Guillaume Le Quintrec said that the book, Histoire / Geschichte, contained “unashamedly pro-European ideology” and an underlying distrust of the United States.

But he said that German historians had fought to prevent their French counterparts from introducing an even harder anti-American line into the book.

“They got us to tone it down,” M Le Quintrec, who led the French team of historians, said. “Otherwise, it would have been even worse from a British point of view.”

The Franco-German textbook, which is published today, was ordered in 2003 by President Chirac of France and Gerhard Schröder, then the German Chancellor. They wanted to strengthen ties by eliminating differences in the perception of history.

The work will be on the curriculum in both countries in the equivalent of the sixth form from September.

It starts in 1945, a convenient date that enables the authors to focus on “memories” of the Second World War rather than its causes.

“The patriotic cult of victory has given way to a universal demand to remember the victims of the war,” the work says. The next stage is the Cold War, where the US and the USSR are presented as broadly equivalent in moral terms.

Both were engaged in an arms race described as “the balance of terror” and both sought to “impose themselves by an omnipresent propaganda” that involved “gross exaggerations and simplifications”.

A substantial section of the work is devoted to the EU — a startling success story and a beacon for the rest of the world, according to the five German and five French scholars who worked on the project. “Through its willingness to co-operate with the Third World, its attachment to multilateralism, its dialogue with other regions, the EU appears as a model on the international scene,” it says.

By contrast, modern American unilateralism “enshrined by George W. Bush is widely criticised throughout the world”, it says. Music, cinema and other forms of culture are “dominated by American multinational firms, which are the main beneficiaries of the free trade”.

M Le Quintrec told The Times that it was “largely right” to describe the work as antiAmerican. But he said that German historians had insisted upon softening the message with sentences such as: “Some people, notably in Germany, consider the US to be a power which defends democracy in a world where the UN is not always able or willing to do it.”

Despite what M Le Quintrec described as “lively discussions” over the US, he said that the work had posed fewer difficulties than he had expected.

However, the next book in the series, to be published next year, may be more problematic. It will cover the 18th century to 1945 — when France and Germany were repeatedly at war.

QUESTIONS ASKED

“Can the European Union represent a new type of power? How does it differentiate itself from the American model of power?”

“Should the European Union free itself from the United States in the field of defence?”

“Present in a detailed manner a project for global governance that would claim to remedy the problems of today’s world.”

“Which country dominates the world’s music market? What are the consequences of this situation?”

“Describe and explain the American preponderance over world cinema. Which countries resist this domination? Why?”

“Why has France decided to protect the French language?”

“What are the reasons for the rise in unemployment and why do you think it is particularly high in France and Germany?”

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