EDC THE EUROPEAN ARMY
IN a prefab tacked on to the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, a dozen staff officers are huddled in talk. They are the advance guard of the European Defense Community (EDC)—the curious alphabetic device that is supposed to fuse the armies of France, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries into a single European Army. Among them is the first German general ever to participate in Western strategic planning: Hans Speidel, better known as Rommel's chief of staff.
The officers' common language is French, and one bitter phrase dominates their...