Cold War history research of the recent years suggests that the East-West détente process of the 1970s was a more significant element than previously believed in understanding and explaining the processes on both sides of the East-West divide which led to the peaceful end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. This anthology is a contribution to this research. The dozen articles of the book elucidate the European d6tente process from grass-root as well as diplomatic levels, including the Helsinki Conference Final Act of 1975 on respect of human rights and human contacts across the Iron Curtain of the Cold War. The articles are original research based on recently opened and not previously used state and private archives in West and East Europe and the United States, written by a mixture of internationally distinguished senior scholars and younger, promising researchers from the United States, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, and Denmark.