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states were relegated to a secondary power status under the US defence umbrella. US-backed trade liberalisation promoted growing Western European interdependence in the post-war decade, while alliances (NATO, the Warsaw Pact and other pacts internationally) transformed global security. The first chancellor of the FRG, Konrad Adenauer, inherited an occupied and provisional state that was mistrusted by its neighbours because of its recent history and its strategic weight. He chose an unqualified Western orientation and adopted a policy of reconciliation and
1 The Statist, 26 January 1962, pp. 261–8. 2 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation, file: Staaten, Irland, 1951–83, Press cutting, Bulletin, nr. 197/S.1663, 23 October 1962. 3 FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, p. 134. 4 See Maher, Tortuous Path, pp. 123–6. 5 AA-PA, Bestand B31, Band 221, Beitritt Irlands zur EWG, Note & aide-mémoire, Harkort to Müller-Armack, 3 July 1961; ibid., Note, Jansen to Lahr, 4 July 1961. 6 TNA, FO 371/158220, M6114/24, Memo, Gallagher to Wilford, United Kingdom and the Six
unremitting Irish criticism of the artificial division of post-war Germany. The anti-communist convictions of Irish society and Dublin’s aversion to relations with the Soviet Union guaranteed that Ireland instinctively fell in with Bonn’s preferences, but there was an emerging utilitarian consideration too – access to the West German market for agricultural products. Antipathy towards Moscow was principally a product of the pronounced Catholicity of Irish society. It inclined towards German Christian Democracy under the aegis of Konrad Adenauer rather than the Social
-serving chancellor, Dr Konrad Adenauer, engaged in policies that went a long way to solving traditional West European rivalries. The newly minted West Germany, with its capital in Bonn, embraced international rehabilitation and integration into the democratic fold. West Germany’s position as the strategic fulcrum of Cold War Europe, its economic rebirth and the opportunities presented by West European cooperation smoothed its relative normalisation in little more than a decade. Adenauer consciously restrained the FRG’s freedom of action by enmeshing it deeply in multilateral
both the CSU and SPD after the inconclusive Landtag Election of November 1950.71 The party also responded positively to Konrad Adenauer’s overtures to join the coalition he formed after the Bundestag Election of September 1953. In fact, two GB/BHE politicians gained ministerial positions, Theodor Oberländer as Minister for Expellees and Waldemar Kraft as Minister without Portfolio. However, the GB/BHE’s influence Connor_02_MainText.indd 150 10/8/07 12:36:26 Integration of refugees into (West) Germany, 1950– 151 on Federal refugee legislation should not be
vote Bavaria Landtag (1946–47) District (1948) Bundestag (1949) Landtag (1950–51) 28.6 23.7 22.7 28.0 Lower Saxony Schleswig-Holstein 43.4 39.6 33.4 33.7 43.8 39.7 29.6 27.5 Source: Adapted from: Forschungsinstitut der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (ed.), Wahlergebnisse in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in den Bundesländern 1946–1988, pp. 3, 5, 11 (Sankt Augustin 1988); BSL (ed.), Die erste Bundestagswahl in Bayern am 14. August 1949, Beiträge zur Statistik Bayerns, No.150, p. 42 and Archiv der sozialen Demokratie der Friedrich Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn (AdsD), LV S
a common market on economic grounds. He preferred a free trade area in which German industry would flourish. It was Konrad Adenauer who persuaded Erhard to acquiesce in the arrangements for a common market. Adenauer’s main aim was to achieve a reconciliation between West Germany and its west European neighbours; France was crucial to this. Adenauer, just as with the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Defence Community, was determined to continue his west-oriented policy of embedding the Federal Republic in Western Europe. Very similar reasoning
left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD) perceived the ‘atomic age’ as positive, as a future characterised by a limitless supply of cheap electric energy.13 The prospect of nuclear destruction became a hotly contested topic in West German politics only in the wake of German rearmament. Public debate on this issue had started in 1950, and until the founding of the Bundeswehr rebuilt German armed forces within the framework of NATO in 1955. A crucial prerequisite of Germany’s return to (still limited) sovereignty, and its rearmament, was Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s
. Steinberg, ‘Right-wing historian Ernst Nolte receives the Konrad Adenauer Prize for Science’, 17 August 2000, www.wsws.org/articles/2000/aug2000/nolt-a17.shtml . 64 Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust , p. 213. 65 Ibid., p. 210. 66 R. Braun, ‘The Holocaust and problems of representation’, in Keith Jenkins (ed.), The Postmodern History Reader (Routledge, 1997), p. 421. 67 M. Kustow, interview with Richard J. Evans, Red Pepper , 72, June 2000. Quoted in T. Helms, ‘Holocaust Day must be scrapped says Muslim leaders’, Daily Telegraph , 12 September 2005.
House in March 1964 as leader of the Labour opposition, Wilson saw Johnson at six more bilateral summits in Washington: in December 1964, April 1965, December 1965, July 1966, June 1967 and February 1968, as well as (briefly) at the funeral of Konrad Adenauer in Bonn in January 1967 and at the memorial service for Harold Holt in Melbourne in December 1967. The Washington meetings would usually include an hour or two during which the