Word: germane
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...West Germans hoped that by making friends in Eastern Europe they would create the relaxed atmosphere in which divided Germany might someday be able to unite. At the outset of the Ostpolitik, the mood in Europe was one of detente. The Soviets seemed willing enough to let Charles de Gaulle traipse around the East bloc and talk about bridge building. But it was 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...
...Second Finland. The question is whether the Soviets will limit their at tacks on West Germany to words. Almost all 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...
...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 the Krem lin's own aims well. Then in came the Grand Coalition, whose Foreign Minister, Willy Brandt, initiated the radical policy of attempting to establish diplomatic relations...
Consequently, the Soviets moved to block West Germany's diplomatic and economic penetration into Eastern Europe. At the same time, in a cleverly co-ordinated set of moves, the Soviets have made it far harder for the West Germans at home to keep their own political house in order. One quandary for Bonn is the existence of the far-rightist National Democrat Party, which now attracts some 9% of the West German electorate. For months the government has been contemplating legal action to suppress the N.D.P. But now that the Soviets have attacked it, West German political leaders...
...West Germans can take scant com fort from the state of their own defenses. The Bundeswehr, which is 52,000 men short of its planned 508,000 force level, showed only two weeks ago, in the Black Lion maneuvers, that it was far too inadequately trained and equipped. Wrote Der Spiegel, the big West German newsmagazine: "The Federal Republic's military situation has never appeared so hopeless as today...