A 1956 trial balloon toward revising Germany’s eastern border claim collapsed within a day

Evidence

A prominent example of this dynamic was the case of Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano in the spring and early summer of 1956. At a London press conference on 1 May, Brentano characterized Germany’s claim to the Oder-Neisse territories as “somewhat problematic” and suggested that for the sake of reunification with the GDR, the Federal Republic might eventually have to consider renouncing that claim. … The launch failed spectacularly. Instant and vociferous protests from expellee activists caused the foreign minister to backtrack within 24 hours, and he spent much of the next two months placating the expellee camp with official statements, personal letters, and even a keynote address at a major expellee rally, all of which were aimed at reestablishing his credibility as a stout defender of the orthodox Ostpolitik line. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 105

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s question about what happens when rational/moral correction attempts encounter a grievance-hardened constituency — connects to the backfire-effects literature and to the expellee-organization case study.