This dissertation examines the history of the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) in NATO from its establishment through its formative and influential first decade. The current historiography, based on a limited number of primary and secondary sources, sees the NPG as an effective method of nuclear sharing in the early 1960s, as a vehicle utilized by the non-nuclear NATO members to influence United States nuclear planning. Utilizing government sources in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, this thesis argues that the Nuclear Planning Group was an effective tool of consultation that allowed for a measure of compromise concerning concepts on nuclear war. This consultation apparatus was a significant departure from American treatment of allied concerns in the first fifteen years of NATO. It represented a method of bringing West Germany into a unique relationship that conformed to the Anglo-American views on nuclear planning while also serving to minimize the influence of other non-nuclear states. There existed limits to which the United States was willing to extend nuclear influence to its partners, and in the longer term, the NPG remained a political instrument, that was unable to resolve some of the most difficult problems of nuclear defense it faced in its first decade. This study of nuclear relations within NATO focuses on those in the highest levels of government and how NATO allies negotiated policy. Once additional documents become available, further expansion of this topic into the dramatic events of NATO's nuclear history in the 1980s will become possible.