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The Unifying Force for Europe

By Paul Reynaud
January 1950
Article Summary and Author Biography

PAUL REYNAUD, formerly President of the Council of Ministers of France; formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs, of Finance, and of Justice; member of the National Assembly since 1946; Chairman of the Economic Committee of the Council of Europe

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EASTERN Europe is, in contrast with Western Europe, a disciplined unit with a plan and a will. Stalin is on top, the enslaved peoples on the bottom.

Russia has made the western borders of the satellite states a rampart. Unreliable populations have been transferred and replaced by others. The Bohemian mountains have been fortified; minefields and other defenses have been installed in the Czechoslovak countryside to a depth of six miles. The troops guarding the frontier separating Rumania and Hungary from Jugoslavia have been reinforced. The armies of the satellite nations have been unified under Russian leadership. Act I, suspect officers are purged. Act II, Russia seizes control of the military administrative services and transportation system. Act III, the army is strengthened and rearmament gets under way. In the last ten months a great effort to equip these armies with modern weapons has been made. The Czechs are using the Skoda works to the full. The Hungarian and Bulgarian armies recently received light armored vehicles, medium tanks and anti-tank weapons. It is rumored that the Russians intend to increase the military power of the satellites by 25 to 30 percent before the end of 1950 --a total of 900,000, though somewhat lacking in officer cadres, of course, because of the purges.

Finally, last November, Stalin raised the curtain on Act IV. He sent one of his Marshals to Warsaw--and what a Marshal! This was the Soviet general who had halted his troops before Warsaw near the end of the last war in order to give the Wehrmacht an opportunity to massacre the members of the Polish Resistance Movement who had started an insurrection in expectation of help from the approaching Red Army. Today, this Russian general is head of the Polish Army and Minister of National Defense of Poland, which is to say that he speaks as master at the seat of government and commands the armed forces. Anyone who knows the hatred of the Poles for the Russians can measure the scope of this stroke...

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