Germany's cold war: the global campaign to isolate East Germany, 1949-1969

Abstract

This volume explores West Germany's efforts to prevent international acceptance of East Germany as a legitimate state following World War II, using newly available material from both sides of the Iron Curtain. West German leaders were unwilling to accept the division of their country and regarded the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an illegitimate upstart - a puppet of the occupying Soviet forces. Together with France, Britain and the United States, West Germany applied political and financial pressure to ensure that the GDR remained unrecognized by all countries outside the communist camp. While the GDR had some success in befriending countries such as Egypt, Ghana and Indonesia, West Germany's intimidation tactics and superior economic resources saw that it never had any decisive breakthrough. This book argues that Bonn's isolation campaign was dropped not due to failure but as a result of changes in West German priorities as the struggle against East Germany came to hamper efforts at reconciliation with Israel, Poland, and Yugoslavia - all countries of special relevance to Germany's recent past. Interest in morally grounded diplomacy, together with a growing conviction that the GDR could no longer be ignored, led to the abandonment of Bonn's effective but outdated efforts to hinder worldwide recognition of the East German regime.