ABSTRACT
Organizing Atlanticism: The Bilderberg Group and the Atlantic Institute, 1952–1963
The Bilderberg group, which originated in Europe in 1952, slowly organized an American participation in the following two years. After a first conference held in May 1954, it rapidly developed into one of the most successful private transatlantic organizations of the 1950s. The project for an Atlantic Institute, which dates back to 1953–54, took longer to develop into a concrete institution, and was formally created, after several years of preparation, in January 1961. Both organizations received funding and support from the Ford Foundation and became fully-established fora in the early 1960s. The study compares the two initiatives to see how they shed light on the more general context of a ‘transatlantic culture’ in the Cold War. Although the networks of personnel were of a different nature and drew on different circles and professions, one can observe some interlocking, and their joint success in the early 1960s was partly due to their importance in ‘outflanking’ Gaullism in France.
