Word: benelux
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Late last week the secret draft of the North Atlantic Pact was brought from London to Washington for scrutiny by the Department of State and leaders of Congress. This pact is a tentative military alliance drawn up in London by representatives of the United Kingdom, France, and the Benelux nations for mutual military action incase of an attack from the East. Its fate depends on the signature of the United States and Canada, for although the European nations plan to pool their military resources anyway, the sum total would amount to very little without definite backing from this side...
...London, the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Benelux trio are now meeting for the purpose of creating an international authority to govern distribution of the Ruhr's coal, iron, and steel production. But the authority will be useless with the Ruhr owned and operated by the German government-to-be. Future allocations will depend entirely on the policy of that government...
Understandably, the U.S. wanted to raise German steel production in order to decrease European demands for U.S. steel. This policy, however, had to be fitted into the broad U.S. responsibility for Western leadership. France and the Benelux countries would lose confidence in U.S. leadership, indispensable to Western Union, if decisions of vital importance to them were taken without consulting them and without considering their deep-rooted fears of a German resurgence...
...Another notable decision of the week: the reluctant French National Assembly voted, 297 to 289, to join (with reservations) the U.S., Britain and the Benelux countries in the Six-Power London program for Germany...
...weeks, representatives of the U.S., Britain, France and the Benelux countries have been meeting in London's drafty, sepulchral India House. Their problem sounded simple. Western Germany, with its coal and iron resources, is Europe's industrial heart, on whose soundness the Marshall Plan, and Europe's future, depend. Since the Russians have consistently sabotaged every four-power action that would give Western Germany (or any part of Germany) the political organization and the economic incentive to go to work for Europe's benefit, the Western powers had to see what they could do by themselves...