Germany plan

This article explains the SPD strategy paper from 1959; For the campaign paper of the same name by the SPD candidate for Chancellor for the 2009 Bundestag election campaign, see Frank-Walter Steinmeier .

Deutschlandplan refers to a strategy paper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1959 . He dealt with German reunification .

Germany plan 1959

The first plan for Germany was published by the SPD in West Germany on March 18, 1959 and represented a concept of the SPD for a possible reunification of the two German states, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic .

Herbert Wehner 1966

The development of the Germany plan was initiated by Herbert Wehner , who at the time was chairman of the working group for foreign policy and all-German issues of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Under his leadership, a committee of seven worked out the proposals contained in the Germany Plan.

The Germany plan envisaged the establishment of a demilitarized and nuclear-weapon-free “relaxation zone” in Central Europe, which the USA and the Soviet Union were to protect. The reunification of Germany should then proceed in three stages. In the first step, an “All-German Conference” with equal representation from the Federal Republic and the GDR should prepare the next steps.

However, neither the USA nor the USSR approved the Germany plan. It was also controversial within the SPD, since it indirectly gave the Western powers the responsibility for the crisis following the USSR's Berlin ultimatum . It was given up after a year. On June 30, 1960, Herbert Wehner declared in the Bundestag that the SPD no longer wanted to pursue the plan. So she recognized the course of the western link .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Daniel Christopher Völpel: The development of the SPD from 1959 to 1969 , ISBN 3-638-64094-9 , p. 6 .