Controversy surrounds the construction of postwar European institutions. How far did the leaders of West European states simply respond to American pressures and to cold war politics? Were they motivated by federalist idealism, or by economic and power-political factors? Why did states behave in different ways towards the many new institutions created during the first fifteen years after the end of the Second World War?

These studies, by an international team of historians, use newly released archival material to examine the motivations of national political leaders and their officials.

Topics covered include French and British military thinking about European and national defence; British and French officials and their European integration policies; Italian, Belgian and Dutch attitudes towards the politics of postwar European integration; German decision-making elites in the 1950s; Britain and the first attempt to join the EEC; and the covert relationship between the USA and the European federalists.