Only three months ago, Ludwig Erhard was firmly maintaining that if Charles de Gaulle insisted on pulling his troops out of the unified NATO command, he could hardly keep 72,000 of them on German soil, no matter how much he wanted to keep a watch on the Rhine. "There can be no throwback to an occupation status," Erhard declared. Then, as De Gaulle's July 1 deadline for France's NATO withdrawal began to creep nearer, Erhard allowed technical experts in Paris to negotiate a "temporary" agreement under which the French troops might stay...
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