ABSTRACT
On 16 April 1922 German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau and Soviet Commissioner of Foreign Affairs Chicherin signed the Treaty of Rapallo. Rapallo became synonymous with the Western nightmare of close Soviet—German cooperation, the more so as the treaty seemed to culminate in the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty of 1939 and resulted in Germany’s attempted conquest of continental Europe. This chapter examines the importance of the ‘Rapallo complex’ in influencing West Germany’s relations with the Western Allied powers in the post-Second World War era. The ‘Rapallo legend’ of a conspiratorial Soviet-German deal against the Western world must largely be regarded as a myth, albeit a very influential one. The Rapallo factor was occasionally mentioned when suspicion about the ‘nationalistic undercurrents’ in Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik was voiced in the United States and elsewhere, particularly in 1970. Ambassador Bohlen was convinced that Konrad Adenauer’s negotiations in Moscow had been ‘disastrous’.
