David Messenger's analysis of French policy and Spanish Republicanism in early postwar France seeks to contribute to Cold War scholarship by arguing for an understanding of the particularity of France's journey into the West's Cold War alliance. Rather than reading the Cold War backward into the 1944–1947 period of French/Spanish/Allied relations, Messenger suggests that we need to consider it in its own right, as a product of the preceding war period.
Messenger's examination of French-Spanish relations during that era is far more than a diplomatic history. He takes a transnational approach, focusing on the texture of the debate within France, and between the French and their Anglo-Saxon allies, about the course the relationship with Francisco Franco's Spain should take. The book's sources are wide—archival material in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as a range of relevant newspapers in the three languages. Ultimately, in reviewing...