France Restored

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.