ABSTRACT
The Berlin Wall fell at a time when the European integration process was advancing very rapidly. Most of the existing literature on the end of the Cold War in Europe does acknowledge this fact, albeit often as little more than a piece of contextualising detail. For the 1970s in particular, authors are beginning to have a literature that explores in some depth the interconnections between the East-West conflict and the changing shape and nature of Western Europe. Much of the US-centred literature on the end of the Cold War, meanwhile, shows only a passing interest in the integration process, tending instead to portray Helmut Kohl's European partners as hesitant and scared obstructions to German unity, ultimately swept aside by a diplomatic push for unification dominated by Bonn and Washington. In most other sub-periods, writing about European integration history has been equally culpable of disregarding the Cold War.
