France and Germany were among the major powers that abruptly lost that status as a consequence of World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s, the governments of both nations sought ways to recover their great-power standing. Each saw the cooperation of the other as crucial for its own foreign policy aspirations and tried repeatedly to engage the other in commitments that would underwrite its own ambitions. But neither succeeded. In the 1970s, France and Germany began to reconcile themselves to the permanent loss of their great-power status. The process of accepting a diminished international...
France and Germany were among the major powers that abruptly lost that status as a consequence of World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s, the governm...
