Word: bonne
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Prussia, the former German provinces east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, were ceded to Poland at the Potsdam Conference. Some 9,575,000 Germans lived in the four provinces then; 7,330,000 have since left. In December, when West Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse boundary in the Bonn-Warsaw Treaty, a secret protocol paved the way for the remaining Germans to leave...
This exodus entails few physical hardships. On arrival at the hospital-clean refugee camp, the newcomers are fed a hearty breakfast, and over the next four days they are given medical checkups, new papers, job counseling and briefings. When the refugees are ready to leave the camp, the Bonn government provides each family of four with the equivalent of $200; the newcomers are also entitled to reimbursement for visa and travel expenses. In labor-short West Germany, where 900,000 jobs are open, the refugees should have no trouble finding work...
...legal documents protect them. West Germany's constitution prohibits the extradition of its own citizens. The 1954 accord between the Allies and Bonn prohibits the retrial in Germany of a war criminal if he has already been convicted in a French, British or U.S. court. That provision was designed to prevent lenient German judges from retrying war criminals after Allied courts had convicted them, and giving them lighter sentences. Ironically, the provision has served to protect those who were tried in absentia in Allied courts but then surfaced after 1955, when West Germany regained its sovereignty. As a result...
...time limit on ratification by the Bundestag. If the treaties of Moscow and Warsaw remain unratified for more than a few months, however, Bonn's relations with the Soviets and Poles are bound to deteriorate. Soviet diplomats have privately warned that Moscow will "punish" the West Germans if they do not follow through on the treaty. By punish, the Russians most probably mean that they would put the old German card back into play to block Bonn's overtures to other East bloc countries. But Brandt is hoping that the Soviet impulse will be offset by Moscow's hunger...
Brandt's Ostpolitik gives West Germany far greater leverage within the Common Market than it had before. The Western Europeans cannot afford to let West Germany slip its Western moorings and drift to the East; accordingly they are intensifying their efforts to tie Bonn more securely to the Western European structure. That is precisely what Brandt wants...