Whenever asked to name his most significant accomplishment as West
Germany's first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer would invariably reply: "The
alliance with the free West." Scholars have echoed his assessment,
citing the Federal Republic of Germany's successful integration into the
American-led West (Westbindung) as the key to its postwar economic and
political recovery. Behind this simple success story, however, lies a
much more complicated history: Adenauer and the CDU/CSU remained
ambivalent about the ultimate relationship between Europe, Germany, and
the United States within the West, torn between visions of Continental
European integration based on Franco-German reconciliation and of an
Atlantic community linking Europe and the "Anglo-Saxons." These
differences eventually erupted into a damaging public conflict between
"Atlanticists" and "Gaullists," which colored Adenauer's last years and,
after his retirement in 1963, led directly to the failure of his
successor, Ludwig Erhard.
The opening of various personal and party archives over the past few
years has now made the entire Adenauer Era accessible for historians. As
one of the first efforts to use that material to re-examine existing
conventional wisdom about the period, this book traces the roles of
Adenauer and the CDU/CSU in shaping Westbindung. Adenauer emerges as a
skilled and resourceful (if also mistrustful and devious) politician,
and as a distinctly German statesman, maneuvering between allies and
adversaries to shape both the Western community and the German role in
it, leaving a legacy that still influences contemporary German-American
and European-American relations.
