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.

A comprehensive assessment of the Fragebogen is presented in the book’s conclusion, including speculation about the enduring effects of denazification on the two German successor states. The unexpected achievements of the zonal screening programs are measured against their many weaknesses and negative results. Consideration is also given to more recent ideological screening projects in different parts of the world, and the historical lessons ascribed to denazification. The book ultimately concludes that despite the many inherent and acquired problems of the Fragebogen screening program, it is difficult to imagine a denazification process that would have been more effective in achieving both the removal of Nazism as a practical political force and the transformation of the beliefs of individual Germans.

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.

The book’s introduction explains why the years 1963 to 1975 were a period of tremendous experimentation in German foreign relations. A succession of relatively weak chancellors gave scope for cabinet members to push in various directions, whether this involved voracious weapons procurement, a single-minded battle against inflation, more generous development aid, or a tighter commitment to European integration. Even in periods of political instability, developments in West Germany had great import for Europe and the world beyond. Historiographically, the introduction stresses the broader historical relevance of German foreign relations: its study reveals the contested values of postwar Germans and how those priorities came to shape the international environment. Methodologically, the chapter presents a brief discussion of constructivism as outlined by political scientists Alexander Wendt and Susan Strange. International relations theory informs the book’s core question – how West Germans shaped and were shaped by the international system.

With the founding of the two German states in 1949, the period of political transition in postwar Germany came to an end. Nazi trials, however, continued in both West and East Germany. The Epilogue examines how policy toward Nazi prosecutions changed with independence in both the Federal Republic and German Democratic Republic. West Germany pursued a policy of rehabilitation for most former Nazis, coupled with the further prosecution of small numbers of ‘intolerable” Nazi atrocities. This was part of a strategy of “democratization via integration.” Meanwhile, East German continued a more robust prosecution program, even if the number of trials was still substantially smaller than during the occupation period. The epilogue also recapitulates the argument of the book. Worse trials in the West helped inadvertently to democratize the emerging Federal Republic of Germany, while better trials in the East contributed to the consolidation of a new, Stalinist dictatorship. Transitional justice in Germany thus produced counter-intuitive results at odds with the prevailing wisdom among scholars and activists.