In March 1944 in a speech in Algiers, de Gaulle floated publicly a different plan for a ‘sort of Western grouping’. This would be a ‘strategic and economic federation’ including Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland, and also the Ruhr and Rhineland, with Britain associated if she wished to be. The Channel, the Rhine and the Mediterranean would be the ‘arteries’ of this grouping. Massigli was instructed to study the idea.29 This was different in two ways from de Gaulle’s suggestion to Monnet, because it seemed to envisage British participation, and because the adjective ‘western’ implied that the
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