Abstract
This chapter explores Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's foreign policy and his government's interaction with the expellees and their purported organizational representatives. The basic objective of Adenauer's foreign policy was for West Germany to be permanently integrated into the Western community, an imperative derived from a coolly realistic reading of the post-war balance of power in Europe. Because the programme was aimed at a radical reorientation of German politics and presupposed a de facto abandonment of popular national causes, Adenauer regarded systematic public dishonesty at home as necessary for its implementation. This chapter highlights an often overlooked major theme in the early history of the Federal Republic of Germany: the complex way in which the expellee problem functioned as a link between the country's domestic politics and foreign policies.
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