France and Germany: Divergent Outlooks

Franco-GERMAN relations are at once much better and much worse than is generally imagined in the United States. Better, because the frigid atmosphere and tensions of 1964-1965 obscure the solidity of the links forged between France and the Federal Republic. Worse, because these tensions are not solely attributable to General de Gaulle but are the expression of a profound divergence in perspective.

Who could have foreseen, at the moment of France's liberation, that 20 years later, to the question "What is your opinion in regard to West Germany?", the responses would be: "good opinion," 52 percent; "neither good nor bad," 29 percent; "bad opinion," 9 percent; no response, 9 percent- putting Germany ahead of all other countries in French sympathies? To explain this evolution thoroughly would require a book. Let us note simply that the amelioration began in 1945. At the end of the war, there were some Frenchmen who believed that the future could not be built on aversion and fear. Most of them were products of the Resistance. Often they had just returned from German prisons and concentration camps. They did not believe in collective guilt and wanted to help the German minority who were trying to build a new Germany. It was the organizers and the participants of the Franco-German meetings of the years 1945-1950 who constituted what might be called the human infrastructure of the present political relationship. Independent of daily politics, there exist today-in embassies, in ministries, on the staffs of newspapers, in the leadership of unions, political parties and professional organizations of both countries-men who have known each other for many years and have acquired the habit of working together.

When in 1963 the other European countries complained about the exclusive character of the Franco-German Treaty of Friendship, they were doubtless right, politically speaking. But were Belgium, Holland and even Great Britain prepared, as France was, for such intimacy? From actual joint cabinet meetings to the success of the Franco-German Office for Youth, created in July 1963 and contributing last year alone to the meeting of 180,000 youths of both countries at 6,500 gatherings, seminars and study trips, that intimacy has been based on a network of contacts and prior exchanges-a network denser between France and Germany than between either of the two countries and any other.