Post-war Greco-German Relations, 1953–1981: Economic Development, Business Interests and European Integration

"When people think of Germany’s relation to Greece in the twentieth century, they think of the Nazi occupation and the sovereign debt crisis. But as Christos Tsakas reveals in this stimulating work, in between came West Germany’s sponsoring role in the political integration of Greece in Europe, without which recent austerity debates would never have been possible. The book successfully deconstructs a more simplistic “blame game” — as the best history often does."
–Samuel Moyn, Yale University

"Christos Tsakas’ book shows how central the Greek-German relation was in the history of European integration, long before the tension that developed between the two countries in the 2010s. […] Tsakas provides a broad picture that effectively recentres the debate on the origins of our current predicament."

–Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, University of Glasgow

"Christos Tsakas’ historical analysis problematizes contemporary narratives of Greco-German relations that focus on conflicts between sovereign debt defaults and austerity measures. […] Tsakas presents a nuanced perspective of the bilateral relationship and sheds new light on the wider dynamics of regional integration in the twentieth century."

– Grace Ballor, Bocconi University

This book explores the post-war Greco-German relationship and asks how this relationship fits into, and changes, the narrative of European integration. The book highlights West Germany’s role in shaping Greece’s development model and argues that Greece's accession to the Community in 1981 had a long back story in the modernization strategies adopted by the two countries as early as the 1950s. The success, not the failure, of those strategies lies at the root of Greece's lingering balance of payments problems: the ever-widening trade deficit with Germany, the country’s main trading partner, was the price of Greek economic growth in the decades following the war. By addressing this three-decade story of uneasy continuity, the book offers new insights into core-periphery relations in Europe, questions the conventional wisdom about Greece’s path to Europe, and challenges the way the so-called North-South divide has been adduced to explain the recent euro crisis. In doing so, the author calls attention to past cooperation between leading political and business circles in Greece and Germany, making this a useful and insightful read for historians and political scientists alike.

Christos Tsakas is a historian and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the EUI. He has previously held fellowships in Berlin, Florence, Princeton, Harvard, and Athens.
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