France Restored

Historians of the Cold War argues William Hitchcock have too<br/>often overlooked the part that European nations played in shaping<br/>the post-World War II international system. In particular<br/>France a country beset by economic difficulties and political<br/>instability in the aftermath of the war has been given short<br/>shrift.<br/>With this book Hitchcock restores France to the narrative<br/>of Cold War history and illuminates its central role in the<br/>reconstruction of Europe. Drawing on a wide array of evidence<br/>from French American and British archives he shows that France<br/>constructed a coherent national strategy for domestic and<br/>international recovery and pursued that strategy with tenacity<br/>and effectiveness in the first postwar decade. This once-occupied<br/>nation played a vital part in the occupation and administration<br/>of Germany framed the key institutions of the new Europe<br/>helped forge the NATO alliance and engineered an astonishing<br/>economic recovery. In the process France successfully contested<br/>American leadership in Europe and used its position as a key Cold<br/>War ally to extract concessions from Washington on a wide range<br/>of economic and security issues.