Western integration

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Under Western integration , and Western integration , the integration of 1949 as will western German part of the state founded Federal Republic in treaties and alliances understood by the western states. With these foreign, security and economic policy decisions were made. The Western powers combined two goals with the integration of Germany into the West. The integration of Germany was intended, on the one hand, to serve the security of the Western European states against Germany, which in the past had represented a danger to its neighboring states. West Germany, on the other hand, was supposed to make a contribution to the security of the West European states from the Soviet Union, whose troops were on the Elbe . With the Paris Treaties in 1955, the Federal Republic was finally integrated into the Western community of states and the Atlantic security community. This marked the first degree that had been shaped on the German side by the politics of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer . In particular, the foreign policy course was only set after strong internal political disputes. The topic of the division of Germany, the preservation of the right to reunification with other parts of Germany and the relationship with the Soviet Union played a special role.

This essentially includes the following contracts:

prehistory

The Truman Doctrine of March 1947 declared the concern of American policy to support free peoples when a totalitarian regime threatened to be imposed on them. This doctrine was one of the first milestones of the Cold War and it marked the collapse of the Allied victorious coalition of World War II . It was published during the London Foreign Ministers' Conference and made it clear that American policy, which for several months had been trying to prevent the further advance of communism in Europe by curbing Soviet expansionary policy , was no longer aimed at an " all-German solution" under four-power control , such as it had been agreed at the Potsdam Conference . At the foreign ministers' conference in Paris a year earlier , the American and Soviet ideas about a future Germany had already been incompatible. While the Soviet Union envisaged a centrally organized unitary state, America wanted Germany to be built up federally .

When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949, the basic structures of the western alliance system already existed. The European Defense Pact of 1948 was followed in 1949 by the North Atlantic Defense Community , in which the United States of America had assumed a contractual obligation to provide assistance to Western Europe . With the OEEC , the European counterpart to the US Marshall Plan , an economic organization for the reconstruction of the West was created in 1948, in which the western zones of Germany were already included. The Council of Europe represented the first step towards European cooperation since 1949.

West policy of the Federal Republic of Germany

West integration of the Federal Republic began when it joined the OEEC on October 31, 1949. The Petersberg Agreement of November 22, 1949 enabled the Federal Republic to participate in international organizations and to join the International Ruhr Authority and the Council of Europe . It allowed the Federal Republic to build up consular and trade relations with the states of the West, which considerably improved the economic situation.

The Western Allied occupying powers ended the state of war with Germany in 1951 with their own declarations: Great Britain as the first of the three Western powers on July 9, France on July 13, the United States on October 19 and 24, 1951. As the last of the four powers declared the Soviet Union ended the state of war with Germany in January 1955.

The Federal Republic got greater freedom in foreign trade through the customs and trade agreement ( GATT ) . France started protests against these freedoms of Germany, which, however, went against the interests of the USA and England . Both wanted to build a bulwark against Soviet expansion, which is why Germany should be integrated into the West. The Paris Treaties of autumn 1954 finally repealed the occupation statute.

The economic integration in Western Europe preceded the political and military integration. According to the Basic Law of 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany became sovereign alongside its military incorporation in 1955.

Western integration

Western integration is the name given to the political, economic and military integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the community of Western European states and the USA, which Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer has promoted. Adenauer was convinced that the Federal Republic of Germany can only achieve effective security against the USSR on the side of the Western powers, so that West Germany can transform itself into a free, democratic state. The Chancellor offered rearmament as an object of exchange for full state sovereignty.

The most important stages of Western integration in the post-war period were the formation of the bizone and the currency reform (both forced by the USA and Great Britain), the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany , the conclusion of the Petersberg Agreement to reduce dismantling (November 22, 1949), the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (Montanunion, April 18, 1951), the agreement of a European Defense Community (EVG) and the simultaneous signing of the General Treaty ( Germany Agreement , May 26, 1952), which the Western powers for the peaceful reunification of Germany ( see German Reunification 1990 ) obliged. The final link with the West finally took place with the accession to the enlarged Western European Union (WEU) and the North Atlantic Pact (NATO) on May 9, 1955. The successful integration into the West, which was made possible by various preliminary work on the part of the Federal Government ( Treaty on reparation with Israel , regulation of earlier foreign debts , Accession to the Ruhr authority and the Council of Europe, Saar Statute, etc.), led to a gradual regaining of state sovereignty until the Paris Treaties of October 23, 1954 finally ended the Allied occupation when they came into force on May 5, 1955.

literature

  • Ludolf Herbst : option for the west. From the Marshall Plan to the Franco-German Treaty (=  dtv 4527). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-423-04527-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Manfred Görtemaker : Little History of the Federal Republic , Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16039-1 , p. 108.
  2. ^ Note from the government of Great Britain regarding the end of the state of war with Germany of July 9, 1951.
  3. ^ Decree of the French Republic regarding the end of the state of war with Germany of July 9, 1951 (see Waldemar Schütz (ed.), Chronology - German history in the 20th century: shaped by World War I, National Socialism, World War II , in: German History in the 20th century , vol. 1, DVG, Rosenheim 1990, p. 290).
  4. Proclamation of the President of the USA regarding the end of the state of war with Germany of October 24, 1951.
  5. Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the end of the state of war between the Soviet Union and Germany of January 25, 1955 (see Wolf-Sören Treusch: 50 years ago the Soviet Union declared the state of war with Germany ended. In: Deutschlandfunk , 25. January 2005).
  6. See Walter Schwengler, Sicherheit vor Deutschland. International legal ties of the Federal Republic of Germany according to the Paris Treaties of 1954 , in: Bruno Thoss (Ed.): From the Cold War to German Unity. Analyzes and contemporary witness reports on German military history 1945 to 1955. On behalf of the Military History Research Office, Munich 1995, p. 101.
  7. Cf. Heinz Rebhan, Structure and Organization of the Air Force 1955 to 1971 , in: Bernd Lemke , Dieter Krüger , Heinz Rebhan u. a. (Ed.): The Air Force 1950 to 1970. Concept, Structure, Integration , Volume 2. Published by the Military History Research Office, Munich 2006, p. 560.