Word: rearmaments
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...provided much evidence of a relaxation of the old British attitude. Self-sufficiency was obviously impossible to Britain and the Commonwealth in 1945. The minimum involvement in Europe consistent with European stability and British defense was Britain's aim. That minimum was a substantial effort in terms of rearmament programs and the stationing of the major part of Britain's armored divisions in Germany. It entailed an official abandonment of the belief that the Channel could be a defense. That has been the starting point of the post-war move away from isolationism...
Mendès-France was one Frenchman, at least, who seemed to realize that France's time for putting off things was near an end. "German rearmament has already been decided upon," he warned. "The only question is whether it will be with us or in spite...
...brooding purposefulness, the poorly led Social Democrats then parceled out their ammunition and unslung their weapons to fight Adenauer over the London agreement just as they had so long fought him over EDC-because, they insisted, West Germany's rearmament in the camp of the West would kill the last hope of German unification. Just before the Socialists' offensive jumped off, Russia's Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov dropped down on East Berlin's airport and produced from his briefcase a diplomatic time bomb designed to derail the London agreement...
...Foot. The Soviet Union, he announced, wants a new four-power conference on German reunification and is even "willing to discuss" the West's proposals for free elections. The death of EDC, explained Molotov suavely, had created "new possibilities of reconciliation." But if West Germany went ahead with rearmament, he warned, "the restoration of German unity would become impossible." The new Soviet gesture was itself evidence of how much Molotov feared the strength that West Germany would add to the West's alliance. But the Social Democrats, as Molotov had doubtless intended, happily snatched up his bomb...
...Germans hope to be making their own light arms, by 1959 their own tanks and jet fighters (under the London agreement, they can not make atomic weapons, big bombers, guided missiles, bacteriological and chemical weapons). The Bonn government is budgeting $2.7 billion for the first year of rearmament...