This day in 1957 we were, not only in the midst of a Cold War with the Soviet Union, we were anxiously looking at the coming elections in West Germany to see where this lynchpin in the East-West powerplay would go.
West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer paid a state visit to Washington, engaging in talks with President Eisenhower and giving an assessment on the coming elections.
Konrad Adenauer was deeply shocked by the Soviet threat of nuclear strikes against Britain and France, and even more so by the apparent quiescent American response to the Soviet threat of nuclear annihilation against two of NATO’s key members. As a result, Adenauer became more interested in the French idea of a European “Third Force” in the Cold War as an alternative security policy. This helped to lead to the formation of the European Economic Community in 1957, which was intended to be the foundation stone of the European “Third Force”.
Adenauer’s achievements include the establishment of a stable democracy in West Germany and a lasting reconciliation with France, culminating in the Élysée Treaty. His political commitment to the Western powers achieved full sovereignty for West Germany, which was formally laid down in the General Treaty, although there remained Allied restrictions concerning the status of a potentially reunited Germany and the state of emergency in West Germany. Adenauer firmly integrated the country with the emerging Euro-Atlantic community (NATO and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation).
Increasingly, the goings on in Germany, particularly with reference to East and West Berlin, and the city’s divided status, were of importance to the NATO and the recently aligned (1955) Warsaw Pact countries. Because, if West Germany sneezed, Brussels caught a Cold.
And giving a commentary on Konrad Adenauer and the days concerns was noted News Analyst Cedric Foster over the somewhat-alarmist Mutual Broadcasting System on May 29, 1957.
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