solution in Western European Union.