Přes zátěž minulosti k nové východní politice Vztahy mezi SRN a Československem v 60. letech jako příklad vymezování Bonnu vůči Washingtonu

• Authors: Vít Fojtek

Title variants

EN

Overcoming the Burdensome Past and Moving on to a New Ostpolitik: West German-Czechoslovak Relations in the 1960s

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This article examines how West German foreign policy became independent from that of the United States in the context of the West German attempts to improve bilateral relations with Czechoslovakia in 1968. As part of its efforts at German reunifi cation, West Germany took advantage of America’s problems in Vietnam to enhance its own prestige in foreign policy. The author considers the Soviet-led military intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to be the catalyst of that process. According to the author, Bonn assumed that Prague would need West German economic aid in order to solve its economic problems. The main obstacle to the establishment of full diplomatic relations, however, remained the Munich Agreement. The thirtieth anniversary of the agreement, in 1968, provided an opportunity from the Czechoslovak point of view for the settlement of this question. Bonn was rather cool to the Prague demand to declare the Munich Agreement null and void from the beginning, even though Prague proposed, in the event of a constructive West German approach, to adjust its foreign policy in favour of greater co-operation with the West, primarily the Federal Republic of Germany. The Soviet-led intervention postponed any solution to this complicated question until, as it turned out, fi ve years later, under quite different conditions.

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 105-128

Contributors

author

Vít Fojtek

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic