Introduction

European integration and the Cold War have both played a significant role in shaping the evolution of Europe since the Second World War. Each, in their own different ways, did much to divide Europe and to unify it. The integration process has from the outset drawn a sharp dividing line between those countries which chose to participate in the ‘building of Europe’ and those which did not. It also created strong bonds, economic, political and institutional, between the six, then nine, ten, 12, 15 and now 27 countries which have been involved. Likewise the Cold War underlined not merely the sharp distinction between Eastern and Western Europe, between the communist and free worlds, but also a less clearcut but still important fracture between those European countries which belonged to one bloc or the other and those neutrals which remained detached from the East-West conflict. The Cold War too had a strong unifying effect, establishing lasting ties between the countries of each Cold War alliance and making much more solid and enduring the interconnections between Western Europe and the undisputed leader of the Western world, the United States. Both processes, moreover, were born, or at least institutionalised, in the same crucial five years immediately following the end of the Second World War. In addition, both were profoundly marked by many of the political heavyweights of the postwar period. Ernest Bevin, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Paul-Henri Spaak, Dwight Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles or John F. Kennedy feature prominently in most accounts of both the integration of Europe and the development of Western Europe during the Cold War.