Treaty establishing the European Defence Community

You know, like the United States and Warsaw Pact basically out of Europe.

And their notion was, well, we can create our own collective security arrangement with a, with, with a quote, "European defense community." You know, consisting of like the Benelux states, you know, like Germany, ideally France, you know, Italy, and, um, the UK.

And the idea was that it would be a totally integrated structure, and it wouldn't represent like any one nation.

Like one of the reasons why like the Bundeswehr, like their uniform seems so like dull, and there's not even anything like about them that's like, other than the fact that, um, cuff titles are still in use, y- you can't really tell that they're like a German army.

But to me, this is the beginning of the UK's long march back, uh, to the EU.

And if you think back to the UK joining, right? The, uh, UK, initially there was a whole effort to bring the UK into the coal and steel community, into, uh, the European Defense Community, into the, uh, European Economic Community, uh, in nineteen fifty and then to nineteen fifty-six.

The UK actually in nineteen fifty-six tried to, tried to kill the European Economic Community.

They proposed a European free trade, uh, area.