The Great Coalition faced the elections of 1969 split on the major problems of foreign policy, as well as on the question of the revaluation of the mark, carried out by the subsequent government (24 October 1969). The election of the Social Democrat Heinemann, with the support of the FDP, as federal president, against the Christian Democrat candidate Schröder, as early as March 1969 had predicted the disintegration of the coalition and, above all, future alignments. In opposition, the FDP had carried out a process of renewal in the liberal-reform sense, replaced its leader, sought new consensus outside the traditional electorate of the old middle classes, developed its leading role in the revision of German politics to the maximum and oriental.
The electoral results of September 28, 1969 (which assigned the SPD, with 42.7%, if not the victory, certainly the best affirmation of its secular history, while retaining the relative majority to the CDU-CSU, in slight regression) allowed, also for the exclusion from the NPD from the Bundestag, thanks to the mechanism of the 5% clause, the formation of a coalition government between SPD and FDP. At this point the new liberal leadership did not hesitate – despite the serious electoral defeat suffered with the loss of the right wing of its electorate, especially in the countryside – to promote the Machtwechsel: that is, the advent of the first government, after 1930, under leadership social democratic. Brandt took over the chancellery, the liberals went to the foreign ministries (owner il leader W. Scheel, vice-chancellor), of the Interior and Agriculture; but the majority was small, by just six votes. The main basis of the social-liberal coalition was the agreement on Ostpolitik. The agreed program established the following points for foreign policy: signature of the non-proliferation treaty; conclusion of a treaty for the renunciation of the use of force with the USSR; gradual abandonment of the Hallstein doctrine; treated with the GDR; settlement of the border issue with Poland; enlargement of the EEC. The polls began on December 8, 1969, Secretary of State Bahr conducted preparatory negotiations in Moscow from January to May 1970, resulting in a draft agreement; preparatory talks with Poland began on February 5, 1970; after an exchange of letters, the dialogue between the two Germany got off to a difficult start – revealing the concerns of the SED leadership over the internal repercussions of Ostpolitik – in the meetings between Brandt and Stoph in Erfurt and Kassel (19 March and 21 May 1970), to be suspended until the signing of the Moscow agreement; the talks between the Four Powers on Berlin were opened, at ambassadorial level, on March 26, 1970.
Initiated on 7, signed on 12 August 1970, the Moscow treaty between the BRD and the USSR established the renunciation of the threat and the use of force and the recognition of existing borders in Europe, especially the Oder-Neisse line and than that between BRD and DDR. With this and with the declarations of intent (on the nullity of the Munich treaty, on the accession of the GDR to the UN, on the launch of the CSCE), the treaty defined the framework for the other Ostverträge and certain links of the Ostpolitik with other aspects of the relaxation process; the “German option” (the non-contradiction between the treaty and the goal of reunification) was unilaterally enunciated in an attached letter. The treaty with Poland (recognition of borders, renunciation of the use of force, normal diplomatic relations) was initialed on November 18 and signed on December 7, 1970; on September 3, 1971, the signatures of the quadripartite agreement on Berlin were signed and in December the complementary agreements were signed. The first treaty between the BRD and the DDR, regulating the questions of communications, was signed on May 26, 1972; but on the Grundvertrag, that is, on the normalization of relations, the GDR’s claim of recognition according to international law and the concept of the federal government of “relations of a particular nature” based on common belonging to the German nation clashed: neither position it could be imposed; however, the representatives are not “foreign” ambassadors, neither for the GDR nor for the BRD. Initiated on November 9, the treaty was signed only after the electoral victory of the social-liberal coalition, on December 21, 1972. In 1973, BRD and DDR joined the UN. In June 1973 Husák’s treaty with Czechoslovakia concluded the Ostverträge series.
According to PROZIPCODES.COM, the ‘ Ostpolitik has finally closed, in relations with the East, the post-war era, recognizing the harsh reality of the results of World War II, unleashed by the Nazi regime, in order to pave the way for normal relations also with the peoples of the East; has abandoned positions which, for some time reduced to fictions and increasingly difficult to sustain themselves even within the framework of the Atlantic alliance, entailed a growing risk of diplomatic isolation, to insert the BRD instead as one of the protagonists in the politics of détente, gaining freedom of maneuver both in the East and in the West and to foster long-term transformative pressures of the status quo. By dismissing the particular conflict on the German question and recognizing the failure of twenty years of reunification policy, it implies a revision of the self-interpretation of the BRD, no longer provisorium, but a state like the others, albeit with its special problems. But Ostpolitik is also, and more than anything else, a security policy; in view of the changing world situation, and even after the experience of Prague, the goal is no longer so much “change by rapprochement “, but “security by standardization” (Löwenthal); hence the central position in the whole Ostpolitik of the negotiations on Berlin, the satisfactory result of which for the purpose of stabilizing the Western presence and the links with the BRD constituted the explicit sine qua non for the implementation of the corpus of Ostverträge (especially the Moscow Treaty). The link that linked Ostverträge, the Berlin agreement, the signing of the non-proliferation treaty, the green light to the CSCE is not only the result of the Ostpolitik roadmap itself, but was also strengthened by precise junctim, set up to avoid agreements that mainly interest the counterpart were made earlier than the one on Berlin. The Ostpolitik finally, it is not understandable if not fully evaluating its anchoring to the Westernist policy of the social-liberal coalition, not only firm in loyalty to the alliance but aimed at strengthening NATO and the EEC: this is borne out by the active position taken at the top of the ‘Aia (1969), as soon as the changed French attitude opened up new perspectives; the reform of the Bundeswehr (1971) within the framework of the flexible response doctrine ; the willingness to take on greater responsibilities even outside central Europe, especially in the Mediterranean (eg Malta crisis).
