The essays in this book were first presented at a fiftieth anniversary conference commemorating the January 1963 Franco-German Élysée treaty. The book's main theme are the bilateral relations, especially the Franco-German relationship, in the Atlantic triangle and their repercussions on relations with the hegemonic power, the United States. The cover photo of the volume is a good representation of this crucial triangular relationship. Presidents Charles de Gaulle, Heinrich Lübke, and Lyndon Johnson are portrayed with other statesmen from around the world, all meeting for the funeral of Konrad Adenauer, the long-serving German chancellor and great friend of de Gaulle's, which took place on April 25, 1967.

The book addresses diplomatic relations in the “long Sixties” in terms of regional conflicts such as the wars in Algeria and Vietnam and their repercussions on the triangle, as well as nuclear, economic, and political relations and mutual perceptions, such as anti-Americanism and anti-communism. “The long Sixties” are defined as the period from 1956 (the Suez crisis) to 1973–1974 (the “compression” [Verdichtung] of triangular relations in the détente era). Most essays in this collection are pithy summaries of the most important aspects of the “variable geometry” (28) of this “triangular relationship,” whereas Hartmut Kaelble's essay on the parallel development of the welfare states in Germany and France and their differences from the United States is more of a jejune comparison. What is missing is an essay on cultural relations beyond the Americanization/anti-Americanism theme, particularly the mutual repercussions of the “global 1968” unrest on the triangular relationship.

French president de Gaulle's ornery role in the international affairs of the 1960s is front and center in this collection. De Gaulle came back to power in 1958 and strengthened the role of the presidency in the new constitution for the French Fifth Republic to the point of assuming “authoritarian powers” (29). The “de Gaulle challenge” (gaullistische Herausforderung) ended the consensual relationship among the three great powers and initiated a new “culture of mistrust” (27). De Gaulle's extraordinary role in these years—his “bombastic rhetoric” about France's greatness—also needs to be seen in its “performative” dimension (30).

Carine Germont outlines De Gaulle's four courses of action: 1) a so-called tripartite directorate of the United States, Great Britain, and France as the main consultative policymaking body in the Western alliance (Eisenhower wanted none of it); 2) to organize a closer political union in the European economic community (the Fouchet Plan), but Belgium and the Netherlands wanted no competition with NATO; 3) close Franco-German partnership through the Élysée Treaty to assert Europe's interests vis-à-vis the United States and the Soviet Union, but the so-called Atlanticists in the Christian Democratic Union did not want to see the Americans outmaneuvered; and 4) the pursuit of a “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals” as an active policy of détente to overcome the Cold War in Europe (113f). Challenging American hegemony in Europe was central to all these plans—de Gaulle was “provocative, cantankerous and often unpredictable” (110).

Garret J. Martin outlines the three phases of the “overarching ambition” behind de Gaulle's tactics throughout the 1960s (121). First, the Franco-German treaty period (1963–1964), during which de Gaulle tried to create “a more assertive and independent Western Europe vis-à-vis the United States”; second, the high independence phase (1965–1966), when de Gaulle took France out of NATO and “launched a full frontal attack against American hegemony”; and third, the détente option (1967–1968), when he tried “to cultivate the Paris–Bonn–Moscow triangle as the means to overcome the bipolar Cold War order” (121). De Gaulle tried to “progressively emancipate Europe” from the United States (125), not unlike his successor in the Élysée Palace, Emmanuel Macron tries to do today. Tim Geiger develops the German dimension of these issue in his analysis of the profound struggle between the Atlanticists and the Gaullists in the CDU/CSU during the 1960s, which almost tore the party apart. The succession struggle for who should follow Adenauer as chancellor was a part of this too.

The essays in this collection are unusually coherent for an edited volume, the tightness of their argumentation outlined in the excellent bilingual (in German and French) introduction by the volume's editors. The essays are written in English, German, and French, which may constitute a challenge for the casual reader. Yet this should not stop research libraries from acquiring this volume, for it is a major contribution to the international history of the 1960s.