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help another, but it cannot identify itself with another. That is why, although remaining faithful to our alliance, I cannot accept France’s integration into NATO.3 As Washington turned a deaf ear to France’s proposals, de Gaulle initiated an independent French nuclear force de frappe and announced it was withdrawing its Mediterranean naval fleet from the NATO command. In 1960, France successfully tested its first atomic bomb in the Sahara. De Gaulle was articulating a new independent voice for the emerging postwar Continental Europe. One of the first steps de Gaulle took after assuming the presidency of France in 1958 was to invite German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to meet with him at de Gaulle’s private retreat in Colombey-lesdeux-Eglises in September 1958. It was the beginning not only of an historic political rapprochement between the two former wartime antagonists, but also of a close personal friendship between the two seasoned statesmen. The process culminated some five years later on January 22, 1963, when de Gaulle and Adenauer signed the ‘Treaty Between the French Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany,’ outlining a process of close heads-of-state cooperation, combined with various forms of economic and industrial policy coordination. The de Gaulle–Adenauer accords sent alarm bells ringing in both Washington and London. Continental Europe, under the leadership of de Gaulle, Adenauer and Italy’s Aldo Moro, was becoming far too independent in every respect for the comfort of some. Nor did it pass unnoticed in London that the very day after the historic signing of the Franco-German treaty, France’s government announced she would veto British application to enter the European Common Market, a veto exercised by de Gaulle out of the years of deep distrust for British motives regarding a strong independent Continental Europe. ANGLO-AMERICAN GRAND DESIGNS AGAINST EUROPE Early in 1962, the policy circles influencing the Washington administration of John Kennedy had formulated their alternative to the assertion of European independence represented by the growing collaboration between Germany under Adenauer and France under Charles de Gaulle. A group of policy advisers, including the ever influential John J. McCloy, who had been Truman’s high commissioner for Germany from 1949 to 1952, White House National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Under
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