France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954

Abstract

Historians of the Cold War, argues the author of this book, have too often overlooked the part that European nations played in shaping the post-World War II international system. In particular, he contends that France has been given short shrift. Drawing on a wide array of evidence from French, American and British archives, he aims to show that France constructed a coherent national strategy for domestic and international recovery and pursued that strategy in the first post-war decade. France, the author claims, played a vital part in the occupation and administration of Germany, framed the key institutions of the new Europe, helped forge the NATO alliance, and engineered an astonishing economic recovery. In the process, France successfully contested American leadership in Europe and used its position as a key Cold War ally to extract concessions from Washington on a wide range of economic and security issues.