Word: czechoslovakias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...quite another thing when West German diplomats and industrialists began arriving with the sort of offers that tempted Eastern bloc countries to look suddenly Westward. Rumania asserted its inde pendence from Moscow by trading ambassadors with Bonn; Hungary was toying with the idea of doing the same thing. Czechoslovakia accepted a West German trade mission, and it was to West Germany that Party First Secretary Alexander Dubcek looked for the loans he needed to revitalize his country's economy and free it from Soviet domination...
...Western military experts, including most West German commanders, feel that the Soviet Union would not risk starting World War III by actually invading the Federal Republic. Nonetheless, ordinary West Germans cannot help feeling physically threatened by the Red Army. Impressed by the swiftness of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, many West Germans fear that Russian tanks might punch across the border so fast and at so many points that dozens of cities would be overrun before NATO got around to repelling the invasion with its tactical nuclear missiles. In that case, much of West Germany would become a nuclear battlefield...
...mood of angst felt more keenly than in West Germany. Last week, as the Bundestag met for a two-day debate on the new threat to West Germany's security, Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger expressed his people's anxiety in careful, guarded terms. "The events in Czechoslovakia compel us to exercise a high degree of vigilance," he said. "While the nuclear balance has diminished the threat of an all-out nu clear war, it also made a conventional attack by a potential enemy no longer seem impossible...
Relaxed Atmosphere. Part of the Soviet bluster obviously is intended for consumption in Eastern Europe, where rantings against West Germany may help divert attention from the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. But the Soviets undoubtedly hope to accomplish more than that. In their view, West Germany represents the chief threat to the status quo in Eastern Europe, and behind much of the Soviet hostility lies the success of West Germany's Ostpolitik. Until two years ago, the West German government refused to have any political dealings with the Communist countries in Eastern Europe, a rigid cold war stance that suited...
...Gaulle's hosts were stung by his failure to join at once with the other major Western allies in warning the Soviet Union after the invasion of Czechoslovakia that any aggression against the Federal Republic would be met by force. They were further disappointed that the French had just used their veto at Brussels to reject a preferential-tariff proposal that would have opened the way for Britain's eventual inclusion in the Common Market. As a result, the West Germans were now thinking about organizing a Common Market that would include Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia but omit...