detailed proposals could be drafted without some idea of what the Allies were thinking, but already it was clear that de Gaulle’s preference was to eliminate any central German authority – breaking Germany up into some form of pre-1870 confederation – to incorporate the Rhineland and the Saar into France, and to find a way of neutralizing the industrial might of the Ruhr. When Massigli produced a note in October 1943 expressing scepticism about the idea of breaking Germany up, de Gaulle annotated it with the comment ‘All that weakens Germany reinforces us’; when in another note in August 1944
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