We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Paradoxes of Ostpolitik: Revisiting the Moscow and Warsaw Treaties, 1970.
- Authors
Gray, William Glenn
- Abstract
This article reexamines the diplomacy of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, focusing on two landmark achievements in 1970: the Moscow Treaty in August, and the Warsaw Treaty in December. On the basis of declassified US and German documentation, it argues that envoy Egon Bahr’s unconventional approach resulted in a poorly negotiated treaty with the Soviet Union that failed to address vital problems such as the status of Berlin. The outcome deepened political polarization at home and proved disconcerting to many West German allies; it also forced the four World War II victors—Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union—to save Brandt’s Ostpolitik by grinding out an agreement on access to Berlin. By contrast, West German negotiations in Warsaw yielded a treaty more in line with West German expectations, though the results proved sorely disappointing to the Polish leadership. Disagreements over restitution payments (repacked as government credits) and the emigration of ethnic Germans would bedevil German-Polish relations for years to come. Bonn’s Ostpolitik thus had a harder edge than the famous image of Brandt kneeling in Warsaw would suggest.
- Subjects
BRANDT, Willy, 1913-1992; HISTORY of treaties; GERMAN history; BAHR, Egon, 1922-2015; CIVIL restitution; TWENTIETH century
- Publication
Central European History (Cambridge University Press / UK), 2016, Vol 49, Issue 3/4, p409
- ISSN
0008-9389
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S000893891600087X