Reconciliation Road : Willy Brandt, Ostpolitik and the Quest for European Peace (Contemporary European History)

Among postwar political leaders, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt played one of the most significant roles in reconciling Germans with other Europeans and in creating the international framework that made possible peaceful reunification in 1990. Based on extensive research including his personal papers, international archives, and interviews with his contemporaries, this book traces Brandt's nearly lifelong efforts toward the full reintegration of Germany into the community of European nations. Here, Benedikt Schoenborn gives us a Brandt who passionately insisted on the interdependence of German history, reunification, and a lasting European peace, while remaining strategically and intellectually adaptable in a way that exemplified the "imaginativeness of history."