The book under review is the product of a conference organized in Berlin in 2016 by the Willy-Brandt Stiftung. The chapters, all written by scholars actively working on German, European and international politics during the second half of the twentieth century, are grouped together into three sections: the first one is on Brandt and the United States; the second one on Brandt and Europe; and the final one on Brandt and Latin America. Taken together, the chapters offer a sympathetic but also intriguing portrait of one of the Federal Republic’s towering political figures. While by no means hagiographical, the collection provides plenty of food for thought. With few exceptions, the chapters focus on Brandt’s life after he resigned from the chancellorship in 1974. With his career in high political office effectively over in Germany, Brandt was free to direct his considerable energy and abilities to the wider world. In reading the chapters one is struck by the breadth of Brandt’s ambitions in this regard: to recast global economic relations through the North-South Commission and the construction of a New International Economic Order; to facilitate the transition to democracy in Spain and Portugal; to defend Détente at a time when Cold War divisions were heating up amid talk of evil empires; and to promote social democracy and human rights in Latin America. For most mortals, the pursuit of any one of these goals would be exhausting, and probably frustrating. Combined, they constituted not so much a coherent political program as an aggregation of aspirations whose translation into concrete results was bound to be difficult—and perhaps also disappointing.
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Talbot Imlay (2019) studied this question.