The main reason why the US was supportive is because they wanted to break open the coal market as well as the German near monopoly (together with the Swedes) fo

The main reason why the US was supportive is because they wanted to break open the coal market as well as the German near monopoly (together with the Swedes) for high grade steel at the time. It was a purely selfish reason, and not because the USA wanted Europe to unite. The hypocrisy is obvious given the numerous US monopolies at the time and various attempts to insert US standards into EU practices to give US companies a leg up. Funny enough, they tried the same in Iraq. EU dependency on the US is bad, but fortunately finally (and thanks to the most unlikely person) we are realizing this. But repairing it is going to take a lot of time and will be costly. We also have to guard not to become similarly dependent on China, whose motives are no better. https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/1945-59/schuman-declaration-may-1950_en https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor... The USA does not even rate a mention, though it probably should have, that's a bit of EU revisionism afaic. More on this in Wikipedia: "The United States was not officially part of the treaty negotiations, but it was a major force behind the scenes. The US High Commissioner for Occupied Germany, John McCloy, was an advocate of decartelization and his chief advisor in Germany was a Harvard anti-trust lawyer, Robert Bowie. Bowie was asked to draft anti-trust articles, and texts of the two articles he prepared (on cartels and the abuse of monopoly power) became the basis of the treaty's competition policy regime. Also, Raymond Vernon in the State Department (of later fame for his studies on industrial policy at Harvard university) carefully reviewed successive drafts of the treaty. He stressed the importance of the freedom of the projected common market from restrictive practices. The Americans insisted that the German coal sales monopoly, the Deutscher Kohlenverkauf (DKV), should lose its monopoly, and that the steel industries should no longer own the coalmines. It was agreed that the DKV would be broken up into four independent sales agencies. The steel firm Vereinigte Stahlwerke was to be divided into thirteen firms, and Krupp into two." As for the Holy Roman Empire, no, that was not what I had in mind but since you are arguing in bad faith all over this thread I don't think it is worth my time to continue the discussion, even if I think that in principle we agree. It has been noted before that just like here you are stating a lot of things without actually aiming to make a point and you are repeating things that are objectively false in order to confuse the discussion, and things that are true but that are besides the point and not worth the contest because of the ridiculous out-of-proportion weight you assign on some details. I have no clue why you are doing this but I also simply don't have the energy for it.