Brandt follows up his reform platform with actions. By signing the Eastern Treaties in Moscow and Warsaw, he makes a considerable contribution toward understanding between the blocs, as well as to German-German rapprochement. Hardliners—among West German conservatives as well as the East Berlin leadership—are put on the defensive. Over the course of the year the first two German-German summit talks are held, and four-power negotiations (between the U.S., Britain, France, and the USSR) on Berlin are resumed.
In the GDR, a burgeoning economic crisis increasingly undermines Ulbricht’s power. Initial provisions for a change in leadership are made in coordination with Moscow.
Continued worldwide protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing and invasion of Cambodia in the spring; in West Berlin this again leads to violent clashes between demonstrators and police.
1970 East Meets West
March 19: the chair of the GDR Council of Ministers, Willi Stoph (right), greets Willy Brandt (left) at the Erfurt train station for the first East-West German summit. With his Eastern politics (Ostpolitik), Brandt lays the foundation for rapprochement between the two Germanys.
December 7: Brandt falls to his knees before the memorial to the victims of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943. The Treaty of Warsaw, signed during Brandt’s visit to Poland, establishes the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as the German-Polish border and signifies the normalization of relations between Poland and West Germany.
