In this dutiful diplomatic history, Steven J. Brady argues that understanding the U.S.-West German relationship during the 1950s helps to explain why the Cold War lasted as long as it did. To Brady, the pressures inherent in maintaining a strong western alliance—particularly the pressure to reassure West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that his western partners would not succumb to the temptation of selling out West Germany in order to reach a deal with the Soviet Union—prevented serious moves toward disarmament after Stalin's death in 1953 and thus forestalled any real reduction in Cold-War tensions.

Brady argues that beneath the surface of a U.S.-West German diplomatic relationship during the 1950s that appeared unusually close lay a constructive relationship that nevertheless suffered its fair share of tensions owing to the inherent security dilemmas each country faced. With Stalin's death soon after Eisenhower assumed the presidency in 1953, the Americans faced the temptation to explore a Modus Vivendi with the post-Stalinist Soviet leadership. But even exploring such a deal risked injuring West Germany's vital interests. The West Germans—especially Adenauer—faced a dilemma as well. In the face of what soon became apparent was a Cold-War stalemate, how could the West Germans convince their western partners to maintain a strong commitment to Germany's reunification on western terms when their own interests quite obviously pointed to a reduction of tensions with the Soviet Union? These two basic dilemmas Brady elucidates made the U.S.-West German relationship far more complicated than was apparent at the time.

Brady's analysis shows how crucial a role Konrad Adenauer played in keeping the dilemmas inherent in both West German and American policies toward the Soviet Union from undermining the alliance. First, the West German chancellor worked hard to demonstrate to Washington that West Germany was its most reliable ally in Europe. Beginning with his important trip to the U.S. in 1953 and well-nigh cemented by West Germany's reaction to the failure of the European Defense Community in 1954—when Adenauer responded to France's ultimate unwillingness to countenance a European army by integrating an independent Bundeswehr into NATO, the chancellor demonstrated a promised reliability that, when push came to shove, the Eisenhower administration felt compelled to respect. (Adenauer's eagerness to demonstrate West Germany's reliability to Washington was all the more important considering British, and at times French, desires to explore a postwar settlement with the Soviet Union at German expense.) In return, the U.S. helpfully made plain its preference for Adenauer as chancellor during the 1953 and 1957 elections by renewing quite vocally the western alliance's commitment to ultimate German reunification. This was all the more important to the U.S. as domestic opposition to Adenauer—not only from the social democrats (SPD), but also, more importantly, from the liberal and still somewhat nationalist free democrats (FDP)—protested bitterly that Adenauer was willing to sacrifice Germans in the east on the altar of western unity. One of Brady's central points is that “American acquiescence in this process again illustrates that Washington was willing to bend when Adenauer's future was on the line, so long as no major sacrifices were required” (p. 201).

With this book, Brady offers a solid contribution to an already large literature on alliance politics—about both sides of the Iron Curtain—that suggests such politics played a vital role in prolonging the stalemate between the superpowers. One might ask, however, exactly what contribution Brady has made to this literature with an analysis that does not depart from quite traditional diplomatic history. Brady touches upon defense strategy—though not quite as much as one may have desired. The more problematic omission, however, is any serious discussion of West German economic policies that touched upon basic West German foreign policy. Apart from the influence of West German economic power on countries such as France, Adenauer's traumatic relationship with his economics minister and eventual successor as chancellor, Ludwig Erhard, receives little treatment at all. The conventional literature on Adenauer certainly makes it appear as though the chancellor understood only too well what threat Erhard posed to his foreign policy legacy by 1958 with the latter's skepticism toward France. In addition, the ending of the book with the end of the Eisenhower administration in 1960 forces Brady to conclude his analysis before the end of the Berlin crisis, which is a bit odd. While these weaknesses do not necessarily call Brady's argument into question, avoiding them would have made for a much richer book.

An important implication of Brady's book—a point that other work about alliance politics, including Hans-Peter Schwarz's standard Adenauer biography, also at least implies—is how the ultimate deal that we have come to define as détente was already on the table by the mid-1950s. In return for a pan-European security agreement that recognized postwar borders, the Soviet Union was prepared to engage in a relaxation of tensions and some measure of arms control. This was, in basic outline, the deal reached at Helsinki in 1975. The very tensions between Adenauer and U.S. policy makers that Brady chronicles is testimony to the probability that as western policy makers began to understand that the Cold War would be of some duration, they had seriously to think about a fundamental agreement with the Soviet Union, whether such an agreement were aimed at disarmament or, in the West German case, trying to do something to ease the burdens on their East German brethren. This would suggest that Jeremi Suri's famous thesis that détente was a function of the social tensions of the 1960s, and the effort to contain such tensions lest they lead to a truly revolutionary order—while perhaps not going as far as putting the cart before the horse, certainly gave the cart a coequal status with the horse that it might not deserve. The outlines of what later became détente were already present in western capitals in the 1950s. Western leaders understood what had to be done. They were just not yet ready to do it.