Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe was withdrawing from the NATO military structure. SHAPE and all the other NATO installations, including NATO Headquarters and Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), were informed that they must leave French territory by April 1967. Belgium became the host nation for both NATO's political headquarters and SHAPE. General Lyman Lemnitzer, SACEUR at the time, had hoped that SHAPE could be located near to NATO Headquarters, as had been the case in Paris, but the Belgian authorities decided that SHAPE should be located at least 50 kilometres from Brussels, NATO's new location, because SHAPE was a major wartime military target. The Belgian
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe the bulk of NATO's forces, proved to be much more complicated. General Eisenhower considered naming an overall Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) there as well but soon realized it would be difficult to find an arrangement that would satisfy all three major powers with forces in the Center—the United States, United Kingdom and France—as they had strongly differing views on the proper relationship of air and ground power. Drawing upon his World War II experience, General Eisenhower decided to retain overall control himself and did not appoint a C-in-C for the Central Region. Instead there would be three separate C-in-C's (air, land, and