Diplomatic History of Europe 1500 - 2000 | The European Project (Lecture 34)

Lecture 34: In response both to the changed status of Europe after a half century of destructive tensions and world wars, as well as its location as ground zero of the Cold War conflict or a future World War III, European political leaders sought to craft a new departure from the competitive politics of statehood inaugurated at the long-ago Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This lecture surveys the European project of unity from 1957 to 1980 (later culminating in today’s European Union) in the midst of the perilous experience of the Cold War. We examine surprising French-German cooperation, the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis, détente, German approaches to eastern Europe (Ostpolitik), and the unsuspected significance of the Helsinki Accords of 1975.

Essential Reading:
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, pp. 568–761.

Supplementary Reading:
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History.