W ilfried L oth . Die Rettung der Welt

Wilfried Loth’s Die Rettung der Welt, which the title claims is about nothing less than “saving the world,” provides a history of attempts at détente between the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War, from around 1950 to 1989–1990. It is the revised and updated edition of Loth’s earlier book with the less dramatic title Helsinki, 1. August 1975: Entspannung und Abrüstung (1998), which was translated into English as Overcoming the Cold War: A History of Détente, 1950–1991 (2002). As in the first edition of this book, Loth sets the scene with a prologue: a snapshot of the signing ceremony for the Helsinki Final Act on August 1, 1975. He does not use this scene to frame a teleological endpoint or turning point of his historical narrative. Instead, he stresses the long-term historical genealogies of this moment and its embedding in Cold War international history. He argues that the first attempt at a European collective security arrangement started with Vyacheslav Molotov’s proposal for a European security conference in January 1954. A more direct predecessor to the Helsinki process, he says, was a 1965 Warsaw Pact proposal for an East-West meeting to discuss measures to enhance “collective security” in Europe (9–10). Loth also points toward the legacies of the Helsinki Final Act, specifically to the events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond.

Cold war · Collective memory · Political science · Politics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law