| The trouble-plagued creation of the West German Foreign Office, which symbolically ended in June 1955 with Konrad Adenauer's resignation as Foreign Minister, reflected important changes in the nature of both international relations and German political culture around mid-century. First, the German Reich's total defeat in 1945 forced the ministry's architects to start from scratch at a time when traditional diplomacy was experiencing a dramatic revolution in its scope and form due to new emphases on economics, culture and international organizations. Second, explicit Allied controls on foreign policy dictated how fast the Federal Republic could establish the ministry. Along with the onset of the Cold War, these controls also helped ensured an unprecedented pro-Western orientation for West German international relations. Finally, the reestablishment of democracy in Western Germany and the strong institutional position asserted by Chancellor Adenauer challenged the methods and the elites that had characterized German diplomacy before 1945. Neither the ministry itself nor its veteran diplomats, stigmatized (in some cases unfairly) by their service under Nazism, would play their traditional leading role in West German foreign affairs. This significant episode in the construction of the Federal Republic's government illustrates central aspects of continuity and discontinuity in the history of twentieth-century German politics, society and international relations. |
