Paul-Henri Spaak

Prime minister of Belgium (1938-1939, 1946, 1947-1949)

• Born: January 25, 1899
• Birthplace: Schaerbeek, Belgium
• Died: July 31, 1972
• Place of death: Brussels, Belgium

A socialist member of the Belgian Chamber of Deputies, Spaak was prime minister on three occasions and foreign minister in many cabinets. He successfully opposed the return of King Leopold III to the Belgian throne following World War II. The implementer of Belgium’s policy of voluntary neutrality before the war, Spaak subsequently advocated European integration and international cooperation. He shaped treaties and served in multiple international posts in service to this goal.

Early Life

The legal and political career of Paul-Henri Spaak (pahl-ahn-ree spahk) reflected family tradition. His father, Paul Spaak, was a lawyer who turned to literature and drama and became director of the Brussels opera. His mother, Marie (Janson) Spaak, was a socialist who in 1921 became the first woman member of the Belgian parliament. His maternal grandfather, Paul Janson, was a leader of the Belgian Liberal Party; his uncle, Paul-Émile Janson, served as prime minister for the Liberals on several occasions. Reared in a freethinking anticlerical tradition and educated in French-language schools, as a resident of the capital city region Spaak was less involved in the linguistic divisions of his country than were the militant Flemings and Walloons of other regions. His patriotism was strong. At the age of seventeen, during World War I, he attempted to escape from German-occupied Belgium to join the remnants of the nation’s army. Detained by the Germans, he was placed in a prison camp for two years.

Spaak studied law at the Free University of Brussels and was admitted to the Brussels bar, serving for some time as counselor for the commune of Forest. More athletic than his later stout figure would suggest, Spaak was a member of the 1922 Belgian Davis Cup tennis team. In 1922, he married Marguerite Malevy, the daughter of a Liberal senator. They were to have one son and two daughters. A year following Marguerite’s death in 1964, Spaak married Simonne Deal.

Life’s Work

In 1921, Spaak made the crucial decision to become active in the Socialist rather than the Liberal Party. The Socialist demand for justice for all was appealing. The chance to assume a leadership position quickly also lay more with the socialists than with the aging Liberals. By 1925, Spaak was chef de cabinet for a socialist minister. A year later, however, Spaak resigned rather than serve under a Roman Catholic Party prime minister in a cabinet of national union. He founded a small paper, the Bataille socialiste, and became the spokesperson of the left wing of the Socialist Party. In November, 1932, he was elected to the Belgian Chamber of Deputies from Brussels. His former paper now defunct, he and friends founded the weekly Action socialiste. Spaak’s radical views offended moderate members of his party, and in 1934 he barely escaped expulsion from the party.

Spaak’s socialism was inspired more by his own sense of justice and concern for the common person than by any deep conviction concerning Marxism. He was later to admit that his extremism was in part a tactical move to break into politics. It therefore was not difficult for Spaak to come under the partial influence of Belgian socialist theorist Henri de Man. Accepting that “integral socialism” was only a distant hope, Spaak followed Man’s espousal of Keynesian economics and the view that capitalism, instead of being overthrown, should be transformed into an instrument for service to the working class. Spaak decided his left-wing predilections were not so strong as to prevent him from taking in 1935 the post of minister of transport and communications in a cabinet headed by the Catholic Paul van Zeeland. He soon was recognized for his moderation and collegial collaboration.

In 1936, in his mid-thirties, Spaak became foreign minister in a cabinet led by his uncle, Paul-Émile Janson. With the chambers and populace so riven by the Flemish-Walloon language disputes that passage of a military bill was impossible as long as the Flemings believed Belgium to be linked to French foreign policy, the cabinet opted for a policy of independent neutrality. Spaak carried out the negotiations associated with this course. In May, 1938, he became the youngest prime minister in the history of his country. He left the post in February, 1939, but again became foreign minister in November. His sharp interruption of the German ambassador’s announcement of the Nazi invasion on May 10, 1940, reflected his passionate nature and became a rallying point for Belgian pride in the dark years of World War II.

Spaak and other members of the government fled to France before the German onslaught. Spaak and the prime minister, Hubert Pierlot, disapproved of King Leopold’s personal decision to remain in occupied Belgium. The Germans later moved Leopold to Austria. With a few compatriots, Spaak and Pierlot escaped to form a government-in-exile in London. Reflection there confirmed Spaak’s sense of the need for international cooperation. The first step was to defeat the Axis powers. When approached by the British and Americans, desperate for uranium in their effort to construct an atomic bomb, he granted them first option for ten years on the world’s prime source of uranium in the Belgian Congo.

Spaak did what he could to support both his own country and the concept of internationalism in practical terms. During the war, he held preliminary negotiations with the Netherlands, which led to the Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg Economic Union (Benelux) Treaty of 1947. He was chief of the Belgian delegation to the conference at San Francisco that drafted the charter for the United Nations Organization. In 1946, Spaak was elected the first president of the United Nations General Assembly. Spaak declined the position for the assembly’s 1947 session, for he had again become Belgian prime minister. He had also occupied that post briefly in March, 1946; this time he would remain in office into August, 1949.

In the months after he left the government, the Belgian royal question reached its climax. Spaak opposed bitterly any return of the monarch to the Belgian throne and led a massive street demonstration. Among his several objections to Leopold was the manner in which the king took actions as commander in chief of the army in the crucial days before and after the outbreak of war without consulting fully with the civilian government. On July 16, 1951, Leopold relinquished the royal prerogative to his son Baudouin I.

When British foreign minister Ernest Bevin in January, 1948, called for a consolidation of Western Europe, his Belgian counterpart responded quickly. Spaak’s influence speeded creation in March, 1948, of a Western European Union that entailed more political and economic cooperation, as well as military cooperation, than the British and the French had initially contemplated. Spaak also signed on behalf of Belgium the 1949 Treaty of Washington, forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He took pride in Article 9 of that treaty; the permanent council it authorized provided for more continuing political and economic consultation among the members of the organization than did traditional military alliances. Spaak returned to the Belgian foreign ministry in 1954 but left the office to serve as secretary-general of NATO from 1957 to 1961. Spaak did yeoman service there by restoring confidence in the alliance shaken by the Suez crisis of 1956.

Spaak’s interest in European political and economic collaboration is also reflected in the other posts that he held. He chaired from 1948 to 1950 the Council of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, the European arm of the United States European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan). At the end of 1949, he was elected first president of the Consultative Assembly of the newly formed council of Europe. Disheartened by the failure of the council to press firmly toward economic and political integration, Spaak resigned the position in December, 1951. His efforts then turned to encouraging the integration of a smaller grouping of six nations in the nascent European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), serving as president of its common assembly from May, 1953, to April, 1954. In 1955, Spaak was selected by his colleagues in the ECSC to chair a committee that would recommend steps to bring about a common economic market among the six. The recommendations of the “Spaak Report” became the foundation for the 1957 Treaties of Rome creating the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community.

Spaak’s skill as foreign minister was once more called on in April, 1961. The newly independent Congo had broken relations with Belgium, the province of Katanga was in secession, U.N. troops were intervening, and Belgian nationals in the Congo appeared in danger. After many difficulties, Spaak improved relations with both the Congo and the United Nations, saw the secession ended, and encouraged restoration of order in the former colony. In February, 1966, the coalition cabinet in which Spaak was serving was overthrown. That June, in the middle of a political scene dominated by the linguistic question, the Socialist Party refused to back Spaak when he urged that it support the government, which sought to host the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe. Discouraged by this lack of vision by his party, Spaak retired from politics.

Significance

Spaak served in the Belgian government for more than twenty-two years, holding the foreign ministry portfolio for most of that time. His influence was great, for the paths he set were usually followed by those who briefly relieved him at the post. His energy in promoting a united Europe was indefatigable. Spaak’s skill as a diplomat lay in finding those points that brought people together. His vision was wide and ambitious, but he was willing to work patiently and determinedly to reach his goals through cumulative small steps. His sense of timing was good, and in both domestic and international politics he was not afraid to propose bold moves when he thought the moment right. His ability to extract the best from his collaborators, his straightforwardness, his clarity of expression, and even his emotional personality all contributed to his success. Frequently he led others to make efforts that they had not originally contemplated. He suffered in reappraising his prewar policy and his relations with Leopold, yet learned from his experience and did not shrink from the consequences of his conclusions. The nature of post-World War II Europe was permanently altered by his efforts. While he believed that European unity and economic and political integration had not proceeded fast or far enough by the time of his retirement, he had earned the sobriquet by which he was then widely known: Mr. Europe.

Bibliography

Arango, E. Ramón. Leopold III and the Belgian Royal Question. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1961. The best-balanced account of this affair in English, it describes well the view of the socialists and Spaak.

Helmreich, Jonathan E. Belgium and Europe: A Study in Small Power Diplomacy. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton, 1976. The last chapters provide a general review of Belgian foreign policy and Spaak’s role from 1936 to 1964.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Gathering Rare Ores: The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943-1954. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Though written from the viewpoint of U.S. policy, the book tells much about Spaak’s role in the uranium negotiations of this period.

Huizinga, James H. Mr. Europe: A Political Biography of Paul Henri Spaak. New York: Praeger, 1961. The greatest portion of this book by a Dutch journalist focuses on the evolution of Spaak’s views on socialism and his breach with Leopold. The development of both Spaak’s character and internationalism is well illuminated.

Laurent, Pierre-Henri. “The Diplomacy of Junktim: Paul-Henri Spaak and European Integration.” In Personalities, War, and Diplomacy: Essays in International History, edited by T. G. Otte and Constantine A. Pagedas. Portland, Oreg.: F. Cass, 1997. This essay is included in a collection of essays analyzing the impact of diplomats, politicians, and military strategists on foreign policy.

Spaak, Paul-Henri. The Continuing Battle: Memoirs of a European, 1936-1966. Translated by Henry Fox. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. The English version slightly abridges the French text. The focus is on Spaak’s work for European unity; no references are made to personal or family events or to those preceding 1936. The period of neutralism and the royal controversy are covered succinctly. Spaak demonstrates his priorities, includes quotations from significant documents and speeches, and presents incisive descriptions of international figures.