ABSTRACT

This chapter merges East and West German perspectives. It reviews the path of continuity in the Federal Republic's Ostpolitik and in inner-German trade against the background of the Euromissile Crisis and the deployment of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) in Western Europe. The chapter investigates the backchannel negotiations between Franz Josef Strauß and Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski leading up to the West German "Milliardenkredit" for the East German regime in 1983. The billion Deutsche Mark (DM) loan stabilized the communist regime in East Germany and the credit saved the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from insolvency. At the same time, the Kohl-Genscher administration utilized the money as a long-term investment to buy the freer movement of people, information, and ideas. The chapter concludes that trade was a significant lever to perforate the Iron Curtain and to conduct detente in dynamic ways as well as being an asset in the efforts to carry on Ostpolitik as an open-ended policy for Europe's transformation and Germany's unification.