Hereditary enemies bury the hatchet

Adenauer and de Gaulle sign the Élysée Treaty

Both France and Germany could trace their history back to Charlemagne’s empire. Despite or perhaps because of this shared past, the two neighbours spent much of the early modern and modern period at war with each other. Louis XIV and Napoleon had both annexed the German territories on the left bank of the Rhine; Bismarck returned the favour by annexing Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. The First and Second World Wars seemed only to be a continuation of the friction between these “hereditary enemies”. Even the peaceful 1950s saw Frenchmen pelt the coaches of German holidaymakers with stones.

Exhausted by this history of conflict, the post-war governments resolved to do better and began with economic cooperation. If both nations owned the means of mining coal and making steel jointly, then they could never again go to war. This was the reasoning behind the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) and the European Economic Community (1957). This process of reconciliation culminated on 22 January 1963 when President Charles de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the Franco-German Friendship Treaty at the Élysée Palace in Paris. Charlemagne’s offspring had finally made up.