This chapter analyses the first two decades of European integration from 1950 to 1969, a period marked by ambitious plans, spectacular setbacks, and unexpected successes. Starting with the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, the study examines how a complex system of supranational and intergovernmental institutions developed from modest beginnings. It shows that early integration was characterised less by a master plan than by pragmatic compromises and the external constraints of the Cold War. While the failure of the European Defence Community in 1954 showed the limits of supranational ambitions, the Treaties of Rome of 1957 proved to be surprisingly dynamic. The European Economic Community in particular developed into the centre of gravity of integration. One central outcome of this was the realisation that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), originally only an appendage to market integration, became the ‘green heart’ of the Community. Despite fundamental approval, people in Europe largely lacked concrete knowledge about the Communities. The chapter shows that in this phase the EC was still one of many international organisations: its later dominance was by no means predetermined.

This chapter investigates France’s contentious relationship with the development of a constitutional practice in European law. The chapter explores the longstanding struggle between two factions within the political and legal elite that shaped the French reception of European law: the supranationalists, who supported a federal vision of European law, and the souverainistes, who resisted supranational legal authority in favour of national sovereignty. This ideological battle was most visible in the French judiciary, where institutions like the Conseil d’État and Cour de Cassation adopted competing stances on European law. Despite these challenges, the chapter argues that France ultimately had to yield to European legal integration in the 1980s, after an open rebellion by the Conseil d’État and the National Assembly in 1979-1980 failed. This evolution reflected France’s broader struggle with defending national sovereignty and adapting to the realities of European integration.

This chapter examines the paradoxical success of the most demanding form of market integration, the Single Market established in 1992, which is based on the federalisation of numerous pieces of legislation. It is surprising that twelve European states, among the richest in the world, felt the need to link their markets so closely, even though they could have perfectly well continued alone. The creation of a unified market gradually became the central aspect of European cooperation between 1919 (when Keynes first aired his ideas on this topic) and 1957. The countermodel of the British-style free trade area (FTA) emerged as a major alternative but it failed. A genuine Single Market was established in the late 1980s. It had three striking features. First, it was put in place quickly between 1987 and 1992, enabling the unprecedented opening of the Union’s internal borders. Second, liberalisation was accompanied by enhanced regulation, in accordance with the oxymoron ‘freer market, more rules’, including a surprising rise of federal competition policy. Third, this move was opposed by several neoliberal figures, such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the late 1980s.

In 1957 the Europeans created the European Economic Community, which is the basis for today’s European Union. Despite its name, this Community has not been able to promote communitarianism in the sense used in this book, namely a policy seeking to bolster the group. Creating a European organisation based on community capitalism has involved grappling with complex questions: who is a partner and who is a foe? Should Europeans companies be favoured or not? Should Europeans be capable of defending themselves independently, or through the US alliance? This chapter will show first that during the Cold War (1947–1991) defence and diplomacy were largely coordinated on a North Atlantic scale through NATO, despite numerous attempts to create a ‘European power’ (including with a nuclear arsenal). Second, some form of European protectionism nevertheless thrived in specific areas, such as agriculture and aeronautics, but surprisingly not in energy. Third, the ubiquity of national industrial policies led European institutions to counterbalance these policies through free-market rules rather than the creation of Europe-wide industrial policy.

To nudge Marshal Petain away from an exclusive Berlin orientation, FDR pursued conciliation toward Vichy France. The hope was that Vichy cooperation with Berlin might be stymied. Unvarnished realpolitik vis-a-vis Vichy ruffled consciences in Capitol Hill and the State Department, though not enough to cause revision. The rival strategic and ethical tugs that agitated her compatriots struck writer Gertrude Stein as neither urgent nor interesting. To her, significance lay elsewhere. France had suffered, admittedly. Yet it would rise again. Stein’s France was perpetual, irrepressible, and safely sheltered under Petain. Entertainer Josephine Baker, like Stein a long-term resident of France, had a viewpoint different from Stein’s and worked as an undercover agent for the Free French. Meanwhile people in the United States anxiously followed the deteriorating human rights condition in France, but this did not convert into calls for action. Exceptions to this hesitancy clustered in private organizations, as in the Emergency Rescue Committee and Varian Fry. He went to Marseilles and managed to help organize the escape of roughly 2,000 people hunted by Vichy and Nazi authorities.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Cold War convention of containment, which undergirded American involvement in Vietnam, was broadly shared, internalized, at times even fostered, by the United States European allies. This consensus broke down by the 1960s, as successive US administrations saw themselves locked ever more rigidly into Cold War logic which seemed to require going to war to preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam. By contrast, the United States transatlantic allies and partners increasingly came to question the very rationale of US intervention. By the mid-1960s there was a remarkable consensus among government officials across Western Europe on the futility of the central objective of the American intervention in Vietnam of defending and stabilizing a noncommunist (South) Vietnam. European governments refused to send troops to Vietnam. However, West European governments differed considerably in the public attitude they displayed toward US involvement in Vietnam, ranging from France’s vocal opposition to strong if not limitless public support by the British and West German governments. Across Western Europe, the Vietnam War cut deeply into West European domestic politics, aggravated political and societal tensions and diminished the righteousness of the American cause.

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historical legacy in foreign policy is most often associated with the disastrous American military intervention and escalation in Southeast Asia. While the passage of time has not diminished criticism of LBJ’s decision-making in Vietnam, scholars have come to recognize that his administration faced other, often complex international challenges. Some of these issues, like the emergence of a new set of European leaders pursing state interests that often clashed with Johnson’s grand strategic priorities, were of the traditional sort. Other global forces were novel and could not be understood only through a Cold War lens. These new challenges included tense dynamics within the Western alliance, the dilemmas of détente, the aftermath decolonization and the rise of new states, global public health, international monetary relations, and nuclear nonproliferation. This chapter explores how President Johnson navigated some of these complicated, cross-cutting international forces.

Chapter 8 moves on to the French case study. As the nation with the oldest major right-wing populist party in Europe, a well-established electoral constituency of political Catholicism, and one of the strictest models of church–state separation, the French case study provides a unique opportunity to trace the historical development of the relationship between religion and right-wing populism. To study these phenomena, Chapter 8 begins by exploring how the historical antagonism between la France Catholique and la Republique laïque still shapes the relationship between politics and religion today, and how the hard-fought compromise between the two has recently been challenged by a return of political tensions surrounding religion and laïcité, in the context of the French far right’s identitarian rhetoric.

Drawing on the diary of Heinrich Krone, Chapter 1 opens by exploring social and cultural changes in West Germany at the end of Konrad Adenauer’s long ascendancy. The Christian Democratic milieu was losing its lock on politics, and the successes of German integration into Atlantic and European communities gave rise to new questions about whether NATO or the EEC had precedence; how German unity could be pursued in the face of détente; and what relationships were possible with the Soviet bloc. Adenauer’s choice was to intensify relations with de Gaulle’s France, with the 1963 Elysée Treaty defining the partnership between France and West Germany as a Cold War bulwark against détente and the USSR. This approach was challenged and significantly modified by the chancellor’s critics in the Bundestag, who feared alienating the United States and pushed for Ludwig Erhard to replace Adenauer. Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder pushed for a “policy of movement,” intended to represent the cause of German unity more forcefully. Controversies over military aid, relations with Israel, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty showed that Adenauer’s long delay in resigning had left a vacuum of leadership.

With the forming of a Grand Coalition, headed by Kurt Kiesinger (CDU/CSU) as chancellor and Willy Brandt (SPD) as foreign minister, West Germany sought equidistance between France and the United States and pursued a new Ostpolitik in parallel with de Gaulle. As Chapter 5 explains, the project proved highly unstable; de Gaulle could do little to aid Bonn vis-à-vis Poland, and Brandt wound up preferring direct contacts with the Soviets. Disputes over Britain’s accession to the EEC further soured Franco-German relations, and Paris was hardly pleased at Bonn’s renewal of its offset promises toward London and Washington. But the U.S.–German relationship also came under strain as the United States and USSR negotiated a non-proliferation treaty (NPT) that would force West Germany to accept a permanently inferior status. Kiesinger and Brandt used their leverage with Washington to force significant changes to the NPT in the areas of nuclear research and commerce; but they also consulted with other nuclear have-nots, such as India and Iran, and contemplated Germany’s future as a middle-sized power. Increasingly, West Germans identified technology exports as a significant source of prestige.

World War II memories constitute the backdrop of Chapter 3. The Auschwitz Trials presented a daily reminder of German crimes; and a stretch of 20-year anniversaries from D-Day to V-E Day provided numerous occasions to invoke the “politics of the past” in putting pressure on Erhard’s Germany. The USSR, Britain, and France all aimed to forestall the MLF project, blocking West German access to nuclear weapons. France also won significant concessions on EEC agricultural policy from Bonn, thanks to de Gaulle’s ability to mobilize “Gaullists” in the CDU/CSU against the chancellor. In the face of intense Israeli pressure, Erhard’s panicky decisionmaking created a Middle East debacle in spring 1965; Bonn canceled its tank deliveries but established diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv, prompting ten Arab states to break relations. West German leaders felt increasingly isolated. Even U.S. opinion wearied of West German rigidity, particularly when German cabinet ministers seemed to contest the territorial status quo in Poland or Czechoslovakia. Real interest in promoting German unity was waning among all of Bonn’s allies; Bonn was at an impasse.

Chapter 2 outlines Ludwig Erhard’s efforts to position West Germany as a Cold War partner to the United States, as pledged during a visit to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch in December 1963. Defense minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel strongly advocated German participation in a NATO multilateral nuclear force (MLF); and he and Erhard signed off on a $1.35 billion offset agreement calling for massive purchases of U.S. weapons. They also agreed to a secret scheme to funnel surplus U.S.-built M-48 tanks to Israel. The Bundestag refused to sanction German deployments overseas, however – whether peacekeeping in Cyprus or a field hospital to Vietnam. “Gaullists” within Erhard’s CDU/CSU party, notably Franz Josef Strauss, complained about Erhard’s neglect of France, and his decision to placate Johnson by refusing a trade mission to China. Motion toward German unity remained stalled; Erhard’s idea of “buying off” the USSR with massive economic aid went nowhere, as did Gerhard Schröder’s policy of “small steps” toward the East. A holiday pass arrangement allowing visits across the Berlin Wall, arranged by Mayor Willy Brandt, offered the strongest evidence for Germans’ sense of belonging together.

By November 1940, les forces françaises libres had swelled to 19,679 soldiers. Arguably the setback at Dakar became a benefit, because it hardened and focused the French exile movement, forced it to adjust to a long-war strategy, and obliged de Gaulle to initiate the transition from a military organization with a political agenda into a political movement with an, albeit constricted, armed wing. With the creation on 27 October 1940 of a Conseil de la défense de l’Empire, the external resistance was now a legitimate territorial power. In the BCRA, la France libre had an organization with the potential to structure and operationalize an as yet diminutive but inevitable internal resistance. On the debit side, la France libre remained an insecure movement with a narrow and underdeveloped African base, factionalized between soldiers and civilians, between the various branches of the movement, torn between its civil war with Vichy and the compulsion to fight the Germans. The BCRA was inexperienced in clandestine mobilization, without a strategy, and dependent on the British for resources. While de Gaulle exhibited many noble qualities, even elements of true greatness, and had stamped his personality on his organization, his attributes were offset by an autocratic temperament and imperious behavior that exasperated allies and alienated potential supporters. Furthermore, Vichy still commanded its High Seas Fleet and controlled the strategically important Levant, Dakar, and AFN. Pétain also enjoyed patriotic prestige and credibility with a French population disoriented by defeat, eager to secure the release of French POWs, and convinced that he was plotting “la revanche” against Germany. British policy continued to recognize Vichy while supporting de Gaulle. With the United States poised to enter the conflict, relations among the three allies would grow more complex.

This chapter follows the days leading up to the French defeat in June 1940. It encompasses the events around the Dunkirk evacuation in late May and early June and concludes with the signing of the Franco-German armistice on 22 June. It challenges the notion that the French defeat simultaneously severed the Franco-British alliance. Maintaining imagery of Franco-British continuity in spite of underlying tensions was an important feature of Franco-British and subsequently Anglo-Gaullist policy throughout the conflict.

This chapter introduces a central and reoccurring theme that emerged after the signing of the Franco-German armistice at Rethondes: the battle to determine the legitimate source of Frenchness. Did it reside in metropolitan France, with Marshal Pétain’s government, or with the little-known General Charles de Gaulle in London? British and French policy-makers argued over this issue using the language of sovereignty and national honour. They drew on emotive rhetoric and imagery rooted in historical memory and conceptions of morality. Efforts to distance the French population from its new government were designed to foster feelings of Franco-British amity, encourage sympathy for the British war effort and facilitate the eventual liberation of France with its alliance membership intact.

This chapter outlines the nature of the “Franco-Chadian state” and its early postcolonial political evolution. It highlights the deep embeddedness of French influence in the Chadian economy and security services. It also provides an overview of the broader context of postcolonial Franco-African relations and French strategic aims in its former empire. The chapter then examines the outbreak of civil war in the country. In 1965, communities in central Chad rebelled against abusive governmental taxation. Quickly the revolt spread throughout the country and gradually its disparate factions became more organized under the loose banner of the Front de Liberation Nationale du Tchad (Frolinat). By early 1969, Frolinat elements threatened Fort-Lamy, Chad’s capital. This chapter examines the nature of this rebellion and French President Charles de Gaulle’s decision, in the final weeks of his presidency, to launch a sizeable military intervention on behalf of Tombalbaye’s regime. This intervention included an important statebuilding component, the Mission pour la réforme administrative (MRA). It aimed to address the administrative failures that French policymakers saw as a root cause of the rebellion. The chapter concludes with a description of the MRA’s mission and an analysis of its ultimate failure.

By 1958, Charles de Gaulle was back on the scene, President of a brand-new Republic, France’s Fifth. He meant to make the Resistance, with the deportation story wrapped up in it, a rallying point for the nation, and he had a monument of his own constructed, the Mémorial de la France Combattante, located at the fort of Mont-Valérien (where the Germans had taken résistants and hostages for execution) in the Parisian suburb of Suresnes. The monument and the commemorative activities associated with it told the story of France’s thirty-year war against Germany. This was a story with de Gaulle and the Resistance cast in the starring role and with the Left, communist and non-communist alike, shunted to the margins. What is remarkable is how powerful this narrative turned out to be, organizations of deportees like UNADIF (but not FNDIRP) lining up under the Gaullist standard.