Word: ostpolitiking
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Teutonic Overkill. The Germans were principally interested in two facets of church activity. One was what they referred to as Ostpolitik des Vatikans. Despite the Vatican's obvious hostility to Communism, Hitler was obsessed with the illogical idea that Rome and the Russians were about to form an alliance. Thus when Pius in 1942 ordered two monsignori to study Russian, the order stirred apprehensive speculation in Berlin. Nazi leaders like Martin Bormann and Reinhardt ("The Hangman") Heydrich were also interested in what Heydrich called "political Catholicism." Certain that the church was attempting to establish a political alternative...
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt has had less than three months to apply his Ostpolitik, so it is hardly surprising that he has not yet achieved any significant relaxation of tensions in Central Europe. Last week, in fact, Moscow stiffened its attitude toward Bonn by endorsing Walter Ulbricht's demand for full diplomatic recognition of East Germany. One effect of Brandt's initiatives toward the East, however, has been all too apparent: the exhaustion of ranking West German diplomats...
...later as Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister in the Grand Coalition, Brandt performed admirably. In Berlin, he coolly faced down the Soviets during the 1959 crisis, when Nikita Khrushchev threatened the city's links to the West. As Bonn's foreign policy expert since 1966, he began an Ostpolitik diplomacy, seeking new amity with the East that his government is certain to emphasize with new vigor...
Clever Timing. In the days before the Czechoslovak crisis, Foreign Minister Willy Brandt held that West Germany should allow the Communists to operate as a legal party if it expected his new Ostpolitik to achieve its goal: establishing normal relations with the East bloc. But at that time, East German Boss Walter Ulbricht stonewalled Brandt's plan by ordering West German Reds to stay underground. Ulbricht feared that the West German diplomatic initiatives would isolate his unpopular satrapy; therefore he wanted to be able to denounce Bonn throughout Eastern Europe by pointing out the Federal Republic's "persecution...
...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...