Second Class Status: The Othering of Germany and Attempts at Alliance Building, 1950–55

In the wake of the Second World War, as Britain clung to its tenuous position as a world power and the United States began to dominate the politics of the Western world, Western European nations began making plans to defend against Soviet aggression. Among the worries of these nations was the potential rearmament of West Germany. Leaders and citizens alike felt as if Germans possessed a distinct quality of Otherness. Having invaded their neighbours twice in living memory, the thought of allowing them to rearm was distasteful to many in France and other Western European nations. The role Britain and the US played in mitigating Germany’s Otherness and countering France’s Othering of Germany was key to the development of NATO and the EU. This paper argues that the leadership of Churchill and Eisenhower in combating the Othering of Germany was crucial to European postwar development. By demonstrating that Western Europe had less to fear from Germany’s Otherness than they did from Soviet Russia’s Otherness, Eisenhower and Churchill played a large role in forcing a European defense plan. This paper will also demonstrate that Eisenhower’s faith in a united Europe forced Churchill to overcome his faith in a British-American partnership and accept Britain’s role in the defense of Europe. This paper will foster a lively debate not only about historical processes, but about current events; with the political whirlwind that was the Brexit vote and the debate about what Churchill would think, it is important to recount the positives and negatives of Churchill’s post-war tenure as former prime minister and prime minister. It is equally important to examine the impact the United States, and in particular General and future President Dwight Eisenhower had on British and European defence planning.