West Germany: Opening Toward the East

Germany's historical Drang nach Osten— push toward the East —has more often than not involved expansion and conquest at its neighbors' expense. Now West Germany is looking eastward again — but this time with a great difference. The only expansion it seeks is economic; the only conquest it wants is over the understandable fear and hostility that still persist among the Eastern European nations that have suffered so much at Germany's hands. Last week West German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger rose in the Bundestag and, speaking to the East as much as to the...