Bringing new evidence and analysis to the changes in a fraught historical relationship, Carole Fink will discuss how West Germany and Israel moved in almost opposite directions after 1965: The FRG, the world’s third largest export economy, launched a series of independent diplomatic initiatives in Europe and the Middle East, while Israel, after its 1967 military victory, became increasingly isolated and dependent upon the United States. Yet the two countries remained closely connected by shared security concerns, personal bonds, and the recurrent evocations of the German-Jewish past.

Carole Fink is Humanities Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at The Ohio State University is the author and editor of fifteen books, most recently West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965-1974, the second edition of Cold War: An International History, and Writing 20^th Century International History: Explorations and Examples.  Two of her other books – The Genoa Conference of 1922 and Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878-1938 - were awarded the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association, and her biography of the French historian and resistance hero Marc Bloch has been translated into six languages. Since retiring from Ohio State, Fink has been a guest professor in China, Israel, Germany, and Australia, and she is currently at work on a new book on West Germany and the Soviet Jewish refugees during the last two decades of the Cold War.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest and the George Washington University History Department for their support.