The Road to Helsinki: An Analysis of European International Relations Leading Conference on Security and Cooperation Europe

is the history of how Europe stepped back from the brink of a third World War. Victory in Europe was declared on May 8, 1945. On March 6, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri. It seemed that World War II had not ended. Europe moved immediately into a “Cold War”, with armed camps in a divided Europe; but this time with nuclear weapons. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, signed on August 1, 1975, thirty years after VE Day, has often been called “The Peace Treaty of World War II”. It was the harbinger of the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the expansion of the European Union and NATO. It is a history of great diplomacy and political courage, of great statesmen and politicians, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.