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

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Historians of the Cold War, argues William Hitchcock, have too often overlooked the part that European nations played in shaping the post-World War II international system. In particular, France, a country beset by economic difficulties and political instability in the aftermath of the war, has been given short shrift. With this book, Hitchcock restores France to the narrative of Cold War history and illuminates its central role in the reconstruction of Europe. Drawing on a wide array of evidence from French, American, and British archives, he shows that France constructed a coherent national strategy for domestic and international recovery and pursued that strategy with tenacity and effectiveness in the first postwar decade. This once-occupied nation 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. contents tables & map foreword acknowledgments abbreviations Introduction The Founding of the Fourth Republic and the Conditions for French Recovery The Limits of Independence, 1944-1947 No Longer a Great Power The Hard Road to Franco-German Rapprochement, 1948-1950 Sound and Fury: The Debate over German Rearmament The European Defense Community and French National Strategy Conclusion notes bibliography