ABSTRACT
As Bevin, Eden and Churchill et al. had foreseen, the East-West conflict remained impervious to any détente so long as the German Question remained an active factor in diplomacy. In 1955, Harold Macmillan predicted that the priority accorded to reunification by West Germany would have a distorting effect upon Western policy:
Whether or not Germany will eventually be unified is likely to depend on internal events in the Soviet Union. Desirable as it is on general grounds, German reunification cannot in itself be the sole object of policy. That policy surely is to defend Western Europe, or at any rate such portions of it as are in practice defensible.1
