The symbolism was unintended, but powerful nonetheless. A little more than six weeks after his death, the government of East Germany laid to final rest the ashes of Walter Ulbricht, who for more than a generation was the country's stern, Stalin-like dictator. The very next day East Germany was admitted to the United Nations, receiving the universal legitimacy and recognition that Ulbricht had both sought and feared.
Even more vividly than the Brezhnev-Nixon summit, the simultaneous acceptance of East and West Germany as members of the U.N. symbolized the beginning of an...
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