Word: brandts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Only three weeks after Chancellor Willy Brandt and Premier Aleksei Kosygin signed the Treaty of Moscow, economic cooperation between West Germany and the Soviet Union was already on the road. West Germany's Daimler-Benz last week confirmed rumors that it is indeed negotiating with the Soviets to build what would be the world's largest truck plant on the banks of the Kama River, 560 miles east of Moscow. The West German automaker also announced that Soviet Automobile Minister Aleksandr Tarasov will go to Stuttgart later this month to discuss the project. As a spokesman for Daimler...
More important than financing, however, is the fact that Brandt's government does not want the German company making deals alone with the Soviets. By organizing a West European consortium, Bonn wants to emphasize to the Soviets that its own economy is completely interwoven with that of the European Economic Community and thus discourage possible Soviet notions about luring West Germany into a neutralist position with economic deals. Also, by bringing in other European firms, the West Germans hope to reduce the offense to Washington, which had applied pressure on Henry Ford II to turn down a similar Soviet...
...Willy Brandt's own ideas about Ostpolitik date from the years he served as mayor of West Berlin from 1957 to 1966. Brandt became disillusioned early with the Dulles-Adenauer policy, which assumed that German reunification would be achieved as an inevitable consequence of the West's economic and military strength...
...Then Brandt saw the Wall go up, and the West did nothing to stop it. Washington's reaction-or lack of it -made it clear that the U.S. was not prepared to risk confrontation with the Soviets over the German issue. So Brandt set out to try to do something himself. He decided on a policy of "small steps" toward the same ends -modest efforts at relaxation on a bilateral basis. His first attempt at Ostpolitik, after becoming Foreign Minister in 1966 in the Grand Coalition, was in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets seized on the West German rapprochement with Czechoslovakia...
Some observers feared that the whole fabric of Ostpolitik could be rent by the fall of Brandt's tiny coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party, whose 30 members give him a bare twelve-seat majority in the 496-seat Bundestag. A defeat of the Free Democrats in the state elections in Hesse and Bavaria in November could result in a coalition crisis that could end the Brandt government as presently constituted. Even so, Brandt's foreign policy seems to enjoy solid support among a large majority of West Germans, who grew weary of the cold-war posturing...