The foreign office of the federal republic of Germany and the question of relations with communist states, 1953–55

The thaw in the Cold War following Joseph Stalin's death in March 1953 initiated a debate within the West German Foreign Office about intensifying relations with Eastern European communist states. Several veteran diplomats advocated expanding economic ties in particular. By 1955, however, the ministry's leadership around Foreign Minister Adenauer had won out with its more cautious course of limiting contacts to diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. This early debate already highlighted most of the issues central to West German deliberations on expanding relations with communist states right up to Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik of the late 1960s and early 1970s.