Ronald J. Granieri – författare

The 1960s in Europe saw the emergence of social protest, newly confident center-left parties, Cold War détente, and frustrations with the pace and direction of European integration. The Federal Republic of Germany experienced these upheavals from a special position: on the front line of the Cold War, occupying a key position in both the European and Atlantic communities, and haunted by Nazi-era crimes. The parties that had governed West Germany since its founding in 1949-the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU)-underwent an especially intense identity crisis. European integration and the social market economy were essential to Christian Democratic political identity, but both faced challenges from right and left. The CDU/CSU was torn between market liberalism and social solidarity, and between nationalist conservatism and European enthusiasm. Konrad Adenauer, the first West German Chancellor, led the CDU and CSU to two decades of political dominance. As Adenauer retired from active politics, however, the parties gradually lost their grip on national power and had to reorient themselves in a rapidly changing domestic and international political environment. Aspiring to appeal to the broad political center, and to advocate both for German reunification and European cooperation, both parties and their leaders, including Franz Josef Strauß and Helmut Kohl, struggled to stabilize the provisional Federal Republic within a divided Germany and a divided Europe, then to react to the challenges of détente between East and West, and finally to develop a coherent response to the revolutions of 1989 in which those divisions were swept away. Among the first books to place the development of the CDU/CSU within the larger context of West German politics and international relations during the late Cold War, Adenauer's Heirs explores still potent questions of political identity from the age of détente to the present day.

James Bond, Ian Fleming’s irrepressible and ubiquitous ‘spy,’ is often understood as a Cold Warrior, but James Bond’s Cold War diverged from the actual global conflict in subtle but significant ways.That tension between the real and fictional provides perspectives into Cold War culture transcending ideological and geopolitical divides. The Bondiverse is complex and multi-textual, including novels, films, video games, and even a comic strip, and has also inspired an array of homages, copies, and competitors. Awareness of its rich possibilities only becomes apparent through a multi-disciplinary lens.The desire to consider current trends in Bondian studies inspired a conference entitled ‘The Bondian Cold War,’ convened at Tallinn University, Estonia in June 2019. Conference participants, drawn from three continents and multiple disciplines – film studies, history, intelligence studies, and literature, as well as intelligence practitioners – offered papers on the literary and cinematic aspects of the ‘spy’, discussed fact versus fiction in the Bond canon, went in search of a global Bond, and pondered gender and sexuality across the Bondiverse.This volume of essays inspired by that conference, suitable for students, researchers, and anyone interested in Cold War culture, makes vital contributions to understanding Bond as a global phenomenon, across traditional divisions of East and West, and beyond the end of the Cold War from which he emerged.

James Bond, Ian Fleming’s irrepressible and ubiquitous ‘spy,’ is often understood as a Cold Warrior, but James Bond’s Cold War diverged from the actual global conflict in subtle but significant ways.That tension between the real and fictional provides perspectives into Cold War culture transcending ideological and geopolitical divides. The Bondiverse is complex and multi-textual, including novels, films, video games, and even a comic strip, and has also inspired an array of homages, copies, and competitors. Awareness of its rich possibilities only becomes apparent through a multi-disciplinary lens.The desire to consider current trends in Bondian studies inspired a conference entitled ‘The Bondian Cold War,’ convened at Tallinn University, Estonia in June 2019. Conference participants, drawn from three continents and multiple disciplines – film studies, history, intelligence studies, and literature, as well as intelligence practitioners – offered papers on the literary and cinematic aspects of the ‘spy’, discussed fact versus fiction in the Bond canon, went in search of a global Bond, and pondered gender and sexuality across the Bondiverse.This volume of essays inspired by that conference, suitable for students, researchers, and anyone interested in Cold War culture, makes vital contributions to understanding Bond as a global phenomenon, across traditional divisions of East and West, and beyond the end of the Cold War from which he emerged.

Whenever asked to name his most significant accomplishment as West Germany's first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer would invariably reply: "The alliance with the free West." Scholars have echoed his assessment, citing the Federal Republic of Germany's successful integration into the American-led West (Westbindung) as the key to its postwar economic and political recovery. Behind this simple success story, however,lies a much more complicated history: Adenauer and the CDU/CSU remained ambivalent about the ultimate relationship between Europe, Germany, and the United States within the West, torn between visions of Continental European integration based on Franco-German reconciliation and of an Atlantic community linking Europe and the "Anglo-Saxons." These differences eventually erupted into a damaging public conflict between "Atlanticists" and "Gaullists," which colored Adenauer's last years and, after his retirement in 1963, led directly to the failure of his successor, Ludwig Erhard.The opening of various personal and party archives over the past few years has now made the entire Adenauer Era accessible for historians. As one of the first efforts to use that material to re-examine existing conventional wisdom about the period, this book traces the roles of Adenauer and the CDU/CSU in shaping Westbindung. Adenauer emerges as a skilled and resourceful (if also mistrustful and devious) politician, and as a distinctly German statesman, maneuvering between allies and adversaries to shape both the Western community and the German role in it, leaving a legacy that still influences contemporary German-American and European-American relations.