Back in 1956 Adenauer had warned that the Federal Republic could not remain a ‘nuclear protectorate’ forever. When it became clear in the early 1960s that the Western Allies had come to terms with Moscow on this sensitive subject, and that between them they would never allow Germany access to nuclear weapons, he was furious.19 For a brief period it seemed as though the Bonn Republic’s allegiance to Washington might be transferred to De Gaulle’s Paris, with whom it was bound by a common resentment at high-handed Anglo-American treatment and a shared suspicion that the US was wriggling free of
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