In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, the victors were unable to agree on Germanys fate, and the separation of the countrythe result of the nascent Cold Waremerged as a de facto, if provisional, settlement. Yet East and West Germany would exist apart for half a century, making the "German question" a central foreign policy issueand given the war-torn history between the two countries, this was felt no more keenly than in France. Drawing on the most recent historiography and previously untapped archival sources, this volume shows how Frances approach to the German question was, for the duration of the Cold War, both more constructive and consequential than has been previously acknowledged.

Frédéric Bozo is Professor of Contemporary History at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, University of Paris III, Institute of European Studies. He is the author of numerous books, includingMitterrand, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification (2009) andFrench Foreign Policy since 1945 (2016), and the editor of such collections asEurope and the End of the Cold War: A Reappraisal (2008).

List of Abbreviations

Introduction
Frédéric Bozo and Christian Wenkel

PART I: FROM CAPITULATION TO COOPERATION

Chapter 1. France and the German Question, 19451949: On the interdependence of Historiography, Methodology, and Interpretations
Rainer Hudemann

Chapter 2. Economic and Industrial Issues in Frances Approach to the German Question in the Postwar Period
Françoise Berger

PART II: THE EMERGENCE OF THE BLOC SYSTEM

Chapter 3. France, German Rearmament, and the German Question, 19451955
Michael H. Creswell

Chapter 4. Impossible Allies? Soviet Views of France and the German Question in the 1950s 
Geoffrey Roberts

PART III: THE DE GAULLE FACTOR

Chapter 5. An Arbiter between the Superpowers: De Gaulle and the German Question, 19581969
Garret J. Martin

Chapter 6. The German Question in the Eastern Policies of France and Germany in the 1960s
Benedikt Schoenborn

PART IV: THE ERA OFOSTPOLITIK

Chapter 7. Perceptions ofOstpolitik: French-West German Relations and the Evolving German Question under Willy Brandt and Georges Pompidou
Gottfried Niedhart

Chapter 8.  France, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the German Question
Nicolas Badalassi

Chapter 9. The Economic and Monetary Dimensions of the German Question: A French Perspective, 19691979
Guido Thiemeyer

PART V: THE END GAME

Chapter 10. The French Obsession with the German Question: Willy Brandt, François Mitterrand, the German Question and German Unification, 19811990
Bernd Rother

Chapter 11. All about Europe? France, Great Britain and the Question of German Unification, 198990
Ilaria Poggiolini

Chapter 12. Franco-Soviet Relations, German Unification, and the End of the Cold War
Frédéric Bozo

PART VI: ENDURING CONCERNS: ANSCHLUSS, BORDERS, AND THE TWO GERMANYS

Chapter 13. Towards a New Anschluss? France and the German and the Austrian Questions, 194555
Thomas Angerer

Chapter 14. France, Poland, and Germany's Eastern Border, 19451990. The Recurrent Issue of the German Question in French-Polish Relations
Pierre-Frédéric Weber

Chapter 15. A Surprising Continuity: The French Attitude and Policy Towards the German Democratic Republic, 19491990
Christian Wenkel

Index