Overview

France defeats EDC is an edited collection, edited by Daniel Lerner and Raymond Aron, devoted to the French rejection of the European Defense Community (EDC). The EDC was the proposed treaty for a supranational European army that would include West German forces; its failure in France is the central subject of the book. The volume is not a single-authored monograph by Aron, nor a general history of European integration. It is a collaborative case study of how and why France refused the treaty, and of what that refusal revealed about French politics, public opinion, economics, and France’s place in the international arena at the time.

The book is framed by Raymond Aron’s opening historical sketch of “the great debate” and Daniel Lerner’s closing reflections on France in the world arena. Between those framing essays, the contributors examine the EDC episode from distinct angles: political interests and passions, French economic constraints, the Franco-German confrontation, the evolution of French opinion, the French press, the political life and death of the treaty, and the postmortems that followed its defeat.

The volume’s chapters, as listed in the book’s contents, are:

Raymond Aron, “Historical sketch of the great debate” — an opening survey of the EDC controversy and the main phases of the debate.
André Philip, “The interplay of interests and passions” — an analysis of the political and emotional forces at work in the French debate.
Jacques Vernant, “European politics faces French economics” — an examination of how French economic conditions and policy shaped France’s response to the EDC.
Alfred Grosser, “Germany and France: a confrontation” — a focus on the Franco-German dimension, especially the political problem of German rearmament.
Jean Stoetzel, “The evolution of French opinion” — a study of changes in French public opinion during the controversy.
Jean José Marchand, “A tableau of the French press” — an analysis of how the French press covered and commented on the EDC.
Jacques Fauvet, “Birth and death of a treaty” — a narrative account of the treaty’s political trajectory from negotiation to defeat.
Stanley Hoffmann, “The postmortems” — an examination of the explanations and recriminations that followed the treaty’s failure.
Daniel Lerner, “Reflections on France in the world arena” — a closing consideration of the implications of the defeat for France’s international role.

Taken together, the essays treat the defeat of the EDC as the product of multiple pressures rather than a single cause. The collection combines diplomatic history, political analysis, economic argument, opinion research, press analysis, and reflection on France’s international position. Its scope is the EDC episode and its immediate aftermath; it does not extend into later stages of European integration or later phases of the contributors’ lives.

Themes and significance

Across the essays, the volume treats the EDC defeat less as a single parliamentary accident than as a convergence of domestic political passions, economic constraints, Franco-German tensions, shifting opinion, and press framing. The arrangement moves from Aron’s historical sketch through sectoral analyses to Fauvet’s narrative of the treaty’s political life and death and Hoffmann’s account of the postmortems, so the collection is concerned both with causes and with how the failure was interpreted and contested afterward. Lerner’s closing essay extends the inquiry to what the episode implied for France’s capacity to act in the world arena.

The book’s significance lies in its collaborative, multi-angle treatment of a single foreign-policy defeat. It uses the EDC episode to examine the pressures on French policy toward supranational military integration and German rearmament, and it combines political analysis, economic argument, opinion research, and press analysis rather than reducing the outcome to one explanatory key. In doing so, it presents the French rejection as a case that illuminates French political life and France’s international position at the time, while keeping its scope bounded to the EDC controversy and its immediate aftermath.