the US government to urge west European states to assume a larger part in their own defence. One solution was to allow West Germany to re-establish a military force, but so soon after the war this was obviously political dynamite in France. Instead the French government came up with the idea (originally hatched by the fertile brain of Jean Monnet) of absorbing German rearmament into a ‘European’ army – the EDC. The treaty approving the EDC was signed in May 1952,
