Brandt’s Ostpolitik accepted the lost eastern territories despite expellee opposition

Evidence

Recognizing that a future reunification could not occur without accepting the Oder–Neisse line, Brandt concluded treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland in 1972 that acknowledged the boundary as ‘inviolable’. In addition to the FRG’s de facto recognition of the GDR in the same year, thus burying the Hallstein Doctrine, a treaty with Czechoslovakia in 1973 nullified the 1938 Munich agreement, the most notorious episode in the prewar appeasement of Hitler. Although the FRG recognized the Oder–Neisse and Czech–German boundaries as ‘inviolable’ rather than ‘unconditional’, a concession to the vehement opposition of expellee organizations, Brandt’s Ostpolitik represented a major step toward accepting the territorial consequences of Hitler’s war for Lebensraum. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 194

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reader’s core question: group solidarity over an unresolved grievance (the expellee organizations’ opposition) is overridden once the state stops feeding the grievance — showing the manufactured threat can be outflanked from above, not only via its own collapse. — connects to: Unification ended German territorial claims despite the expellee constituency’s objections — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 205
• SEED: Article angle: how states can defuse an identity-anchored grievance movement by redefining the ‘obvious truth’ (territorial claims) through treaties rather than confronting the movement directly.

Broader Connections

• Unification ended German territorial claims despite the expellee constituency’s objections #corroborates (0.82) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 205