A State of Peace in Europe

“Hakkarainen’s monograph derives from a prize-winning dissertation, and the accolades are well deserved. The research base is admirably wide-ranging…[This is] an excellent study that constitutes essential reading for historians of détente in Europe…One can only hope that other researchers will write as fluidly and skillfully about those conferences—or about that other grindingly slow multilateral framework of the 1970s and 1980s: the talks on MBFR (Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions). Hakkarainen’s book provides a worthy model.”• German Studies Review

“Petri Hakkarainen deserves commendation for his thorough and well-researched account of West German government strategies and actions with regard to the CSCE between 1966 and 1975. This is true in particular for his refusal to write deterministic history from hindsight...This book is a very solid, reliable, and convincing piece of history on policy deliberations and diplomatic negotiations conducted by the West German government.”• American Historical Review

“Hakkarainen’s study makes an important historiographical contribution alongside its empirical one. The author admonishes his readers: the CSCE together with the new Ostpolitik, which in his account are intimately linked, would indeed prove instrumental in ending the Cold War and bringing about German reunification, but this does not at all justify reading history backwards from the watershed years of 1989–91…For Hakkarainen, the infiltration of triumphalist narratives into histories of the CSCE, as well as of détente more broadly, must therefore be resolutely opposed and the history of the Cold War ought to be written ‘without prejudices based in the events of 1989–90.”• German History

“West-Germany and the CSCE, 1966–1975is concisely written and develops our understanding of the pre-history of the CSCE, the FRG’s role vis-à-vis its Western allies and the complex linkages between its Ostpolitik and its interests in the CSCE.”• Journal of Contemporary History

“In a balanced way the author blends German views with those from Britain, France, and the United States, using these countries’ official documents as well. His book represents a very serious piece of scholarship and is interesting to read. It excels with a novel hypothesis, a very careful use of varied archival sources, and an ability not to lose his argument in the wealth of material.”• Helga Haftendorn, Free University, Berlin

“I don't know of any other book that deals so thoroughly with German CSCE policy in the years described here…The author has done a vast amount of research, using documents from different archives and different countries…While he is of course not the first scholar to write about the origins of the CSCE, the author does contribute new elements and interpretations to the topic.”• Benedikt Schönborn, University of Tampere, Centre for Advanced Study