At a Tripartite Summit held on 15 February 1991, Václav Havel, President of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, József Antall, Prime Minister of the Republic of Hungary, and Lech Walesa, President of the Republic of Poland, establish the Visegrad Group (named after a town near Budapest) by signing the ‘Declaration on cooperation between the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Hungary in striving for European integration’. They also decide to wind up the institutions created in connection with the Cold War and to disband the Warsaw Pact. The dissolution of the Pact would officially take effect in Prague on 1 July 1991.
‘ … We even provide the user manual.’ On 28 July 1949, as plans are being made for the organisation of European defence, French cartoonist Jean Effel harshly criticises the prominent role played by the United States (on the right, Uncle Sam) in the efforts to rearm the fledgling Federal Republic of Germany. The FRG is depicted as a Germania with aggressive, militaristic features, who is being handed a gun and user manual by Uncle Sam. Her steel horned helmet with a crossed-out swastika recalls the misdeeds and atrocities of Nazi Germany during the Second World War and emphasises France’s distrust of post-war Germany. In the background we see Britannia and Meisje, the personifications of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, carrying their guns on their shoulders for military training. In the context of the Cold War, the United States is calling on France to accept the rapid rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany because it is increasingly afraid that the Soviet Union will launch an offensive military campaign in Western Europe. But the majority of the general public, especially in France, does not seem ready to accept a new German army, with memories of the Second World War and the Nazi occupation still painfully present.
In this interview excerpt, Willy Claes, Belgian Minister for Economic Affairs from 1973 to 1974, from 1977 to 1982 and from 1988 to 1992 and Foreign Minister from 1992 to 1994, admits that the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 took him by surprise. This historical event, which signalled the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), paved the way for German reunification. Claes also emphasises the importance of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) during this period.
In this interview excerpt, Sir Brian Unwin, a diplomat in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1960 to 1968, a senior official in Her Majesty’s Treasury from 1968 to 1985, Chairman of the Board of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise from 1987 to 1993 and President of the European Investment Bank from 1993 to 1999, discusses the relative disinterest of the British public in European integration, particularly in the signing of the Treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) in Rome in 1957. He explains that at the end of the 1950s, the British public was mainly interested in issues related to the Suez Crisis, the Cold War and the process of decolonisation.
In this interview excerpt, Mark Eyskens, Belgian Prime Minister in 1981 and Minister for External Relations from 1989 to 1992, explains the reasons and processes that led to the signing in Paris on 21 November 1990 of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, in which the Heads of State or Government of the States participating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) undertake to meet the objectives of democracy, peace and unity in a new Europe after the end of the Cold War.
In this interview, Willem van Eekelen, Netherlands Minister for Defence from 1986 to 1988 and Secretary-General of Western European Union (WEU) from 1989 to 1994, gives the reasons for the establishment of the Agency for the Control of Armaments (ACA) and the Standing Armaments Committee (SAC) in 1954 and 1955, in the middle of the Cold War.
In this interview excerpt, Francis Gutmann, an official in the French Foreign Ministry from 1951 to 1957 and Secretary-General of the External Relations Ministry from 1981 to 1985, discusses France’s position on the Soviet military presence in the Mediterranean during the Cold War and its implications for the balance of forces. France was prepared to do all it could to maintain a strategic balance between the United States and Russia in the Mediterranean, but the situation in Afghanistan was not seen as a direct threat to the strategic balance in the region.
‘It’s been cut in two … Both together: “What have you hatched there?”’ In April 1949, against the background of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Opland, Dutch cartoonist, speculates on the future politics of a divided Germany.
On 1 July 1948, the Italian newspaper Il nuovo Corriere della Sera explains how the Berlin Blockade fits into the scheme of the Cold War and considers the fate of Germany.
‘...placed under the tutelage of France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. "As you can see, it seems that we have not really gained any ground."' For Opland, Dutch cartoonist, the Cold War makes any rapid solution to the problem of the partitioning of Germany difficult.