Monnet's Conception

The Conservatives succeeded Labour and Churchill replaced Atlee in 1951,there were hopes this party might be more "Europe-minded". But they were no more enthusiastic towards integration. The Churchill government would give its support to Europe but there was no question of Britain taking an active part. Chairman of the Council of Europe,Spaak accessed the Assembly would have to "do without Britain's support in order to make any headway". The third bid for a supranational government was successful.
Monnet believed something "more practical and ambitious" was needed to achieve the desired goal, and an opportunity came in 1950. West Germany had emerged finally as a self-government of Chancellorship. Under its Basic Law passed on 8 May 1949, the new Federal Democratic Republic or FDR, was based on a federation of the eleven highly decentralised Land governments guaranteed by a constitutional court. All international treaties had to be ratified by the Lander through their legislative assembly,the Bundesrat. The largest and most powerful Land, Bavaria, had actually voted against the new constitution, for not reserving even greater power to the Lander.
Economically by this time, the new Germany, under the guidance of Ludwig Erhard, was already showing signs of a remarkable recovery. This raised the question of how the new nation should be assimilated into the western European community. At the Council of Europe in August 1949 Churchill had shocked many delegates by proposing that she should be given the warmest of welcomes. Two of the western occupying powers, the USA and Britain, wanted to see her continue on the road towards full economic recovery and nationhood as soon as possible. But this had provoked a deep rift with France, which wanted to continue exercising control over the German economy, for fear that she might once again become too strong a political and economic rival.
The argument centred on the bone of contention, the coal and steel industries of the Ruhr,heartland of Germany's economy and formerly the arsenal of her war machine. In 1948, France had demanded the setting up of an International Ruhr Authority, which would enable French officials to control Germany's coal and steel production and ensure that a substantial part of that production was diverted to aid French reconstruction. It was a curious echo of France's policy after the First World War. Naturally a new West Germany was bitterly opposed to such an authority. Equally so were the other two occupying powers, America and Britain.
For over two years this dispute had festered, without resolution. But in the spring of 1950 the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson finally lost patience. He issued France with what amounted to an ultimatum. On 11 May there would be a foreign ministers' meeting in London; and unless the French could offer a satisfactory compromise proposal, the USA would impose a solution on all parties.
This gave Monnet the opportunity for which he had been waiting. For years he had dreamed of building a "United States of Europe", beginning by integrating the coal and steel industries, and setting up a supranational authority to run them. This was the idea first put forward in the 1920s, by Coudenhove and Loucheur, and partly implemented by Mayrisch in 1926. It was the idea Monnet himself had outlined to Spaak in 1941 and in his Algiers memorandum in 1943. But what Monnet had in mind was that the coal and steel industries, not just of France and Germany but of other western European countries, should be placed under the direction of a supranational authority: just as over dinner in Paris in 1917 he and Salter had come up with a similar plan for the control of allied shipping.
When Monnet came to put his plan to paper at the end of April,allegedly after two weeks' strenuous walking in the Swiss Alps, he was obviously troubled by how much he dare reveal of its real underlying purpose. Before getting to its final stage, it went through nine separate drafts. In the first, the pooling of coal and steel was regarded as "the first step of a Franco-German Union and a European federation". By the fifth draft, this had been changed to "Europe must be organised on a federal basis. . But , by the final draft, almost all of this was missing. All he would allow himself was a reference to the pool being the "first step of a European federation",a vague term which could mean different things to different people.
Monnet had in mind the creation of a European entity with allthe attributes of a state, the anodyne phrasing was deliberately chosen with a view to making it difficult to dilute by converting it into just another intergovernmental body. It was also couched in this fashion so it would not scare off national governments by emphasising that its purpose was to override their sovereignty.

Communism in Czechoslovakia

Primarily US interest in the European arena was triggered by fear of Communist take-overs in Italy and France, where Communists were briefly the largest single party in the Assembly. A severe winter of 1946-1947 had caused economic dislocation that undermined a post-war optimism about the potential for recovery of western Europe's economies. Serious concern arose in Washington about the ambitions of Communism in Europe.
However, the first country to enter economic crisis was Britain: over-stretched by huge military commitments.
The US abrupted the "lend lease" war loan agreement in 1945 after the Japanese war came to an end. The US had loaned Britain $48.5 billion. Britain's adverse trade balance soared. On 27 February 1947 Britain informed Washington she could no longer afford sending financial aid to the governments of Greece and Turkey(in addition to her substantial military commitment to Palestine,where the British mandate was coming under severe pressure from the campaign by Jewish nationalists and terrorist groups to set up a state of Israel).
Crisis meetings were staged between members of Congress and State Department officials. The possibility of a Communist take-over in both Greece and Turkey might manifest the spread of Communism to Iran and India.
Truman announced a support package for military and economic assistance in Greece and Turkey. "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
This marked the beginning of America's cold war foreign policy and the point of relations between Communist "East" and non-Communist "West". Local Communist parties were making significant gains in Eastern Europe;Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. It was clear Stalin was intending every country of central Europe into a Soviet Empire. The Marshall Plan (US Secretary of State) was an altruistic gesture by the US to help the impoverished Western allies but was also a gateway for the US to import strong commercial interests in a market of several hundred million persons.
US Congress at first were hostile to the plan but as Czechoslovakia was turned over to Communist control in 1948 resistance to the plan diminished.
The French found the Communist threat highly advantageous. Mendes-France commented: "The Communists are rendering us a great service. Because we have a "Communist danger", the Americans are making a tremendous effort to help us. We must keep up this indispensable Communist scare."