Is Willy Brandt the spiritual father of those who understand Putin? – Culture

A single sentence by Willy Brandt, wrote Claus-Heinrich Meyer in 1970 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, is “the shortest and truest interpretation” of the new détente policy. In a televised speech from Moscow, the SPD chancellor said: “With this treaty, nothing is lost that has not been gambled away long ago.” With the signing of the German-Soviet treaty, both sides had promised a renunciation of violence and confirmed Poland’s western border – which was tantamount to the German renunciation of the former eastern territories there and unleashed a hurricane of protest orchestrated by the opposition CDU in the Federal Republic. These areas had long since been lost, “not gambled away by us, who bear political responsibility in the Federal Republic of Germany,” Brandt continued. “But gambled away by a criminal regime, National Socialism.”