Chapter 3: Paris (France) [An Abridged History of Europe]

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF EUROPE 
by William M. Brinton 

Chapter Three:
Paris (France)

Napoleon with Murat and Berthier (France, 1806)
Napoleon with Murat and Berthier (France, 1806)

The President of France's Fifth Republic has more power that any other elected official in an advanced democracy. With a seven-year term he is both head of state, executive President of the Republic and boss of a major political party, which usually forms the single biggest group in the legislature. He also names the Prime Minister and approves the composition of the government. The President also commands the armed forces and sits on acres of patronage. Keeping these facts in mind has been the most frustrating political scene in all Europe. Yet John Fenby has written a recent book on the subject, France on the Brink: A Great Civilization Faces the New Century. Fenby clearly enjoys France where he has reported on its multitudinous maladies. The French, according to Fenby, would rather take to the streets than compromise a dearly held principle. Fenby, however, sees dark days ahead and suggests that corruption has gone way to far. Corruption is fuelled by the political mandarins trained in the system that produces them, all cronies of each other, L'écoles Nationals d'Administration otherwise known as ENA. Graduates of these elite institutions — as of 1998, there were 65,000 of them — were often friends for life while they ruled France as technocrats. There is, however, a growing disposition to question such authority even at the highest level of government, and some have been charged with corruption. And as more Europeans have heard of the Court of Human Rights located in Strassbourg, this court has had to liberalize its rules to handle a growing caseload. A French Minister of Justice recently was embarrassed by conduct of one of the agency's employees. They were convicted of torturing a foreign national in clear violation of the Human Rights Convention and the Convention Against Torture. Abdullah Ocalan's lawyers plan an appeal from his conviction in Turkey for treason and sentenced to death. Under the Convention, Turkey would not be allowed to execute Ocalan during pendency of his appeal. Human rights have taken enormous strides since the time of Napoleon.

The history of Paris begins long before the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonapart (1790 - 1815). See www.bnf.fr/enluminures/texte/atx2_01.htm Yet, it is the modern French period that deserves more attention than the medieval one. This period ended with the French Revolution which, in many respects, began in the same way that the American revolution did, but there were significant differences. In France, it took several wars, a terror, and five republics to establish contemporary France. France always seemed to stand still while Paris grew in splendor and beauty as time passed. Today Paris has two operas, many theaters, a symphony, a dozen museums and two landmark cathedrals, Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle.

The Louvre at Night, Paris, N. Barth 1995
The Louvre at Night (Paris)
© N. Barth 1995, The Paris Pages

The Louvre is perhaps the greatest museum in the world. In 1985, a renovation and addition to this museum was authorized. I.M. Pei, the architect, did a magnificent job. His pyramid of heavy crystal was made the principal entrance, and dozens of shops were built below groundlevel. In 1964, La Defense was designated as an office park, and the first tower was completed then. It now has 48 towers with sculpture by Calder, Miro, and Cesar. The National Center of Industry and Technology is considered the most important buildings of the entire cluster.The National Assembly was built for the Duchesse de Bourbon, a daughter of Louis XIV in 1722. It was confiscated during the French Revolution and became the home of the French parliament in 1830. The Internet now offers a tour through Paris and its museums, monuments, restaurants and other sites worth seeing: www.cnac-gp.fr/english/. The Museum Centre (Georges Pompidou) has one of the world's most important public collections of 20th century art, architecture, and design. This Web source shows a map of the six rail stations in Paris as well as a map of the Paris Metro. The Bois de Boulogne is one of the great parks of Paris, and this park also contains Long Champs, this internationally-known race track with the Jockey Club for its members. They used to appear at race time formally dressed in swallow tail coats and grey top hats. Today, it is a pale shadow of its former sartorial elegance with emphasis on gambling on the horses.

Johann Strauss Monument in the Street. CORBIS/Harald A. Jahn; Viennaslide Photoagency
Johann Strauss Monument in the Street
CORBIS/Harald A. Jahn; Viennaslide Photoagency

By the end of the 19th century, all Europe was mobilized to illustrate and embroider national themes. Music lovers had a wide choice of composers. From the rhythms of Chopin to Lizst a brilliant trail led through the pleasures of Richard Wagner and Johann Strauss. Generations of young people learned the waltz from his music. Norwegian Edvard Grieg, Finnish Sebelius, Hungarian Bela Bartok, British Edward Elgar, and the famous Russians, such as Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov rounded out this baker's dozen of composers. In the 20th century, music took a turn toward a new genre popularized by the Beetles in the early 1960s. When Nazi Germany dominated Europe, composers were told to perform only Nazi-approved music. Nazi Heinrich Himmler tried to write guidelines for music composition, but his effort was doomed to failure. In Communist-occupied Czechoslovakia, the saxophone was banned. Czech writer Joseph Skorchy wrote a book on this foolishness.

Once known for its production of fine films, Paris has fallen on hard times. In January 1999, Le Figaro reported that French films accounted for a mere 30 percent of the 170 million times people went to theaters to see them. Dinner of Idiots, Halls of Time and Taxi were great French-produced film successes during 1998, and most of the other releases were financial failures. The huge success of Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, and The Horse Whisperer all produced in the United States simply overwhelmed Paris. Parisians have raised their complaint about being overwhelmed by American culture to a new decibel level.


In sports, France won the World Cup of Soccer football in 1998. The stadium used for the final match had been specially designed for football, and a roaring crowd celebrated the French win. Favored Brazil was the loser. The euphoria of this win was the medicine French workers needed to forget about unemployment in 1998, close to 11.5 percent.

Paris has been the home of high fashion for most of the 20th century. Coco Chanel led the way before Armani, Versace and Dior came along. Then Coco died in 1971, and with a few intervening designers, Karl Lagerfeld took over in 1983. He brought the House of Chanel out of its decline and dedicated his designs to Madame Chanel and the Chanel "look." Even before World War I, Chanel established her fashion leadership early by opening boutiques in Paris and Deauville. Her chic clientele followed her to Deauville, finding it a pleasant refuge from the hardships of Paris. In 1921, she offered her now famous perfume, Chanel 05.


Saint Margaret (France, 1480-90)
Saint Margaret (France, 1480-90)
Mirror of Medieval World, p. 196

Architecture did not suffer from either World War I or II. In June 1940, Hitler asked one of his generals when Nazi forces marched into Paris "Is Paris burning?" Paris itself was never bombed during either war, although the rest of France suffered and emerged in 1945 with the need to replace some of the buildings. The internationally-influential architect Le Corbusier dominated design in France. But even some of those designed by Le Corbusier were demolished. After World War I, Le Corbusier changed his style to help rebuild France. Ironically, his best plan was reflected in the design of Chandigarh in India. He designed the entire city and sited all public buildings. Early on, city governments learned that planning had to be done to reconcile existing buildings with those planned. Paris itself was designed by the architect, Le Corbusier, who was born in Switzerland as Charles-Eduard Jeanneret and left Switzerland adopting his new name in France. Alain Sarfati does not hold out much hope for architectural innovations in France. Sarfati remembered meeting a monk in a monastery build by Le Corbusier. The monk said it was obvious the architect must have been a Protestant, because it provided no space where anything could be left about untidily. Perfect symmetry demanded that you should instantly pick it up and put it away. Art history at the University of Wisconsin produced marvelous images from www.wisc.edu/arth/ They and much related material should be seen. This Web site offers art from Italy, France, England, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States.

Malmaison (France, 1600s)
Malmaison (France, 1600s)
Napoleon, p. 7

Today French people would rather restore old houses than build new, exotic homes like that of Marcel Dassault. He built a replica of Trianon. However, the rich French prefer not to display their wealth. They like to hoodwink the French internal revenue agency. Or, to put it in another way, the rich are not keen to show off their wealth. This ingrained instinct stems from the old days in France, when the nobility hid or left the country during the days preceding the French Revolution in 1889. A realistic alternative then was death on the guillotine.

Liberty Leading the People (1830), Eugene Delacroix, Oil on canvas (260 x 325 cm), Musee du Louvre, Paris
Liberty Leading the People (1830)
Eugene Delacroix
Mark Harden's Artchive

When the revolution ended, the French had their equality, liberty, and fraternity. These words do not seem to have the definition given them by Robespierre and others. Liberty does mean that you can do and say what you like, but within reason. Authorities on French behavior offer an example. One of the most publicized of all French laws allows the government and property owners to put up notices on walls. Then, people discovered that the law had forgotten to mention drainpipes, so these have become free advertising space. Equality did not mean you were as good as anybody else, but even Socialist and Communist ministers earn six times as much as laborers. The amount of income tax one pays still depends on one's wits or honesty, since avoiding tax remains a national pastime. Fraternity means that schools somehow manage to have three dining rooms, so that those with higher degrees, ordinary degrees and no degrees at all might eat separately. To live within the narrow regulations used by the French bureaucracy has given birth to a new word to minimize bureaucratic harassment, the System D for Debrouiillard, which means the art of getting by, of finding obstacles often means doing better that one's neighbors. The Almanac de Gotha, has published a list of all the nobles of France, but the number of names on this list seems unrealistic. The French spend a great deal of time studying possible advantageous marriages, and some others simply invent titles no one has ever heard of. Still, the divisions of the French into classes had a fortuitous beginning, the Estates General under the guidance of Louis XIV. French revolutionists saw it as a device to insulate royalty from the day-to-day decisions essential to run a government. The first estate dealt with the church, the second estate dealt with the nobility, and the third estate dealth with workers, farmers and other members of the working class. The divisions seem to exist today in spite of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era ending in 1860, the Franco-German War of 1871 that saw France lose Alsace and Lorraine to the Germans, World Wars I and II and the French retreat from Indo-China in 1954.

Napoleon in his Study (1812), Jacques-Louis David, Oil on canvas, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Napoleon in his Study (1812)
Jacques-Louis David
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)

The causes of the French Revolution had its causes which people are still debating. On the political front, the American War of Independence (1763-83) had repercussions in France. For one thing it pushed France's financial crisis towards the brink. The American colonists with help from France were a huge drain on its treasury. People in France thought that if King George III of England could be described as a tyrant, one could easily classify King Louis XVI as a like tyrant. The crowned heads of all Europe shuddered at the implications for them. Americans wanted representation in Parliament, and most European nations had no parliaments. Historians saw the calling of the Estates General by King Louis, followed by the storming and capture of the Bastille as the straightforward consequences of popular grievances, of excesses perpetrated by the courts, the church and nobility, and of reform pursued too late. The King and his ministers did not have to be told that disaster loomed; but unlike other historians, they did not have 200 years to study its causes. The countryside was populated by serf in debt to their owners, and proletarian Paris had no way of regulating the waves of poverty-led fear and blind anger at the ruling class. On August 26, 1789 the National Assembly approved a Declaration of the Rights of Man prepared by A.F Pison du Galland, a member of the National Assembly. Historians note it was really put together by the Marquis de Lafayette, the general who helped George Washington defeat the British, and Thomas Jefferson. members.aol.com/agentmess/frenchrev/mancitizen.html. A month earlier, revolutionists liberated the Bastille, a prison for criminals and those who defied the king's ministers. In the 20th century and after World War II, the date, July 14, is celebrated as a national holiday throughout France. Carcassonne, one of the last walled cities of France, has been the venue.for at least one celebration .A group from Paris performed within this city by featuring Chansons de Roland on one night and Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well the following night with dramatic fireworks best viewed from outside Carcassone by taxi.

St. Michael Dedicating his Arms to the V. (France, 1637-40), Le Nain Brothers
St. Michael Dedicating his Arms to the V. (France 1637-40)
Le Nain Brothers
1648 War and Peace, p. 306

During the years after the fall of the Bastille, violence continued unabated throughout France. Wanton attacks against the persons and property of priests and nobles was commonmplace. There were terrible revenge killings in Marseilles after the fall of the Jacobins, extremists led by Roberspierre.The Second Reign of Terror was conceived by the Committee of Public Safety It was designed to create such a climate of fear and uncertainty that the very thought of opposition would be stifled. The Revolutionary Tribunal rarely issued anything but a death sentence and fed the guillotine with a constant stream of innocents. The climate of the Terror produced spies, informers, and unlimited suspicion. In the provinces, it was enforced by the military. It produced scenes of crowded tumbrels carting the condemned through hate-filled streets of men and women facing death, alternately serene or wretchedly broken, of the ghoulish tricoteuse (spectators who enjoyed knitting) knitting away beside the guillotine as severed heads dropped into nearby baskets.

Opposition to the revolutionary ideas was not well thought out in intellectual terms. The peasants were confused by competing claims to intellectual obligations. Furthermore, a number of provinces remained loyal to the monarchy, and there was considerable resistance. This royalist resistance had to be contained even in Paris.Popular fury had been rising in the western provinces In 1792, many parishes supported the priests who refused to pledge allegiance to the civil establishment. The rising of the Vendee adjoining Normandy was bloody and ruthless. It broke out in 1793 when the Vendeans embarked on their foolish gambit, having been erroneously told that the British would meet and rescue them from republican hooligans. The British never turned up, so the retreat began. Thousands died during the retreat Republicans harried them and killed thousands more. These defenseless civilians could be massacred with impunity. Historians note that in the scale of loss of life, the retreat was not dissimilar to Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.

A Republican army transferred from the Rhine completed this French auto da fe. The army wreaked dreadful revenge on the villages that had supported the Vendeans. Tens of thousands were shot, guillotined or burned in their barns or churches. In one province, Angers, thousands of prisoners were shot out of hand. At Nantes, thousands more were drowned. The systematic manner in which the French slaughtered the rebels foreshadowed the Nazi death camps like Treblinka, where some ten to twelve thousand persons daily were killed. Another French leader led the Chouan forces from Normandy, Brittany and Anjou carried on guerilla warfare against the Republican forces. This warfare lasted until 1801 when the Vatican signed a Concordat that settled the religious differences. Even so, roving bands of Chousans continued to carry on guerilla warfare until 1804, when its principal leader was captured and executed.

Grace before Meat, Jan Steen, Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire
Grace before Meat
Jan Steen
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)

During the 1790s, other monarchs troubled by republican France took measures to keep regicide within the boundaries of France. Austria, Prussia and Russia furnished the manpower for coalition armies organized to end the threat to thrones in these countries. The conflicts finally produced Napoleon Bonaparte. He had shown great skill in organizing armies as fighting units. The Italian campaign of 1796-97 was notable for the introduction of this remarkable military genius. Napoleon was First Consul of France and he then added the title of emperor of France at his coronation on May 18, 1804. In the gallery of the chateau at St. Cloud, Napoleon received from members of the Senate the official document proclaiming him Emperor of the French. The event was memorialized by a Rouget painting, now at Versailles. Eight years later, the armies of Napoleon invaded Russia and reeled in defeat celebrated by Beethoven's 1812 Overture. One by one, however, the armies of the Coalition began to stir. This period from 1808 to 1812 marked the beginning of the end of Napoleon's power. In the years between 1812 and 1814, France lost some one million men to the attrition of war. In April, 1814, Napoleon abdicated with British, Russian and Prussian soldiers camped in Paris. Napoleon was exiled to the Island of Elba. In 1815 he escaped, however and, after sending out his call to arms, he organized them but fought a losing battle at Waterloo at the hands of troops led by the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon surrendered once more and was sent to St. Helena where he died in 1821.

In passing, the text of Napoleon's abdication dated April 11, 1814 reads as follows:

"The Allied powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the only obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces for himself and his heirs the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even his life, which he is not willing to make for the interests of France. Done at the palace of Fontainebleau, 11th of April, 1814."

One year later, the Congress of Vienna met and announced agreement on all points and which Prince Mettermich promised would restore peace. Mettermich was not much of a prophet. Throughout Europe and the Ottoman Empire, there were about six wars between 1815 and 1914 and World War I. Napoleon left Europe with a legacy; it was to restore the monarchy that had made Prussia, Russia and other countries so unsettled Peace lasted until 1848 and the revolutionary outburst of that year. Napoleon III was ousted in favor of a popular ruler, even though it might become a republic. In 1871, Germany attacked France.

Bifolium, From a Manuscript of ... (France, 1290)
Bifolium, From a Manuscript of ... (France, 1290)
Mirror of Medieval World, p. 122

The Franco-German War of 1871 ended with France being forced to cede Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. With peace breaking out all over, however temporary it might be, the Concert of Vienna allowed the Industrial Revolution to move forward with the steam engine, the cotton gin, the rail system and eventually electricity to power all these new machines.At the outset, coal fueled some 90 percent of all energy. Oil was not seen as having any real market value until it was discovered in the Caspian Sea basin in the early 1890s. Even then, it only served as a way of providing light by lanterns. Agricultural machinery made it possible to plant more acreage in grain and other crops. In time, the internal combustion engine was even more revolutionary than the steam-driven engines of an earlier era. In its march into the 20th century, The Industrial Revolution spilled over into World War I — see An Internet History of the Great War (1914-1918) at www.worldwar1.com This six-page site has many links great for reference material. At the Paris peace conference, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles in which the Allies demanded huge reparations which Germany could not pay. This fact later led to ruinous inflation and the Weimar Republic. From this point, it was only a few years that Adolph Hitler assumed power in 1933 displacing the senile Chancellor Hindenburg. However, the French anti-semitic environment was to last through World War II and even later, surfacing at times of national tension, particularly in Paris.

France suffered from the Dreyfus affair in 1895. Alfred Dreyfus was an obscure officer in the French army. He came from a Jewish family that had left its native Alsace for Paris, after Germany annexed Alsace in 1871. In 1894, letters found in the wastebasket of a German diplomat made it appear that a French officer was providing secret information to the German government. Dreyfus, partly because he was a Jew was tried by a French military court in a secret proceeding and convicted of treason, after his prosecutors denied him the right to examine the evidence against him. The army stripped Dreyfus of his rank in a humiliating ceremony and sent him to Devil's Island, a prison colony off the coast of South America. Dreyfus seemed destined to die in disgrace, until Emile Zola tried to rescue him.

Portrait of d'Emile Zola (1868), Edouard Manet, Oil on canvas (146 x 114 cm), Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Portrait of d'Emile Zola (1868)
Edouard Manet
Mark Harden's Artchive

Zola believed Dreyfus had been railroaded. A Colonel Picqquart, an unapologetic anti-Semite, looked into the affair and concluded that a Major Esterhazy had been the guilty party in the Dreyfus case. However, the army was more interested in preserving its image than in finding the real culprit. Esterhazy was acquitted and shipped to Tunisia. In the meantime Zola had intervened with his famous tract, J'accuse. Zola was sued for libeling the army and fled to England, remaining until amnesty was granted by the French republican government in Paris, a government that had steadily drifted to the right. Ultimately, the case had long term consequences for French society and politics. Indeed, Leon Blum, a brilliant and controversial Jew became Prime Minister of France in 1936 as the leader of a Front Populaire government. Blum had briefly worked on the Dreyfus case in 1898. It was his belief that the road to democracy was parliamentary, nor revolutionary as advocated by Lenin. However, the right-organized monarchy and anti-Semitism movements under the label of Action fançaise later fostered the Vichy French regime headed by a pathetic Marshall Petain. It collaborated with the Germans occupying France between 1940 and 1945 and actually sent French Jews to die in the concentration camps of Germany.

The Typographer (France, 1919), Ferdinand Leger
The Typographer (France, 1919)
Ferdinand Leger

Blum was untroubled by his own Jewishness, but he was a critic of the French Jewish community, castigating the rich Jews and the the Jews of the middle-class bourgeoisie as well as the Jewish civil servants. They were concerned lest the public treat them differently because Blum was denouncing those who criticized his conduct on behalf of Dreyfus. In 1938, Blum wrote that "There was nothing in the world more painful or shameful that the spectacle of French Jews striving to close France to Jewish refugees from other lands." It can be no surprise that Blum, together with General Maurice Gamelin and Edouard Daladier were tried in France and sent off to Auschwitz in 1940. There Blum was so forceful in debates that the Germans felt he might predjudice their views of the war.

Another French intellectual was Raymond Aron, a professor of philiosophy at the Sorbonne. In 1933, for example, Aron had given up the effort to convince his correspondents of the danger of a Nazi revolution, and focused instead on the task of arousing a degree of political realism in French policymaking. Aron, too, invoked the Dreyfus affair. As early as 1937 he spelled out his reasons. "It isn't every day that a Dreyfus affair allows you to invoke truth against error. If intellectuals want to offer their opinions on a daily basis, they will need a knowledge of economics, diplomacy, politics etc. Whether it concerns deflation and inflation, Russian alliance or entente cordiale, collective contracts or wage rates, the point at issue is less about justice than about effectiveness." He believed in accountability and realism. Aron had no patience with the Communists of France. He might have said that those who support its program have been seduced by empty promises of a utopian world, where Aron would have said, power was the true goal of communism. Its adherents need only analyse Stalin's genocidal terrorism as announced by Khruschev in 1956.

In 1939, France, Great Britain and the British Commonwealth declared war on Hitler's Germany when it invaded Poland. War became inevitable when Stalin and Hitler signed a secret treaty allowing Russia to occupy the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had sought to deflect Hitler from annexing more than Austria and the Czech Sudetenland. In July of 1939, Chamberlain flew to Munich. He returned to London waving a piece of paper in his hand. "Peace in our time," he claimed. Shortly after this appeasement, all of Europe was at war. The United States did not enter the war until after the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Still Life with Magnolia (France, 1941), Henri Matisse
Still Life with Magnolia (France, 1941)
Henri Matisse

From 1940 to 1944, Nazis occupied part of France known as Vichy. The Vichy collaborated with local French officials, notably French police. Marshall Petain was a pathetic president of the Vichy government. during this four-year period, some 75,000 Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz, where they died in gas chambers. With their Teutonic efficiency, Nazi bureaucrats supervised the French police who drew up lists of Jews who lived in France. Some 600,000 of these Jews might have been sent to concentration camps. The war ended before all of these Jews could be deported. In postwar France, many of these French collaborationists were tried and some were sentenced to prison for their role in murder. Maurice Papon was sentenced in 1995, but his case is on appeal. the National Front Party, headed by Jean-Marie LePen, has extended its rabid anti-semitism to voters who hate immigrants from Algeria and Morrocco. Even though this party routinely gets 10 or 11 percent of French voters, it has not yet managed to control the National Assembly, but the hatred of minority immigrants continues throughout France, while widespread official corruption and youth gang violence intensifies in major French cities. LePen addresses crowds with his trademark rhetoric that marks the extremist tilt of his party, the National Front, accused of racism and anti-semitism.

Near the end of the fighting in Europe, American and Soviet soldiers came across a grisly sight. These emaciated survivors had been abused beyond belief and starved by their captors, the guards of Auschwitz, These almost-dead survivors were the results of the Holocaust in which some 6 million Jews were slaughtered by Germans in various concentration camps in Germany and Poland. This slaughter was the result of an agreement reached in Swannsee, a suburb of Berlin in early 1940 and continued throughout the war until 1945 when Germany surrendered. A special place in hell should be reserved for those who deny the Holocaust ever happened.

Readers will find a five-page history of World War II at www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/WWII/ww2.html. This history has many links to other sites on the Web, for example, a description of dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then, a second one on Nagasaki. See www.nhk.or.jp/nuclear/e/text/main-4.htm. Before these cities were bombed, Tokyo had been almost leveled by American fire-bombing. President Truman approved the use of nuclear weapons to end the war against Japan.

Cardinal Richelieu (France, 1640), Philippe de Champaigne
Cardinal Richelieu (France, 1640)
Philippe de Champaigne
1648 War and Peace, p. 78

President Franklin Roosevelt had died on April 12, 1945 and Harry Truman succeeded him. Truman was at the Potsdam Conference in Germany with Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and the Soviet Union's Josef Stalin. Truman hinted that the United States had successfully dropped an atomic bomb to end the war with Japan. Thus, Stalin need not send Soviet troops into China to collect land promised to Russia at Yalta. Stalin's reply was said to have been noncommittal. However, six years later, the Soviet Union publicly tested its first nuclear bomb, probably using written material obtained by spies in the United States and some within Great Britain. The race to be first had begun even before the Cold War had opened. Britain, France and the United States established a defensive treaty in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

By this time, it seemed clear that the Soviet Union was intent on making Berlin uninhabitable. Berlin was occupied by Allied soldiers, but the city itself was surrounded by the part of Germany given to the Soviet Union to administer. The Soviets forces cut off all supplies to Berlin. The American troops stationed in the American zone of Berlin were put on alert while American and British aircraft lifted coal, food and medicine from bases to the west of Berlin using planes landing only minutes apart all day long. After almost a year of this Berlin airlift, the Soviets finally gave in and supplies could move by surface transportation.

Four Censing Angels (France, 1170-80)
Four Censing Angels (France, 1170-80)
Mirror of Medieval World, p. 69

The division of Germany really occurred on August 13, 1961 when the Berlin Wall was built, eventually erecting a wall of some 300 miles to keep East Germans from escaping Communist rule. On November 19, 1989 the Wall fell to freedom. It was not until 1991 that the Soviet Union collapsed. Later, children at the Berlin Wall sold chunks of it to tourists. In 1990, East Germans held an election on the question whether the Federal Republic of Germany and East Germany should be reunited. The results were overwhelming, and the ceremony of reunion was held on October 3, 1990. Chancellor Helmut Kohl was running for election that year, and he made it part of his program that the Ostmark would be converted with the Deutchmark on an equal basis. That one decision cost Germany a huge sum. Unemployment in Germany reached something like 10.5 percent by 1998. Turkish Gastarbeiters, or workers, arrived in Germany over the years, and, by 1998, some three million of them considered Germany a home. On January 4, 1999 a new currency replaced the Deutchmark in accordance with a treaty provision. By the same Treaty of Masstricht, the euro's rate was fixed at DM1.95. Eleven countries of the European Union followed the treaty terms, Of the major countries of the European Union, only Great Britain did not change to the euro from the pound sterling on January 4, 1999. It has the option of doing so later. Denmark and Sweden had not qualified for membership in the euro fraternity.

Prudence Leading Peace and Abundance (France, 1655-60), Simon Vouet
Prudence Leading Peace and Abundance (France, 1655-60)
Simon Vouet

Before leaving Paris in favor of Berlin, a piece of history should be seen. It's the Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889. It was the tallest structure on Earth. until the Chrysler Building topped it in 1934. The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889, just in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. Gustave Eiffel was one of Europe's foremost industrial designer. In fact, Eiffel provided most of the money to build it in exchange for a license on operations. He spent most of his life trying to find practical applications for his tower. Finally, but too late for Eiffel, the French discovered radio. In 1904, the tower was broadcasting radio signals. Today, the Eiffel Tower has been draped with modern communications technology.

The Worldwide Web has created a site at law.house.gov/198.htm that has additional information in prodigious amounts, the U.S. House of Representatives. It is the Internet Law Library with lists of Euopean law sources.



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All contents © 1999 William M. Brinton