External Allied pressure, not domestic will, drove Bonn’s 1959 nonaggression overture toward the East.
Evidence
However, larger foreign policy considerations caused the government to seize the initiative in early 1959. Since the onset of a renewed Berlin crisis a few months earlier, the Federal Republic faced intensified pressure for a more elastic Ostpolitik from its Western allies. Behind the scenes, the Americans pushed for flexibility, particularly toward Poland, and in the public arena Charles de Gaulle distinguished himself by advocating a German recognition of the Oder-Neisse line. Bonn’s nonaggression proposal was a direct response to such pressures. The initiative’s chief sponsors—Minister Brentano and his Foreign Office staff—justified their brainchild as a way of gaining “breathing space,” of adapting to Allied demands while avoiding the hazards of premature action on the Oder-Neisse issue. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 199
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader question of manufactured external enemies and what happens when the ‘lost homeland’ grievance loses salience — here the government is forced to move precisely because external events (Berlin crisis, Allied pressure) de-prioritize the expellee grievance.
- SEED: Angle: the 1959 nonaggression proposal as case study of a grievance-based constituency being bypassed through institutional secrecy (excluding the Expellee Ministry) — useful contrast with open confrontation.