Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

One of the achievements of the Soviet-backed ‘Peace Movement’ of the early 1950s was its success in convincing many West Germans that their country could be both reunified and secure if it declared itself ‘neutral’. Over a third of adults polled in the early fifties favored a neutral, united Germany under any circumstances, and almost 50 percent wanted the Federal Republic to declare neutrality in the event of a war. Given that the most likely trigger for a Third World War in Europe was the German situation itself, these aspirations may seem curious. But it was one of the oddities of post-war West Germany that their country’s privileged position as a de facto American protectorate was for some of its citizens as much a source of resentment as of security. And such sentiments were only strengthened when it became clear from the later fifties that a war in Germany might see the use of battlefield nuclear weapons—under the exclusive control of others.