The year 1972 proved to be generous in the question of the calculation of time and the chronological order. It was ITU-R TF.460-6, an International Telecommunication Union directive, that introduced the “new coordinated universal time” in 1972. The world suddenly beat to the same beat. With the extra day of a leap year and two extra seconds, 1972 became the longest year in the Gregorian calendar. Never before and never since have people had more time in a year.
In 1972 they made good use of it. If the present is felt to be particularly intense and event-packed, then this may only be due to the mercilessness of the social media feeds. Of course, the early 1970s can keep up with this pace. There was no lack of drama: wars, alliances, terror, climate, the race in space – and an unusual accumulation of plane crashes with a total of 2365 deaths. That, too, is a historic high.
On the one hand, the early 1970s were shaped by the spirit of openness and the removal of taboos, which was set free by the student revolts of the late 1960s and was to result in a social de-icing for many years. Just as bare breasts were celebrated on magazine covers as a symbol of sexual liberation (only to be exposed today as possibly cheap sexism), so other taboo breakers milled their way through Western societies: abolition of the death penalty in France, a vote in the US Congress to include it an amendment to the constitution on equality between men and women (which has not yet been ratified by the states), also in the USA the approval of contraceptives for unmarried men and women. British doctor and writer Alex Comfort published his handbook The Joy of Sex, which – unsurprisingly – ranked in the top five for 70 weeks New York Times-Bestseller list ranked. A German version was not released until nine years later. The first UN Environment Conference (in Stockholm) and the Club of Rome report on the “Limits to Growth” received less attention.
In 1972, Nixon’s politics intensified, both internally and externally
Alongside the new freedom, however, the old constraints also reigned supreme, and none embodied the spirit of conservatism and the post-war United States better than its President Richard Nixon. The Republican was a special phenomenon in office. On the one hand suspicious and devious, controlling and malicious. On the other hand, his exaggerated character and decades of experience at the center of power enabled him to use surprise tricks that matured into historical importance. In 1972, Nixon’s politics intensified, both internally and externally – the key year of his five and a half year presidency.
Of the greatest strategic importance was Nixon’s decision to respond to advances from the People’s Republic of China and initiate the normalization of relations. In 1971, the American table tennis team received a surprise invitation to the People’s Republic of China. The ping-pong diplomacy in April was met with tremendous interest – for the first time since World War II a US delegation set foot on the soil of the People’s Republic. Shortly thereafter, Nixon’s security adviser Henry Kissinger traveled to Beijing for a few hours on a clandestine mission to prepare the coup: he feigned an upset stomach in Pakistan, allegedly withdrew to a country residence and secretly flew off.
The world view of more than a billion people suddenly falters
From February 21 to 28, 1972, Nixon himself went to Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai – a sensational event in world politics. After two decades of wild anti-American politics and enemy propaganda, party leader and dictator Mao Zedong decided on an abrupt about-face – under the impression of the concentration of Soviet power on China’s western border and in fear of an invasion. Nixon, an old-school communist glutton, saw the opportunity immediately and traveled. The image of the handshake with Mao became the symbol of a new policy of opening up and a counter-movement to the logic of the Cold War, which was based on deterrence and threats. The imperialist and class enemy met the forefather of Sino-Communism and human slaughterer – the worldview of a billion Chinese, but also of many hundreds of millions of Westerners, began to falter. “The world changed this week,” Nixon was later quoted as saying, and the metaphor caught on in American newspapers: “Only Nixon could go to China” – only someone who stands with every fiber of his existence for the opposite can land a coup like this .
In the wake of the China flight, the constellation of the Cold War developed rapidly – the antagonism between the democratic-capitalist West and the post-Stalinist-communist Soviet bloc. In April, the North Vietnamese launched their big Easter offensive in the Asian proxy war of the superpowers, which was intended to cause massive difficulties for the South and the USA as a war party. Washington then resumed the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. Shortly thereafter, the iconographic image of the Vietnam War emerged – nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, burned by napalm, runs down a street with her arms outstretched.
Kissinger announces that peace in the Vietnam War is on the horizon
The offensive was intended as a prelude to the parallel peace negotiations in Paris and was intended to strengthen the North’s negotiating position. In November Kissinger announced in Paris that a peace agreement was now in sight.
Nixon used the opportunity for the second, spectacular coup of the year: on May 26, he signed the superpowers’ first arms control treaty with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. The Salt I arms control agreement, which had been in preparation for years, provided for limiting missile defense capabilities so as not to allow any one-sided advantage in the “balance of terror”. It was also agreed to freeze the number of long-range missiles for five years. The first step in arms control and in the East-West dialogue had been taken, the following years were to bring the Helsinki talks and many new ideas for detente.
First rapprochement: US President Nixon (left) and Soviet leader Brezhnev (right) sign the Salt I arms control agreement between the two great powers in May 1972.
(Photo: imago stock&people)
Domestic politics caught up with Nixon in June – police arrested five White House officials while breaking into the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters. Only later would the full extent of Nixon’s surveillance apparatus become known. Nixon was re-elected in November, but Watergate refused to give way and forced him to resign in 1974.
An oversized year, two seconds longer than usual, garnished with the last moon mission, the beginning of the space shuttle era and the first game console. How fitting that just in time for the Olympic Games, one of the largest solar storms ever recorded hit the earth’s magnetic field, paralyzed telephone connections and satellites and detonated a few sea mines.