Title: Greece During the Early Cold War, The View from the Western Archives
Subtitle: Documents
Description: Greece‘s relation with the West during the Cold War era has constantly attracted the
attention of Greek and international scholarship. In this relationship, continuities and
breaks become evident. The postwar era was marked by the continuation of the
agonizing Greek effort to integrate in the West. Thus, there was an effort to bring
relations with the major Western European states (Britain, France, West Germany,
Italy) back to a kind of normalcy. This, as could be expected, was a particularly
demanding endeavour, especially regarding the former Axis powers, against which
Greece had fought during the Second World War. The Cold War provided a context
or a medium which facilitated the rebuilding of bilateral contacts.  
	There also were breaks, or at least novelties, pointing to the ascent of a new
era of international relations. The US-Greek special relationship, forged during the
difficult years of the Greek civil war but also burdened by the memories of US
penetration in Greek policy-making in 1947-52, was a salient novel element. Greece‘s
participation in NATO was an unprecedented event: this was the first time that the
country allied formally with the major powers of the West. Last but not least,
Athens‘s ambition to participate in supranational European integration resulted in the
1961 Association Agreement with the European Economic Community, and opened
new roads for Greece‘s internal development and international relations.

This volume presents archival material from the West German, French, Italian,
British and US national archives, as well as from the NATO Archives, addressing
important aspects of this historical phenomenon. This multi-archival research was
undertaken by a large number of scholars, in the context of the Thalis project on
Greece and the Cold War, coordinated by the University of Macedonia: Konstantina
E. Botsiou, Dionysios Chourchoulis, Christos Christidis, Evanthis Hatzivassiliou,
Vaios Kalogrias, Periklis-Stelios Karavis, Manolis Koumas, Sofia Papastamkou, and
Ioannis Sakkas. All researchers also suggested documents for possible publication,
thus creating a large pool of archival material. The editors then made the final
selection and prepared this volume.

This volume cannot, of course, tell the whole story of Greece‘s relationship
with the West in the postwar era. It aims to highlight important landmarks or
perspectives, as seen by the other Western capitals. It is hoped, however, that it will
contribute to a widening of the debate on one of the most important aspects of
contemporary Greek history.
Subjects: Greece, Cold War, Greece-USA, Greece-UK, Greece-Nato, Greece-France, Greece-Germany, Greece-Italy