ABSTRACT
This chapter deals primarily with the incremental shift in policy in West Germany culminating in Ostpolitik, the sea-change in the Federal Republic's relations with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Communist Europe, which ultimately proved to be a necessary, though unforeseeable, precondition for reunification in 1990. Ostpolitik, which resulted in a series of treaties in the early 1970s that recognised the post-war order in Europe, is generally attributed to Willy Brandt, Governing Mayor of Berlin, and his close adviser Egon Bahr. The fear of another uprising in the East was one of the most important elements in Ostpolitik, as it also was later, in the 1980s, when it was skilfully exploited by Erich Honecker to extract more financial support from Bonn. William E. Griffith, one of the foremost experts on Ostpolitik, stresses the interdependence on what happened on both fronts of the Soviet Empire.
