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WEST GERMANY: Bad Break

2 minute read
TIME

More than a year ago, the West German government solemnly threatened to break off relations with any country that recognized the Communist government of East Germany. Last week Yugoslavia’s Marshal Josip Broz Tito, previously on the best of terms with West Germany, defied Bonn’s displeasure and extended formal recognition to the East Germans.

Yugoslavia was the first nation outside the Soviet bloc to recognize the East German puppet regime. After nearly a week of dithering, Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano concluded that, whatever the cost, he could not back down on a public and frequently repeated threat. At week’s end Brentano called in the Yugoslav ambassador and handed him his walking papers.

If Bonn had failed to make good on its threat, a score of nations ranging from Sweden to India would surely have followed Tito’s lead. This would have given the East German regime a new diplomatic respectability, which would reinforce Russia’s crafty argument that the way to reunite Germany is not by nationwide free elections (in which the Communists would be overwhelmed) but by some kind of deal between the Bonn government and East Germany’s puppet rulers.

But the break with Yugoslavia had its drawbacks. If other nations followed Tito’s lead, Bonn might be forced to break diplomatic relations with a large part of the world.

One clear gainer was Nikita Khrushchev, who had extracted Yugoslav recognition of East Germany in return for Tito’s readmission to honorary membership in “the camp of socialism.” By this maneuver Khrushchev had forestalled Konrad Adenauer’s tentative scheme to try some Bismarckian diplomacy in Eastern Europe. Adenauer’s first projected step was the recognition of Poland, in the hope of creating useful fragmentation among the Soviet satellites. Having broken with Tito over the issue of East German recognition, West Germany could scarcely justify entering into diplomatic relations with the Poles, who have recognized East Germany ever since 1949.

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