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The Monnet Plan
Following World War II France was in severe need of reconstruction. To rebuild, France was completely dependent on coal from Germany's main remaining coal-mining areas, the Ruhr area and the Saar area (The German coal fields in Upper Silesia had been annexed by Poland). In 1945 Monnet proposed a plan, named after him, to take control of these German areas and redirect the output of German coal production away from German industry and into French industry instead, permanently weakening Germany and raising the French Economy considerably above its pre-war levels. The plan was adopted by Charles de Gaulle in early 1946. In 1947 France removed the Saar from Germany and turned it into a protectorate under French economic control.
As the head of France's General Planning Commission, Monnet was the real author of what has become known as the 1950 "Schuman Plan" to create the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), forerunner of the Common Market (EU). Jean Monnet described the EU's method: "Europe's nations should be guided towards a super state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation." The single currency was the most important of these steps: as Monnet said, "Via money Europe could become political in five years." (Christopher Booker and Richard North in their book "The great
deception"  ).
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