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The Western European Union Armaments Pool 47
negotiations with the Soviet Union and lent weight to Moscow's threats about the
dire implications of the decision to rearm Germany. In October, during the debate
on the London agreements in the National Assembly, representatives from such
varied quarters as the Gaullist, Jacques Soustelle, the Radical, Maurice Bourgés-
Manoury, the Socialist Secretary Guy Mollet and the Progressiste, René de Chambrun,
called for broadening of the Agency's powers. The Mouvement Républicain
Populaire declared that it would vote in favour of the WEU only on condition that
arms production was unified. While paying lip service to European cooperation, all
the speakers emphasized the pool's value as a means of restraining German rearmament.
30
After the vote on 30 August the risk that the National Assembly might fail to
ratify the Agreements could not be discounted and Mendès France was fully aware
of it. 31 The domestic situation was a useful tool for his diplomatic action and the
Allies feared that he would exploit it to secure better conditions for France. 32 In
fact, after the London conference, the French government made no effort to revise
the armaments pool plan in order to render it more palatable to its partners. When
the Working Group met in Paris the French encountered firm resistance on the part
of both the British and the Benelux representatives. At the Paris Nine Power Conference
in late October Mendès France failed to overcome Allied opposition so the
Seven confirmed both parts of the London decisions concerning the WEU's powers
on the subject of armaments. The Fourth Protocol to the Agreements continued to
state that Western European Union would be setting up in Paris an Agency for
Armaments Control only endowed with control powers over existing arms stocks
over Continental Europe. The proposed Standardization and Production Pool was
further deferred for discussion at an ad hoc conference scheduled to take place in
Paris on 17 January 1955. Halfway lay the French Assembly's ratification of the
Paris Accords. 33
By way of contrast with the inertia displayed on the armaments pool issue, in
preparing for the Paris conference the Quai d'Orsay energetically pushed forward
on bilateral relations with Germany.
On 6, 7 and 12 October, Parodi presided over meetings where Colonel Bernard
Duperier, the Secretary of State for the Air and Charles Cristofini, Programmes
Director at the Ministry of Defence, expounded upon studies of the prospects for
Franco-German cooperation in aircraft and other arms manufacture. 34 In a comparative
study of aircraft industries in the four major Western countries sent to Mendès
France on 15 October, Duperier stigmatized the "ultra-nationalistic commercial
30. L'année politique, 1954, pp. 493-495.
31. On this point in particular G.-H. SOUTOU, "La France".
32. The Allies however recognized that Mendès France did not try to link the plan to the ratification,
e.g. National Archives, Washington (hereafter NARA), RG59, 3114, 740.5/1-2455, Conant
(Bonn), no.2105, 24 January 1955.
33. DDF, 1954, Annexes, Procès-verbal of the Paris Conference. Initially, the opening date for the ad
hoc conference was 1 December 1954, PRO: FO 1086/184, NPC/Paris-D/11, 21 October 1954.
34. AMAE, Wormser, 86, direction Affaires économiques et financières, Notes, 11 October 1954, and
13 October 1954.