Adenauer supported expellee demands instrumentally to shore up his Western policy, not from conviction.

Evidence

Genuine conviction of the merits of the cause was thus clearly not the reason for the government’s and the parties’ support for the desiderata of the expellee organizations. The real reasons lay deeper and can only be characterized as instrumental in nature. For Adenauer, the expellees constituted a significant prop for his government’s Westpolitik, particularly in the period preceding the final ratification of the Paris Treaties, which endowed the Federal Republic with extensive sovereignty and NATO membership in May 1955. At home, Adenauer needed the backing of the expellees, partly to secure an electoral majority for his government and partly to demonstrate his supposed commitment to reunification and other national causes, even as his practical policies increasingly diverged from such objectives. Acting upon his stated conviction that a causal link existed between the expellee problem and a successful outcome of his Western policy, the chancellor publicly committed himself to advocating the expellee organizations’ Ostpolitik interests in his negotiations with the Western powers. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 150

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks directly to the reader’s research question about solidarity sustained by manufactured external grievance rather than primordial identity — here, elite instrumental use of the homeland-loss grievance while policy diverge from stated goals, with the implied question of what happens when Adenauer’s Western course makes that grievance moot. — connects to: Adenauer publicly endorsed the expellees’ revisionist territorial claims. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 95; Adenauer weaponized expellee grievances to stall reunification and extract concessions — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 156; Expellee-organization opposition, not state-interest reasoning, drove Adenauer’s Ostpolitik reversals. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 238
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: did the expellee rank-and-file eventually perceive that Adenauer’s public advocacy diverged from his actual Western-first policy, and did that perception affect their support? This is the threat-hardened vs. rationally-corrected belief dynamic.

Related

• Adenauer publicly endorsed the expellees’ revisionist territorial claims. (similarity 0.91)
• Adenauer weaponized expellee grievances to stall reunification and extract concessions (similarity 0.91)
• Adenauer backed the expellee cause mainly to preempt social unrest. (similarity 0.89)
• Expellee-organization opposition, not state-interest reasoning, drove Adenauer’s Ostpolitik reversals. (similarity 0.88)
• Adenauer’s long tenure institutionalized expellee groups as de facto veto holders. (similarity 0.87)
• Expellee organizations supported rigid indefinite continuation of Ostpolitik non-recognition policy. (similarity 0.87)
• Adenauer avoided an Ostpolitik toward Poland chiefly out of fear of upsetting expellee leaders. (similarity 0.86)
• Expellee organizations crystallized anti-reunification-compromise principles during Cold War polarization. (similarity 0.84)
• Expellee leaders sought direct representation in Ostpolitik negotiations after unifying in 1958. (similarity 0.84)
• Pertti Ahonen — Domestic Constraints on West German Ostpolitik The Role of the Expellee Organizations in the Adenauer Era (similarity 0.83)
• Expellee organizations claimed a veto role over East policy. (similarity 0.83)
• Expellee organizations enforced an orthodox policy line by punishing political deviation (similarity 0.82)
• Expellee groups could veto policy options but not shape policy positively (similarity 0.82)
• Expellee organizations sustained West German revanchism by reinforcing refusal to accept the postwar border (similarity 0.82)
• No new Soviet provocation explains Adenauer’s July 1959 Ostpolitik about-face. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Adenauer weaponized expellee grievances to stall reunification and extract concessions #corroborates (0.82) — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 156
• Expellee-organization opposition, not state-interest reasoning, drove Adenauer’s Ostpolitik reversals. #contradicts (0.75) — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 238