The Americans did not ascribe much significance to military alliances; but Europeans, as Walter Bedell Smith advised his colleagues on the State Department Policy Planning Staff, ‘do attach far more importance to the scrap of paper pledging support than we ever have.’ This was not perhaps altogether surprising—they had nothing else. The British, at least, were still an island. But the French, like everyone else, were as vulnerable as ever: to the Germans and now to the Russians as well. NATO thus had a double attraction for Paris especially: it would place the line of defense against Soviet
...more
