Kniffka Philatelie

After World War II, the Saarland came under French administration again, as the Saar Protectorate. Before detachment from Germany the French enlarged the territory by adding 109 municipalities from the Rhineland Palatinate to it. In the speech Restatement of Policy on Germany, held in Stuttgart on September 6, 1946, the American Secretary of State James F. Byrnes stated the U.S. motive in detaching the Saar from Germany as "The United States does not feel that it can deny to France, which has been invaded three times by Germany in 70 years, its claim to the Saar territory". From 1945–51, a policy of industrial disarmament was pursued in Germany by the Allied powers (see industrial plans for Germany). As part of this policy limits were placed on allowed production levels, and industries in the Saar were dismantled as they had been in the Ruhr, although mostly in the period before the detachment. Under the Monnet Plan France attempted to gain economic control of the German industrial areas in its assigned zones of control, especially areas with large coal and mineral deposits, such as the Ruhr area and the Saar area. Similar attempts to gain control of or permanently internationalize the Ruhr area (see International Authority for the Ruhr) were abandoned in 1951 when France rejected the traditional aims of European hegemony predicated upon European enemity. In the face of American and Soviet domination of Europe the French government took a historic step in deciding that the only viable political model for the future lay in European integration. This resulted in the Schuman Declaration in 1950, a plan drafted for the most part by Jean Monnet. The plan put forward France and Germany as the core of a new Europe, and this required a rapprochement and the establishment of close ties between the two states. As a first step France and Germany were to agree to pool their coal and steel resources (see European Coal and Steel Community). German participation in the plan was contingent upon a return of full political control of German industry to the West German government. However, France delayed the return the Saar in the hope of cementing its economic control over the region.