Suchergebnisse

The former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt grew up as a devout Anglophile, yet he clashed heavily and repeatedly with his British counterparts Wilson, Callaghan, and Thatcher during his time in office. Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations looks at Schmidt's personal experience to explore how and why Britain and Germany rarely saw eye to eye over European integration, uncovering the two countries' deeply competing visions and incompatible strategies for post-war Europe. But it also zooms out to reveal the remarkable extent of simultaneous British-German cooperation in fostering joint European interests on the wider international stage, not least within the transatlantic alliance against the background of a worsening superpower relationship. By connecting these two key areas of bilateral cooperation, Mathias Haeussler offers a major reinterpretation of the bilateral relationship under Schmidt, relevant to anybody interested in British-German relations, European integration, and the Cold War.

"In light of Britain's impending departure from the European Union [EU], Helmut Schmidt's damning verdict on British attitudes towards post-war Europe seems as potent today as when the former West German Chancellor first uttered these words in a public lecture at Yale more than thirty years ago. Ever since the late 1940s, tensions over European integration have overshadowed an otherwise flourishing post-war relationship between Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany. After Britain's initial refusal in the 1950s to join the emerging European institutions such as the European Coal and Steel Community [ECSC] or the European Economic Community [EEC] from the outset, Germany's subsequent reluctance to back Britain's two membership applications in 1961-3 and 1967 against French resistance foreshadowed many of the dynamics that cloud the bilateral relationship to this day. Though Britain eventually did join the European Communities [EC] in 1973, its open scepticism towards new European initiatives such as direct elections to the European Parliament or the European Monetary System [EMS] continued to compromise British-German relations during much of Schmidt's chancellorship in the 1970s; developments that were not helped by Britain's attempts to renegotiate its terms of membership in 1974-75, or by its fight to reduce its EC budget contributions from the late 1970s onwards. The 1990s then saw British-German tensions over Europe reach new heights."--

Die Europäische Union ist aktuell mit einem beispiellosen Zusammenspiel komplexer Krisen konfrontiert. Obwohl deren Ursprünge oftmals weit in die Vergangenheit zurückreichen, ist die Geschichte der europäischen Integration in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung kaum präsent. Aufbauend auf aktuellster Forschung greifen in diesem Band führende Expert:innen Schlüsselthemen gegenwärtiger europapolitischer Debatten auf, diskutieren deren historische Wurzeln und denken sie weiter. In verständlicher Sprache und frei von EU- oder Fachjargon beleuchten die Autor:innen grundlegende Dynamiken der europäischen Integration seit 1945 und erweitern die oftmals stark gegenwarts-orientierte Debatte um historische Perspektiven.