In her book, historian Mary E. Sarotte presents the “true history of NATO’s eastward expansion.” A conversation about the motives of politicians in 1990, the strange role of Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Vladimir Putin, who uses history as a weapon.
During the negotiations for German unification, was there really a promise to Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward? Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, this question has been the subject of new and heated discussions. The US historian Mary Elise Sarotte, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University, has delved into this history like no other. Her much praised work “Not one inch eastwards” has just been published in German.