West German party leaders privately abandoned the lost-territory goal but kept secrecy.
Evidence
By 1959 the party’s top leaders were ready to admit, in a closed meeting, what some of them had concluded years earlier—that they saw “no chance” for a reunified Germany to “regain the lost eastern territories.” They also stressed, however, that this stance must not be divulged to the public. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 148
Categorization
- XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s research on whether professed conviction diverges from actual belief when a grievance-based goal is politically costly to repudiate publicly.